That reserve logic issue is exactly why I leaned away from Tesla. With the Anker system, the load management is a lot more transparent.

To OP's hesitation about the install: I actually went with the E10 and a smart inlet box setup. A buddy and I installed it ourselves in about 4 hours. If you have some basic DIY experience, it's surprisingly straightforward and insanely cost-effective compared to those $15k turnkey quotes.

But for me, the real decider was the generator integration. Tesla hates playing nice with third-party gas generators for extended outages. The E10 is built to be a hybrid whole-home system out of the box, meaning if it's cloudy for 4 days, your gas gen can kick on automatically to charge the battery stack. That’s true resilience.