Then start arguing for removing the regulations into the energy market. Because it is the single source of corruption and easier for companies to lobby politicians to pass regulations that favour then and destroy the competition. The only reason the power company has monopoly in any given area is because it is legally mandated by government regulations. Start arguing for 100% removal of regulations and then you migh see competition increasing and you as a customer benefiting form it. Because little bit of regulation is again the same, the regulations started as just little and we know what they are now. If you wish gov to regulate just a little bit then you are just naively hoping that the same corrpt politicians will by magic be not corrupt this time. Imagine if there were regulations on how many political parties can there be any given area? What if it was legally mandated that any area can only have 1 political party? What would you call it? And wont you argue to remove all restrictions on no of political parties and candidates as much as they want to, and argue for removing all bariers of entry right(exceptions : convicted violent criminals eg terrorists/murderers etc banned from being a candidate)? Same logic applies to power companies.
I have been off grid for 7 years . My system is 72kwh's of chevy volt batteries, 21000 watts of used panels. I run 2 inverters one 12kw low frequency split phase. A 6kw low frequency inverter charges my chevy volt. My inverters have no software ! And they don't need the internet to make it work. It's been running seven years this way.
How do you manage to survive winter? I generate the most power in summer - when I don't need heating and car requires less powermto run, etc. In winter, the production is horrible (we had a period with less than 5kWh from 12kW array - in 14 days!!!).
Just something you mentioned pertaining to your gas usage. It's now been 17 years since I've had any heat in my house no gas whatsoever. I insulated everything floors wall ceilings attics. The gas company chargers based on your usage during the summer months. Anything over that allotment during those warm months they charge 5 times the rate of what you use in winter time. As far as it goes with cooling the house I can't Express more than the use of thermal tint on the windows. You can feel almost the 20% drop difference in heat coming through the windows. It's a bit pricey but it paid for itself. Just like the insulation a little more pricey initially. I have 10 tons of air conditioning in my home and I only turned the system on to test during final inspection17 years ago.These little things reduce my bill to the point where at the moment my simple solar generator is keeping the utility companies at bay. When you don't have to pull permits and get anybody involved with what you do to stay off grid, I I'm smiling all the way to the bank.
Off grid over 20 years with no house payments and no utility bills. Internet $80 a month for unlimited and I run a business online. Solar and wind power with batteries. Propane heat, OD water heater and stove. Wood stove backup. You can do it!
My backup generator is going to be my Cybertruck. I’m also going to adjust my batteries to feed our home/grid during peak cost hours. No system is perfect, but I’m grateful to have solar, batteries and EVs. Thanks for your great videos :-)
Cool. Specs say the Cybertruck can supply 11.5 kW to the house I assume that's continuous. That's some real power. Most home batteries can supply about 3-7 kW continuous. But most EVs on the market are capped at about 3.3 kW (if they offer Vehicle to Home at all!)
Great comment on moving off natural gas to solar/battery. We replaced the HVAC (heat pump), R8 duct, added additional return to guarantee 1600 cfm in and out (4 ton). When Jan 2023 cold season hit our natural gas bill went from $30 to $99. Our neighbors went from $30 to $300-$600. Our water heater is in our insulated garage and suffered from the cold. My daughter and I spent a couple hours with a R8 insulation wrap. Following cold months dropped to high thirty’s. My conclusion is HVAC Heatpump is extremely efficient and has 99 speeds of operation maximizing efficiency. It does not take a huge hit on the battery to start as ramp up, maintain and ramp down keeps the home comfortable for winter or summer. Last comment, I would not switch the water heater from natural gas as there is literally no maintenance for 15-20 years (optional yearly discharge or anode replacement if you want 20-30 year life). Heat pumps require monthly/quarterly air filter cleaning, they are noisy, produce vibrations, require exhaust duct (my opinion for cold air) and the cost at the end of day are pretty close in Southern California.
My GE heat pump/resistance heat hybrid water heater ($1,400 price in 2010, then less a $400 utility rebate) is still running fine in 2024 after fourteen years. No maintenance required except rinsing off the air filter. It never shows it using the resistance heater. 50 gallon capacity, 63 gallons at selected temperature (130F) for the first hour. I did put a water softener in front of it to avoid our hard water lime buildup.
Have you considered how to reduce your power consumption in the first place? That is usually the best thing to do before considering how to generate more with solar. I Denmark where I live there is a great focus on building low energy houses - to minimize energy consumption for heating. But the isolation works both ways - so also against heat in the summer 😉
I have spectrum and they said 100 MB is all you can get. Metro fiber started coming on line in my neighborhood and now I constantly get 200 MB all the time. 🤔
@@paperburn The average user is overpaying for anything over about 50MB. I have 100Mb fiber and it's pretty stable compared to the at least monthly 1 to 10 hour outages I had with Xfinity/Comcast in Silicon Valley, no less!
What they charge you for electricity is insane!! In Western Washington state we pay about 11 cents a Kw. Moving out of California in 2018 was the best decision of my life!
Just a little bit North of you in British Columbia we have a government electricity monopoly, but we pay even lower rates than you. I don’t think energy monopolies themselves are the problem, it’s whether they’re public or private, and how they’re regulated.
@@jamesvandamme7786 Yup, here we have Hydro-Quebec , my rate is 0.06509 per Kw/hour then it go up to 0.10041 if I pass a certain amount per 2 months. I still need to insulate my house more, got some major heat loss from old windows ,doors and the floor joist, this should lower my heating/cooling bill.
This time last year, we were in the process of having battery backup installed along with expanding our solar before NEM 3.0 went into effect here in California. Our choice was NeoVolta based in Poway, CA. The NeoVolta system is 14kWh expandable to 24kWh (we did that) with an integrated Solar Inverter as well as a secondary input for pre-existing solar or a fuel generator. They also use LFP batteries which was a selling point because we feared NMC battery problems which were getting a lot of attention at that time. We have PG&E, but live in an area where a local Irrigation District has been fighting to offer service for over 20 years but can't get PG&E to sell the infrastructure. Mind you, we are being hit for most of 2024 with a PG&E price increase because they haven't done even basic maintenance in our area in 25 years. PG&E, SDG&E, SoCal Edison are all for-profit corporations that have played fast an loose with maintenance for decades and when they get caught red handed (the San Bruno pipeline explosion, all of the forest fires. Destroying the entire town of Paradise.) Killed people and then somehow weasel their way out of it by filling false bankruptcy-- since when does bankruptcy discharge court ordered settlements? If I could cut the PG&E connections to my property, I'd do it in a second but until I can, I'm going to self-generate as much as I can.
Tips for stretching the battery life over night - turn off things you don't need. Running servers? Are you sure you need all of them 24/7? Running lights? Are all of them off when nobody is in the room? For things like this, there is perfect cooperation between presence sensors (radar based) and in-wall light switches. If nobody is in the room for 5 minutes, just turn the light off. Same thing about opened windows - few sensors will tell home automation that the window is opened for too long and you should close it to avoid heat creep. Car charging - leave the car plugged and charge only when your battery is already full and only use the excess energy that would normally go back to grid. Garage doors - long-opened garage doors will again allow heat creep into the house - be it hot or cold air, that you will then need to spend energy to compensate. Simple notification on the phone for garage doors opened for more than 3 minutes (usual time to put kids and bags into the car and leave garage) will remind you to close it, avoiding heat differences. But no matter what, in the end, you will still need utility company if you want to keep your standard of living. Just use it as little as possible.
Ricky forgot about the energy stored in the EV. It holds more than all three of the Franklin batteries. It's called V2H - vehicle to home. If he had a Bidirectional charger, the EV could supply enough energy to run his house all year. Putting a few more panels on the roof would charge both batteries and EV, taking the load off the batteries. Also converting the appliances to heat pumps will reduce the load on the batteries. The problem with network equipment is it makes enough heat to require 24/7 air conditioning, so turning off all but a minimum will do little to reduce the air conditioning. Plus the equipment that makes the most heat has to stay on 24/7. What saves money is insulating the dwelling. When a company gets a law made that costs the consumer money, that's known as rent seeking to the economics field. It's a legal form of corruption that should be outlawed.
@@acmefixer1 The problem is that almost no V2H or V2L currently on the market can supply a house. One reason is peak and sustained capacity. An F150 Lightning CAN supply a house with a max of 80A. However almost all other EVs can only supply a paltry 3.3 kW or so (13 amps). That's not enough to run the average AC unit - though it could run the average home.
@@StevenChristenson By your logic, if the EV can't keep the air conditioning running, then the battery ESS can't either since it has much less capacity than the EV. But on hot days the Sun shines brightly so if the house has rooftop solar, it can run the air conditioning and have some left over to charge the EV and/or batteries. This is why they say it's best to insulate a home since it will reduce the amount of energy needed for heating and air conditioning.
You can go off grid without sacrificing your standard of living. You just get very good at finding more efficient ways of doing things. Running the washing machine on sunny days when you've got lots of power coming in is better anyway, because that's good weather for hanging the washing out to dry. A more efficient and possibly smaller fridge doesn't warm up your house as much, and if it's smaller, that reminds you to use your bought food while it's fresh and not let it sit there going stale until you throw it away. A well insulated house uses very little heating and cooling, and is pleasanter to live in than a poorly insulated house even with the HVAC running. Lights are a red herring in energy efficiency. I have all 12vDC LED lights in my house, on a separate battery set and everything isolated from the 240vAC system, and I leave my outdoor lights on 24/7. There's just no reason to switch them off.
@@tealkerberus748 There is a reason to switch off the LED lights: the more hours they're on, the dimmer they get. Finally they're putting out too little light and must be replaced. Same with the wearing out of the electric system.
I am so glad someone recognized the power of an individual over legacy monopolies. I have 8.5kW system, Tesla Model 3 (no gasoline), heat pump HVAC and hot water (no natural gas), and most disruptive of all... I am plant based vegan (No meat, dairy, or processed food monopolies).
I have experienced multiple 10 day outages and many shorter duration outages, some lasting hours, some lasting days. We've always lived just on the edge of urban areas but far enough out to be among the last restored during am outage. Our most recent 10 day outage was last year. We have had whole home backup generators for years and plan to go solar in the near future. Franklin is at the top of our list for battery backup because of their ability to use the backup generator to recharge the batteries.
Excellent presentation. I'll add that you wouldn't need to charge your vehicle during extended outages, or low solar production periods (use public charging instead for that two weeks per year scenario). And soon you'll be able to use your EV to feed your home batteries, if not already. This would eliminate the need for additional solar panels and batteries.
Perfect timing on this episode. We’re specifying a solar system right now. We have a SPAN, would love a detailed followup video on the SPAN/FRANKLIN integration. SPAN’s documentation naturally doesn’t play favorites when it comes to integration. I’d value your take. Thanks.
work with a food group that installed a dual battery franklin system, really looks pro.. no solar , powers a dozen big 2 door freezers... and a walk in... no grid downs yet.. SoCal for my small house. 1 server rack battery and victron 3KW. inverter off grid in town all summer 50 % so far this winter.. with 13 panels. from salvage job.. thanks
First love the channel, you as the thought provoking host and this episode. I can’t help to ask questions for myself as if I were in your situation . 1) solar/battery for off grid living ain’t there yet… right? 2) the pinnacle would be off-grid energy charges my EV. And maybe we, I mean me, are seeking solutions to self-sufficiency at the wrong end. Maybe it’s reducing consumption. Like the Eco Resort we stayed at in Belize… it ran on 4kW per day. I have found some success with multiple heating/cooling sources here in the Pacific Northwest. And my take home point is lessening energy consumption where I can, i.e. 110watt oven and likely a future 110watt water heater and a safari hunt for energy hogs. Hello SPAN. I ask: should we look for the balance of energy independence from many sources rather from one magic bullet…While we await affordable technology? PS I love and am envious of your system. Thanx for the straight up review. Cheers!
$0.42/kWt hour? Crazy! I pay $0.09/kWt hour and I live in the desert where we run our AC 24/7 for at least 5 months out of the year. I'll have to confirm it with my wife, but I'm pretty sure my electric bill is NEVER more than $200/month.
Most of the cost of electricity is infrastructure, so the actual $price/kWh tends to depend on usage. States with very high consumption tend to have lower $/kWh rates. But the bills wind up being comparable for average homes. California isn't even in the top-10. It's middling for actual electricity bills and a bit higher for electricity + NG bills (around #10-#12). In fact, the average electricity bill in Arizona is higher than the average bill in California even though Arizona electricity costs only $0.15/kWh. New Mexico, on the other-hand, has the 2nd lowest electricity bill in the U.S. Low prices and low bills. It varies. That said, heavy electricity users in California do get dinged. If you are a heavy user you really need Solar to keep the bills reasonable. I also live in California and am a fairly heavy user. I save around $3000/year by having roughly 7kW worth of solar on my home. My monthly electricity bill (not including natural gas) varies between $25/month in summer to $150/month or so in winter. And that includes charging an EV. I'm working towards reducing it even further. -Matt
@@brawnbenson552 I don't know about SDGE, but Pacific Gas And Electric will NOT let you use a tiered plan in Northern Califonia, you MUST go with a Time of Use Plan. The reason is simple... if you don't have a battery the peak electricity costs can kill you because they occur as production wanes and ends. In fact due to a snafu, I was on the 2-tier plan for almost 3 months. It's pretty amazing how much more reasonable costs are when you can stay in the first tier all day and month! To add insult to injury, however the default Time of Use plan charges MORE per "off-peak" kWh than the tier-1 plan! Only when you move to say EV-2 plan do you actually get a decent spread in rates between peak and off-peak AND a reduction in the off-peak rate over the other plans.
Hi Ricky, I’ve been listening to you for a long time and sat in on a panel you moderated at the EV show and San Diego a while back. Thanks for all the info . I like this idea of fighting monopolies. Our local Internet provider was getting worse overtime and it was the only choice so we started using data over our phones for a while until our Starlink showed up which is great.
i've been completly offgrid for 2 years now, with 9 Kw PV array and 15 Kwh Lifepo4 battery pack. we have plenty of wood for heating during winter. As for hot water we use Propane Gas tankless water heater that costs around 25$ a winter, and a Solar water heater for the rest of the year. Going Solar for electricity is the best decision ever since the cost of 1Kwh is 0.35$
Are you considering replacing your A/C with a heat pump? This will save you big money in the summer as it runs off DC power and will also give you heat in the winter. Since it does not get very cold in San Diego this is a better option than your gas furnace.
My parents lived in North County with SDG&E as their energy provider for over 40 years and the cursing never slowed. As a high school kid I can remember so many cars with bumper stickers that said: "Welcome to North County. Owned and Operated by SDG&E."
Great Report, one additional point to LFPs , the code allows to have them in closer proximity, thus increasing the density of the setup, Franklin can scale, a lot.
I would love to see a couple of videos/episodes of a breakdown between the pharmaceutical, education and energy sectors in the US vs most of Europe and Scandinavia. One comment is from a Norwegian living in the Netherlands. They mention how the energy companies are completely separate from the grid (nationally). My term for what we do here in the States is “predatory capitalism”. It’s like you described in a video, monopolies within monopolies all appearing to be based on competition. But the biggest areas of “predatory capitalism” here are education (especially college), medical care/costs (including health care insurance, pharmaceutical costs and medical care schemes). Most Americans are one major illness or one major accident away from bankruptcy. Medical expenses are easily the #1 reason behind personal bankruptcy. The costs involved with colleges as well as how school loans work are absolutely examples of predatory capitalism. Europe has handled many of these issues so much better than we have here. They have their own problems and opportunities for corruption…but in many areas, the rest of the world is decades ahead of the USA.
My wife and I just bought a piece of property in upstate NY (50 acres) and we're hoping to build our house on it completely off-grid. We're not sure yet just how big of an array we'll need, but we expect to put in around 30-35kwh of batteries along with 20kw-30kw of solar panels. We're planning on making sure that the system is easy to expand just in case it's not enough to begin with, but we'll get there eventually. Thank you for the information you provide, it really helps us to at least know what questions to ask and were to look for solutions.
Be sure to focus on conservation of energy first and then size the system. Insulation, air seating and low energy devices should be foremost in your mind :)
You brought up a very very good point about back feeding, I've workout in the business of clearing trees from power lines, and that is a very real danger when we are called in for storm repair.
You'll love the new aPower 2. It's power and capacity is probably the last battery you need. Definitely need more solar. I have virtually the same setup but went with 22kW. Next on my update list is geothermal which will get rid of the compressor and give me the cement block for the generator.
I'm sorry, Ricky, but using 1100 kWh per month sounds absolutely insane to me. Our family of 3 uses between 400 and 500 kWh per month. That even includes an EV in our garage. Your utilities and the CA state legislature are absolutely doing you dirty, but your usage is also sky high.
The Generac PWR Cell offering that I have is very similar it seems. We don't have peak/off peak pricing though, so we just use it to sell back to the grid and use as automatic backup when the grid goes down.
You are SO lucky your solar influx is that constant! 1600 KWh in the best month, around a 1000 in the worst month! Here in the Netherlands it's between a factor 6 - 10, we can never, ever, ever go off grid unless some new form of generation is developed!
Yes - in Australia power has increased greatly in the past few years to around $0.32c per kilowatt, but solar here is huge so many who can afford are investing in both solar + batteries.
I bought my house in Sacramento and it needed a new HVAC system and water heater before we could move in and had both switched to electric. Got the whole house on electricity and had PG&E disconnected and the meter removed. So glad we did it. See all the gas surcharges that people are dealing with is bananas.
The most important thing, is running refrigerators and freezers. A person can get large enough portable batteries for emergencies, that can be charged from the grid, later they can invest in solar etc.
@TwoBitDaVinci We recently installed a similar system. I did discover a few issues, and I'm curious if you have noticed. 1. The roundtrip loss Panels -> Battery -> Back to House is stated as 11% (under "Standard Test Conditions), but this winter in Northern California I notice it is about 13.9% (look at the Charge and Discharge information for your aPower and compute the difference/percentage). That matters because payback decreases due to those losses, and some people who think that they can charge their battery at off peak and discharge it to cover their peak loads may actually be paying MORE if the rate difference is less than about 13% between the two. That is, "Time of Use mode" might cost more than "Self Consumption Mode". 2. Our system is a "partial backup", meaning we have a backed up critical circuits panel, and the rest are "non-essential." Unfortunately the FranklinWH system as installed has no knowledge of the other loads (including our AC), so what it reports for imports and exports to the grid are not what the utility company sees. It's a bit of a gut punch to think you imported only 12kWh in a month and discover it was actually 60kWh.
Hi, connections to the grid will have the future possibility of selling power as part of a cooperative to sell as part of a peaking plant ie high export prices… coming soon to a district near you (hopefully)
SPAN + FranklinWH are truly a power couple! SPAN Panel integrates seamlessly with FranklinWH for smarter home energy management that helps you save more and extend your battery during power outages. Thank you, Ricky for showing us how to enable ultimate home energy management system! 🔋☀⚡👏
This is just like the Tesla Powerwall 2 really, except you can disconnect from the grid via the Tesla App. The weather here in South Australia is similar to San Diego (not as hot as it used to be but that's another story), our return on roof-generated solar works differently though in that we pay top price for incoming electricity at peak times and get 5c/KWh when feeding solar back to the grid, so it's a no-brainer to install whatever batteries you can afford to soak-up your own solar output during the day to use when the incoming supply is at its most expensive. As pointed out in the video, some battery systems will keep your solar panels working during a grid failure and some won't, so do your homework. I have 2x Powerwalls which have largely contributed to credits on my power bill for the last two (summer) quarters while running whatever appliances I want day or night, including some significant airconditioning during the few really hot events we get these days. The bottom line is whether you continue to pay for peak grid electricity or pay to have batteries installed, you will eventually reach a point where the batteries have paid for themselves and you will truly be getting "free" electricity.
All power companies are connected to each other via grid that runs across the whole country because of that if you live in California and wanted to buy electricity from New York, you should be able to do that. It’s the lobbyist at the federal government that keeps us from getting cheaper power off the grid. I appreciate your research and knowledge of solar systems. I’m too old to be able to take advantage of it but thank you anyway.!!
Talk to your utility to see if you can get a load shedding rate. I work in a hospital and we get the load shedding rate. We pay 3 cents per kW. Also power rates are usually cheaper after 9 pm, talk to your utility to see if you can charge your batteries when rates are cheaper.
I feel you! PG&E JUST JACKED our rates to $.51 and I also have solar NEM2. There's no reason to pass on the costs the way they do. Something is extremely wrong. Literally they just ask to charge more and BAM they do. Our generation cost is low...it's all transmission cost.
Great Video, Live in Panama and this is a huge monopoly. Energy cost just went up in January. and we are a country we cannot say No more grid we need to pay them until we die. I am connecting currently my Solar system but as always the permits takes sometime around 3 months. but trying to cut my bill off completely, that means paying 2.50 a month since that is something i will have to pay even if i do not use the grid during the month. Probably next year will start the battery project.
If you use both 5G and cable internet, you aren't fighting your cable monopoly even a little. You're still paying them and that's what they care about.
only way to beat it is using a small business wisp... which most people dont know about in many areas. There used to be a mapsearch ability but it got bought out and taken down (ubiquiti wisp tools)
Not true. I live in Seattle and had no issues with weather-related outages. I don’t know the tech to know why they don’t suffer from the same issues as satellite TV but am guessing the low-earth orbit is part of it.
That said, I ditched Starlink, not because it doesn’t work, but because it was oversubscribed, thus not always the greatest performance, and AT&T came out with their $50/mo home 5G internet, half the price of Starlink and better performance.
Wow! You really should look at using less electricity rather than getting a larger battery and solar system. I live in an off grid house, and our battery bank is 9KW, and works fine for us. We are very conscious of the power everything consumes, and our power consumption is below average. Also... All our heating is not electric. We have solar hot water, with one of those glass tube systems (works amazing) and for heating we got a wood stove. Heating on the winter consumes too much power, so if you offload that to other systems, you will have enough electricity with the current system. So if you have a heat pump I would say, just use it as an air conditioner in summer when energy is plentiful, but for heating get a pellet stove and a solar heater for the water, as it is way more efficient than making electricity, and then heating the water. And then, just reduce the amount of stuff plugged in 24/7, get timer switches or something at least, and only buy high efficiency household appliances, and try to use them efficiently also.
Another way to fight monopolies is to practice permaculture and related disciplines, as well as going for localization instead of sourcing to outside areas. If you harvest rainwater to water tanks and soil you lessen grid dependency and build personal resiliency. Pumping water from afar pulls a lot of electricity, as well as requires a lot of infrastructure. Harvesting your own rainwater lessens brownouts because less electrical grid strain. Harvesting rainwater also assures people lower in the water table have less flooding as well as a more stable clean water source. Letting rainwater evaporate off is a huge waste. Worse (cost-wise) is letting rainwater run to a storm drain network. Most storm drain networks then commingle sewage and rainwater and then dump the system overload into rivers, lakes and the ocean. This is wastes higher quslity water as well. Letting stormdrains be the sold source of rainwater management adds to carbon lost to water instead of soil . Higher carbon in water adds to screwed up weather patterns, and also loses soil fertility, permeability and water retention in soil. If you install raingardens/bioswales you also reduce ground subsidence and related foundation repairs, as well as reduce irrigation costs. If you recycle your greywater you also reduce the amount of carbon lost through poorly-managed, centralized systems, and more pumping costs...
I agree it’s valuable to go off-grid in any way you can, not just solar. We live in the country, so, an old-fashioned pump and a septic system takes care of most of that by default. Rainwater goes into the ground except for what we divert into rain barrels for the garden & greenhouse. Permaculture is a little tough here (MT) but we are working on it. There are many ways to reduce stress on the environment and avoid monopolies, depending on where one lives.
@@DDGLJ Have you seen how Brad Lancaster manages rainwater run off? He's brilliant. Greywater is an excellent resource as well, and can be easy to harvest with a simple set up. It can be nutrient-rich without the pathogen issues of blackwater. Make a set up that diverts it to landscaping or trees/orchard. Every bit helps.
excellent presentation there Ricky, looks to be the USA version of what we have in the UK, the givenergy AIO (all in one) theres is 13.5kw lithium iron 100% DOD & with the gateway gives up to 7kw surge in the event of grid down, BUT in a grid down scenario during the day the solar is added to the 5-7kw supply possibility and can be retrofitted to current solar systems, i myself am saving for a AIO/Gateway, as i live alone will be able to export back to the grid when @ work for circa 15-30p per kwh and still have enough juice for when i @ home, next step is adding more solar on the south and then on the east :)
I live in Southern California -- Winter Rates are $0.26 - $0.53 per kWH and Summer Rates are $0.27 - $0.60 per kWh on our Time-of-Use plan with SoCal Edison (our electric utility provider/monopoly) ... I went with solar in 2022 and it's incredible to see how quickly they're hiking the kWH rate. Thankfully, my solar system on NEM 2.0 covers my entire utility bill between solar generation, selling to the grid for credits, etc. --- but I'm looking to add Enphase batteries to my system in the next 5-10yrs for more independence and anticipating higher usage/utility fees/EV purchase(s)
Another great video, keep them coming! One questions - if you can get less expensive grid power at night, can you use grid power to top up the batteries?
@senseidadproductions: There is a round trip loss of 11% (up to 14% that I measured this winter). The net of that is unless the "off peak" rate is 15% less than the peak rate, it's not fiscally practical to use grid power off peak and discharge at peak. Where the off-peak charging makes sense is in anticipation of a storm or planned power outages, or when you have a dismal day that doesn't manage enough production to charge the battery and you want to make it through the peak period.
Here in Puerto Rico most people are getting solar. is required to stay connected to the grid to get the project approved. is insane but is the reality. The best thing is the peace of mind.
Those batteries do look very cool. They seem large for only 5kwh each, or maybe I misunderstood I have 5.6 kwh batteries that are server rack size approx. 5 inches tall by 24 inches deep by 19 inches wide. They now sell for about 1300.00 each. I do love solar
I don’t think energy monopolies themselves are the problem, it’s whether they’re public or private, and how they’re regulated. In Canada, the provinces with government-owned electricity companies have very high reliability and very low rates. I pay the equivalent of less than $0.10 USD per kW.
I found there are 2 ways of buying solar set up. The first way is to spend 100k or more on a system that runs your whole home. The second way is the route I took . U scrap every appliance. Then u buy all new energy efficient appliances. The current technology is ridiculously efficient. That way you can run your house on a much cheaper system.
WOW that is insane how much you had to pay in Jan 23. Crazy. I have added Solar to my house and it has helped cut my bill a lot. Last year I produced 129% of my electric energy needs.
I wouldn't say we're in a gold age of batteries yet. I think we have the potential to be in a golden age within the next 10-15 years, but we certainly seem to be on the cusp of that transition point.
What a company that installs Tesla batteries wanted for 2 Powerwalls was insane. I laughed on the phone, I thought it was a joke quote. If I remember correctly, for just 1 it was $24K and 2 was $35K or something dumb. They are obviously trying to rip me off, I know the units themselves are about $8400. Add the gateway + install....I installed 8kW of solar + a 200 amp panel upgrade and move 100amp panel to subpanel in garage for under $20K (before tax credit). Huge battery packs in cars are under $20K for about 80kWh. I just want between 20 and 30kwh of hours batteries for a reasonable price. Anyway, I'll go through with it within 3-4 years. That will help bring an ROI with it, right now I don't have financial incentive and I have 2 Ecoflow Delta Pros that can backup my house when needed manually (minus the high ticket electric demand things of course).
Try doing a story on your home getting an energy audit to work out ways to reduce its consumption levels, which may allow your batteries to see you through the evening even in winter.
So, in a lot of places in the USA, the monopolies for utility companies is actually legally protected. Building out the infrastructure for the power grid is extremely expensive, so it really only made sense financially for companies to build in large cities where they would have more potential customers in a smaller area to recoup those investment costs. When the country was first becoming electrified, the government didn't want to leave behind rural communities, so they promised the utility companies a non-competitive monopoly in different areas in exchange for building out the grid to customers who otherwise wouldn't have made financial sense for the utilities. That is also why you are legally required to be connected to the grid in some places, because the government promised the utility that if they built the grid every home in that area would be their customer. In an attempt to protect consumers from the typical monopoly B.S., the government also made the utilities agree that they couldn't charge whatever they wanted and could only raise rates by a small amount each year or to pay for upgrades and expansion of their infrastructure. This is why the utilities are constantly upgrading, because every time they swap out a transformer they are allowed to charge you a little more. These laws achieved their goal of electrifying the country, but it has left many consumers tied to corporations that see them more as their asset/property rather than a valued customer, and their behavior often reflects that.
Could you do a video on the Ridgeblade? Is San Diego windy enough? Would it be a good addition to your self generated power grid? Look forward to future videos.
Been looking into getting solar and possibly wind power as well because here in Massachusetts its like living in a wind tunnel and it is common to lose power for 3 days or more! I lose power for a couple hours total per month if I'm lucky
In Switzerland if you use a lot electricity for a 5 person household you pay around 100-120 Francs! Your bills are insane! The electricity market in Switzerland is state controlled. That's why no crazy prices can occure!
My daughter that lives in Encinitas had the same issue! I think the gas costs the utility about 10% of the price to customers but it is all buried in the overhead costs of the utility. I live in northern California where PG&E does the same thing.
Go to the junkyard and get some bicycles, alternators, washer/dryer motors and work on some homemade wind power.... that would be cool.... got a flowing water source next to you? Try hydro
Thank you, dear... Sometimes, it is not under their control. When they lose input1 and input2 and remaining only input 3 and 4. That's will not be enough to run their bussiness and have no other choice than to increase the cost... Good choice to have back up. Thanks.
I agree with you about the electric utility monopolies, but like any privately owned business, they have to make money for their investors. I have Tesla solar panels and Powerwall batteries which seem to cover all the points I'm looking for and that Franklin seems to cover - just need more panels and battery so I can charge my EV at night too! Looking for a similar system for another property; I'd be very interested in a 'compare and contrast' bit on Franklin versus Tesla.
"Net Zero" means that over the course of a whole year, you generate as much power as you use. That's kind of the bare minimum threshold for self-sufficiency. When you're going off grid, it's not enough to generate as much excess power in summer as you need to heat your house in winter, because electricity doesn't store well over that sort of time span. You need to measure your 'Net Zero' over each day. Generating excess power during the day in order to have that power to use overnight is a good time span for most batteries. If you can do that, you're free of the electricity company.
That's a crazy amount of infrastructure - batteries, Span ($80K!) etc. Here in New Hampshire we have 27 panels and a single Tesla Powerwall 2 ($30K after tax credits). In the winter months we wouldn't be able to charge up a single battery. We live in the woods and have had 30 power outages last year. All were less than ten minutes except one which was three hours. The Powerwall kept us going, we didn't even notice. But we have a small gas generator and wood stove in case we had an extended outage. I consider even a SINGLE battery is a luxury, a one battery allows for 10-14 hours of running absolute essentials and allows the solar panels to work during an outage. The emphais should be on electricity generation first, storage second.
It makes me laugh a bit that the state the touts as the most green friendly is the one that has tried to kill solar with the regulations. I'm lucky in Virginia where I have 1 to 1 net metering. Now, if solar gets too popular here, then I can see that changing as they would happily lobby to change it. I have no time of use billing and it is the same all day. Until those things change, there is little incentive to get batteries as we have lost power for maybe 6 hours in the time span of a year. Now if the utility wants to start paying for sending power back into the grid at peak times...it might be worth it. You have a nice setup for sure!
Ricky - PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE do a video on WHY solar batteries are sold at almost 10 times the cost of EV batteries. Yes, I know the EV guys buy much higher volumes - but so did the major PC manufactures' in the early days. It did not matter. As a smaller PC manufacturer AST Research/Computer, Gateway, eMachines etc. - we would go to the major manufacturers and tell them we wanted 2k per month of virtually the same thing Dell was buying 10K per month of - for the same price. They would give us the product for about 110% of the price Dell was paying (not 10x). Our smaller volume made their cost for the dell product fall a little and they ended up making more money. Automotive guys are buying batteries at $80 per kwh now and it is projected that the cost will drop to $50/kwh by the end of the year. What is going on? Yes the inverter adds a few dollars - but seriously - the batteries are the major cost and should cost around $80 per kwh! Help.
Thanks for sharing, this is an awesome set-up. Did you calculate your cost of power (LCOE)? Let's say for 20 years and assuming 5% hurdle rates? Are the alternative options to use your $80K better?
I think your problem should be as much with California regulators and lawmakers as with the utilities. The state of California is far more onerous on industries and companies than almost any other state. With as much natural resources as California has, power should be dirt cheap there.
I’m also in a battle with SDGE. I only use super off-peak power (12-6am) to charge my 2 EVs and top off my 2 powerwalls. Then the rest of the day I power the house with solar and batteries and sell back as much solar as possible. Those credits fully cover the night time consumption. Unfortunately as soon as SDGE rolls out the income based delivery fees, we will all be paying an exorbitant amount $$ that can’t be offset by solar credits 😢
I live in canada where the eletricity is state own in my part of country. Our electricity is notoriously cheap, but everything your saying for your own benefit should also be apply to a state monopoly. Even more so I think. We should all have solar and battery in these time of climate change. It would benefit everyone with redundancy for the grid, eventhough it would take major updates on it. That would be great if politicians could acte for things that are more than 4 years ahead. Another kind of problematic monopoly.
Very good and informative video! Will you go to on demand water heater? I am redoing some insulation with rockwool in areas in the basement that were never insulated. Two reasons I want to go to on demand water heater, too keep costs down for my mom and I and the connection for the current water heater has only four inches to remove the rod to clean or replace that is about 3ft long. Getting batteries first make perfect sense. We left our cable; stayed with the company and use their internet instead saving $200 a month not including the various subscriptions to watch your favorite shows. Half our base bill is taxes. Governments will also lose so they will need to come up with a plan to replace those taxes.
The Franklin system can handle electrical input from either the grid, solar panels and ICE generators. I would like to know if it can also handle a vehicle to house system. A lot of EVs have 100 kw hr. battery packs which would would increase the amount of electrical storage or even eliminate the need for a Franklin battery.
Holy crap! Those three units cost $54,000! There's so many other battery options out there that you could have. God, at least three times the amount of battery storage that you have right now. And probably still put about $20,000 back in your pocket.
Power company’s are going to start adding a base fee so that even if you are 100% Solar , you are still gonna have a bill every month unless you go off the grid because they know it isn’t worth going off the grid relative to the cost of their fees
Gas and leccy companies in the UK have had a daily fee for having a connection to them for decades. It's about 50p. On the plus side, our ancient mechanical gas meter jams in cold weather XD
Question; Does Franklin have a resale program like, Tesla where they grab all of their customers batteries and resell the energy back to the utility company as a block of power? I'm pretty sure this will be a big selling point for Franklin.
This really seemed like a paid advertisement for Franklin. My 2 cents: when you're reviewing a product, consider clearly stating, up-front, that the company did (or didn't) compensate you in some way. Linus Tech Tips is really good about doing this, if you want an example of how to do it. I'm happy to watch the video whether Franklin paid you or not -- as long as I know what is happening. If it feels like you're hiding the motivation behind the video, I find it very off-putting. That being said, it looks like a dang cool system, and your video production value just keeps getting better.
What is infuriating to me is that some of my power bill ends up paying lobbyists to bribe politicians into continuing the monopoly.
Honestly that is no surprise that's how power company get their support and funding
yeah man but becareful how u say that or else you sound crazy
The ones here in Illinois went to jail. One was the ComEd president
That’s why they’re called “power companies”…
Then start arguing for removing the regulations into the energy market. Because it is the single source of corruption and easier for companies to lobby politicians to pass regulations that favour then and destroy the competition. The only reason the power company has monopoly in any given area is because it is legally mandated by government regulations. Start arguing for 100% removal of regulations and then you migh see competition increasing and you as a customer benefiting form it. Because little bit of regulation is again the same, the regulations started as just little and we know what they are now. If you wish gov to regulate just a little bit then you are just naively hoping that the same corrpt politicians will by magic be not corrupt this time.
Imagine if there were regulations on how many political parties can there be any given area? What if it was legally mandated that any area can only have 1 political party? What would you call it? And wont you argue to remove all restrictions on no of political parties and candidates as much as they want to, and argue for removing all bariers of entry right(exceptions : convicted violent criminals eg terrorists/murderers etc banned from being a candidate)? Same logic applies to power companies.
I have been off grid for 7 years . My system is 72kwh's of chevy volt batteries, 21000 watts of used panels. I run 2 inverters one 12kw low frequency split phase. A 6kw low frequency inverter charges my chevy volt. My inverters have no software ! And they don't need the internet to make it work. It's been running seven years this way.
It must be good to live in a free state instead of a slave state.
How do you manage to survive winter? I generate the most power in summer - when I don't need heating and car requires less powermto run, etc. In winter, the production is horrible (we had a period with less than 5kWh from 12kW array - in 14 days!!!).
Wow, nice! How much was the batteries and how did you get them. I’m starting putting in my small system to follow your lead
What is the life expectancy on each equipment…..$120K is quite a bit…panels needs to be replaced…etc
I use chevy volt batteries broken down into forty eight volt segments.@@randymatthews5263
Just something you mentioned pertaining to your gas usage. It's now been 17 years since I've had any heat in my house no gas whatsoever. I insulated everything floors wall ceilings attics. The gas company chargers based on your usage during the summer months. Anything over that allotment during those warm months they charge 5 times the rate of what you use in winter time. As far as it goes with cooling the house I can't Express more than the use of thermal tint on the windows. You can feel almost the 20% drop difference in heat coming through the windows. It's a bit pricey but it paid for itself. Just like the insulation a little more pricey initially. I have 10 tons of air conditioning in my home and I only turned the system on to test during final inspection17 years ago.These little things reduce my bill to the point where at the moment my simple solar generator is keeping the utility companies at bay. When you don't have to pull permits and get anybody involved with what you do to stay off grid, I I'm smiling all the way to the bank.
Off grid over 20 years with no house payments and no utility bills. Internet $80 a month for unlimited and I run a business online. Solar and wind power with batteries. Propane heat, OD water heater and stove. Wood stove backup. You can do it!
You should look into the sand battery. That'll definitely help with heating the air in the house and heating the water as well.
That way the only use of propane will be for cooking.
What does OD mean
@@kawaiisenshi2401 On Demand. It does not have a tank and heats water only as needed.
When there is no competition, be the competition! Good for you! Take back the power, fight the power!
My backup generator is going to be my Cybertruck. I’m also going to adjust my batteries to feed our home/grid during peak cost hours. No system is perfect, but I’m grateful to have solar, batteries and EVs. Thanks for your great videos :-)
Cool. Specs say the Cybertruck can supply 11.5 kW to the house I assume that's continuous. That's some real power. Most home batteries can supply about 3-7 kW continuous. But most EVs on the market are capped at about 3.3 kW (if they offer Vehicle to Home at all!)
Put a soft start on the AC and it will save a bit more. Awesome set up.
Great comment on moving off natural gas to solar/battery. We replaced the HVAC (heat pump), R8 duct, added additional return to guarantee 1600 cfm in and out (4 ton). When Jan 2023 cold season hit our natural gas bill went from $30 to $99. Our neighbors went from $30 to $300-$600. Our water heater is in our insulated garage and suffered from the cold. My daughter and I spent a couple hours with a R8 insulation wrap. Following cold months dropped to high thirty’s. My conclusion is HVAC Heatpump is extremely efficient and has 99 speeds of operation maximizing efficiency. It does not take a huge hit on the battery to start as ramp up, maintain and ramp down keeps the home comfortable for winter or summer. Last comment, I would not switch the water heater from natural gas as there is literally no maintenance for 15-20 years (optional yearly discharge or anode replacement if you want 20-30 year life). Heat pumps require monthly/quarterly air filter cleaning, they are noisy, produce vibrations, require exhaust duct (my opinion for cold air) and the cost at the end of day are pretty close in Southern California.
My GE heat pump/resistance heat hybrid water heater ($1,400 price in 2010, then less a $400 utility rebate) is still running fine in 2024 after fourteen years. No maintenance required except rinsing off the air filter. It never shows it using the resistance heater. 50 gallon capacity, 63 gallons at selected temperature (130F) for the first hour. I did put a water softener in front of it to avoid our hard water lime buildup.
Have you considered how to reduce your power consumption in the first place? That is usually the best thing to do before considering how to generate more with solar. I Denmark where I live there is a great focus on building low energy houses - to minimize energy consumption for heating. But the isolation works both ways - so also against heat in the summer 😉
My dog hates it when the stranger utility person goes on the yard and checks the meter! Bravo to you leading the charge to fight the monopolies!
I didn't realize they still had that anywhere lol. My meters all go through cell service for usage.
I also switched to T mobile's 5G home internet last year from Spectrum's monopolized cable internet at my apartment in Texas. It's absolutely amazing.
I have spectrum and they said 100 MB is all you can get. Metro fiber started coming on line in my neighborhood and now I constantly get 200 MB all the time. 🤔
@@paperburn The average user is overpaying for anything over about 50MB. I have 100Mb fiber and it's pretty stable compared to the at least monthly 1 to 10 hour outages I had with Xfinity/Comcast in Silicon Valley, no less!
What they charge you for electricity is insane!! In Western Washington state we pay about 11 cents a Kw. Moving out of California in 2018 was the best decision of my life!
Just a little bit North of you in British Columbia we have a government electricity monopoly, but we pay even lower rates than you. I don’t think energy monopolies themselves are the problem, it’s whether they’re public or private, and how they’re regulated.
@@ScrapKing73 It also helps to have real cheap hydroelectric power.
@@jamesvandamme7786 Yup, here we have Hydro-Quebec , my rate is 0.06509 per Kw/hour then it go up to 0.10041 if I pass a certain amount per 2 months. I still need to insulate my house more, got some major heat loss from old windows ,doors and the floor joist, this should lower my heating/cooling bill.
Alberta Canada, $0.30/kwh after fees
@@MitchOfCanada That's insane. I'm really lucky to have $50 electric bills. I also have natural gas but that's $180 max for the coldest month or two.
This time last year, we were in the process of having battery backup installed along with expanding our solar before NEM 3.0 went into effect here in California.
Our choice was NeoVolta based in Poway, CA. The NeoVolta system is 14kWh expandable to 24kWh (we did that) with an integrated Solar Inverter as well as a secondary input for pre-existing solar or a fuel generator. They also use LFP batteries which was a selling point because we feared NMC battery problems which were getting a lot of attention at that time.
We have PG&E, but live in an area where a local Irrigation District has been fighting to offer service for over 20 years but can't get PG&E to sell the infrastructure. Mind you, we are being hit for most of 2024 with a PG&E price increase because they haven't done even basic maintenance in our area in 25 years. PG&E, SDG&E, SoCal Edison are all for-profit corporations that have played fast an loose with maintenance for decades and when they get caught red handed (the San Bruno pipeline explosion, all of the forest fires. Destroying the entire town of Paradise.) Killed people and then somehow weasel their way out of it by filling false bankruptcy-- since when does bankruptcy discharge court ordered settlements?
If I could cut the PG&E connections to my property, I'd do it in a second but until I can, I'm going to self-generate as much as I can.
Couldn’t agree with you more about fighting against monopolies, wish I could hit the like button on this video more than once. 👍👍👍
Tips for stretching the battery life over night - turn off things you don't need. Running servers? Are you sure you need all of them 24/7? Running lights? Are all of them off when nobody is in the room? For things like this, there is perfect cooperation between presence sensors (radar based) and in-wall light switches. If nobody is in the room for 5 minutes, just turn the light off.
Same thing about opened windows - few sensors will tell home automation that the window is opened for too long and you should close it to avoid heat creep.
Car charging - leave the car plugged and charge only when your battery is already full and only use the excess energy that would normally go back to grid.
Garage doors - long-opened garage doors will again allow heat creep into the house - be it hot or cold air, that you will then need to spend energy to compensate. Simple notification on the phone for garage doors opened for more than 3 minutes (usual time to put kids and bags into the car and leave garage) will remind you to close it, avoiding heat differences.
But no matter what, in the end, you will still need utility company if you want to keep your standard of living. Just use it as little as possible.
Ricky forgot about the energy stored in the EV. It holds more than all three of the Franklin batteries. It's called V2H - vehicle to home. If he had a Bidirectional charger, the EV could supply enough energy to run his house all year. Putting a few more panels on the roof would charge both batteries and EV, taking the load off the batteries. Also converting the appliances to heat pumps will reduce the load on the batteries.
The problem with network equipment is it makes enough heat to require 24/7 air conditioning, so turning off all but a minimum will do little to reduce the air conditioning. Plus the equipment that makes the most heat has to stay on 24/7. What saves money is insulating the dwelling.
When a company gets a law made that costs the consumer money, that's known as rent seeking to the economics field. It's a legal form of corruption that should be outlawed.
@@acmefixer1 The problem is that almost no V2H or V2L currently on the market can supply a house. One reason is peak and sustained capacity. An F150 Lightning CAN supply a house with a max of 80A. However almost all other EVs can only supply a paltry 3.3 kW or so (13 amps). That's not enough to run the average AC unit - though it could run the average home.
@@StevenChristenson
By your logic, if the EV can't keep the air conditioning running, then the battery ESS can't either since it has much less capacity than the EV. But on hot days the Sun shines brightly so if the house has rooftop solar, it can run the air conditioning and have some left over to charge the EV and/or batteries. This is why they say it's best to insulate a home since it will reduce the amount of energy needed for heating and air conditioning.
You can go off grid without sacrificing your standard of living. You just get very good at finding more efficient ways of doing things. Running the washing machine on sunny days when you've got lots of power coming in is better anyway, because that's good weather for hanging the washing out to dry. A more efficient and possibly smaller fridge doesn't warm up your house as much, and if it's smaller, that reminds you to use your bought food while it's fresh and not let it sit there going stale until you throw it away. A well insulated house uses very little heating and cooling, and is pleasanter to live in than a poorly insulated house even with the HVAC running.
Lights are a red herring in energy efficiency. I have all 12vDC LED lights in my house, on a separate battery set and everything isolated from the 240vAC system, and I leave my outdoor lights on 24/7. There's just no reason to switch them off.
@@tealkerberus748
There is a reason to switch off the LED lights: the more hours they're on, the dimmer they get. Finally they're putting out too little light and must be replaced. Same with the wearing out of the electric system.
I am so glad someone recognized the power of an individual over legacy monopolies. I have 8.5kW system, Tesla Model 3 (no gasoline), heat pump HVAC and hot water (no natural gas), and most disruptive of all... I am plant based vegan (No meat, dairy, or processed food monopolies).
I have experienced multiple 10 day outages and many shorter duration outages, some lasting hours, some lasting days. We've always lived just on the edge of urban areas but far enough out to be among the last restored during am outage. Our most recent 10 day outage was last year. We have had whole home backup generators for years and plan to go solar in the near future. Franklin is at the top of our list for battery backup because of their ability to use the backup generator to recharge the batteries.
Awesome video Ricky! Lifepo is my favorite chemistry too! I like things that just ALWAYS work, forever.....or as close to it as I can get 😄
sodium ion is on it's way. 20%cheaper than LFP
Your channel is one of my favorites! Keep it up buddy!
Excellent presentation. I'll add that you wouldn't need to charge your vehicle during extended outages, or low solar production periods (use public charging instead for that two weeks per year scenario). And soon you'll be able to use your EV to feed your home batteries, if not already. This would eliminate the need for additional solar panels and batteries.
Perfect timing on this episode. We’re specifying a solar system right now. We have a SPAN, would love a detailed followup video on the SPAN/FRANKLIN integration. SPAN’s documentation naturally doesn’t play favorites when it comes to integration. I’d value your take. Thanks.
work with a food group that installed a dual battery franklin system, really looks pro..
no solar , powers a dozen big 2 door freezers... and a walk in... no grid downs yet.. SoCal
for my small house. 1 server rack battery and victron 3KW. inverter off grid in town all summer 50 % so far this winter.. with 13 panels. from salvage job.. thanks
Thank you for explaining your reasons for choosing Franklin.
First love the channel, you as the thought provoking host and this episode. I can’t help to ask questions for myself as if I were in your situation . 1) solar/battery for off grid living ain’t there yet… right? 2) the pinnacle would be off-grid energy charges my EV. And maybe we, I mean me, are seeking solutions to self-sufficiency at the wrong end. Maybe it’s reducing consumption. Like the Eco Resort we stayed at in Belize… it ran on 4kW per day. I have found some success with multiple heating/cooling sources here in the Pacific Northwest. And my take home point is lessening energy consumption where I can, i.e. 110watt oven and likely a future 110watt water heater and a safari hunt for energy hogs. Hello SPAN. I ask: should we look for the balance of energy independence from many sources rather from one magic bullet…While we await affordable technology? PS I love and am envious of your system. Thanx for the straight up review. Cheers!
$0.42/kWt hour? Crazy! I pay $0.09/kWt hour and I live in the desert where we run our AC 24/7 for at least 5 months out of the year. I'll have to confirm it with my wife, but I'm pretty sure my electric bill is NEVER more than $200/month.
Most of the cost of electricity is infrastructure, so the actual $price/kWh tends to depend on usage. States with very high consumption tend to have lower $/kWh rates. But the bills wind up being comparable for average homes.
California isn't even in the top-10. It's middling for actual electricity bills and a bit higher for electricity + NG bills (around #10-#12). In fact, the average electricity bill in Arizona is higher than the average bill in California even though Arizona electricity costs only $0.15/kWh. New Mexico, on the other-hand, has the 2nd lowest electricity bill in the U.S. Low prices and low bills. It varies.
That said, heavy electricity users in California do get dinged. If you are a heavy user you really need Solar to keep the bills reasonable. I also live in California and am a fairly heavy user. I save around $3000/year by having roughly 7kW worth of solar on my home. My monthly electricity bill (not including natural gas) varies between $25/month in summer to $150/month or so in winter. And that includes charging an EV.
I'm working towards reducing it even further.
-Matt
He didn’t mention his family and business use so much electricity that they most likely are in the highest usage tier.
@@junkerzn7312
I live in northern Arizona and pay $0.09/kWh.
@@brawnbenson552 I don't know about SDGE, but Pacific Gas And Electric will NOT let you use a tiered plan in Northern Califonia, you MUST go with a Time of Use Plan. The reason is simple... if you don't have a battery the peak electricity costs can kill you because they occur as production wanes and ends. In fact due to a snafu, I was on the 2-tier plan for almost 3 months. It's pretty amazing how much more reasonable costs are when you can stay in the first tier all day and month!
To add insult to injury, however the default Time of Use plan charges MORE per "off-peak" kWh than the tier-1 plan! Only when you move to say EV-2 plan do you actually get a decent spread in rates between peak and off-peak AND a reduction in the off-peak rate over the other plans.
Hi Ricky, I’ve been listening to you for a long time and sat in on a panel you moderated at the EV show and San Diego a while back. Thanks for all the info . I like this idea of fighting monopolies. Our local Internet provider was getting worse overtime and it was the only choice so we started using data over our phones for a while until our Starlink showed up which is great.
i've been completly offgrid for 2 years now, with 9 Kw PV array and 15 Kwh Lifepo4 battery pack. we have plenty of wood for heating during winter. As for hot water we use Propane Gas tankless water heater that costs around 25$ a winter, and a Solar water heater for the rest of the year. Going Solar for electricity is the best decision ever since the cost of 1Kwh is 0.35$
Are you considering replacing your A/C with a heat pump? This will save you big money in the summer as it runs off DC power and will also give you heat in the winter. Since it does not get very cold in San Diego this is a better option than your gas furnace.
Seriously impressive setup.
Glad you are going with a battery solar system. We have a SunPower system and are also happy.
My parents lived in North County with SDG&E as their energy provider for over 40 years and the cursing never slowed.
As a high school kid I can remember so many cars with bumper stickers that said:
"Welcome to North County.
Owned and Operated by SDG&E."
Great Report, one additional point to LFPs , the code allows to have them in closer proximity, thus increasing the density of the setup, Franklin can scale, a lot.
I would love to see a couple of videos/episodes of a breakdown between the pharmaceutical, education and energy sectors in the US vs most of Europe and Scandinavia. One comment is from a Norwegian living in the Netherlands. They mention how the energy companies are completely separate from the grid (nationally). My term for what we do here in the States is “predatory capitalism”. It’s like you described in a video, monopolies within monopolies all appearing to be based on competition. But the biggest areas of “predatory capitalism” here are education (especially college), medical care/costs (including health care insurance, pharmaceutical costs and medical care schemes). Most Americans are one major illness or one major accident away from bankruptcy. Medical expenses are easily the #1 reason behind personal bankruptcy. The costs involved with colleges as well as how school loans work are absolutely examples of predatory capitalism.
Europe has handled many of these issues so much better than we have here. They have their own problems and opportunities for corruption…but in many areas, the rest of the world is decades ahead of the USA.
My wife and I just bought a piece of property in upstate NY (50 acres) and we're hoping to build our house on it completely off-grid. We're not sure yet just how big of an array we'll need, but we expect to put in around 30-35kwh of batteries along with 20kw-30kw of solar panels. We're planning on making sure that the system is easy to expand just in case it's not enough to begin with, but we'll get there eventually. Thank you for the information you provide, it really helps us to at least know what questions to ask and were to look for solutions.
Be sure to focus on conservation of energy first and then size the system. Insulation, air seating and low energy devices should be foremost in your mind :)
2:05 For me the government is the most frustrating monopoly.
You brought up a very very good point about back feeding, I've workout in the business of clearing trees from power lines, and that is a very real danger when we are called in for storm repair.
You'll love the new aPower 2. It's power and capacity is probably the last battery you need. Definitely need more solar. I have virtually the same setup but went with 22kW. Next on my update list is geothermal which will get rid of the compressor and give me the cement block for the generator.
I'm sorry, Ricky, but using 1100 kWh per month sounds absolutely insane to me. Our family of 3 uses between 400 and 500 kWh per month.
That even includes an EV in our garage.
Your utilities and the CA state legislature are absolutely doing you dirty, but your usage is also sky high.
The Generac PWR Cell offering that I have is very similar it seems. We don't have peak/off peak pricing though, so we just use it to sell back to the grid and use as automatic backup when the grid goes down.
You are SO lucky your solar influx is that constant! 1600 KWh in the best month, around a 1000 in the worst month! Here in the Netherlands it's between a factor 6 - 10, we can never, ever, ever go off grid unless some new form of generation is developed!
Yes - in Australia power has increased greatly in the past few years to around $0.32c per kilowatt, but solar here is huge so many who can afford are investing in both solar + batteries.
Great video Ricky (and no click-bait title). I luv it. Informative while showing a path forward no matter the cost. Not just motivation, cost.
I bought my house in Sacramento and it needed a new HVAC system and water heater before we could move in and had both switched to electric. Got the whole house on electricity and had PG&E disconnected and the meter removed. So glad we did it. See all the gas surcharges that people are dealing with is bananas.
The most important thing, is running refrigerators and freezers.
A person can get large enough portable batteries for emergencies, that can be charged from the grid, later they can invest in solar etc.
@TwoBitDaVinci
We recently installed a similar system. I did discover a few issues, and I'm curious if you have noticed.
1. The roundtrip loss Panels -> Battery -> Back to House is stated as 11% (under "Standard Test Conditions), but this winter in Northern California I notice it is about 13.9% (look at the Charge and Discharge information for your aPower and compute the difference/percentage). That matters because payback decreases due to those losses, and some people who think that they can charge their battery at off peak and discharge it to cover their peak loads may actually be paying MORE if the rate difference is less than about 13% between the two. That is, "Time of Use mode" might cost more than "Self Consumption Mode".
2. Our system is a "partial backup", meaning we have a backed up critical circuits panel, and the rest are "non-essential." Unfortunately the FranklinWH system as installed has no knowledge of the other loads (including our AC), so what it reports for imports and exports to the grid are not what the utility company sees. It's a bit of a gut punch to think you imported only 12kWh in a month and discover it was actually 60kWh.
Please talk about thermoelectric generation. I have a fireplace and lots of free wood as a possible source of supplemental energy generation
Hi, connections to the grid will have the future possibility of selling power as part of a cooperative to sell as part of a peaking plant ie high export prices… coming soon to a district near you (hopefully)
SPAN + FranklinWH are truly a power couple! SPAN Panel integrates seamlessly with FranklinWH for smarter home energy management that helps you save more and extend your battery during power outages. Thank you, Ricky for showing us how to enable ultimate home energy management system! 🔋☀⚡👏
This is just like the Tesla Powerwall 2 really, except you can disconnect from the grid via the Tesla App. The weather here in South Australia is similar to San Diego (not as hot as it used to be but that's another story), our return on roof-generated solar works differently though in that we pay top price for incoming electricity at peak times and get 5c/KWh when feeding solar back to the grid, so it's a no-brainer to install whatever batteries you can afford to soak-up your own solar output during the day to use when the incoming supply is at its most expensive. As pointed out in the video, some battery systems will keep your solar panels working during a grid failure and some won't, so do your homework. I have 2x Powerwalls which have largely contributed to credits on my power bill for the last two (summer) quarters while running whatever appliances I want day or night, including some significant airconditioning during the few really hot events we get these days. The bottom line is whether you continue to pay for peak grid electricity or pay to have batteries installed, you will eventually reach a point where the batteries have paid for themselves and you will truly be getting "free" electricity.
All power companies are connected to each other via grid that runs across the whole country because of that if you live in California and wanted to buy electricity from New York, you should be able to do that. It’s the lobbyist at the federal government that keeps us from getting cheaper power off the grid. I appreciate your research and knowledge of solar systems. I’m too old to be able to take advantage of it but thank you anyway.!!
You need a video on the SPAN panel. IIRC, it does intelligent "load shedding" of circuits in the house as the battery gets depleted. Correct?
Talk to your utility to see if you can get a load shedding rate. I work in a hospital and we get the load shedding rate. We pay 3 cents per kW. Also power rates are usually cheaper after 9 pm, talk to your utility to see if you can charge your batteries when rates are cheaper.
I feel you! PG&E JUST JACKED our rates to $.51 and I also have solar NEM2. There's no reason to pass on the costs the way they do. Something is extremely wrong. Literally they just ask to charge more and BAM they do. Our generation cost is low...it's all transmission cost.
Great Video, Live in Panama and this is a huge monopoly. Energy cost just went up in January. and we are a country we cannot say No more grid we need to pay them until we die. I am connecting currently my Solar system but as always the permits takes sometime around 3 months. but trying to cut my bill off completely, that means paying 2.50 a month since that is something i will have to pay even if i do not use the grid during the month. Probably next year will start the battery project.
You just described grid tie like every would go for that option. Try mini split rather than central heating to reduce energy usage
If you use both 5G and cable internet, you aren't fighting your cable monopoly even a little. You're still paying them and that's what they care about.
I like Starlink. It has been an option but it has also been my only choice at times.
@@snookmeister55 still does not work in rain and snow... i would not be reading your reply if i had it in the woods three miles away heh
only way to beat it is using a small business wisp... which most people dont know about in many areas. There used to be a mapsearch ability but it got bought out and taken down (ubiquiti wisp tools)
Not true. I live in Seattle and had no issues with weather-related outages. I don’t know the tech to know why they don’t suffer from the same issues as satellite TV but am guessing the low-earth orbit is part of it.
That said, I ditched Starlink, not because it doesn’t work, but because it was oversubscribed, thus not always the greatest performance, and AT&T came out with their $50/mo home 5G internet, half the price of Starlink and better performance.
Wow! You really should look at using less electricity rather than getting a larger battery and solar system. I live in an off grid house, and our battery bank is 9KW, and works fine for us. We are very conscious of the power everything consumes, and our power consumption is below average. Also... All our heating is not electric. We have solar hot water, with one of those glass tube systems (works amazing) and for heating we got a wood stove. Heating on the winter consumes too much power, so if you offload that to other systems, you will have enough electricity with the current system. So if you have a heat pump I would say, just use it as an air conditioner in summer when energy is plentiful, but for heating get a pellet stove and a solar heater for the water, as it is way more efficient than making electricity, and then heating the water. And then, just reduce the amount of stuff plugged in 24/7, get timer switches or something at least, and only buy high efficiency household appliances, and try to use them efficiently also.
Agreed, 1000 kWh+/month seems crazy to me. I don't own an EV though.
Another way to fight monopolies is to practice permaculture and related disciplines, as well as going for localization instead of sourcing to outside areas.
If you harvest rainwater to water tanks and soil you lessen grid dependency and build personal resiliency. Pumping water from afar pulls a lot of electricity, as well as requires a lot of infrastructure. Harvesting your own rainwater lessens brownouts because less electrical grid strain. Harvesting rainwater also assures people lower in the water table have less flooding as well as a more stable clean water source.
Letting rainwater evaporate off is a huge waste. Worse (cost-wise) is letting rainwater run to a storm drain network. Most storm drain networks then commingle sewage and rainwater and then dump the system overload into rivers, lakes and the ocean. This is wastes higher quslity water as well.
Letting stormdrains be the sold source of rainwater management adds to carbon lost to water instead of soil .
Higher carbon in water adds to screwed up weather patterns, and also loses soil fertility, permeability and water retention in soil.
If you install raingardens/bioswales you also reduce ground subsidence and related foundation repairs, as well as reduce irrigation costs.
If you recycle your greywater you also reduce the amount of carbon lost through poorly-managed, centralized systems, and more pumping costs...
I agree it’s valuable to go off-grid in any way you can, not just solar. We live in the country, so, an old-fashioned pump and a septic system takes care of most of that by default. Rainwater goes into the ground except for what we divert into rain barrels for the garden & greenhouse. Permaculture is a little tough here (MT) but we are working on it. There are many ways to reduce stress on the environment and avoid monopolies, depending on where one lives.
@@DDGLJ
Have you seen how Brad Lancaster manages rainwater run off? He's brilliant.
Greywater is an excellent resource as well, and can be easy to harvest with a simple set up. It can be nutrient-rich without the pathogen issues of blackwater. Make a set up that diverts it to landscaping or trees/orchard.
Every bit helps.
excellent presentation there Ricky, looks to be the USA version of what we have in the UK, the givenergy AIO (all in one) theres is 13.5kw lithium iron 100% DOD & with the gateway gives up to 7kw surge in the event of grid down, BUT in a grid down scenario during the day the solar is added to the 5-7kw supply possibility and can be retrofitted to current solar systems, i myself am saving for a AIO/Gateway, as i live alone will be able to export back to the grid when @ work for circa 15-30p per kwh and still have enough juice for when i @ home, next step is adding more solar on the south and then on the east :)
I live in Southern California -- Winter Rates are $0.26 - $0.53 per kWH and Summer Rates are $0.27 - $0.60 per kWh on our Time-of-Use plan with SoCal Edison (our electric utility provider/monopoly) ... I went with solar in 2022 and it's incredible to see how quickly they're hiking the kWH rate. Thankfully, my solar system on NEM 2.0 covers my entire utility bill between solar generation, selling to the grid for credits, etc. --- but I'm looking to add Enphase batteries to my system in the next 5-10yrs for more independence and anticipating higher usage/utility fees/EV purchase(s)
Another great video, keep them coming! One questions - if you can get less expensive grid power at night, can you use grid power to top up the batteries?
@senseidadproductions: There is a round trip loss of 11% (up to 14% that I measured this winter). The net of that is unless the "off peak" rate is 15% less than the peak rate, it's not fiscally practical to use grid power off peak and discharge at peak. Where the off-peak charging makes sense is in anticipation of a storm or planned power outages, or when you have a dismal day that doesn't manage enough production to charge the battery and you want to make it through the peak period.
Here in Puerto Rico most people are getting solar. is required to stay connected to the grid to get the project approved. is insane but is the reality. The best thing is the peace of mind.
Those batteries do look very cool. They seem large for only 5kwh each, or maybe I misunderstood I have 5.6 kwh batteries that are server rack size approx. 5 inches tall by 24 inches deep by 19 inches wide. They now sell for about 1300.00 each. I do love solar
I don’t think energy monopolies themselves are the problem, it’s whether they’re public or private, and how they’re regulated. In Canada, the provinces with government-owned electricity companies have very high reliability and very low rates. I pay the equivalent of less than $0.10 USD per kW.
That's the key, taking essential services out of the hands of profiteers. In the UK it's around £0.35 per Kw and rising.
I found there are 2 ways of buying solar set up.
The first way is to spend 100k or more on a system that runs your whole home.
The second way is the route I took .
U scrap every appliance.
Then u buy all new energy efficient appliances.
The current technology is ridiculously efficient.
That way you can run your house on a much cheaper system.
WOW that is insane how much you had to pay in Jan 23. Crazy. I have added Solar to my house and it has helped cut my bill a lot. Last year I produced 129% of my electric energy needs.
I wouldn't say we're in a gold age of batteries yet. I think we have the potential to be in a golden age within the next 10-15 years, but we certainly seem to be on the cusp of that transition point.
What a company that installs Tesla batteries wanted for 2 Powerwalls was insane. I laughed on the phone, I thought it was a joke quote. If I remember correctly, for just 1 it was $24K and 2 was $35K or something dumb. They are obviously trying to rip me off, I know the units themselves are about $8400. Add the gateway + install....I installed 8kW of solar + a 200 amp panel upgrade and move 100amp panel to subpanel in garage for under $20K (before tax credit). Huge battery packs in cars are under $20K for about 80kWh. I just want between 20 and 30kwh of hours batteries for a reasonable price.
Anyway, I'll go through with it within 3-4 years. That will help bring an ROI with it, right now I don't have financial incentive and I have 2 Ecoflow Delta Pros that can backup my house when needed manually (minus the high ticket electric demand things of course).
Consider a soft start for your 4 ton air conditioner . To reduce the amount of energy for surge when its compressor kicks on.
Try doing a story on your home getting an energy audit to work out ways to reduce its consumption levels, which may allow your batteries to see you through the evening even in winter.
I hate monopolies too. Especially the most violent of them all - government.
Government is also the reason utility monopolies exist. 🤷♂
So, in a lot of places in the USA, the monopolies for utility companies is actually legally protected. Building out the infrastructure for the power grid is extremely expensive, so it really only made sense financially for companies to build in large cities where they would have more potential customers in a smaller area to recoup those investment costs. When the country was first becoming electrified, the government didn't want to leave behind rural communities, so they promised the utility companies a non-competitive monopoly in different areas in exchange for building out the grid to customers who otherwise wouldn't have made financial sense for the utilities. That is also why you are legally required to be connected to the grid in some places, because the government promised the utility that if they built the grid every home in that area would be their customer. In an attempt to protect consumers from the typical monopoly B.S., the government also made the utilities agree that they couldn't charge whatever they wanted and could only raise rates by a small amount each year or to pay for upgrades and expansion of their infrastructure. This is why the utilities are constantly upgrading, because every time they swap out a transformer they are allowed to charge you a little more. These laws achieved their goal of electrifying the country, but it has left many consumers tied to corporations that see them more as their asset/property rather than a valued customer, and their behavior often reflects that.
Could you do a video on the Ridgeblade? Is San Diego windy enough? Would it be a good addition to your self generated power grid? Look forward to future videos.
Great setup, mate
Been looking into getting solar and possibly wind power as well because here in Massachusetts its like living in a wind tunnel and it is common to lose power for 3 days or more! I lose power for a couple hours total per month if I'm lucky
Great thoughts! Are my eyes deceiving me but the fittings under that Franklin box looked like galvanized pipe fittings?
In Switzerland if you use a lot electricity for a 5 person household you pay around 100-120 Francs! Your bills are insane!
The electricity market in Switzerland is state controlled. That's why no crazy prices can occure!
My daughter that lives in Encinitas had the same issue! I think the gas costs the utility about 10% of the price to customers but it is all buried in the overhead costs of the utility. I live in northern California where PG&E does the same thing.
Go to the junkyard and get some bicycles, alternators, washer/dryer motors and work on some homemade wind power.... that would be cool.... got a flowing water source next to you? Try hydro
You can buy a Ruixu server rack battery 30,kw for 7,758.00, it's worth a look.
Great video Ricky!
Thank you, dear...
Sometimes, it is not under their control.
When they lose input1 and input2 and remaining only input 3 and 4. That's will not be enough to run their bussiness and have no other choice than to increase the cost... Good choice to have back up.
Thanks.
I agree with you about the electric utility monopolies, but like any privately owned business, they have to make money for their investors. I have Tesla solar panels and Powerwall batteries which seem to cover all the points I'm looking for and that Franklin seems to cover - just need more panels and battery so I can charge my EV at night too! Looking for a similar system for another property; I'd be very interested in a 'compare and contrast' bit on Franklin versus Tesla.
"Net Zero" means that over the course of a whole year, you generate as much power as you use. That's kind of the bare minimum threshold for self-sufficiency.
When you're going off grid, it's not enough to generate as much excess power in summer as you need to heat your house in winter, because electricity doesn't store well over that sort of time span. You need to measure your 'Net Zero' over each day. Generating excess power during the day in order to have that power to use overnight is a good time span for most batteries.
If you can do that, you're free of the electricity company.
That's a crazy amount of infrastructure - batteries, Span ($80K!) etc. Here in New Hampshire we have 27 panels and a single Tesla Powerwall 2 ($30K after tax credits). In the winter months we wouldn't be able to charge up a single battery. We live in the woods and have had 30 power outages last year. All were less than ten minutes except one which was three hours. The Powerwall kept us going, we didn't even notice. But we have a small gas generator and wood stove in case we had an extended outage. I consider even a SINGLE battery is a luxury, a one battery allows for 10-14 hours of running absolute essentials and allows the solar panels to work during an outage. The emphais should be on electricity generation first, storage second.
The residual payment left over from Snowageddon is the reason we are going off grid on our farm.
It makes me laugh a bit that the state the touts as the most green friendly is the one that has tried to kill solar with the regulations. I'm lucky in Virginia where I have 1 to 1 net metering. Now, if solar gets too popular here, then I can see that changing as they would happily lobby to change it. I have no time of use billing and it is the same all day. Until those things change, there is little incentive to get batteries as we have lost power for maybe 6 hours in the time span of a year. Now if the utility wants to start paying for sending power back into the grid at peak times...it might be worth it. You have a nice setup for sure!
Ricky - PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE do a video on WHY solar batteries are sold at almost 10 times the cost of EV batteries. Yes, I know the EV guys buy much higher volumes - but so did the major PC manufactures' in the early days. It did not matter. As a smaller PC manufacturer AST Research/Computer, Gateway, eMachines etc. - we would go to the major manufacturers and tell them we wanted 2k per month of virtually the same thing Dell was buying 10K per month of - for the same price. They would give us the product for about 110% of the price Dell was paying (not 10x). Our smaller volume made their cost for the dell product fall a little and they ended up making more money. Automotive guys are buying batteries at $80 per kwh now and it is projected that the cost will drop to $50/kwh by the end of the year. What is going on? Yes the inverter adds a few dollars - but seriously - the batteries are the major cost and should cost around $80 per kwh! Help.
Thanks for sharing, this is an awesome set-up. Did you calculate your cost of power (LCOE)? Let's say for 20 years and assuming 5% hurdle rates? Are the alternative options to use your $80K better?
I think your problem should be as much with California regulators and lawmakers as with the utilities. The state of California is far more onerous on industries and companies than almost any other state. With as much natural resources as California has, power should be dirt cheap there.
you should move 2 hrs. east to Yuma az. In the 18 years I lived there it only went down below freezing a couple times
Az and south Utah are definitely Interesting to me! I love the culture food and weather tho.
I’m also in a battle with SDGE. I only use super off-peak power (12-6am) to charge my 2 EVs and top off my 2 powerwalls. Then the rest of the day I power the house with solar and batteries and sell back as much solar as possible. Those credits fully cover the night time consumption.
Unfortunately as soon as SDGE rolls out the income based delivery fees, we will all be paying an exorbitant amount $$ that can’t be offset by solar credits 😢
I live in canada where the eletricity is state own in my part of country. Our electricity is notoriously cheap, but everything your saying for your own benefit should also be apply to a state monopoly. Even more so I think. We should all have solar and battery in these time of climate change. It would benefit everyone with redundancy for the grid, eventhough it would take major updates on it. That would be great if politicians could acte for things that are more than 4 years ahead. Another kind of problematic monopoly.
So well said!
What about adding wind mills for cloudy days? I didn't see you mention that. They have quiet windmills now days.
Very good and informative video! Will you go to on demand water heater? I am redoing some insulation with rockwool in areas in the basement that were never insulated. Two reasons I want to go to on demand water heater, too keep costs down for my mom and I and the connection for the current water heater has only four inches to remove the rod to clean or replace that is about 3ft long. Getting batteries first make perfect sense. We left our cable; stayed with the company and use their internet instead saving $200 a month not including the various subscriptions to watch your favorite shows. Half our base bill is taxes. Governments will also lose so they will need to come up with a plan to replace those taxes.
Probably better off with a heat pump water heater these days, rather than a tankless. They are much more efficient.
The Franklin system can handle electrical input from either the grid, solar panels and ICE generators.
I would like to know if it can also handle a vehicle to house system.
A lot of EVs have 100 kw hr. battery packs which would would increase the amount of electrical storage or even eliminate the need for a Franklin battery.
Franklin has some news and new products. Ill be sharing a video soon. these questions will be answer.
Holy crap! Those three units cost $54,000! There's so many other battery options out there that you could have. God, at least three times the amount of battery storage that you have right now. And probably still put about $20,000 back in your pocket.
Power company’s are going to start adding a base fee so that even if you are 100% Solar , you are still gonna have a bill every month unless you go off the grid because they know it isn’t worth going off the grid relative to the cost of their fees
Gas and leccy companies in the UK have had a daily fee for having a connection to them for decades. It's about 50p. On the plus side, our ancient mechanical gas meter jams in cold weather XD
Question; Does Franklin have a resale program like, Tesla where they grab all of their customers batteries and resell the energy back to the utility company as a block of power?
I'm pretty sure this will be a big selling point for Franklin.
I have never seen this guy shaven. He has the most serious 5 oclock shadow i have ever seen.
@@Sjrick and?? So??
@@BaBaYaga1999-p7u so buttons on ice cream
This really seemed like a paid advertisement for Franklin. My 2 cents: when you're reviewing a product, consider clearly stating, up-front, that the company did (or didn't) compensate you in some way. Linus Tech Tips is really good about doing this, if you want an example of how to do it. I'm happy to watch the video whether Franklin paid you or not -- as long as I know what is happening. If it feels like you're hiding the motivation behind the video, I find it very off-putting.
That being said, it looks like a dang cool system, and your video production value just keeps getting better.