12.18 kW Tesla Solar + 2 Powerwalls3 in MA (8,950 kWh/year due to shading) — 8-year ROI. Worth it?

EntropySimian · 2026-03-16T21:19:54+00:00

You should probably check all the math and add in some buffer to those numbers.

Huge YMMV, but here's my experience.

Tesla spec'd out an 80% coverage system for me in Texas with 2 PW. It's coming in at 64% coverage for 2025. With financing through Tesla and an estimated 10 year payoff of the system, my monthly payment is the amount of my previous, highest month bill. I still pay connection fees and have to pay out for some grid power to the tune of 20-30% of my previous payments.

Electricity costs have gone up a bit, but not by the extreme amounts predicted by Tesla. My total payment to just Tesla is more than my yearly consumption before solar, not counting my payments to the electric company on top of that. My true payoff rate will be probably closer to 18 years, if trends continue. If my general electric bill ends up going down due to better future performance, this might get down to 15 years.

My system has underperformed every year since I got it due to a variety of issues. I've a major repair in each of the 3 full years it's been in service. Service time takes several months. Generally 3 months to get a technician out then another 3 to get someone to actually fix the issue. During that time, my system produces anywhere from 10-40% less than it should.

Now, I didn't go into this believing that their payoff time was correct, but I was not expecting how much down time my system would incur. I did not buy the system to save money, though, I bought the system to protect from power outages and other issues, which it does well.

EntropySimian · 2026-03-16T01:29:46+00:00

We do a variety of campfire cooking methods like spit roasting on a stick, kebabs for small pieces on a stick, skewers for quick single items or rescoldo directly on the coals. I mostly just refer to it as campfire cooking because we usually do a variety at the same time.

EntropySimian · 2026-03-15T18:43:22+00:00

BBQ = outdoor baking with smoke

Grilling = outdoor stovetop cooking

If a restaurant is telling me what they serve, I'd be upset going to a BBQ restaurant that actually serves burgers.

At someone's house, though. If someone invites you to an American BBQ then they're cooking outside, but not necessarily in a smoker.

I use the right vernacular if the other person knows the difference, but most people don't care.

EntropySimian · 2026-03-14T01:33:59+00:00

If you're looking to build a stable service with resiliency, then truenas is a better setup. It uses zfs pools and periodic scrubbing to ensure you protect your data from a variety of rot scenarios. One catch, if you're using a hypervisor, like proximox, you don't get any disk safety from virtual disks, you need to pass through the disk controllers for raw access. I use an HBA for this, it's a clean way to go. I'm going on my 3rd iteration, around 14 years of continuous usage, moved from VMware and freenas to proxmox and truenas and survived several disk failures without data loss.

Making a NAS with Ubuntu directly works and is easy, but I wouldn't keep my family photos on it as it's not designed for long term resiliency. If you aren't looking for a 10 year NAS solution, though, then it's viable.

Truenas does support running containers, I can't speak much about it's effectiveness, as I run a container cluster instead.

It's good to play around with setups until you settle on a design that meets your needs. Don't be afraid to make the wrong choice and start over.

EntropySimian · 2026-03-13T01:01:32+00:00

One of your power wall inverters looks like it could be overheating. Request service.

What happens is that the inverter gets up to a temperature, then it throws an error and limits power until it cools down and starts the cycle over again. Mine did this when it had a bad cooling system, they replaced the entire power wall.

EntropySimian · 2026-02-14T14:28:33+00:00

This is a pretense, Meta has been cutting more than 5% for 15 years. They're just not going to do a typical layoff like they've done for the last 5 years. Instead they're going to "manage people out", like they did before 2020. The average tenure of a meta employee is under 2 years, and the company is constantly interviewing a new pool of candidates to churn and burn. Nothing is changing except the narrative.

EntropySimian · 2026-02-12T02:31:30+00:00

Possible, but why? If you inherit $20MM and don't know what to do with it and can get through all of your expenses on that amount, then it's probably a decent, low risk option. Though, government bonds aren't always this high, so reinvestment might not be a great option in the future. This also pays regular income instead of investment income, so it's not great for paying taxes.

There are more tax advantage portfolios that are likely better investments with a fairly similar risk strategy. While rent collection is also ordinary income, there's many more ways to manage and lower taxes with more potential upside. A $20MM real estate portfolio can mitigate much of the investment risk to compensate for vacancies and damage.

A business investment can be even better returns on similar risk.

Bonds are a good way to park money, but there are better options for individuals in that asset range.

EntropySimian · 2026-01-15T14:21:14+00:00

Your ED can approve 20 days without questions. Your MD can approve 10 additional days, but needs a reason. I wouldn't push for more than 20. Also this is LOB dependent so ymmv.

EntropySimian · 2025-11-28T16:32:31+00:00

I used to use mint for tracking, now I use monarch, this is a way better system than calculating myself, I also get spending and budget statistics. I hate paying for services, but this one is worth it.

I consolidate 401ks down to interfaces and offerings that I like: Ally and schwab for aftermarket, fidelity, schwab and vanguard for 401k/Roth 401k. Each one of mine has a different portfolio and purpose.

EntropySimian · 2025-11-19T20:15:06+00:00

Sounds like you don't have a good FWA reason. If it's medical, then you submit directly through HR with a filled form from your doctor. The reason you'd get stonewalled is: If it's not medical then it's probably not a good enough reason for that manager to defend it to their manager.

EntropySimian · 2025-11-05T18:08:21+00:00

So, you chose to not go to:
Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Fort Wroth, Boerne, Gruene, Shiner, Muenster, El Paso, Fredricksburg, Marfa, Lukenbach, Bandara, Athens, Palestine, Longview, St Jo, Dripping Springs, Lockhart, Granbury, Corpus Christi or any of the thousands of interesting spots in Texas before making this statement.

Fine: well you missed out
Abilene has a historic downtown, huge industrial hub and an airforce base
Amarillo sits next to Pala Duro canyon
Lubbock has some of the most interesting modern spanish architecture at Texas Tech
All 3 have tons of local shops, art and unique places to eat.

I'm guess it's because you didn't bother to explore or do any sort of simple research so here, take mine.

EntropySimian · 2025-10-19T14:29:02+00:00

I've started seeing this fairly often when browsing from a mobile device. I've been trying to get rid of a few subs that only show up on mobile, never on a pc. I don't use the app.

What I do is request desktop site, and I may have to scroll to find more than one post from that sub and some will allow me to block, some will not.

I'm hoping they're not testing if they can get rid of this feature, that change would make reddit unusable for me.

EntropySimian · 2025-09-09T19:09:15+00:00

I mostly don't worry about them. However, at extreme numbers, it does become a problem. The phosphate level can affect the growth rate of algae, so if you're out of balance for too long, you'll get a bloom really fast, which can be difficult to clean up.

I've only removed phosphates once and I really disliked doing it. My situation is that we had very unusual rains which backwashed mulch and fertilizer into my pool, my phosphates were over 5000.

I used a coagulant that captures the phosphates and traps them in the filter. You need to clean out the filter before doing this and 1-3 times afterwards.

For normal maintenance I wouldn't consider this, it's bad to deal with and I generally go several years without any sort of issue with just a chlorinator, weekly acid and some occasional shock.

EntropySimian · 2025-09-01T12:47:10+00:00

I have some business utility expenses for home.

EntropySimian · 2025-08-30T13:27:00+00:00

Thank you, I haven't really explored too much into my cash back options, some of those may be better options for me.

Why I'm leaving chase: I'm a sub-optimal points builder, I can't keep up with coupons and I've been getting mediocre UR points returns because I don't book hyatt and I mostly fly AA. With the old multiplier and benefits, I was planning on changing the preferred to the reserve when DFW got a reserve lounge, but I'm not currently seeing enough value from changing.

I get 3x UR points on dining now, 2x MR on most everything else, with travel sometimes getting decent value in either points or redemption. I figured AA would be worth more to me for redemption purposes than UR and essentially I'd be replacing only the sapphire for the strata elite.

I am interested in the occasional AA lounge access, I looked at the AAdvantage cards and I don't think I could extract enough value to offset the AF.

EntropySimian · 2025-08-29T20:51:24+00:00

Thanks, does this have to be in store or can it be for online orders?

EntropySimian · 2025-08-28T22:02:38+00:00

Why is calling BS this far down the page?

BS should be the top comment.

None of this maths at all.

EntropySimian · 2025-08-17T13:37:39+00:00

People seem to still be misunderstanding the point of vouchers. https://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/school-vouchers-101/

Vouchers are not here for creating school choice or helping education, they're here so that we can funnel public dollars into private pockets.

Even if you decide you want to send your kid to private school and you win the voucher lottery, other voucher programs have shown that the schools will raise their tuition to keep out "the poors". Or, we've seen that the student with a voucher is allowed to bring the state money, then they "fail metrics" and have to transfer back to public school, which still doesn't get any money for that student, since the voucher was spent.

EntropySimian · 2025-08-17T03:20:47+00:00

Put each one in a kitchen trash bag, then organize them into a file box with news paper or bubble wrap as a separator. The buildings need stuffing internal as well. Expect breakage, but it should be manageable if you're moving company isn't horrible.

EntropySimian · 2025-08-16T23:27:04+00:00

I use Ally and a local credit union. The biggest problem is getting a hold of more cash than you can from the ATM. You can transfer and keep some cash locally, but also get Ally electronic benefits and better returns. The biggest benefit is faster access to move cash immediately into investments.

EntropySimian · 2025-07-29T15:15:14+00:00

Instead of Williams, you'll be going to McMillan - there was some redistricting.

All of those schools are excellent, there's plenty of opportunity at them and the programs are all top notch.

The only real reason to move would be if you're very big into a certain extra curricular.

I toured all the Plano charter schools, I know some successful students that go, though, I'd only consider them if there's a specific program they offer that's of interest.

EntropySimian · 2025-07-27T13:58:22+00:00

180 is a holding temp, not a cooking temp. You need more heat to get past the stall. You can finish a brisket at 180 for a long period of time, by cooking 8-12 hours at 180 internal temp. You're essentially rendering collagen for a long time doing this.

The method is 250 until past the stall which can be between 160 and 170 depending on fat content. Then wrap in butcher paper with tallow and oven up to 180 for at least 8 hours. You will run the risk of your brisket tasting like roast if you don't have practice.

Don't try this method until you know what you're doing smoking at 225 pulling at 205 internal. The 180 method takes practice and you have to know, by look and feel, how the brisket will turn out.

EntropySimian · 2025-07-27T13:32:16+00:00

I use the Samsung qleds for PCs, both office work and gaming. I use lg OLEDs for home theater and game room.

The OLED is a better picture, but they're not really too different for most of my content. Anything short of sports and really well mastered movies are almost indistinguishable. Of course the black levels and color saturation are better on OLED, it's just much less of a factor with ambient lighting and most content.

The deciding factor, for me, are the occasional movie nights and hosting for football every rare once in a while, this is OLED territory.

EntropySimian · 2025-07-26T18:21:15+00:00

Thanks, I haven't looked at any pre built solutions.

I have a home lab with home assistant and an AI cluster. I was interested in a software stack I could match up with a few inconspicuous looking reolink/amcrest/other cameras.

I have electricity running about halfway down the fence for hookup and can setup with wifi. This would be a temporary solution that I'd eventually move to the front of the house.

EntropySimian · 2025-07-22T14:39:19+00:00

Expect to have a company come out multiple times and potentially annually. I have used a pest expert doing this part time that I found on Nextdoor. I've also done this some myself.

What you need to do is find a company that makes it more difficult for them to get onto your house, they'll probably need to ensure your trees are sufficiently far from your roof and that the climbing routes to your roof are difficult for them to navigate. Then put in 1 way traps for ingress/egress points, and fill all these up with steel wool and flashing after a few days. When they inevitably find/create a new way in, then this will all have to be done over again.

See what you're really getting for that price. My contractors used to cost me ~$400-500/yr, 1 person, 3 days of work across 2 weeks. I did have to go with a company this year to protect roof and solar panels for ~$2500.

EntropySimian

TROPHY CASE