SPAN - Smart Breakers + EV Charging

[thecodingart]

I believe we have some individuals in the forum whom might have SPAN panels, but for those who are unaware of the product, I thought now might be a good time to make a post for awareness. I've personally been eyeballing the product for a while now awaiting (what is upcoming) proper V2H integration with their charger. I highly advise taking a look at the video posted below and digging in a bit as those here (like myself) who are all in the home backup + solar + EV echo system, this guy is fairly powerful and enabling. The best part, it now seems to qualify for the new round of tax credits by a fairly significant amount.

Other benefits that are fairly unique include home/charger load balancing for those who may not have spare full 60/70/80/100amp breakers for charging.

SPAN Will Help the Inflation Reduction Act Realize its Climate Goal and Full Potential, as Homeowners Use SPAN to Integrate Electrification Products like Batteries, Heat Pumps, Solar, and Other Energy Improvements

SPAN, the leading innovator in smart home electrical panels, commends President Biden for signing the new Inflation Reduction Act into law.

www.businesswire.com

SPAN® | The smarter electrical panel

Lower your energy bill with SPAN smart electrical panels - advanced features and intelligent design save you money and energy.

www.span.io

 

[borski]

I wish. Their panel only supports 200A service, otherwise I likely would’ve gone for it. But I have 400A service.

 

[MoniputerLM]

I wish. Their panel only supports 200A service, otherwise I likely would’ve gone for it. But I have 400A service.

Buy two!

 

[thecodingart]

I wish. Their panel only supports 200A service, otherwise I likely would’ve gone for it. But I have 400A service.

I have 2 200 Amp panels in my home and will probably swap them out for theirs. I’m guessing you have 1 400 Amp panel currently? Splitting it would be an option. Someone mentioned they have a 300ish Amp panel now as well.

 

[blueice89]

Last when I saw this product it was pretty expensive not sure it’s still worth the heavy investment. I am not 100% sure what it provides. That said we have SRP and 3 powerwalls that provide back up power to our house and 8kw of solar panels. We effectively have 0kw demand and our powerbill is maybe 100$ a month for the year for a larger house. The powerwall system does all on peak off peak scheduling for SRP and most the times power is not more than 5 cents per kWh.

I am curious what exactly does SPAN panel give I addition to powerwall system.

 

[thecodingart]

Last when I saw this product it was pretty expensive not sure it’s still worth the heavy investment. I am not 100% sure what it provides. That said we have SRP and 3 powerwalls that provide back up power to our house and 8kw of solar panels. We effectively have 0kw demand and our powerbill is maybe 100$ a month for the year for a larger house. The powerwall system does all on peak off peak scheduling for SRP and most the times power is not more than 5 cents per kWh.

I am curious what exactly does SPAN panel give I addition to powerwall system.

The posted video will go over the benefits, especially when paired with solar and a powerwall. It is pricey, but it seems there might be a tax rebate option up to $6,500 that might make this a worthwhile investment. I believe the panels are advertised between $3.5-4.5k each today.

 

[blueice89]

So I watch this video and mostly he is saying redirect power in power outage. I have had powerwalls since 2018 in Arizona and I think we had 1 power outage and all I did was go to breaker box and turn off pool. He also mentioned the air conditioner a lot. We can balance air conditioner using our nest thermostat. We have 3 powerwalls which can serve up to 15kw simultaneously and 39kwh capacity. The YouTuber video has a massive house so it might serve that case but for us we just use nest, pool pump timers, and hybrid water heater. Anything that uses massive power is on schedule. I am software engineer by trade and always enjoy building stuff on Raspberry pi. For a while I had to automate my powerwalls cause Tesla didn’t t have super robust scheduling. But now tesla has really customizable scheduling including double peak. Like in AZ our peak run time is 5a-9a and 5p-9p and our house only runs off battery and solar at These times. It’s beautiful.

The graph below shows when we pull to grid and you can see in peak it just drops to zero!

 

[borski]

Buy two!

Haha that would require me to have split service, but I have a single 400A line

 

[Electrified]

$4300.00 load center for a residence, why not just get a genset that can power your whole house and have no worry about which circuits are on or off.

 

[Electrified]

I wish. Their panel only supports 200A service, otherwise I likely would’ve gone for it. But I have 400A service.

Do you have electric heat?

 

[Electrified]

I have 2 200 Amp panels in my home and will probably swap them out for theirs. I’m guessing you have 1 400 Amp panel currently? Splitting it would be an option. Someone mentioned they have a 300ish Amp panel now as well.

Serious question, why?

 

[blueice89]

I did think the reading of the power usage per breaker was cool. But I have a rough idea how that works like at night our only major power producer is car charging and pool pump. A lot of the stuff seems like luxuries at 3500$ plus install probably another 3000. This is like 6500$ expense at that cost i rather just add more powerwalls.

Our house wouldn’t be as interesting as that big house. Like right now we just using 4kw total in the house.

 

[thecodingart]

Serious question, why?

I have quite a few use cases this aligns with actually.

Benefits of their charger (even better when they have a V2H product) and breaker system:
- Much more granular control of where my solar power routes to. It’s not possible today to tie a car charger to 100% solar input without some special configurations and REALLY going out of your way for the hookup (I’d know because this is what I originally tried to do). The fact that I can prioritize my car charger to be 100% solar driven and have any left overs revert back to somewhere next in the queue is fantastic granular control that simply doesn’t exist today.
- Charger load balancing. Yes I have a 400Amp input, but the ability to limit/load balance chargers is up on my list. My wife will be receiving an EV soon as well and this is a natural progression for me.

Without their charger
- Monitoring general utility usage is something I’ve wanted for a while now. One of their demo’s basically uses historical graphs to predict your fridge is about to go bad due to spikes. This is right up my alley. This is one use case, but electricity has been going up and Tesla’s data barely provides the information I desire to make cognizant decisions about my usage. Whole home usage is great, but there’s a lot of guess work in what’s causing what. The more granular that data is, the better.
- Remote abilities to control my breakers is something I’ve dreamed about for a very long time now. Simply put, I have a lot of DIY projects I’ve done and this, is amazing from a convenience factor.
- Granular control where I can route power to specific areas of my house during a power outage. I love the idea of being able to optionally turn off power draw to things like my pool, other pumps, different rooms, maybe even one of my 2 AC units rather both. I live in Florida and have been without power for a week before during a hurricane, not for me honestly. During any outages today, I can’t really “control” where my power walls send power to. I have to turn off things manually to sort of get that effect. With this I can without manually doing any of that and guessing.

There’s more their content breaks down, but these are my primary reasons. With a tax break that could cut the cost of this product significantly down, this seems worth it at some point to me. I take a bit of pride in my smart home as well, soooo this is a natural investment with one of the backbones of a home. I consider many things in modern homes to be archaic needing innovation.. this is one of them. I’d also like the ability to monitor water usage to this level tbh. Yes there’s leak sensors out there, but I actually want that data because I’m me .

Also, anything I can do to own my utility meter is a huge win.. they offer something to help with that (https://www.solarpowerworldonline.c...r-and-meter-products-within-smart-home-suite/). I hate being at the mercy of a utility company.

My single hesitation is a lack of understanding on my behalf of how well this software works if the company goes out of business. That’s always a bit of a question with proprietary hardware/software now-a-days though.

 

[blueice89]

Do you have a current powerwall system today or something that shows you overall house usage?

 

[thecodingart]

Do you have a current powerwall system today or something that shows you overall house usage?

I have 2 powerwalls and solar. It’s a huge step up from “nothing” previously, but I find it extremely lacking in granular control or breakdowns. Also, the data is usually skewed from utility company information a bit. I want more accurate and more granular information. I also want waaaay more control. Most of what’s there from Tesla’s Solar/Powerwall combo is a good starting point for getting some sort of informal readings on your home with a very high level set of configurations balancing your solar/backup load times with the grid.

I also have a feeling V2H is going to fit snuggly within a system like what Span is trying to offer.

 

[blueice89]

I am curious how does it go with the tax credit. Is that 30% tax credit? If you need control and not getting that from your appliances then this seems like a way to go.

 

[thecodingart]

I am curious how does it go with the tax credit. Is that 30% tax credit? If you need control and not getting that from your appliances then this seems like a way to go.

I’m reaching out to their sales team to dive into this exact topic. They advertise it’s part of the 30% tax credit “up to” something like $6,500. I just don’t know the semantics around how that works yet.

And definitely don’t get this information properly from my appliances. Historically, I have tried other middle man solutions for some of this data, but it’s a lot of piecing crap together. I’m ready for a solution at the source that’s universal.

 

[thecodingart]

I think @zipcube had mentioned they had a SPAN system, so I’d love to hear from them or other current owners. (Especially if they have any counters to my thoughts above)

 

[blueice89]

Low-and-moderate-income households - which are defined as households with a median family income of less than 80% of the area median income - are eligible for incentives up to $6,500 total for an Upgraded Load Center which SPAN Panel qualifies for, and for Upgraded Electrical Wiring which the installation of a SPAN Panel qualifies for as well

This is what I see on the SPAN site curious how the measure or enforce low and moderate

 

[DeaneG]

Interesting, as SPAN is almost an appeal to technology hobbyists with a high income. I could see using this panel if I could use it as part of a V2H setup, as adding a separate transfer switch to my home would be physically a pain/ugly due to location and construction of my power entry and main breaker panel.