Going off grid with solar in Washington, DC sounds appealing.
Generate your own electricity. Store it in batteries. Stop relying on the utility. Become completely energy independent.
It sounds great in theory.
But for most homeowners in Washington, DC, and especially for homeowners living in row homes, going completely off grid with solar and batteries usually does not make practical or financial sense.
That doesn’t mean batteries are bad. We install battery storage, and we think batteries will play an increasingly important role in the future of our electrical grid.
The question is what you are actually trying to accomplish.
For most DC homeowners, staying connected to the grid, installing a properly sized solar system, and adding battery backup when resilience is important makes much more sense than spending tens of thousands of dollars trying to disconnect from a grid that is already relatively reliable.
What Does Going Off Grid With Solar Actually Mean?
There is a major difference between having solar with battery backup and actually living off grid.
A normal grid-tied solar home generates electricity whenever the sun is shining while remaining connected to Pepco.
A truly off-grid home has to generate and store enough electricity to operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without depending on the utility.
That means your solar and battery system needs to handle:
- Overnight electricity consumption
- Several consecutive cloudy or rainy days
- Short winter days
- Air conditioning during a DC summer
- Electric heating during the winter
- Cooking and household appliances
- EV charging
- Periods of unusually high electricity consumption
Your system can’t simply be designed around your average day.
It needs to be designed around the days when solar production is low and electricity consumption is high.
That’s where going off grid gets very expensive.
The DC Electrical Grid Is Already Relatively Reliable
One of the first questions we ask when someone talks about going off grid is: What problem are you trying to solve?
If you live somewhere that routinely loses electricity for days at a time, a very large battery system might make sense.
That generally isn’t the experience of most homeowners in Washington, DC.
Long-duration outages can certainly happen, but most DC homeowners aren’t regularly spending multiple days without utility power.
That changes the economics considerably.
You could spend tens of thousands of dollars building enough battery capacity to operate your house through a hypothetical multi-day outage that you may rarely experience.
For most homeowners, we think it makes more sense to design backup power around the outages you’re actually likely to experience.
One Home Battery Is Not the Same as Going Off Grid
This is probably the biggest misconception around battery storage.
Installing one whole-home battery does not necessarily mean your home can operate indefinitely without the grid.
Depending on the equipment, electrical work, permitting, installation conditions, and configuration, installing a home battery system can represent an investment approaching $20,000.
Going completely off grid is a different proposition.
Depending on the home’s electricity consumption and desired backup duration, a true off-grid design could require five, six, or even more batteries.
A large battery installation could potentially represent $60,000 to $80,000 or more in battery equipment and installation, before considering the cost of the solar array itself.
And buying enough batteries only solves half of the problem.
You still have to recharge them.
Your Roof Has to Be Able to Recharge All Those Batteries
Imagine waking up after a winter night with your batteries significantly depleted.
Your solar array now has two jobs.
It needs to produce enough electricity to operate the house during the day while simultaneously generating enough excess electricity to recharge the batteries for the following night.
Now imagine it’s cloudy for three days.
That is where off-grid solar gets difficult.
You need enough solar capacity to meet your immediate electricity consumption and replenish your stored energy.
On a rural property with several acres of open land, you might solve that problem by installing a very large ground-mounted solar array.
A DC row home is a completely different environment.
DC Row Homes Have Limited Roof Space
Washington’s row homes are particularly challenging for large off-grid solar and battery systems.
Roof space is already valuable.
Solar designers have to work around chimneys, roof hatches, vents, HVAC equipment, fire-code setbacks, shading, neighboring buildings, and other obstructions.
There is only so much solar that can physically fit.
Then you have to find somewhere to put the batteries.
One or two batteries may be manageable on many properties.
Five or six large batteries are another story.
Batteries take up valuable real estate, and DC homeowners generally don’t have unlimited basements, utility rooms, garages, or exterior walls available for energy equipment.
Even if we could physically find space for all those batteries, the bigger question remains:
Can the solar array that fits on the roof generate enough electricity to reliably recharge them?
In many cases, it can’t.
Heating and Air Conditioning Change the Equation Quickly
Heating and cooling are some of the most important loads to consider when discussing battery backup.
Air conditioning can be one of a home’s largest electrical loads during a hot Washington summer.
Winter can be equally challenging for an all-electric home.
Electric resistance heating can consume a substantial amount of electricity. Modern heat pumps are considerably more efficient and can work well in the DC climate, but heating a home during very cold weather can still represent a major electrical load.
The same goes for EV chargers, electric water heaters, electric ranges, dryers, and other large appliances.
This is why homeowners need to think carefully about what they actually expect their batteries to do.
There is a big difference between:
“I want my refrigerator, internet, lights, outlets, and important equipment to work during an outage.”
and:
“I want everything in my house to operate normally for several days without the electrical grid.”
Those are two completely different battery systems.
Smart Batteries Can Shed Loads to Extend Backup Power
Fortunately, modern battery systems are getting much smarter.
Systems such as FranklinWH can use smart load controls to automatically disconnect certain large electrical loads as the battery’s state of charge falls.
For example, you might decide that during an outage your refrigerator, lights, internet, and essential circuits are more important than charging your EV.
The battery system can prioritize accordingly.
FranklinWH’s Smart Circuits can automatically turn selected loads on or off based on battery state of charge, which can help conserve stored energy during an outage.
We think this is a great use of battery technology.
But smart load management doesn’t change the fundamental energy equation.
A battery can decide where your stored electricity goes. It cannot create more electricity.
Eventually, that battery still needs to be recharged.
Batteries Don’t Necessarily Increase Your Solar Savings
There’s another important difference between the Washington, DC market and some other solar markets around the country.
In some areas, utilities have aggressive time-of-use rates. Electricity might be relatively inexpensive during the middle of the day or overnight but significantly more expensive during peak evening hours.
In those markets, batteries can have an additional financial purpose.
A homeowner can store energy when electricity is inexpensive and discharge the battery when electricity is expensive. This is often called load shifting or energy arbitrage.
Modern batteries are specifically capable of doing this. FranklinWH, for example, supports time-of-use load shifting where applicable.
But many Washington, DC homeowners are not paying residential electricity rates that create that same large day-to-night price opportunity.
That matters.
If you are already receiving the benefits of solar and net metering, storing a kilowatt-hour in a battery and using it several hours later may not suddenly make that kilowatt-hour significantly more valuable.
For those homeowners, the financial argument for installing batteries purely to increase solar savings can be relatively weak.
That’s why we generally view residential batteries in DC primarily as a backup and resilience investment, rather than something every homeowner needs to maximize the financial return from solar.
Your specific utility rate and energy usage should always be reviewed before making that decision.
Think of the Electrical Grid as a Giant Shared Battery
This is one of the easiest ways to understand why grid-tied solar works so well.
During the middle of a sunny day, your solar system may produce more electricity than your home is consuming.
Instead of requiring you to purchase enough batteries to store every excess kilowatt-hour yourself, a grid-connected solar system can export excess generation.
Later, when your house needs more electricity than the solar system is producing, you can draw electricity from the grid.
That relationship is incredibly valuable.
Instead of building enough battery capacity to prepare your individual home for every possible weather condition, you remain connected to an enormous electrical network that already exists.
And when the grid does go down, that’s where a properly designed home battery can step in.
So When Does a Battery Make Sense in DC?
None of this means we are against batteries.
We install them. (I have one on my house!)
For the right homeowner, battery backup can be fantastic.
The important thing is right-sizing the battery around what you actually want it to accomplish.
Maybe you want to keep your refrigerator and freezer running.
Maybe you work from home and need reliable internet.
Maybe you have a sump pump, medical equipment, security system, or other critical electrical loads.
Maybe you simply don’t want to sit in the dark during an outage.
Those are perfectly reasonable reasons to install battery backup.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need enough batteries to operate every appliance in your house for four days.
Instead of asking:
“How many batteries do I need to never use Pepco again?”
We think a better question is:
“What do I actually need to keep running when Pepco isn’t available?”
That can lead to a much smarter and more affordable battery design.
What About Microgrids?
This is where the conversation gets much more interesting.
We don’t think the future of energy in cities like Washington, DC is about thousands of individual homeowners each trying to disconnect themselves from the electrical grid.
We think there is enormous potential in making the grid itself smarter, cleaner, more distributed, and more resilient.
That’s where microgrids come in.
A microgrid can connect local solar generation, battery storage, homes, buildings, and other energy resources into a coordinated system.
During normal conditions, those homes and buildings can remain connected to the larger utility grid.
But when there is an outage or another grid event, a properly designed microgrid may be able to use local solar generation and stored battery power to support participating homes or critical electrical loads.
That’s fundamentally different from trying to make every individual row home completely self-sufficient.
Microgrids Can Make Better Use of Batteries
Think about the difference.
One approach is for every homeowner to individually purchase enough batteries to prepare for the worst outage they could possibly experience.
Those batteries could spend most of their lives waiting for an emergency.
A microgrid creates the possibility of coordinating energy resources across multiple homes or buildings.
Solar can generate electricity locally. Batteries can store energy. Smart controls can determine where that electricity is needed most. The utility grid can remain available during normal conditions.
And when something goes wrong with the larger grid, those distributed resources can potentially become an important source of local resilience.
The concept isn’t about abandoning the electrical grid.
It’s about building a better one.
Solar, Batteries and the Grid Should Work Together
The conversation around energy independence is sometimes presented as a choice:
Either you depend on the utility, or you become completely self-sufficient.
We don’t think that’s the right way to look at it.
Solar, batteries, smart electrical controls, microgrids, and the larger utility network can complement one another.
Solar provides inexpensive local generation.
Batteries provide backup power, flexibility, and energy storage.
Smart controls help manage when and where electricity is consumed.
Microgrids can coordinate distributed resources.
And the larger electrical grid provides enormous generating capacity and redundancy when individual homes need it.
The goal shouldn’t necessarily be to disconnect all of those pieces.
The goal should be to make them work better together.
Should You Go Off Grid With Solar in Washington, DC?
For the overwhelming majority of DC homeowners we work with, our answer is no.
Stay connected to the grid.
Install as much productive solar as your property reasonably allows.
Take advantage of the benefits available to grid-connected solar customers.
And if backup power is important to you, install a battery system designed around the electrical loads you actually need during an outage.
There are absolutely places where completely off-grid solar makes sense. A remote property without access to utility service is an obvious example.
A Washington, DC row home already connected to a relatively reliable electrical grid usually isn’t one of them.
At Uprise Solar, our goal isn’t to sell someone the most panels or batteries we possibly can. Our job is to look at the property, electricity consumption, available roof space, backup priorities, and budget and design a system that actually makes sense.
The future of energy in Washington, DC probably isn’t off-grid. It’s a smarter grid.
If you’re considering solar, battery storage, or both, contact Uprise Solar for a free solar and battery assessment. We’ll look at your home, energy usage, available space, and goals and help you understand what actually makes sense for your property.