ESS installation

One of the best additions and purchases to the Houston project was an ESS (Energy Storage System). It is essentially a battery backup for the whole house or partial backup of important things. Mine does the whole house. Over the last few years, I have saved a ton of money by choosing an electricity plan that gives me “free nights” when I can recharge the battery and then run off of battery during the day. In addition to money savings, it also keeps the house running when the power goes out. I can run the whole house normally on battery for 8-12 hours. My power is pretty reliable where I am located in Houston, but there have still been events where the grid was down and I still had power.

I used Sol-Ark / Homegrid in Houston and it is integrated with my Savant home control system. As much as I like it, I wanted to try another, lesser expensive option for the lake house. I chose EG4 with a Ruixu battery. I got the battery in August, but couldn’t install the system without the missing bracket for the inverter. Unfortunately it took from September to January before Signature Solar got me the bracket. Once I could mount the inverter, I could then wire it all up. I design and sell these types of systems in my day job, so I am reasonably familiar with them. I like to include a manual transfer switch so that the inverter can be serviced or replaced while still providing grid power to the house.

In addition to the above mentioned benefits, the inverter is what allows me to connect solar panels to the house. Solar, grid, battery, and optionally a generator can all feed into the inverter and it will determine what power to use for the house. These are amazing systems that are clean, cost efficient, require no maintenance, designed to last 10+ years, and deliver quality power to a home. A generator isn’t any of that. Some people still might need a generator, but even with this, they can add one. I haven’t been without power at either house for more than a few hours, so this alone suffices for my use case.