Nick and Traci have lived in a few different locales – San Diego on the West Coast, Chicago in the Midwest and Morehead City, North Carolina, on the East Coast. They’ve been in Morehead City for nearly two years now and have found their forever home.
Since they plan to stay put, the couple decided to invest in their house and added advanced technology to achieve a level of energy independence.
“First and foremost, we wanted to help the planet. Second to that was the ability to capture solar energy so we could have grid resiliency and third was a desire to reduce our electrical bills.”
Nick
Reliable energy is important for Nick since he works from home, has a number of computers and needs stable, reliable and uninterrupted power throughout the day. In fact, the couple uses 1,800 – 2,000 kWh of power a month, which is double what the average U.S. home draws.
The couple initially had some bumps due to faulty batteries but, with a switch to SimpliPHI 6.6® batteries from Briggs & Stratton Energy Solutions, everything is operating at 100%.
“Now that the entire system is up and running, I completely believe in it and am surprised more people don’t have solar and batteries. The partners we selected, Pamlico, Briggs & Stratton and Sol-Ark were definitely the right ones.”
Nick
Nick and his family were familiar with solar but, once they made up their minds to add it to their home, Nick, who has a background in electrical engineering, started his in-depth research. He talked with several local solar installers and settled on Pamlico Solar, an electrician-owned company in Wilmington, North Carolina.
“Pamlico was very intentional and asked a lot of questions to make sure they were meeting our needs. The other installers seemed to have a cookie cutter approach and weren’t interested in adapting their systems to what we wanted.”
Nick
In November 2023, Pamlico installed 28 panels on two peaks of the Basil’s home for an 11kW system. An important step was to increase the utility amperage from 200 to 400 so they could split the amps into two panels. Pamlico put the family’s furnace, hot water heater, computers, lights and refrigerator on a critical load panel that’s connected to a Sol-Ark® 15K hybrid inverter. The non-critical loads panel remains grid tied.
At the same time, Nick added battery storage to collect and store the excess power generated by their solar system.
Unfortunately, while the solar panels performed as designed, the batteries didn’t.
“Our original battery system never worked and it was a complete disaster from day one. We went through months of frustration trying to reach someone who would help us but the manufacturer refused to address the problem. Pamlico was great during this time, but the battery company wasn’t."
Nick
The family finally had the batteries disconnected from their solar system. They were now back to square one to identify a battery company.
“What stood out about Briggs & Stratton® was the fact that they’re a U.S.-based company with a U.S. support team. We didn’t want to go with another overseas company. Based on our first experience, we had even more questions. The Briggs & Stratton people knew their product from top to bottom and were patient with the questions we had.”
Nick
In June 2024, Pamlico installed three SimpliPHI 6.6 batteries from Briggs & Stratton Energy Solutions. Nick and his family now have nearly 20 kWh of battery backup power. Nick estimates the batteries can power his critical loads for about four days with some solar production.
“With our solar system, we generate around 1,800 kWh of power a month plus we can tap into backup power from the batteries. We’re still a bit reliant on the grid but not by much. In fact, we had a storm the other week and were on battery power four times and my wife didn’t even notice.”
Nick
In the future, Nick says they might augment their power supply with a Briggs & Stratton home standby generator since a number of their neighbors have them.
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