You did it, Dan! We love how much you learned about your home from energy insights in your SPAN Home app throughout this experiment, and that your SPAN Panels made it possible to go off-grid for a full 48 hours. Resilience looks good on your Dream Home!

Watching this from South Africa is funny. We live with 10+ hours a day where we have no power. Switching to solar is a game changer here and almost a requirement to live a normal life.

Dang those drone shots are sweet!

Hey Dan, I didn’t read through the comments, so someone else may have said this, but it seems that the Span panel is in charge and not the power wall. This would account for some of the discrepancies that you saw. The power walls are being fed from the Span panel, which is why the span panel was seeing the “whole” picture more clearly than the power wall was seeing. Hope this helps! Thanks for the video! Can’t wait to go solar myself.

It’s crazy to see how much your house uses even without AC. Even more extreme with AC. Thats no comparison to european houses

I wish the Tela powerwalls and chargers would communicate with the Cars to send power from their battery packs back into the house just to bridge the gap between the power walls running out and the solar kicking in fully. It would also mean that the solar could continue at 100% output after the power walls were full and start charging the batteries in the cars. This is something we know Tesla could make, with the app connectivity they already have it would be easy to make them all communicate.

This is honestly such a good challenge. You really learn to appreciate having power and become more conscious on how much electricity you use every day. I would love to see you guys try this challenge again in maybe a year and see how you change your home to become more and more efficient.

whats crazy is that he said he was using even the heaters during night! So he’s using AC during the day and then all that cool air is being heated up during the night?! What a waste of energy. Plus there’s no need to use AC when it’s 80 degrees outside. Like literally, here in Europe, we weren’t allowed to heat up our homes during (freezing) winter to above 65-70 degrees (19-20C) and yet the dummies in the US are just wasting energy.

My wife walked in the room and asked why I listening to Ryan Reynolds and told her I was watching what’s inside family 😂😂 never really knew how similar Dan sounds just like Ryan Reynolds and now I can’t get it out of my head

You need a UPS for your network/computers with a managed shutdown script

Dan - Can you please explain how in 2023 with LED bulbs everywhere, you are using 1KW for your lighting (15:34) during the *day* ?????

We lived off grid with our Tesla PowerWalls for 11 days after Hurricane Ida! Our solar panels charged our PowerWalls daily.

American houses use so much power. I have no idea how do you guys even use this much power, like what in the actual hell are you doing to possibly use this much power ? Most American still use the outdated and dangerous GASSSS for cooking and still use this much power. It just blows my mind.

It's good to have a backup like you have installed even though you have such a good grid energy system! Here in South Africa our grid is unstable, we have rolling blackouts every 4 hours or so, so having some sort of backup is a need unless you like sitting in dark for 4+ hours a day. You should do some more videos on the solar side.

Cool challenge. Since there were times in the day where the power banks weren't charging because they were full, couldn't the cars get charged during that time? It would use up some of the stored energy and utilize the available sun. Can't wait to finally see what happens to the statue.

Great video Dan! I love the flexibility of SPAN you showed. Our family has about 12kW of solar and 4 Tesla Powerwalls installed. We ran this type of experiment before and after installing a 5 zone Mitsubishi based heat pump system (for cooling and heating), in both winter and summer. I was able to go reliably off grid in both seasons, in part by moving from HVAC to heat pumps. We live in Los Angeles and our home is significantly smaller - about 2,600 square feet - but it's a testament to how much more efficient heat pumps are over traditional HVAC systems. And with the multi-zone nature of heat pump systems, you can just heat or cool the area of the home where you are.

they use more energy in one day than i do for my home in a month

This is more entertainment than instruction. Timing is important and insolation is much better this time of year. And you appear to be in the southwest so not much weather. Practically, this CAN be done any time of year if one manages demand. And yes, the solar/powerwall/SPAN combination is powerful.

great video and very interesting. done this myself 4 weeks ago and you really learn a lot about power, usage and your behaviour. everyone should do this to get the knowledge about there power usage

Excited to see how this turns out

It takes a fair amount of practice to figure out what you actually need on or off. Awesome video! South Africa is going through this but not by choice, haha!

Have you looked at the Tesla solar tiles for the other sections of your roof, as they are far more discreet than the big solar panels?

this was an eye opener on how, when n what to use in power conservation n also on hw to go abt power usage in cases of outage

Pretty sure your home isn't 100% running through the powerwalls, do you have two breaker panels? That may be why the Tesla app isn't showing your full home usage? My home is 100% going through the backed up panel so it shows every watt we use.

Could you possibly see about putting a WiFi extender close to your Tesla power wall? Wondering if it just loses communication from the WiFi at certain points? Maybe during peak performance times where a lot of bandwidth is being used? Putting that WiFi extender near the power wall maybe help with that intermittent connectivity.

Seems like you need to complete the solar roof. All that wasted space that can be used for solar. That house should be able to run off the grid without cutting down energy usage.

Would love to go off the grid and seeing this video does make me want to do it more! Very cool and educational

You did this challenge so well and I loved the drone shots i can’t wait for you to do another challenge like this, maybe 72 Hours. You ae my favorite youtuber!

Lift masters garage door openers with a battery backup is a must for all my houses. When we moved to our current home it was one of the first things we had installed

I think that your house is wired up weirdly, as I have found the tesla app is actually very accurate even when the power is out. It also works completely independently of the internet too (and allows for hardwired ethernet if you want). I have a second power meter, and I measure both at 1hz with some home automation and they match to about 0.1% error. I think this is an app explanation issue. It looks like your house has 2x 200a panels, and the powerwalls do not actually connect between separate the two service connections. This means when it is disconnected, there are many ways that the tesla app could measure differently than span depending on how the house is wired and they truly are measuring the correct power through a wire, but just because of the way they are wired, they represent different things.

Span and the tesla wall are amazing. It's so cool how your power goes down, but you still have power! Also, late happy birthday to Claire 👍

I’m ou should have put a emergency battery under your desk for your computer, it would of made thjngs so much easier😊

This is what it feels like in South Africa everyday with constant power outages. Such an amazing video love the content!!

our electric went out for 2 weeks and we handled it very well. Kept the shades closed, doors, ,etcc. Especially if the entire Grid goes out through the Country. what else is best for people to have security cameras!!! We visit your city a month ago, it's so beautiful there and the citizens are so nice. Throughout Utah it's pretty.

I live in rural Pakistan and the grid turns off many times a day (load shedding) and we have a ups but it’s not always enough especially in the hot summers when we want to run the ceiling fans. I have AC but the grid turns off more often in the heat so I’m not able to properly use it. I have been looking into solar to power my whole house ,but It’s expensive and the lithium battery’s are even more expensive. 😅 Basically the experiment you did is just like what happens here when the grid goes off for hours at a time.

This was a great test, I imagine your solar/usage can be scaled up and down dependent on size of property and appliances. You can switch off fridges for a few hours as long as you don’t open them, in a pinch you could have not used air con etc… during an actual outage, this could be life saving. Instead of using the Tesla power wall there are modular systems that allow for more granular upgrades. Teslas a nice package though. Nice real world, human test. Also, well to wheel, EVs still contribute less CO2 than ICE vehicles. Span needs to go international, absolutely cracking idea.

It's a good, Hard way to find out if the solar panels orientation was set up correctly. Thank you for this. Will keep this in mind when I finally put them on my house

This video should be titled "Utah Family Plays Vermont Simulator for 2 Days"

Good Stuff Dan Powerwalls & Span panels are a great combo.

Did you stop uploading on the main channel??

For the weirdness of the applications. Maybe, the tesla doesn't know that power is use in the house because it's from the solar panel only. Instead, the SPAN app know because all the power from the solar go thought the SPAN system and so, the app know the power consumption of the house and stored energy of the tesla wall

I LOVE these house updates. Please keep this content up!

so what I've gathered is you need 1 more powerwall, maybe v3 11.5kwh rumored ones, and you could do this flawlessly.

I wish SPAN was available in Australia. I'm building a house and going full electric. Planning on getting 13kW solar and one Powerwall 2 (thinking of getting a second maybe). SPAN would be nice to have so I could have more control over the house.

Back in February 2021 there was a severe ice storm where I live and it’s very unusual to get weather like that, but from it we lost power for 5 days and it took out nearby cell towers so we had no wifi, cell service, and heat Edit: we had to then opt for a generator afterwards instead of solar as from late October to early mid April we don’t get much sun

Car coming out is so nice❤❤❤ 12:33 +Tesla sounds

great video man! very informative!

Happy Battery Birthday Claire! (Great video btw!)

Great video,keep them coming

LOVE these house updates.....i want you to move for more house videos lol

17:09 I believe the reason it does this is because the grid is disconnected and the power can’t be sent to the power company. I do think that it is odd that it doesn’t use the solar for the house but it may be for the same reason. And good job managing everything and keeping energy for your house most of the video!

I live in Denmark where aircondition is rarely used or even installed. Like the office building I work in has no air conditioning. We do have 82 here from time to time during the summer, and you don’t need AC for those temperatures. Yes it’s a little bit unpleasant, but you can easily do a couple of days with those temperatures.

Oh my God, I’m your fan

Your frustration between the mismatch of generation and storage is a perfect microcosm of the issues faced by the grid!

i think the reason your tesla power wall wasn't working after grid was on because you changed your Powerwall setting to off grid mode. i might be wrong but that's what came in to my mind.

Happy birthday Claire

Greetings from Europe. Solar is also a big thing in the more wealthier countries, even tho my country gets 50% of its power off of low to 0 carbon sources, lots of people love the idea of solar. We also have barely any ACs here. Energy prices are also really high here, even tho they gone down lately. We pay 30-45 cent per kWh. The power your house is consuming is really absurd for european standards. I know it's a bad comparison, but my flat uses 200 watts when everything is only standby, which is already high since I have lots of non standard electronics running 24/7. Most people here consume about 5 kw/h without ac and electrical heating :)

i helped my neighbor go off grid, 7.5 kw of solar and 20kw of batteries, occasionally he needs to use the generator, but it is winter in south east Australia and solar is lousy her over winter because of how south we are. we split his panels 50/50 east and west so he makes power all through daylight hours and only when its severally overcast he will generate little power. His batteries her set up for cycle life so they are only used from 30% charge to 85% so in essence he is only using about 10kw of his batteries.

0:22 THAT WAS THE BEST DRONE SHOT EVER :O

So my question is, would it be better to do the solar roof tiles and maybe another battery because then maybe you would be able to sustain being completely off grid? An you would also beable to get more solar energy from start to end off day?

This is a very interesting video I really life the span breaker system

Cool experiment, but it's not really representative of normal energy saving. Stuff like lights and phones take bssically zero energy, you could run them 24/7 no problem. The only real things that draw power are heating and air conditining.

cool house you have. when I was a kid our power got shut off all the time in the summer because my parents didnt have the money for the bill. 90+ degree days with no fans - no fridge. we had coolers. >>>> memories .

I work for an electrical utility. I need some of our customers with solar to watch this video to show that even with a lot of solar and batteries you would still need some help from the utility at times to keep the power going and what it would look like if you were actually off grid

Always happy to see that Zack's statue is still there.

Get the Liftmaster or other brand garage opener with battery backup which also has wifi and belt drive (very quiet). I was amazed one time when my wife came home when power was out and it just worked. Very nice feature.

I can give some advice. You can set up the lights so you use less of them for example each of my fixtures have 2 bulbs and when I'm that night time power save mode I use only one and when I'm being really frugal I was set the lights to a color which uses 3 watts or less per bulb

Dan what you just explained about why the power pack only charges up to 97% is what is called controls engineering or having feedback loops that can change in real time.......I would know since I just graduated with a B.S. in Robotics Engineering

Dan house needs his own Tesla Megapack & not just Powerwalls😂

Hey Dan, will you tell Claire, happy birthday and, I hope the stars will guide her! For the power wall, I seriously think the Tesla app isn't doing all that it could do. Haven't used it myself personally but I have Enphase so far I haven't had too many issues. Do love the way that it shows what it's doing. Live and how your showed up was very different from the way that Enphase app is. Personally, since you showed off the spam system, hopefully I said that correctly. It would be quite nice to have that installed here in the house because it would put us to a full house backup system instead of partial backup. With only one battery, I think we could manage the output of it, especially during the summer months where we have sun higher in the sky here in NC. My recommendation is to purchase a few cheap solar LED lights for outside and inside that does not have to be connected to any type of power. And personally, that was a great idea by the girls to charge up some of the battery backups and cell phones and flashlights!😂😂😂😂🎉 Great day to choose her birthday to torture her with one of your experiments as well! From my understanding, you could possibly get away with installing one more backup battery and possibly get away with having the home stay almost completely active. But yes, if you went with an extra two or three you would most likely have power for days! Or at least enough for a bad winter night! And thanks for all you do. Keep up the great content boss!

I believe if the home was also smart, you could pretty much configure so that when the battery is full, you can run the A/Cs on "max" so you can also create a thermal battery in the house. This way you can use way less power overall since you have the overflow during the "A/C time" and allow you to run more devices @ night. This is something TechnologyConnections mentioned about off-peak grid use, so I think it would also perfectly apply in the opposite case here of on-peak sun hours ☀☀

Got hope on twitter that you said on what’s inside twitter but hopes it’s what’s inside family

@17:47 "...as soon as it hits 98% it turns off the solar....it says we have zero kW coming from solar" This is happening because you have your "Permission to Export" on "No"(go to Settings) If you have it on "Yes" then you will be able to sell your excess electricity back to the power company. Does your State have a regulation to make the electric company fairly reimburse you for the excess power you produce & send back to the grid? If so, then turn you "Permission to Export" setting to "Yes" (Someone didn't read their Owner's Manual) 🙄

Happy birthday clare🎉

Here in uk I have the ability to back feed from my electric car into my house if needed my inverter allows this I rarely use the grid. I use a solar controller through my pcb which incorporates a timer turns off when you know your not producing high power. if circuits power isn’t being produced to supply high power ie water heater it doesn’t turn those on.

What about a challenge, where everyone in your family each gets an ecoflow power bank, and whoever powers his personal devices the longest wins something cool?

Could the CT's for the TESLA power walls be located incorrectly or do the need to be calibrated. The Tesla system is also protecting itself that is factored in. It is eye opening and the data from the SPAN panel can be used to fine tune the loads and spot efficiency problems. A UPS system would be a good idea to take care of your computers independently.

Awesome video. Thank you

Cooll idea Dan. Very interesting.

Havent watched yall since the og days before this channel, glad i still get the same vibes now

I live in Hermiston Oregon and we have 22 325 watt panels and 10 365 watt panels that all face the south and right now on the average they generate 63 to 65 kw a day. The only thing is we don't have Tesla Powerwalls yet!

It is not off-grid if you have internet conenction. Try doing the same and unplug internet cable. It would be intersting if you can still manage your apps for tesla and span. BTW. Tesla app tells you only what is comming in and out to the wall, it does not have any information about SPAN and the other inventer, so it is reporting correctly, but just for itself.

If the house is connected to the grid, will the power-management system still exclusively use the Powerwall if it's charged enough, energy demand is low enough, and there's no solar input power?

Does your power go into the span first before it goes to the Powerwall, or is the solar wired directly into the power wall? On the powerwall, do you have a MESH internet for WIFI? It might help the Powerwall is on WIFI fulltime.

6:46 why not have solar panels on both sides? But I’d get more solar storage.

Happy Birthday Claire.🎉 🎂 🥳 wishing you get your wish.. 🕺 ❤😇

It would be cool if you could connect your tesla to the powerwall and set it to drain in case of emergency till a set amount of miles left.

I have a single Span panel and a single Tesla Wall. I just wish the Span panel would be more connected to real breaker activity. The app doesn't show if a breaker is tripped or not. And I don't believe too much of what the Tesla app says regarding capacity. They could do a much better job. But hey, they build cool rockets.

I really enjoy your videos Dan, mainly techy but dynamic, like all on this family channel. It would be awesome if you could make a detailed smart home over few parts or security focused video next, (like a demo how it is set up) i wached your last smart home video, you said it can diferentiate yours from strangers it sounds like AI magic. What cameras or recorders can do that else than Luma, i cant get hold of them in Europe. Have a nice day, Matej😊

Ask your solar installer to check the CPs installed in main service panel. If it’s not picking up all the loads that might be causing the inconsistent readings on the Tesla app

happy birthday Claire

Do you have a powerr generator, like a gas generator to see how much the difference would be? You have a gas stove so It would be interetsing to see what the power usage with a gas generator would be vs grid

Great Video!

Love ur videos 🎉 thanks for the vids

I love you videos so you that teals powerwall 2 with the larger compasity help you house completely off grid?

connecting to and disconnecting from the grid: minimize your usage to minimize the arking and the current surge. A current surge can burn out equipment and devices. Example : the power company forgot to notify our processing plant before restoring the power. The power company had to replace 3 35 horsepower 3 phase m

im amazed at how much power some people use. i average 9KW a day at my house, 3 fridges, computers and electric heating/ cooling. we do have gas instant hot water and stove top but a gas cylinder lasts 6 months.

The 0% solar with 95% powerwall charge reading was correct. When off grid, the powerwalls will shut down the solar inverters before they reach 100% charge as a safety measure when your power use is relatively low. The powerwalls can control the solar production by shifting the frequency of the house power slightly. If you were to start using a lot of power suddenly (like plugging in the car) then the powerwalls would switch on the solar again. The trick is you would need to remember to turn off the circuit to the car as the sun goes down to avoid having it draining the house battery storage too soon.

Living in the Caribbean we do these test all the time glad I have 🪟 so a/c isn’t turned on in the day. Plus when the grid is out you won’t make it to a 100% in the Tesla app stays at 98%. You just have to reduce consumption mainly a/c, a/c makes people soft like you’re dying without a/c.

i wonder if the tesla app is cloud based other thing i wonder if tesla just estimates power usage and such vs span which has wires touching or a loop around the wires because my LG AC unit estimates but doesn't know the actual power consumption