You’ve finally got the full trifecta – a rooftop solar panel system feeding a home backup battery that charges your EV. Heck, you’ve even got a bidirectional EV that can send power back to the house when you need it. Now the real question: are you actually saving any money?
Last week, microgrid expert and GM Energy employee Jim Reilly took to LinkedIn to share his personal experience with a whole home electrification setup that includes both a GM Energy home backup battery and a GMC Sierra EV powered by electrons generated by his rooftop solar array – and he’s coming out way ahead.
“Lots of discussions on how tensions in Iran threaten a gas price surge,” writes Reilly, in his original “Energy Dominance” post. “The cost of a ‘full tank’ of gas is unpredictable. Here’s my math on a ‘full tank’ so I can check in on this in a few months, to see if these numbers spread even further, driving more people to an electric vehicle.”
⛽ Gas (24 gal at $4/gal): $96 per fill-up.
🔌 Public EV (200 kWh at $0.48/kWh): $96.00 per fill-up.
🏠 Home EV (PSE at $0.14/kWh): $28.00 per fill-up.
☀️ Solar EV (if sized larger correctly for your home): $0.00 (Locked-in independence).
Juicing up the massive 205 kWh Max Range battery in the GMC Sierra EV for less than $30 is a game changer in a world with $5 gas and $7 diesel – especially in light of the the truck platform’s record-setting range, and the fact that gas and diesel prices don’t seem to be coming down anytime soon.
As Reilly points out, the real benefit of pairing an EV with a home solar system is the ability to make your own fuel, and help set the price of refueling by selecting when you want to charge, when you can, and storing the most affordable energy in your batteries for use later. And, for his part, he absolutely gets it.
Crude oil prices
Head over to Jim Reilly’s LinkedIn account and follow along for more solar and fuel cost comparisons, as well as more of his work compiling and analyzing his home solar data and energy savings, then let us know if you’ve got your own, similar data to share with us in the comments.
If you’re curious how this math plays out in the weeks ahead, Reilly says he’ll keep documenting his home setup’s performance and sharing more details and cost comparisons on his LinkedIn account. Accounts like his are great because they’re not just theory – they’re real-world examples of how a whole home setup like Jim’s can work.
Electrek’s Take Disclaimer
While Reilly’s setup seems to be working incredibly well for him, your home, battery, EV, and driving habits might be dramatically different. If you’re considering following in his footsteps, talking to a qualified professional installer can help you understand what’s being offered and how a given deal is being structured. Take the information they give you to an accountant or trusted financial expert to understand what’s real, what’s marketing, and what actually makes sense for you — and if there’s money on the table in the form of local utility incentives or tax credits, make sure you don’t leave it there.
Unless, you know, you don’t actually care about money.
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