this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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Interesting. Anybody on here have this and is it worth it?
It depends upon what you mean by worth it.
If you mean evironmentally, it is likely the cheapest way in the long run to offset carbon intensive power usage, but that depends upon your location's daylight energy mix.
If you mean financially, your payback period will depend upon whether you have a free circuit at your dwelling to plug into, the panel positioning and solar intensity, your cost of capital, and your prevailing cost of power. Your payback could be anywhere from two to over ten years.
If you mean as a backup power source, they are locked out in case of grid loss of power.
I would install one if I could, but my state lets its power monopoly call the shots. So instead I subscribe to solar.
The ones I looked at had couple of plugs on the controller to plug things directly, that would keep running off solar/battery in case of outage, which is nice to at least cover essentials like fridge/freezer.
It's a relatively small amount of power, but they pay for themselves in just a few years if you get a system cheap enough. The more expensive your power and the more you can shift your usage to daylight hours, the faster it'll pay off.
So I have a solar panel and 3kw battery on my patio already. I use it for my cooking needs and boiling water. The pecron setup cost $1k. This will be a lot cheaper for people. I just need to understand if the outlet needs to be connected to the same circuit as the fridge outlet for the electricity to transfer over?
It does not need to be on the same circuit as any particular load.