Ever wondered how batteries are revolutionizing the solar industry and your energy bills? Cue the energy-packed dialogue with Ralph and Ben as we peel back the layers on the world of solar batteries. From backup power essentials to the shrewd art of peak shaving, we're letting you in on all the electric details. With a pinch of humor we swiftly segue into why batteries are more than just power reserves; they're your ticket to managing those skyrocketing energy costs.
Ever wondered how batteries are revolutionizing the solar industry and your energy bills? Cue the energy-packed dialogue with Ralph and Ben as we peel back the layers on the world of solar batteries. From backup power essentials to the shrewd art of peak shaving, we're letting you in on all the electric details. With a pinch of humor we swiftly segue into why batteries are more than just power reserves; they're your ticket to managing those skyrocketing energy costs.
Welcome to another episode of the Harman Solar Podcast. I'm Rob Romano, VP of Sales and Marketing at Harman Solar. With me, as always, is my co-host, Ben Walschlager. You guys know him as Mr Everything Ben, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:A little hungry, but I'm here I'm a little hungry too. I know I didn't get to eat before the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our chef is out of the country, unfortunately, so we didn't have food today.
Speaker 2:I only do this for one reason it's the food. So you're going to be grumpy today. I'm going to be grumpy, yeah.
Speaker 1:Today is the grumpy podcast. Let's make it a quick one, all right? Well, today what we're going to do is we're going to tackle batteries. We're going to talk about batteries, we they work, how they can benefit you. It's a hot topic.
Speaker 2:People do call in a lot and say I want a battery, I want a battery, I want a battery.
Speaker 1:How the technology has gotten better in the last few years and batteries are like you said. They're getting very, very popular, yeah, and we're on the forefront of that, thank goodness, and we'll talk about that as we get. So let's just get started with batteries. Um, I think we should probably start talking about how people use batteries sure and then we can kind of get into detail and have some slides.
Speaker 1:I've had slides in a long time really. When's the last time I had slides? I don't really watch the podcast. Wow, okay, this is the hungry Ben yeah.
Speaker 2:Hungry Ben. But yeah, batteries are kind of popular. I don't know if it's because a lot of people are out there thinking the world's going to end and you know they want that backward backup power, a lot of uncertainty in times and I think we do get those customers who call in and say I want batteries, just in case you know the grid goes out.
Speaker 1:Right, and I'd say in arizona, probably one of the biggest things is our grid's really good.
Speaker 2:yeah, it doesn't go down very often right because we can buy power from other places right.
Speaker 1:So we probably have one of the most stable grids in the country, which so, thank goodness, considering that we live in well, we live on the sun basically for about four months a year do you remember that, um, that snowstorm, that blizzard that hit in tex, the whole?
Speaker 2:you know, everyone was out of power. We got so many calls for people wanting batteries and I had to kind of educate them. I was like, first of all, we live in Phoenix, a blizzard happening, probably not going to happen, and you know Texas, you know utilities in Texas and utilities in Arizona very, very different you know, as far as regulations and things like that.
Speaker 2:So you didn't have much to concern. But yeah, because of national you know things that were going on in the country, people were concerned and they were talking about do I need a battery? So yeah, this is a good podcast to kind of educate you on whether it's a good idea for you or not if it makes sense for you and they have.
Speaker 1:The pricing has come down over the past. I would say five years, dramatically yeah and the technology has gotten better. So, like everything else, right, right.
Speaker 2:So think about that. Pricing has gone down, technology has gotten better. Makes no sense. Makes no sense, makes no sense.
Speaker 1:And so probably the two most common ways you're going to use a battery. I would say the first one is especially in Phoenix, so you have a lot of retired people that live in Phoenix and you'll have people that maybe need oxygen running all the time or whatever critical things they have that needs to be plugged in somewhere. So they need a battery as a backup so if something does go down, that battery can handle that critical load and keep it going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's probably the most common thing you'll see in arizona, I think yeah because of the community that we are yeah, that, and you know people who work from home. They have their computer stations, things like that, and like I can't you know, I have to work from home i't have my computer go down. So if the grid goes down for an hour or two or whatever you know day or whatever, they need to still be able to work.
Speaker 1:So I would just take a nap, pto, and probably the other most common thing would be peak shaving, which we'll get us. I have a slide for that so we can talk about peak shaving, what that means. But it's really important in your bill, really important in your bill, yeah. So with that, let's, let's go to that slide, okay, all right. So peak shaving what's peak shaving?
Speaker 2:well, as we know, we have on and off peak uh times in your utility company. On peak, yep, on peak is more expensive and off peak is cheaper. It's utilities way to kind of people to transfer energy, because they know a lot of people when they come home from work and they cook and dinner and run their ac all that stuff. So they want to kind of encourage you, so to speak, to shift your energy to the off-peak times. It's cheaper, to less strain on the grid and things like that.
Speaker 1:So, like in APS, the most common peak time, I think, is 4 to 7. That's when they're charging you the most for the power. In SRP, I would believe it is 3 to 8.
Speaker 2:2 to 8. It depends on yeah, there's a summer, or like spring and summer, then there's fall. Five to nine. Five to nine.
Speaker 1:So there's changes up. Yeah, so I mean, the idea is like just Ben said, and I'll read my slide Go ahead. Peak shaving is a strategy used to minimize electricity costs by strategically managing energy consumption during peak hours, which is what you just said. Yeah, you just said it. And during those periods, utility companies do charge more, and they do that because of increased demand, right? That's why they charge more, so it's a justifiable charge. I don't want you to think, hey, let's just pick this time and charge more, to be mean, there's a reason they do that. So the goal of peak shaving is it's to reduce or eliminate the need to draw power from the grid during those hours, right? So how can we do that? Well, there's a couple ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we did it a long time ago with solar. Yeah, we used to sell peak systems.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:If people couldn't have, you know, maximize their whole roof or offset all their power, we would look at well, what's just your peak power? We can just shave off just the peak time so you can still buy power from the grid during off peak times where it's cheaper. But then, when on peak time hits, now your, your solar system is generating that power, so it's getting rid of the most expensive part, because the whole goal of this is save money aps used to have that 12, 12 to 7 rate remember that I have that rate.
Speaker 1:still, I'm grandfathered to that rate. So from 12 to 7 7, and I have a peak system, yeah, so it's ideal. From 12 to 7, I'm relying on my solar system.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it covers all my peak, yeah. And then you buy your power off-peak from APS. Yes, it's cheaper power.
Speaker 1:It's cheaper yeah, because that's how it was done back in the day. The interesting thing about if it's four to seven, we're dark by 435 yeah, you're not getting a whole lot of peak time during that right for solar production, so batteries as the solar production comes down and the peak goes up.
Speaker 2:We need something here yeah, like that circle here right there great visuals, Low budget graphics.
Speaker 1:So so that's where a battery would come in, right, if your battery is charging during the morning hours, especially getting charged back up, yeah, as soon as you hit four o'clock, let's say an APS, now your battery kicks in and it's helping as your solar is coming down. It's helping to bring more power as um solar goes down, that goes up. It helps to cover that expensive demand rate that you would get from aps.
Speaker 2:Not demand, it's not demand, but it's a usage rate, yeah, that you would get from aps yeah, um, just like we talked about many, many times before on the podcast, when your solar system is producing power, that power has to go somewhere. Is it going to your home? Is it going to the grid? Well, now, if you have a battery, you know if it's going to there, it's going to be charging that battery. So when it gets to the point of, okay, I'm going to start drawing more power, um, because I'm using more. But now we're getting to that on peak time, where it's more expensive, I don't want to buy it from the grid, I want to get it from a cheaper source. So that's why I have my battery. It's going to start drawing that extra power from the battery during that small window of peak time.
Speaker 1:That's peak shaving. I mean, in a nutshell, that's exactly what it is. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because the solar system production went down, but I still need power. Where is it going to come from? Is it coming from the grid or my battery Coming from the battery?
Speaker 1:Right, and I'll just restate the benefit per the slide Cost savings, right. So by avoiding peak rates, what only is it benefiting you as a customer and helping you save money, but it benefits the grid because it takes some of the stress off it. So it's twofold, it's a win-win, right. So battery is the way to do that. All right, so we can go to our next slide. Next slide, battery options. There's a ton. I went to a show I want to say it was beginning of last year, out in San Diego was a solar show, and there was this whole area of all these manufacturers and all they had was batteries. There was like 150 manufacturers of batteries. It was ridiculous Just batteries, just batteries. Everybody's got a battery. Yeah, you know, I mean I should make a battery, we should do a battery and call it the Harmon podcast battery.
Speaker 2:The Harmon podcast battery. Yeah, we could do it. The Ralph Romano double a battery.
Speaker 1:Everyone has batteries, like here. I'm showing you the. The. The Generac has a battery and I know they're more known for their generators, but they do have batteries. They're not great in Arizona right now, but the new stuff coming out at the end of this year is actually going to be really good for Arizona. Enphase, who does microinverters, has batteries. We sell those. And then Tesla, of course, is the king of the battery world in my opinion, in our opinion, and Harmon Sure Franklin's, another company that's been coming on more and more lately. I showed one of yours.
Speaker 2:So Franklin's been doing more batteries more of a little bit. Lower cost, maybe not as great technically, but not a bad battery. So there's a ton of battery options out there, yeah, and I think what we do as responsible people at Harman is we take a look at all these batteries and solar panels and inverters and we go what's going to be good for our customers? You know our customers right. You know we don't want to offer every single battery because there might be batteries that are just not very cost effective, um, or don't fit in our utilities or our climate, environment, things like that. So we take a look at I'm sure you know Dan and Julie take a look at everything and go what's going to be good for our customers and in our, in our business.
Speaker 1:So to that point. That that out, that's a great point. So I'm going to give an example. So, like this is not. California, lg had a battery called the LG Chem. This is probably three, four years ago, really popular battery. Everybody was installing these batteries in Arizona as well. Well, they don't like heat, yeah, so people were putting them in garages which a lot of people put batteries in garages or they were putting them in direct line of sun or whatever. But again, it's hot here, so when they hit a certain temperature, they start derating and turning off. They don't work, yeah, and so a lot of people and I'll say this Harman never installed an LG cam because we researched and went whoa, these are going to be an issue down the road.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, the companies that are at that did install them and we know a few of them. They're having to deal with these customers now because these batteries are not doing well in the summer. They're derating, they're going down fast. I mean they don't do what it's designed a battery to do, because they just can't, because it's just too hot. So saying that we started really researching batteries, going what makes sense for our customer in our climate that we can deal with, that makes sense. And somebody said it's tesla why? I'll give you a reason number one tesla is the only liquid cooled battery out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's huge in this environment yeah, people don't realize that electronics and heat don't like each other. If you have solar and you look at your solar production and we kind of get these calls from new customers too, they go hey, it's you know middle of july or you know august and I noticed my solar production isn't as high as it was in like may or june. Right, because I tell people, well, and they're like oh good, it's 120 degrees outside, it should be producing the most. Like solar works off a light, not heat. Right, you know, I'll send them the uh, you know data sheets of you like your solar system panels and optimal temperature is like what, like 85 degrees.
Speaker 2:Yeah, after 85 degrees they start to produce less, the hotter it gets. So that's why you see a spike in your production in like may and june, because may and june it's not hot yet but you're still having a lot of sunlight. So that's when you get, you know, the most production and then after that it starts to taper off because it gets hotter. Same thing with these batteries they don't hold up well in the heat. So that's why we, you know, we look at the Tesla option.
Speaker 1:What you're saying is the panel coefficient heat rating used to be an X percent. We can get into that. There are customers that we get that want to get into that. They're engineers always.
Speaker 2:They go to me. I'm going to transfer you to Ben.
Speaker 1:So this next slide is basically the Powerwall Evolution. So I don't have the Powerwall 1 on here. That was the first one that came out, but I'm starting at the Powerwall 2. Because up to recently we were still selling the Powerwall 2. Yeah, but they're no longer making the Powerwall 2. But just to give you an idea, the Powerwall 2 has the energy capacity of 13.5 kilowatt hours. Right, that's what it could store that you could use On-grid power that's 5K continuous and backup of 7k peak. So those are its limitations, right? Great battery. We've installed a ton of these batteries. They were especially popular in retrofit situations where people already had solar and they wanted to put a battery on it. This is a great battery for that, because it's just a standalone battery. That's what it is. Liquid cooled works fantastic, right yeah that's the one that.
Speaker 1:That's one our boss actually has yes, dan has three of those in his garage.
Speaker 2:Find that YouTube video.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can find that YouTube video. We're actually going to do a more detailed one and we're going to put it on the podcast, where he's going to go ahead and see how far he can go, and we're going to look at all the details of his app and everything else and we're going to kind of experience it with him and, for those who don't know, our owner has a YouTube video out there of the Powerwalls on his home.
Speaker 2:He basically cuts it off for what's like three days. I think he ran three days Like three days to see. Can I live off just solar and battery and no grid for three days?
Speaker 1:I'll put the link on here. You'll see it right here on the screen. There's the link and we'll use that for anybody that wants to take a look at that video. It's actually a really good video. Yeah, it's a good educational. Secondarily, now the Powerwall Plus. So the Powerwall Plus came out and it changed a little bit. So what happened is, notice how you look at it on that picture there it's two pieces. You got the battery below and then now you have an inverter. It's a 7.6K inverter. That's part of the setup and it's liquid cooled inverter, which is kind of neat. So the liquid cool battery, liquid cooled inverter yeah, very important in our environment. Um, you'll see that it has the same 13.5 um capacity, 76 um on-grid power, because it's got a 76 inverter, 5k continuous and the backup is 9.6k or 7k continuous. All that wonderful technical information what? What does it really mean? I don't know. What it means is the difference between the Powerwall 2 and the Powerwall Plus is now they've added an inverter as part of the gig, right, so you're no longer.
Speaker 2:You don't have to have your end phase inverters, solar edge inverters, things like that. You can have your.
Speaker 1:It all goes through the Tesla battery inverter yeah, which is really kind of cool. It's all integrated, integrated into one yep um. The bad part about that is, if you have, if you have a system already up with inverters, you can't retrofit it with this because it has to run off this inverter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we don't do that. But very, very neat, um, how they did this? And then they've now these, these two right here, the two and the two and the plus have been discontinued. They don't make them anymore. They just stopped making them in december. Um, so we don't sell them anymore? Yep, they're done. They've all evolved. Now to the powerwall. Three dun, dun, dun the beautiful powerwall three which you see there on the right.
Speaker 1:what do you think is the next one? Powerwall four. Oh geez, so the three has just come out. Um, we were the first, um, we were the first installer in arizona to actually have I'm not sure the availability for other installers, but we're selling it and it's a 13.5 battery. Here's the difference with this one it's got an 11.5K inverter in it.
Speaker 1:So you don't see it broken into two pieces. It's actually just inside of it, so the inverter is in there. 11.5 allows you to do a lot more. You can put a bigger system on it.
Speaker 2:It allows you to do a lot more. Yeah, you can put a bigger system on it. Um, it's just, it's just better. Yeah, because in the in the old days, people would call in and they would say, hey, I want a battery. And then we take a look at their solar system and you know, depending on the size of the solar system, we would say you can't just get one battery because your system is so large, you actually need two or three batteries, right? So you know you can't. It was a linear relationship the bigger your system you had, the more batteries that you would be required to get right.
Speaker 1:So for an example, on that, with the older batteries, especially if you have an ac that you want started up on an older battery, it can't do it right, it doesn't have the power to do it. Power wall three can, yeah, but we'll talk about that in a second too. But anyway it has the ability to do that. And here's a couple differences as well, from the Powerwall 2 to the Plus and the 3. You had to do back and we're going to get in the next slides. We're going to talk about backup loads versus a backup switch. That's another big difference on these batteries, huge difference that you don't see on this slide, but we'll get to the next slide. But those are the three Powerwalls that have kind of evolved. And the Powerwall 3 is where we are as a company right right now.
Speaker 1:So backup load setup is what I was talking about. So this is typically like a sub panel. So on the older batteries for instance, a Powerwall 2, you have your battery set up and then we would run critical loads. So what I mean by critical loads is things that are critical that you need when there's a power outage, right. So you need your fridge running, you need a wall, a couple of wall sockets. You have to have your internet plugged in, your computer plugged in. You need some lights in some rooms, so not everywhere, but you're. You would pick typically six to eight loads that you wanted, backed up by the battery. If the grid went down, yeah, the battery would kick on, this panel would kick on and any load in those pan, that panel would go that was a huge misconception we had.
Speaker 2:when people call in, they would, you know, fear that the grid go down. They want to back battery and we'd have to tell them it's not backing up your entire home, it's only backing up a few things.
Speaker 2:So people are like what? No, I want my whole home. It doesn't work like that. You have to pick what's important to you and there was kind of weird things. People would find out what was important, like, well, I want my garbage disposal backed up, I want that's important. You know, I want my landscape lighting backed up in my pool. I'm like, okay, well, I think there might be more important things backed up, but we can get there. But yeah, it was a huge change of what was before and what we have now, of just what's being backed up. Backed up because a lot of people again, they didn't, they didn't, they thought the whole home was going to be backed up. Nope, that's not the case not at all, so all.
Speaker 1:So I think that Tesla recognized this as an issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they said what are we going to do about it? It turned a lot of people off too.
Speaker 2:actually no pun intended. People are like, oh, I don't want a battery.
Speaker 1:then and when we start talking about, I want to go to the next thing first. Then we'll talk about loads. So the next slide was what Tesla did to solve that problem they. So the next slide was what Tesla did to solve that problem. They created what's called the backup switch. Yep, it basically is this black collar you can kind of see it in the picture here but it goes onto your main meter on your SES, on your panel, and it backs up that entire panel. Yeah, it's one connection. It goes from the battery to this collar on there and it backs up the entire panel. So there's no critical load sub panel, none of that stuff. It all goes away. So this is the new way that they're doing it. They started doing this with the plus and now it's even a bigger deal.
Speaker 2:On the three, yeah, so those people who called in and didn't want batteries before because it was only backed up a couple of things, this is the battery you wanted now.
Speaker 1:Right. So they've listened to what people were saying and they've created this backup switch. And this backup switch is a game changer in the battery industry. No doubt about it. Less upgrades to be done. It does the whole home backup. But let's talk about a whole home backup for a second. So we are Phoenix, yeah, and we've said this before, and we have to keep pounding this. If you want to. Just I got a backup, I want my. All my AC is going to be backed up. If you turn your AC on when you're running off the battery, you're going to see that battery go pretty quick yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd say an hour, hour and a half at the most, depending on the size of your air conditioning system, how many units you have, it'll go quick. So probably not the smartest thing to want to back up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've told people this before too, that when you do have a backup battery, you're like, yeah, we could back up your AC, but as soon as you turn that thing on, you now have like what 30, 45 minutes power and then what? That's it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so to that point, ac. Yeah, you can't. You're gonna drain everything down and you're not gonna have to back up, so you got to be smart, so great you got your whole home.
Speaker 2:Now it's all backed up, but you better be smart about what you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just saying could be scary, could be scary, but very cool that tesla listened and they have this now and it makes it the, my opinion, the best product out there. Yeah, so so that's the. That's the end of the slides. I mean just wanted to give you a quick couple slides to kind of show you some of the key things that what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2:Let's, let's get into um aps with a battery yeah, and aps is a giant utility company right all over arizona and it also depends on where you are in aps because there are more reliable spots than others, right. Um, if you think about if you're in a, you know, major congested area, you know phoenix, peoria, glendale, scottsdale, whatever a lot of your, your homes in that area, when the grid goes down, it goes down for like what?
Speaker 2:maybe a couple minutes yeah hour at the most because of a storm or something like that, but kind of on the outskirts, like when you get like north of anthem or new river stuff like that, where there's not a whole lot of homes. I've talked to homeowners out there and you know, and I've asked how long does it?
Speaker 2:you know when the power goes out, how long does it last? And for them they sometimes say you know it'll go out for three, four, five, six hours. Wow, so it depends too. So for those people out in the, you know, kind of in the outskirts of the valley, batteries could make more sense because of you know their lifestyles and what they want, right. But like for like you and I, when we live in the city, boys over here, you know the grid goes down for a couple of minutes and then back up, so it's a flicker of the lights and that's it.
Speaker 1:Maybe in APS what we were thinking more about is doing peak shaving. Yeah, so that's probably the benefit in APS. Is you really want to use it for peak shaving? Right it? Let's say that in the, in the major areas at least, where the grid's really really reliable, that makes a lot more sense, and there is you just talked about then. Yeah, it makes sense because you want to use it for critical.
Speaker 2:It's kind of on the outskirts peak shaving. Yeah, sure is important because we're all changed, charge the same rate, but then you also have to consider reliability emergency backup stuff, emergency backup yeah and then in srp, so that all applies to srp as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the difference in srp and I shouldn't say it's a difference, but but it seems like the demand rate in SRP is more popular than the demand rate in APS. Yeah, so the demand rate in SRP right now, if you watched our SRP podcast, we talk a lot about a demand manager and we actually had Steven here from Energy Demand that he kind of showed it how it worked and all that, and it's very critical when you're on that rate.
Speaker 2:While with a battery it can act as technically a demand manager.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, a demand manager.
Speaker 2:It has the technology built into it. Yeah, yeah, um, the the main thing with srp and I know this is crazy to think about when you go solar on srp we want you to buy power from srp. It's cheaper than solar, it's a lot. We're getting you solar so that you can get on those great low rates. But now we want you to buy power from srp. Just the power aspect, not the demand aspect. We want just the power to buy from srp. So then the battery, yeah, will help kind of shave off the demand. It's kind of like a peak shaving of demand right so that you don't have to rely too much on demand from srp. So it's still good as a peak shaver in srp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it works in all aspects and APS has a demand rate too, so it can help keep that demand down as you're using. It's all about how you set it up. So there's an app that comes with the batteries and you can basically adjust it to do whatever you need it to do Whether you want it to charge at certain times, just let out at certain times. Whatever you want it to do, you can make that work and even the capabilities are just insane.
Speaker 2:Like it's not just a, oh, I want to charge it and discharge it here. You could do it by percentages and everything too. Like I want to discharge it, but I want to keep about 20% reserve, just in case. So it'll know, okay, I'm going to discharge only to that threshold and then I'm keeping their extra and that's what you'll see a lot of.
Speaker 1:I've noticed in some of the stuff I've looked at where they'll use their battery during the peak shaving time and then they get it down to about 20% by the evening and then it recharges in the, you know, in the morning hours and stuff in the early afternoon hours and then they're ready to go to 100% or close to again right as they hit the peak shaving time so it's that continuous cycle of how it works yeah, so you can set your battery up like I never want it to go below 50%.
Speaker 2:I want to keep at least 50%, just in case the grid goes down, you can do that, or keep it down to 5% or 0%, whatever you want.
Speaker 1:All custom, all personalized to. However, you use power Just like everything else that we talk about Right Right Now, the pricing of batteries has come down quite a bit, actually in the last, I would say, three to four years it's come down and, like we said earlier, the technology has gotten better and there's more that you can do with it now. Yeah, it just depends on your situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know is this are you the person that you're? Just, you can't afford to pay your bill and you need to save today, and if you add more money to the system, it's going to impact your ability to save as far as your margins and saving. So you really can't afford to put a battery in right now. Yeah, let's just say, because there is a return on the battery depending on I can't give you a number I know, it all depends on how you use it, how you set it up and things like that, I know there's a lot of companies out there that'll tell you it has one year, two year return.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll call BS on that all day long. Uh, it's more like a 10 year benefit to it. And this is where we're going. People, especially as APS's buyback rate continues to drop, it'll make more and more sense to, instead of giving them that power at you know, let's say, three or four cents, like you have to do, an SRP 2.81 cents that you fill that battery up and you keep that power and use it when you need to use it to keep your bill down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, get those customers calling who have solar and they're like you know I'm saving money with the solar system. It's great. I still have, you know, like a ten dollar bill with aps right, can I get a battery so I can get that bill down lower like no come on, just be happy with your ten dollar like it.
Speaker 2:We might be able to shave a few cents or a dollar here or there, but the battery isn't free. You still have to take into account how much am I paying for this battery and what benefit am I getting from my savings? So in those special cases it doesn't make sense and we'll tell people no, it doesn't make sense for you.
Speaker 1:On the battery. You have to remember too, there's a 30% tax credit on it, so that's good. There's usually rebates. I know that I think APS is getting ready to roll a rebate out for the batteries as well. They'll give you a few thousand dollars back. I think Tesla even does its own rebate here and there. So you have to check at the time when you're going to buy a battery what are the available rebates, tax credits and all that. But it definitely helps bring the cost down and make the return better. And as we move more and more forward into the future, we're starting to hear more and more about different incentives and different things they want to do because they want people putting batteries on these systems. And it helps the utility yeah, because, like I said before, it takes the stress off of the grid. The more we can take the stress off the grid, the better. In Hawaii right now, the grid is stressed out to 100%. Yeah, right, so you can't get solar on your house without having a battery, because the grid doesn't want your excess power.
Speaker 2:It to go into the battery.
Speaker 1:It's a requirement, um, and it's not a requirement in Arizona yet at this time. Yeah, it might be on. Some days it might become a requirement. I'm not sure. I would say probably will one day, um, but as of right now we're good to go. But I would say, keep your eye on batteries, um, if it's not, you know, maybe it's for you, maybe it's not for you. Just, we wanted to educate you on kind of what they are and what they do and why they're important yeah um, are they good for everybody?
Speaker 1:absolutely not. Um, if you just there's a lot of people that want to buy it just because it's cool yeah, give us a call, we'll be, honest with you.
Speaker 2:We'll tell you whether it's a good fit or not. You know our as we mentioned many times on podcasts, our job isn't just to sell you batteries and sell you solar. We want to figure out is this a good fit for you?
Speaker 1:because we for you.
Speaker 2:Because we want to take care of our customers. So if you're sitting there wondering, like, should I get a battery, well, give us a call. We'll kind of go through it together and figure out what's best for you and your needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it works for a lot of people. We sell systems that have three or four batteries on them. I mean it makes a lot of sense for a lot of people, but some of you guys make any sense back in the old days with the earlier power walls.
Speaker 2:Man, I don't know, I don't think the company liked me because I was turning people away left and right for batteries just because you know I don't luck of the draw people that were calling in I would take a look at and go. You know it doesn't make sense for you. Yeah well, other companies buy and sell you one, sure, but I don't want to sell you one because I remember those financially I'm looking at the numbers doesn't make sense for you in your situation.
Speaker 1:I remember people would call in and say I want a battery. Those Teslas look cool, they're great, I can use car paint on them and change the color and all this stuff. That's fantastic. How much do they cost? And I told them well, why would I do that? Exactly, exactly there you go, why would you do that? But now has gone up, so I would definitely take a look.
Speaker 1:So if you, when you give us a call and you're looking to go solar, ask the question, say, hey, what does a battery look like? Does it make sense for me? And honestly, we will help you to determine if it makes sense for you or not. We're not going to try to sell you a battery if you don't need it, if it doesn't make any sense. But be careful of the people that come in and just push battery, battery, battery, great technology there is a cost to it that will impact your savings situation. Very important that you look at that. They're not free. So always I would say, when you get proposals, look at one with and look at one without and you will see the impact of what it does to you. Take a hard look, trust yourself, trust your gut. Don't trust the sales guy. What if I'm?
Speaker 2:the sales guy Trust yourself, trust your gut, don't trust.
Speaker 1:No, I would trust you but definitely do your research. So I mean that's really, that's really it. I mean there's not, I don't want to go into. I'm not going to sit here and get into coefficient temperatures and you know, lithium and this, that'll be next week. Yeah, we're not going to. We're not going to do that kind of a dive. We just wanted to give you a basic overview, quick podcast, on batteries and what they can do for you and how they've changed over the years.
Speaker 2:So Sounds good. Make sure you like and subscribe and follow us on all the socials and everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll be back again next, probably the next week or two, with the next topic. I'm hoping we get Neil and Amy back and that they got some proposals from somebody else, because I really want to have that conversation.
Speaker 2:I would love to pick apart other proposals from other companies.
Speaker 1:Me too.
Speaker 2:I think that'd be fun. We should show them on the air like oh, this company look at this company, but hopefully we can do that next.
Speaker 1:If not, we've got some other things we're going to do, so we just wanted to get this one out of the way in a sense, because I really feel like we've needed to do this and we just kind of skipped over it. So thanks for your time and we'll see you soon. Thank you.