When Julia and Steve moved from California to Tucson in the fall of 2018, they immediately began implementing sustainability measures into their home, including solar and battery storage systems:

“We’ve been solar-powered since 2002. The early 2000’s were the era of rolling blackouts in California. We decided we didn’t want to be 100% grid dependent, but batteries weren’t fully accessible back then - you would have been looking at a shed full of car batteries, basically. We installed a raised channel metal roof with thin film fabric solar panels mounted between the ribs on the sunny side of the house.

When we decided to move to Tucson we knew we couldn’t live here without air conditioning. Being native Californians, we’re not going to adapt that fast, so we knew we needed to make that more affordable and efficient. 

Battery wasn’t necessarily first on our list when we moved here. We’d talked about it, but price was a consideration. When we first signed up with TFS and scheduled our install, they held a seminar on battery technology while we were still in the configuration process for the system. We attended, looked at what we were doing with the house and figured we’d go all in. 

We didn’t worry too much about the payback schedule. The benefits are worth far more than the immediate dollar return on your investment. Think about what it does for the resale value of your house. One of the only other homes here in our neighborhood with solar is 1,100 square feet and it’s selling for $280,000+, which is a significant premium above the others, and that premium is the solar system. 

Living with the system has been great. We still watch the data monitoring app every day. The experience is enhanced by the data. Even when we’re out of town, with the app we can pull it up and see what’s going on at the house. 

We draw first from our own generation, then from the battery, then from the grid during the peak demand periods. The battery recharges in the morning when the solar generation is high. We keep a portion of the stored energy saved in the battery for potential outage during the evenings. I don’t want to be working in my office in the late afternoon, have a monsoon come through and knock the power out, and not have any charge in my battery. The integration with the data monitoring app allows us to be proactive with monitoring the load on the system. I imagine when we go to winter rates, when we’re not running the AC, we’ll be structuring it a little differently.

I think most people don’t realize that you can decide when you’re going to draw from your battery. it’s not just for when the power goes off. It allows you to manage your usage and decide when you’re on battery or not.

I’ve got the refrigerator magnet up with the time of use rates and we try to avoid doing laundry or running the dishwasher during the peak hours. I look at peak times as more than just expensive energy; this is when the grid is at risk for drawdown. If I can minimize what I’m pulling during those times then I’m doing my part. I think a lot of people would do that if they knew that the information was accessible and managing your behaviors was so easy. Our next step is going to be a smart thermostat and monitor our usage patterns.

My message to someone considering solar and/or battery would be don’t focus too much on the short term payback. It’s an investment in your property, regardless of whether you plan to live in it or sell it. People tend to think in such short financial thresholds: ‘If my bill didn’t go down significantly this month then it’s not worth it.’ I tell people: ‘I can’t wait to see my winter power bills. Right now, keeping the air conditioning at 78 during summer, we’re running between $100 to 120 a month for everything, including water. Our winter bills last year were running in that same range without the solar. I think we’re in for some good surprises this winter.

When we first went solar in 2002, we were told our system would be a 15 year payoff. Well, it paid off in half of that. Everything depends on the grid and external factors. There was a period of time in the early 2000’s in California when the natural gas market was very unstable and it created expensive heating bills in a pretty cool environment. This has all changed now, but there’s always that unpredictability. Here in Arizona, there are all kinds of industrial customers who are going to need grid power as they expand. It just keeps growing, and there could be any number of problems. None of this stuff is permanent, and resources are quite finite. I think about what happened in California that resulted in an expedited payback on my system and we could see a similar situation happen here.

Looking at the longterm growth plans for Tucson, usage is going to outstrip the infrastructure very soon, increasing the likelihood of seeing things like rolling blackouts or grid failures during increasingly hotter weather. Doing what we can to reduce our own pull from the grid is the responsible thing to do. Even now, I work from home and I have a UPS on my computers that’ll start beeping while I’m working. That’s a fluctuation in local power. A brown out. 

Sustainability has always been an interest of mine. I’ve spent a lot of time working with non-profits in California on local economic development and scalable food supply, energy, and communities. This is one way that we, living in a suburban area, can contribute to that.

It just makes sense. It takes the load off of a single power generator and spreads it out. The more people in a community that do this, they are building resiliency for the grid for a whole region because they are putting power into the system. I’ve had people from the off-grid community ask me why i want a grid tied system; it’s because I want to be part of the solution. No, I don’t get paid the same for sending my excess generation back to the utility as if I’d bought it from them, but it’s a start.”