The Danube Waltz Redemption

Prague: The Warm-Up Act That Steals the Show

We arrived four days early. The same logic as before: jet lag is brutal, and planes are sometimes unreliable. My pre-failure here was in not securing business class seats – but we managed. This time we stayed in Prague rather than London, which turned out to be the right call. Prague is spectacular, and unlike London it doesn’t charge you £400 for the privilege of being rained on.

The Old Town Square alone is worth the airfare. The medieval Astronomical Clock – the Orloj – performs a brief mechanical procession of apostles every hour. The audience of tourists pointing phones at it would confuse the 15th-century clockmaker, but I think he’d be pleased the thing still runs.

We walked the Charles Bridge in the day, and again at night. It’s lined with 30 Baroque statues of saints, each one dramatic enough to star in its own cathedral. The bridge is pedestrian-only, and the imposing Prague Castle lit up on the hill, reflected in the Vltava below – is exactly as good as every photo you’ve ever seen of it. Possibly better.

At left: Old Town Square at night. The Astronomical Clock tower (left) and the Church of Our Lady before Týn (right). The clock has been running since 1410 – before Columbus sailed, before the printing press, before anyone thought to call it “Central Europe.”

*Long exposure of the Charles Bridge from downstream using the telephoto (5x zoom). The reflections give you two photos for the price of one.*

*Kafka’s Head” – stainless steel sculpture by David Černý*

“Kafka’s Head” is a 45-layer rotating stainless steel sculpture by David Černý near the Palladium shopping center. The layers spin independently and periodically align into a recognizable face. Franz Kafka was born a few blocks away, which seems appropriate for a man who spent his career writing about fragmented, bewildering identities. What do I mean? Well Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915) follows traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes up transformed into a giant cockroach. Yeah, that Kafka.

Street view from the *Art Noveau Palace Hotel, Prague*

Breakfast in the dining area of the Art Nouveau Palace Hotel, Prague, looking down a typical street through an arched window. Prague is full of interiors like this: elegant, unhurried, and considerably cheaper than the equivalent in Vienna or Paris. And it was just blocks away that we found Svíčková. But you’ll have to wait for that.

*Prague’s terracotta roofline from the grounds of the Prague Castle complex.*

The city looks much as it has for centuries, which is either extraordinary preservation or a shortage of developers with ambition. You can see that ambition is not lost on the newer parts of Prague – check out those MANY cranes in the distance!

A practical note: Prague is extremely walkable if you are willing to do a lot of walking. The food is excellent and cheap by Western European standards, and the transit system is clean and reliable – or so we observed. We arrived late on the first day, and the three days remaining felt short. If you can swing four, do it. Word of caution: beware any ATM machine that say “EuroNet”. They are well documented tourist traps with hideous exchange rates. And by the way, that is the least best thing about Prague. The Czech Republic (and Hungary) use their own currency. In the republic currency is called the koruna, or crown (code: CZK) not the Euro. In fact, Hungary (with its forint’s) was the only place where we had to switch phone plans to stay connected. The good news is that credit cards are accepted just about everywhere.

Prague Walking Track — March 2026

Prague Airport and Walking Track – March 2026

GPS track recorded during pre-cruise exploration

Passau: A Lovely City With a Dark Footnote

From Prague we traveled by coach to Passau, Germany – our ship departure point. Passau is a small, photogenic city at the confluence of three rivers (the Danube, the Inn, and the Ilz), which gives it a layered, peninsular quality. It also floods constantly, which the locals have documented on their buildings with remarkable precision.

Our Passau guide, Esther, was originally from Singapore, married a German, and earned her citizenship – giving her an outsider-insider perspective on the city that was worth any organized tour. She walked us through the city pointing out trams and buses, oddly named streets and flood marks. She explained German bureaucracy with the rueful humor of a survivor, and then told us about a four-year-old boy who once fell through the thin ice on the Inn River and was pulled out by a local priest who later became the St. Stephen’s cathedral organist.

“That boy,” she said, pausing for effect, “was Adolf Hitler.”

<- Our guide, Esther, pointing out the high-water marks embedded in the wall. Each plaque records a different flood year. The marks go considerably above head height. The uppermost plaque, recording the highest flood reads: After the birth of Christ, in the year 1501, on Our Lady’s Day, the floodwaters rose to the cross. Passau has been doing this for a very long time. The street name: Roßtränke means “Horse Trough”

*St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Passau. Home to the largest pipe organ north of the Alps (17,974 pipes). We did not hear it play.*

Passau also had opinions about geopolitics. Several shop windows in the Old Town displayed signs reading “Putin’s Supporters: No Entry.” Central Europe’s proximity to Ukraine makes the war feel considerably less abstract there than it might from, say, Seattle.

It’s worth noting, too, that many of the towns and countries we visited along the Danube have taken in enormous numbers of Ukrainian refugees. We spoke with Ukrainians everywhere – some tending shops, some cleaning them, some in heavy industry, many aboard ship. The most Ukrainians taken in per capita were in Estonia, Czechia (aka the Czech Republic), Slovakia – and Ireland. Bravo to those countries for their hospitality. Poland received more but they are much larger country – and, of course – a neighbor to the Ukraine.

It was palpable to us, as American’s abroad, in that the war with Iran was started on February 28th, was still ongoing during our sojourn abroad – and is still ongoing today in June as I write this.

Aboard the Viking Vilhjalm: The Flat-Water Difference

The Viking Vilhjalm is a river longship measuring 443 feet long, 38 feet wide, and hauling 190 passengers. The Viking Vela carried 998. The most immediate practical difference: nothing rocks or rolls. The river is glassy, the ship is flat, and at no point did anyone measure the tilt with a bubble level app. This was, I cannot overstate, a significant improvement.

The Vilhjalm from the Chain bridge over the Danube. The dining room glows through the panoramic windows – a reminder that one of the pleasures of river cruising is dining while watching the city drift past.

The Viking Vilhjalm docked in Budapest as the blue hour settles in. The Buda skyline – Fisherman’s Bastion, Matthias Church – lit up behind it. This is what “docked in the heart of the city” looks like.

River cruises also pass under bridges and through locks with impressive frequency and minimal clearance. The wheelhouse folds flat hydraulically, which you can watch from the sun deck (if allowed, that is, some under-crossings are less spacious than others). The captain threads the ship under railway bridges at night without drama. On our previous cruise, “drama” was essentially the entire experience. The contrast was noted and appreciated.

*Night passage. The wheelhouse is partially retracted to clear the bridge. The margin looks alarming; apparently it is not.*

The smaller passenger count means the crew learns names, preferences, and jokes. Which brings us to the Hannah Waddington situation.

Rebecca from Ted Lasso, Apparently on a Career Break

One of the dining crew was the spitting image of Hannah Waddington – the 6-foot-tall British actress who plays club owner Rebecca Welton in Ted Lasso. tricia, who cannot let a good resemblance go unnoted, asked her if anyone had ever said she looks like the star.

She paused. “That’s the first time this year!”

Then: “…and this is the first cruise of the year.”

The delivery was impeccable. She had a wickedly good sense of humor and warm presence to match, and by the second day we – along with a growing number of other passengers – were specifically seeking out her section. If you sail on the Vilhjalm and a tall, very funny woman who looks uncannily like Hannah Waddington is working the dining room: request her table. Don’t call her Hannah, though, her name is Anett, and she’s from Latvia. You’re welcome.

Linz and Pöstlingberg: A Frankfurter Worth the Climb

Linz is Austria’s third-largest city and the one most likely to surprise you. It sits at the foot of a vine-covered hill called Pöstlingberg – which roughly translated means “the postal area mountain”. You can reach its heights by a historic tram that begins downtown and claims to be one of the steepest adhesion railways in the world. At the top of the Pöstlingbergbahn you will find a Grottenbahn – which is a whimsical “grotto railway” for children. It wasn’t running, we missed that train. The tram left from this very square.

Linz’s Hauptplatz (main square) with the famous “LINZ” letter sculpture framing the Plague Column. Yes, “Plague Column”. That’s a bit of history North Americans did not have to endure, and many cities have monuments erected commemorating the end of the Black Death. Linz has worked hard to rebrand itself as a cultural city – it is the birthplace of Anton Bruckner a bizarre man and brilliant composer, and home to the Ars Electronica festival. Also, regrettably, the hometown of Hitler. A city dealing with a complicated legacy.

At the top of Pöstlingberg, the Schloss Bräu restaurant has a deck with a panoramic view of Linz spread far below in the Danube valley. We had the Frankfurters. Two of them each, served in a delicious crunchy pretzel-like bun with shredded fresh horseradish. It sounds humble. It was not humble. It was the second-best thing I ate on the entire trip, and I ate some genuinely excellent things on this trip.

Pöstlingberg, looking back down over the rooftops to Linz in the valley and the Danube beyond. The Schloss Bräu restaurant is to the right of this picture, but has a view much like that large terrace you see at the right. The Frankfurters are not visible but trust me

Göttweig Abbey: Apricot Dumplings and Baroque Excess

Between Linz and Krems is Göttweig Abbey (Stift Göttweig) which is a Benedictine monastery perched on a hill above the Wachau Valley that has been operating since 1083. The docking is in Krems – so you’ve already had chance to catch a glimpse of Göttweig high up on a hill before a bus takes you there. The current Baroque buildings date to the 18th century and are, in the way of 18th-century ecclesiastical architecture, considerably larger than necessary.

Stift Göttweig. The foundation stone was laid in 1083; the current complex was rebuilt in Baroque style after a fire in 1718. The abbey produces its own wine, olive oil, and apricot products from the surrounding orchards.

The Wachau Valley is Austria’s most celebrated wine and apricot-growing region, and Göttweig’s café served apricot dumplings (Marillenknödel) – soft potato dough wrapped around a whole apricot with its pit removed and replaced by a sugar cube, rolled in buttered breadcrumbs. You have not had apricot dumplings until you have had apricot dumplings at a Benedictine monastery overlooking a UNESCO World Heritage valley. I’m setting the bar deliberately high.

The Wachau Valley: Castles Included, No Extra Charge

The stretch of Danube between Linz and Krems is the Wachau. And it is a UNESCO World Heritage landscape of vineyards, medieval villages, and castle ruins perched on cliffs. It is the kind of scenery that makes the cruise fare feel justified regardless of everything else.

*Schönbühel Castle, which has watched the Danube since the 12th century. The current structure dates to 1821. It still looks appropriately medieval from the water.*

The town of Dürnstein is where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned in 1192. His loyal minstrel Blondel supposedly wandered Europe singing outside castle walls until Richard sang back – one of history’s more musical jailbreaks. The ruins are still on the cliff above town, and the blue Baroque church tower below makes the village look like a painting someone left out in good weather.

*Dürnstein. The blue church tower belongs to the Augustinian monastery. Richard the Lionheart’s castle ruins are on the cliff above. He did not leave a review.*

Sailing through the Wachau on a clear March morning. The Austrian flag indicates we’ve crossed from Germany. The valley looks exactly like a UNESCO site should.

Vienna: More Than a Day Could Justify

Vienna got one full day, which was not enough. It is enormous, beautiful, and packed with imperial grandeur at a density that becomes mildly numbing – the opera house, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the parliament, the Burgtheater, Stephansdom, all within walking distance, all built to impress, all succeeding.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum on Maria-Theresien-Platz, facing its twin the Natural History Museum across the square. Both were built in the 1890s and both contain more than you can see in an afternoon.

*Stephansdom (St. Stephen’s Cathedral) in the heart of Vienna. The spire is 448 feet tall.*

The outdoor café in the foreground seems unbothered by the huge spire and features something worth stopping for: Kaiserschmarrn – which is literally translated “Emperor’s Mess” – it’s a delicious pancake thingy. If there is no table space, you can find a take out window with a quick moving line.

It seems every city we stopped in had it’s own composer of record. I couldn’t keep them straight. When I blurted out “Richard Strauss” trying to answer our Vienna tour guide query: the guide’s stern eye and swift correction “Johann Strauss” made me realize I made an embarrassing faux pas. Johann is from Vienna, Richard is from Berlin. It felt for a moment like I had put ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago.

Come back for three days minimum. Consider bringing a museum membership.

Bratislava: The Underrated One

Bratislava in Slovakia gets less attention than Prague, Vienna, and Budapest, which is undeserved. The old town is compact, walkable, and genuinely lovely. The Primate’s Palace, where Napoleon and Austrian Emperor Francis II signed the Peace of Pressburg in 1805, is among the finest Neoclassical buildings in Central Europe, and the compact scale of the city means you’re never far from something worth seeing.

*The Primate’s Palace, Bratislava. Napoleon signed a treaty here. It now houses the mayor’s office, which seems like a reasonable use of a landmark.*

Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising, also known as the **UFO Bridge**, located in **Bratislava, Slovakia**

Speaking of landmarks, the most unusual bridge we passed beneath was the “UFO Bridge” in Bratislava, Slovakia. It is odd in that it is a cable-stayed bridge that has a single pylon with a “saucer shaped restaurant” at the top. We had the time to give it a try, but decided to remain on our side of the Danube and enjoy the view instead.

The bridge was built in late 1960s and early ’70s at the height of Communist excess, in honor of the 1944 resistance movement against the Nazi forces. It’s probably the ONLY communist era structure with pizazz. Throughout the Slavic countries, astute guides will point out how to easily distinguish Soviet era buildings from any others: the Soviet Era buildings are the ugly ones, i.e. gray, square, and unembellished.

What NOT To Do if You Are A Linguist

Now might be a good time to point out what not to do when in any former Slavic country. Language is my thing. I am weird that way. I’m fairly fluent in German so Passau (Germany) to Vienna (Austria) was easy. But Czech’s of course speak Czech, while Slovakians, Slovenians, and Croats all speak their own dialects – but each mostly understands the other. The mistake NOT to make is noting aloud how each “Good Morning” greeting sounds like Russian which is pronounced “DOBRaye OOTra”. I made that mistake several times (I’m a slow learner) as I tried to pronounce local “Good Day” and “Thank You” variations. All those countries were once under the thumb of the Soviet Union, of which they do not like to be reminded. Everyone I spoke to – including the Hungarians – agreed that Hungarian is the most impossible language ever. This is especially amusing to me now, because one of my photos appeared in the Hungarian edition of “The Economist” and that partially explains the bizarre way they spelled my name in the credits. A Hungarian article about when I won the Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest came with a similar, unrecognizable, transmogrification of my name.

While I’m on the subject, here are a few notes for us Westerners. What German speakers call Donau (Duh-NOW) we call the Danube. What westerners call “Prague” the Czechs – who live there – call Praha, Wien (pronounced VEEN), is the actual name of Vienna. If it seems almost everything Czech (Č) ends with a “ch” or an “itch” … well, that’s because almost everything does. To their credit, they bother to show how to accent things. English is a quagmire.

Budapest: The Grand Finale

Budapest may be the most photogenic city in Europe. I say this having just come from Prague, Vienna, and Bratislava, all of which are lovely. Budapest operates at a different scale of dramatic. The Danube cuts the city in two – Buda on the west with its castle and Baroque churches on the hill, Pest on the east with the Parliament and the grand avenues – and both sides light up at night in a way that makes the river between them glow.

*The Hungarian Parliament building from the Buda side by day. 879 feet long, 96 domes, 691 rooms, built between 1885 and 1904. Still the largest building in Hungary.*

*The Parliament lit gold at night. The daytime photograph is impressive; the night photograph is something else.*

*One of the four lions guarding the Chain Bridge, with Buda Castle lit above. The lions were installed in 1852 and have been criticized ever since for lacking tongues. They remain silent on the matter.*

*60 pairs of iron shoes, installed in 2005 to commemorate the Jews shot here.*

Budapest also contains one of the most affecting memorials I have seen anywhere. That’s saying a lot. My wife and I both stood along the long black marble Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, DC and we wept as we watched a legless wheelchair-bound vet rub his hand slowly and somberly over the name of a fallen colleague.

Along the Pest bank of the Danube, 60 pairs of iron shoes mark the spot where Hungarian Jews were shot by the Arrow Cross militia and fell into the river during the winter of 1944–45. The shoes represent different people: men’s shoes, women’s shoes, a child’s. There is no plaque required to understand what you’re looking at.

In fact, I didn’t notice when I took the photo, but someone has placed Ukrainian flag ribbons on a pair of women’s shoes – a quiet statement about history’s tendency to repeat.

*Breakfast aboard the Vilhjalm, docked in Budapest. Matthias Church and Fisherman’s Bastion through the window. The coffee was also good* – per my wife. I mostly drank peppermint tea.

One of the pleasures of river cruising is waking up docked in the heart of a city. Breakfast with Matthias Church visible through the dining room window is a specific luxury that anchors-and-tender ocean cruising can seldom match.

The Food: An Itinerary Within the Itinerary

*Svíčková na smetaně: braised beef in creamy root vegetable sauce, with cranberries, lemon zest, cream, and bread dumplings on the side. The Czech dark beer appears to have been involved as well.*

A Danube cruise feeds you well on both sides of the gangway. The single best dish of the trip was Svíčková na smetaně – a classic Czech preparation of braised beef sirloin in a rich, creamy root vegetable sauce, served with bread dumplings (knedlíky), cranberry sauce, and lemon zest. We learned about it from our driver from the Prague airport, who had grown up in Czechoslovakia during the communist era and steered us toward it with the conviction of someone passing on essential knowledge. He was right. If you are in Prague and you skip the Svíčková (SVEETCH KO VAH) in favor of something you already know, you will regret it. The same driver said something that really stuck with me:

“The Czechs and the Slovaks split the country, and only the politicians remember why.” The Velvet Divorce as it is called happened in 1992. Each country is less populous than the city of Los Angeles.

The second-best dish – which was mentioned earlier and surprised me – was a humble Frankfurter at Schloss Bräu in Pöstlingberg, above Linz: served in a crunchy pretzel bun with shredded fresh horseradish. Simple ingredients, flawless execution, and a view of the Danube valley as a bonus.

Göttweig Abbey’s apricot dumplings have already been covered in the relevant section but deserve a second mention here because they were awesome – not to mention the fact that the ship’s chef prepared a cooking demonstration about how to make them. The chef had very strong opinions about why the way he and the Viennese made schnitzel was superior. “It seems foolish to me to get a delicious crispy finished dish and then place it in or cover it with a sauce that makes it soggy.” He was very right!

Some of the local flare was less impressive, of course. One of the worst mistakes we made, food wise, was attempting to get Vietnamese food in Prague (What WERE we thinking!?) In our defense, Slavic food is much like German food. Heavy on the sauces and shades of brown, butter and meat – so the Vietnamese fiasco was an attempt to get healthier, lighter fare. It was reminiscent of traveling in Spain where it seemed nothing green was going to ever appear on a plate and we pleaded with the hotel for a plate of broccoli. In Slovenia, green appeared on the plate, but parsley just doesn’t count as a vegetable, does it?

*Slovenian sausage with sauerkraut and sides in Ljubljana, complete with a Slovenian flag toothpick. Local restaurants in Ljubljana take the flag – and the sausage very seriously.* We were less of a fan.

*Breakfast aboard the Vilhjalm. The kitchen arranged the Eggs Benedict, sausages, and bacon into a smiley face (Of course it was Anett’s doing*)*. The food was consistently excellent, but this particular presentation was memorable.*

The Viking ship’s own kitchen was consistently good. Genuinely good. Not “good for a boat.” The Eggs Benedict arranged into a smiley face one morning was a small detail that suggested the kitchen was paying attention and having fun. But everything was consistently good to excellent.

Zagreb and Ljubljana: The Bonus Round

The post-cruise days took us first to Zagreb for two days, and then to Ljubljana for two more. Both of which exceeded expectations.

Zagreb has the confident ease of a city that knows its own value without needing to advertise it. The Croatian National Theatre – canary yellow, impeccably maintained since Emperor Franz Joseph inaugurated it in 1895 – anchors the lower city. The upper town is medieval, quiet, and connected by a funicular that is so short it feels more like an elevator with ambitions.

The Croatian National Theatre, Zagreb. Emperor Franz Joseph I inaugurated it in 1895. The flowers in the foreground are a reminder that spring arrives in the Balkans before it arrives in, say, Seattle.

*Zagreb has a lot to point you toward. The bicycle appears to be making its own decisions.*

Much of Zagreb was still enrobed in exterior scaffolding due to the 2020 6.4 magnitude earthquake (there were actually TWO that year). With a population less than 6 million people, and lots of very old buildings, I can see where having a small tax base makes all the fixes a protracted endeavor. One of the remarkable things about all the guides is how well versed in history they were. They were talking about dates in 1081, and 1400s. Being an American we have only a fraction of that history to remember.

While we were in Zagreb, there was very high security at the Esplanade Zagreb Hotel where we stayed. Apparently there was an international financial conference being held there. The police stopped the cars and tram on the street and we watched from the front steps of the hotel as an entourage of vehicles displaying Ukrainian flags rolled up. We tried to be inconspicuous, thinking that we might catch a glimpse of Volodymyr Zelenskyy – the leader of the besieged Ukraine, but, alas, it was not him.

Ljubljana, Slovenia is smaller, warmer, and aggressively charming. The Dragon Bridge and its four bronze guardian dragons, the old town’s distinctive Art Nouveau facades, the castle on the hill above – Ljubljana operates at a human scale that lets you actually be somewhere rather than trying to keep up with it.

*Ljubljana’s old town. The decorated façade at left belongs to the Cooperative Bank building, designed by Maks Fabiani with distinctive folk-Art Nouveau ornamentation.*

Ljubljana punches above its weight architecturally. And yet it’s compact and EXTREMELY walkable – especially from our hotel the Grand Hotel Union Eurostars, Ljubljana. If you have been struggling with that city name (which I did for a LONG TIME) there is an easy way to get it right: just pretend the “J”s are “Y”s. Lyublyana (or Li-u-bli-an-a, if you’d rather). It was my second favorite city. (Prague and Budapest tied for first).

*One of the four copper dragons of Dragon Bridge. The city’s coat of arms features a dragon; the bridge takes the heraldry literally. They are said to bring good luck to true-born Ljubljanans.*

*Ljubljana Castle courtyard, Slovenian flag above the clock tower. The castle dates to the 12th century; the city has been climbing the hill to visit it ever since.*

Lake Bled: Save the Best for Last

A day trip from Ljubljana to Lake Bled, was perhaps, the best day of the trip. Bled is one of those places that looks like a screensaver and turns out to be better in person, which feels like a minor miracle.

A glacial lake. A medieval castle on a cliff above the eastern shore. A Baroque church on a tiny natural island in the center of the lake, the only natural island in Slovenia, is reached by traditional flat-bottomed boats called pletnas. Julian Alps rising snow-capped in every direction. Even in late March, in mildly overcast weather, it was remarkable.

*The Church of the Assumption on Bled Island, photographed from Bled Castle above. There has been a place of worship on this island since the 8th century. The current church dates to the 17th.* The 10x zoom on the phone came in handy here.

One of the nice things about our Croatia and Slovenia extension is that because it was the beginning of the season there were just four of us. We fit comfortably into a van and were ferried around everywhere with one constant guide and driver. A lovely couple from Tennessee were good company throughout.

*Near Bled: an Alpine house with the Julian Alps rising behind it. Slovenia is a serious mountain country and doesn’t get enough credit for it.*

Viking vs. Viking: The Comparison

For anyone wondering whether a river cruise redeems the ocean cruise experience, here is the short version:

The river cruise wins on intimacy, stability, and access. 190 passengers on flat water, docked in city centers every night. You wake up in Budapest, not anchored somewhere offshore. The crew knows your name by day two. Nothing flies off the tables.

The ocean cruise wins on scale and spectacle when the weather cooperates – and the Norwegian fjords (when we finally reached them in Eidfjord) were every bit as spectacular as promised. When the weather doesn’t cooperate, it wins on spectacle of a different kind. See: the original article.

The Danube Waltz itinerary packs an exceptional density of civilization into eight days of sailing: the Wachau Valley, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest – all dockside, all walkable from the gangway. Add Prague, Zagreb, and Ljubljana as bookends and you have a genuinely hard-to-beat two-week itinerary through the heart of Central Europe.

Would we cruise Viking again? We already answered that question by booking this one. We’d do it again. Perhaps not in the North Sea. In January.

Photographer’s Post Trip Observation

We chose to travel with one suitcase each and one carry-on each. Instead of bringing my normal photo backpack laden with camera gear, I chose to try JUST using the phone. I definitely missed some great night sky and landscape photo opportunities. I definitely wished I had brought a simple tripod. The one huge mistake I made though: I forgot to turn on GPS location tagging for my photos until near the end of the trip. But the phone did afford me with good photos, communication, and I was able to use GPS (from the tracking app I used). That tracking turned out to be a life saver in remembering which of thousands of photos came from where.

All in all it was not a terrible trade off – especially since the 5x and 10x lenses on the Samsung came in handy on several occasions. It would have been much harder to do without bringing multiple seriously large lenses. I think next trip, however, I’m going to lug the big tripod and the “real” camera.

If you’ve cruised the Danube Waltz or visited any of these cities, drop a note in the comments. And if you want context on why anything short of a hurricane felt like a triumph on this trip, the original Viking Vela story is here.

About the images: All photos taken with a Samsung S24 Ultra unless otherwise noted. GPS tracks were recorded throughout the trip.

Titanic Adventures in the North Sea

9 Replies

^{Released: January 22, 2025}
^{Edited: April 3, 2026 (add links)}

Viking Vela at Ålesund dock (from webcam)

To celebrate our December, 2024 retirement my wife and I booked an Aurora Borealis Cruise with Viking. We had previously cruised with Viking for a Rhine River cruise which I never documented, but briefly describe here for context. The river cruise occurred in November, 2021 from Basel, Switzerland to Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was originally scheduled to depart in May, 2020 but… COVID! We stuck it out until it was actually possible to go.

About the images: I reserve all rights to use of these images for any commercial purpose. You may use them as backgrounds or wallpaper for your personal use, but any other use requires a license. The majority of these images were taken with a Samsung S24 Ultra phone.

So, the great retirement getaway was meant to combine two of our goals: Seeing the Aurora Borealis again (we were fortunate to see them in December, 2023 in Fairbanks, Alaska), and visiting the Fjords of Norway. I had suspicion that the cruise might be dicey as the North Sea and Norwegian coast are rather famous for big seas and fierce winds in winter. Well, there were big seas and fierce winds! The first day of cruising was a stop in Ijmuiden (Amsterdam) and the weather was fabulously sunny. We enjoyed a canal boat tour.

The “Dancing Houses” of Amsterdam. They all lean in different directions due to being built on wooden poles that are hundreds of years old.

Sailing out of Amsterdam toward our next destination of Narvik, Norway, we knew there would be almost 2 full days of sailing as Narvik is quite far north.

Leaving Amsterdam looking over the pool deck and retractable roof.

But despite the captains warning that seas may be a bit rough and encouragement that our course would spare us much of the ruckus, there was a big squall starting and we were not able to outrun it. By about 10 PM, the ship was rolling about 5 degrees side to side as measured by my bubble level app. Before the big rolling I measured the listing as 6.8 degrees starboard and to port (during the biggest heaves, I measured 9.5 degrees sway to each side!)

The Norwegian Sea wave forecast for 2 PM Norwegian Time (source) looked menacing. The crosshair is approximately where I expected we’d be at that time, but what you can’t see is that the storm was coming up in the direction we were sailing. Here you see wave heights forecast to as high as 10.5 meters (34 feet).
At about 11 PM the rolling measured 6 degrees side to side on my bubble level. I wedged my boots into the closet door to stop it from slamming, and stowed all the breakables. I know several folks had their sliding doors break the closet they were in.

If This Boat’s a Rockin’

By 1:00 CET, the ship was rolling up to 7 degrees side to side. I awoke at 1:30 CET due to the tossing and with my wife’s blessing went down to the first deck to watch the Washington Commanders vs the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the executive lounge (where the internet was better). While there, and about 10 minutes before the end of the game the BIG rolling began at about 3:45.

The captain estimated the winds at 100 mph gusts, and seas of up to 37 feet. His first efforts were to turn the ship to keep the wind from causing the rolling. However at some point, that seemed to make matters worse. The first big rolling jolt toppled marble-top tables, flung open cabinets and contents went spilling. Two ladies came down to guest services on the first deck where I was because their water carafes and glasses had shattered in their stateroom. Another guy down there (Matt) said he thought he should go check on his girlfriend… I should have done the same. While the football game was still going on I captured some movies and still shots, and when the game ended (with a bounced-in walk-off field goal!) I returned to our stateroom (6092 at the port side stern) via the 7th deck where the pool is located. The pool area had massive mayhem as you can see in the photos below. I took the stairs because the elevators were making ominous banging noises in the rolling sea.

Bodily Injuries

My wife attempted to keep items from flying off the desk in our stateroom but was instead launched from the bedside to the window. That wasn’t enough injury, so as she got up after being hurled, a tray with daily news and menus sailed off a table and struck her in the forehead above her left eye. It broke the tray and left her with a goose egg that went black and blue under her hair and over the next 6 days turned into a black eye.

By the time I got back to our room, I was measuring 9.5 degrees tilt from starboard to port (19 degrees total). I was able to flag a steward to bring an ice pack for my wife – and our cabin attendant kept us supplied with ice ever after.

We met several passengers with black eyes, and others recounted broken ribs a broken finger, a broken toe, and a broken nose. So, yeah, it was rough for many of the 998 passengers and 465 crew. Many of the crew told us they had never been in such difficult seas. Many of the injuries were from being thrown out of bed into the nightstands – but that tended to occur for those on upper decks (6, 7 and 8). Another person recounted getting hit in the shin by the shower door as they were on the throne. One of the black eye situations was a woman who was thrust from the bathroom to the sliding glass doors. She had a concussion and lingering pain, and double black eyes. The days following the rough and tumble seas reminded me of the scene in Jaws where they compared scars with one another.

We can’t speak highly enough of the great care, professionalism and kindness shown by the crew. Our cabin steward, as I noted took excellent care of us.

The captain, Rune Loekling, made announcements frequently through the night reassuring everyone that the ship was built to take the conditions. He asked everyone to stay in their staterooms for safety and that persisted through breakfast and lunch (the crew brought fruits and boiled eggs to the room for a late breakfast, and a cooked meal with salmon and beef for a late lunch. We diverted to Ålesund, Norway, arriving in port at about 21:00, though once in the protected fjord the weather no longer rocked and rolled the ship so furiously and folks were able to leave their staterooms to get dinner at about 18:30. It was a total of about 19 hours of “motion”. My main concern is that much could have been done to minimize the damage by encouraging passengers and crew to stow breakables (many people had water carafes and glasses on slippery surfaces and those resulted in broken glass). Viking could even provide a checklist of things to do when heavy seas are expected or encountered.

The captain kept mentioning that the “pounding” was a normal occurrence of the bow hitting the waves. I was curious how much different it was for those near the bow so I ventured to the port side of the pool deck (7th deck) at almost 10:00 where I could record the seas. Watch and you’ll see a huge splash as the bow hits a wave. Also, I’m not sure what it was that was hanging down, I noticed it wasn’t there later, so perhaps something else that had been damaged in the storm. I also took the opportunity to get more ice for my wife’s head.

Ship Damage

Damage was rather extensive. Not many people saw it because they were doing a lot of cleanup while passengers were encouraged to remain in their staterooms.

Damage in the pool area. Broken glass, overturned tables, and contents spilled from cabinets and bookshelves.

Aftermath of the First Big Rolls aboard the Viking Vela

While the pool area damage was the most striking, I noticed lots of bits of damage, including 4 washer/dryer units that toppled in the laundrette and damaged wall panels,

Notice the dented wall panels from the washer/dyers falling over.

The Aquavit lounge outdoor in the stern was pummeled with sailing marble-top tables and was smashed off its mounting, and much of it’s (quartz?) exterior was battered and smashed along with perhaps a half dozen shattered table tops. Indeed one of the outdoor glass barriers at the side of the stern port side was shattered, though still intact.

Finally the grand glass and steel staircase leading up from the Explorers lounge on the 7th deck in the bow had a large curved panel that was shattered and removed. The staircase was roped off for the rest of the cruise though I didn’t observe any other obvious damage to the stairway.

There were several places where either buckling or impacts from heavy falling items damaged the floor tiles. They replaced floor tiles near the starboard World Cafe entrance, at the starboard exit of the Explorers lounge. On the second floor there is a two-stage exit from the atrium to the outside of the ship. During the melee the forward most port side door was wide open (probably held so by the wind), and the inner sliding glass door was leaning inward with spray and was also half open with wind and rain howling in. I pushed the inner door into its channel to reduce the wind and spray – I wasn’t about to go near the outer door! However in the morning the right half of that sliding door had only a fifth of the bottom remaining the rest had apparently been sheared or broken off. I suspect the pounding from going into the waves is what did in that door as well as that large curved glass at the base of the Explorer Lounge stairway.

Altered Itinerary

It was clear our itinerary was going to be impacted. We believed it meant that Narvik would be removed from the schedule and instead we’d sail to Tromsø – the next planned port. But instead we remained in Ålesund for almost 5 days to allow for repairs an inspections and to avoid the still turbulent seas. Some speculated that the reason for remaining in port was to repair the Azipod drive/steering system, but that is unconfirmed.

We finally sailed out from Ålesund on the 7th day of the 13-day trip. However all the northern locations, and an interim planned excursion to Flåm were removed and instead we sailed south.

I was excited when they announced the trip to Flåm up a long fjord, but that too, was cancelled. Fortunately we did make it to Eidfjord which also had calm water and much better weather.

Alesund harbor at night. — Ålesund, Norway harbor at night

Eidfjord was Spectacular

Not only was the weather cooperative, but the setting was every bit as expansive and beautiful as I had imagined. It did make me sad that we didn’t get to see Narvik, Tromsø, or Alta because that fjord magic was perhaps the key thing we were interested in.

The bow of the Viking Vela in the Hardanger fjord adjacent to Eidfjord.

The Aurora Did Show Up!

In the evening as we left Eidfjord at about 21:00 Norway time, the aurora was spotted to our stern and there was a great rush of folks to the aft and starboard side of the ship.

Eidfjord aurora above the Viking ship Vela. — A consolation aurora visible from the stern, starboard side of the ship on the way to Stavanger from Eidfjord.

Gallery of Cruisers

NO20250119_6003 x
https://starcircleacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/NO20250119_6003-scaled-3lyw2xach1jb6l8plhemtc.jpg
Viking Vela passengers. Jan. 19, 2025 beneath the Aurora Borealis near EidFjord, Norway
NO20250119_6002 x
https://starcircleacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/NO20250119_6002-scaled-3lyvzspeivyl34fkhbr4sg.jpg
Viking Vela passengers. Jan. 19, 2025 beneath the Aurora Borealis near EidFjord, Norway
NO20250119_6005 x
https://starcircleacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/NO20250119_6005-scaled-3lyw0omc97cezg10bcpog0.jpg
Viking Vela passengers. Jan. 19, 2025 beneath the Aurora Borealis near EidFjord, Norway
NO20250119_6007 x
https://starcircleacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/NO20250119_6007-scaled-3lyw0zoeay8zjppq7kzdog.jpg
Viking Vela passengers. Jan. 19, 2025 beneath the Aurora Borealis near EidFjord, Norway
NO20250119_6010 x
https://starcircleacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/NO20250119_6010-scaled-3lyw45n3ibos7pqgk9o3cw.jpg
Viking Vela passengers. Jan. 19, 2025 beneath the Aurora Borealis near EidFjord, Norway
NO20250119_6009 x
https://starcircleacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/NO20250119_6009-scaled-3lyw1fdthivixs0pcv3cao.jpg
Viking Vela passengers. Jan. 19, 2025 beneath the Aurora Borealis near EidFjord, Norway
20250119_212432 x
https://starcircleacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/bfi_thumb/20250119_212432-3lysc5ptzt0blfqd9yt0xs.jpg
Viking Vela crew. Jan. 19, 2025 beneath the Aurora Borealis near Eidfjord, Norway

Previous Image

Next Image

info heading

info content

These cruisers saw me taking photos and asked to be photographed under the agreement that their photos are displayed here publicly. Those people who are pictured are free to copy and use the photos in anyway they wish. I have added my copyright/watermark to them to prevent random pilfering, however unwatermarked photos are also available by clicking the watermarked ones (once I get it working!). Right click the image and select download to save it (or whatever is the equivalent on your browser of choice).

NOTE: If you would like for your photo(s) to be removed, please use the contact form on the site, send me an email asking for your photo(s) to be removed. Be sure to specify WHICH photo is of you, e.g. “NO20250119_6005” (or just _6005 for short). Allow up to 30 days for me to remove your photo as I travel and don’t always have access to the site.

About these photos: all these photos were taken with the following equipment and settings:
Sony A7RIII, 15-35mm f/2.8 Cannon lens, @17 mm, f/2.8, 3200 ISO, 8 seconds, Daylight white balance. None of the photos have been edited, they are straight out of the camera.

Course Departure

Due to the loss of Narvik, Tromsø and Alta, the ports of Eidfjord, mentioned above and Stavanger were added to the itinerary.

In Stavanger an excursion by boat to Pulpit Rock in the Lysefjord was one of my favorite side-trips.

The original cruise had this itinerary:

1. London -> Amsterdam
2. Amsterdam
3, 4 at sea
5. Narvik
6, 7. Tromso (2 nights)
8, 9. Alta (2 nights)
10, 11. at sea
12, 13. Bergen

The actual itinerary was this

1. London -> Amsterdam
2. Amsterdam
3 at sea
4. confined to stateroom -> Alesund
5, 6, 7, 8. Alesund
9. Flam (canceled Alesund)
10. Eidfjord
11. Stavanger
12, 13. Bergen

External references to this event.

Is Anybody on Board the Viking Vela Now (REDDIT)
Viking Vela Diverted for Repairs (Cruise Hive)
Viking Vela Stranded in Norway (Candid Cruise)

If you were on this ship for this or a subsequent cruise, feel free to comment, provide me with photos or videos and I can add them to this page.

I think it’s also fair to say that Viking initially offered every passenger a 60% fare voucher toward any cruise booked within 1 year. This occurred once we faced our 3rd day stuck in Ålesund. However before departing the ship on the last day in Bergen, the voucher was increased to 100% – meaning, effectively that the cruise was 50% off IF you book another cruise. The voucher excludes any shore excursions actually taken, and any self arranged hotel or airfare. Since we arranged our air travel and pre and post stays ourselves, that also would not be included. I suspect those wouldn’t have been included in the voucher even had they been booked as part of the cruise package.

Also, worth mentioning that Viking upgraded everyone to the “Silver Spirits” beverage package for free for the last half of the cruise. That comes to $50 per day for 2 people or about $350 value. That freebie unlocked some better wines, but not being much of a drinker we didn’t gain much value from the offer.

Before the Cruise – London

Having your plans dashed because of a plane delay is never fun, so we booked 3 pre-cruise days in London, and an extra post-cruise day in Bergen. Also getting accommodated to a whole new timezone can be daunting. We stayed in the Shard (aka the Shangri-La) which is one of the tallest hotels in London. It was truly awesome and I believe a much better value than booking a pre-cruise stopover via Viking.
Nearby were the London Bridge, the Tower Bridge, and the Eye of London – though the latter was closed for maintenance. One day was cold and rainy, the other days were merely cold. A former co-worker and friend came to visit with us and took us on a tour of the surrounding area. That was better than any tour we might have booked.

The Tower Bridge in the background with friends Kevin and Jennifer and my lovely wife, tricia… and me at the right.

London: The shard is at the left, the London Bridge in the center.

View from the 39th floor of the Shangri-La hotel. The Eye is at the upper left, the London Bridge at the right hand side.

Looking back onto London as we departed for Tillbury Port for the cruise.

About the images: I reserve all rights to use of these images for any commercial purpose. You may use them as backgrounds or wallpaper for your personal use, but any other use requires a license. The majority of these images were taken with a Samsung S24 Ultra phone.

Going Solar Part 2

2 Replies

^{Last Updated 2024-10-28}

Before we jump back into solar, I’m going to tell you that wherever you see *aig* on an image caption, it means it is an Artificially Intelligence Generated image. Generally using gemini.google.com. Had to dip my toe in the AI thing to help break up the longish paragraphs…

A typical winter day with a 13.6 kWh FranklinWH AC coupled battery, 18 Rec Alpha 410 Watt solar panels (7.36 kW) and Enphase IQ8 microinverters looks like Chart 1, below. Positive values are USAGE and negative values are EXPORTS except for the yellow (solar) production. Just before 8:00 AM you’ll notice a little cyan (house utilization) peak. This was partially offset by solar production (yellow) and part offset by import from the grid (purple). After 3:30 PM another little cyan spike is partially offset by solar, and part battery discharge. See the legend for more details.

**Chart 1**: A typical winter day production with a battery system.
(1) Insufficient battery so drawing from the grid (purple).
(2) Using energy while the sun shines (cyan)
(3) Riding out the PEAK and night with battery (green)
(4) Charging battery (green) and exporting to the grid (purple)
(5) Battery charge percentage

System Quirks and “Gotcha’s”

There are a number of things that can go wrong or be wrong with your solar setup. Many revolve around what is observable/measured and what is not.
In particular, if your system is unable to see the big-picture consumption it may not behave as you expect, and you might, for example, get surprises from your utility company when they bill you for much more than you thought you’d be billed.

We’ve already thrown around the terms “kilowatts” (kW) and “kilowatt-hours” (kWh) like a pro, but let’s give them quick definitions. A kilowatt is a thousand watts and is a measure of power. An apt analogy to watts is the pressure in a water hose. A kilowatt-hour is a measure of the AMOUNT of that power used in a given time. It is a measure of energy. In our hose analogy it would be the number of gallons or liters that are used from the hose over a given time. And you might also remember that a watt is equal to 1 amp at 1 volt – but that’s not important here.

Excess Energy for Sale

Your utility may reject YOUR solar energy and may in fact try hard to prevent you from installing your own power production. *aig*

Many people, especially those with solar-only systems assume that the best use of the excess energy is to feed it back to the utility company and get credit for it. But that’s less true every day. Typically there is an incentive for exporting excess but as solar energy becomes more prevalent, there is less incentive for a utility to WANT your energy, and they typically will not want to pay you for it. Some utilities won’t pay you for any energy you export as we described in Going Solar Part 1. Some utilities see your energy generation as competitive and are therefore hostile to having to pay anything for that energy (even though every kWh that you export they don’t have to generate and can sell to your neighbor at a hefty profit). In fact, at “grid scale” (very large) solar farms can produce energy at a cost of about $0.025 per kWh and they’d much rather charge you 33 cents for their 2.5 cent energy! As solar becomes more prevalent, a utility company is much more likely to incent you to send them energy when they are not able to produce it themselves (i.e. when the cheap wind and solar systems are NOT producing).

There are currently four major billing/reimbursement models:

Net Energy Metering – in the early versions of this model there is often a one-to-one correspondence between energy you use and energy you export. But the value of the energy is usually NOT a one-to-one credit, and can vary dramatically.

Net Energy Metering 2.0 – again, the specifics vary from location to location, but generally version 2.0 means you get SOME credit, less “non-bypassable” charges for energy you export. The 2.0 implies that the value of the export is roughly equivalent to the value of energy you import. Some utility companies (with the blessing of state public utility commissions) charge you the full rate for the electricity you consume and only periodically (once annually) credit you for the energy you export. The credit may be dollars or kWh and usually cannot be carried over to the next period.

Net Energy Metering 3.0 – generally this model is similar to 2.0, except it implies that the exported energy is credited at the “wholesale” rate and that rate is typically miniscule. Most 3.0 plans also run on monthly billing cycles, not the protracted cycles of 2.0.

Demand/Response Billing – this is a “wild ride” where the value of energy you consume (import) and the value of the energy you export are driven by current loads, time of day and the market forces. The rate can swing dramatically at 15 minute intervals. And curiously there are some times of day when you can be PAID to consume energy (because there is excess load on the grid and the power needs to go somewhere). This method of billing is not very common for residential customers in the US, but it is “behind the curtain” of all of the utility companies. The California Independent System Operator {CAISO}, for example has fascinating graphs of the costs of energy. I am aware that in the UK Octopus Energy has several plans including a demand/response plan that they call Agile. The US Department of Energy has details on other Demand/Response plans, but I notice the majority of them are only available to large energy-using businesses.

Chart 2: The wild world of wholesale energy pricing. The “LMP” (Local Marginal Prices per Megawatt-hour) can be both positive (e.g. **$14** for Kirkwood, and New Spice), and ***negative*** as shown here for San Mateo, Curtis and Morgan Hill). I’ve filtered out the higher costs, but at this same time the highest energy costs in this area were **$67** for Hollister. The average cost is $10.97 across the region. ($0.011 per kWh!)

Not for-profit utilities will prefer to get their energy at the lowest cost so they can charge a lower cost. There are a few utilities that offer plans to those with batteries that allows them to discharge your battery to the grid to help with load imbalances. These arrangements are referred to as Virtual Power Plants (VPP) and as battery adoption and capacity ramps up, this strategy could save utilities BILLIONS of dollars in cost – because, well, customers have borne the cost of the batteries themselves. OhmConnect was formed to be a VPP of a different sort. I participated aggressively with them until my solar system made it impractical. OhmConnect is a large base of people who agree to reduce energy usage at specific times in order to gain incentives (like cash and prizes). A utility that can coax the batteries of hundreds or thousands of customers into helping them out is a powerful tool. Of course such plans usually come with monetary incentives, too, below is one example.

Enrolled battery systems will be directed to discharge every day from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. during the months of August through October, a critical window when energy needs are highest in California. In exchange, customers will receive an upfront payment of $750 and a free smart thermostat for participating.
~ Sunrun announcement

The utility company taking kilowatts out of your battery 🙂 . *aig*

Would I trust my utility company to use my battery and energy wisely? NO! However some installers, a FEW battery manufactures and a FEW utility companies are adopting virtual power plants (VPPs). Tesla, Sunrun, and sonnen are some of the battery manufactures with such arrangements. FranklinWH and Enphase have announced plans, but have not yet rolled out this potentially game changing technology as best I can tell. Feel free to leave a comment if you know otherwise!

_______________________________________________________________________

Electricity is like apples. Your utility company can only count what you send them, not how many you pick. *aig*

How Do Utilities Determine My Net Usage?

Why doesn’t your utility company credit you for all the energy you generate LESS the amount that you use? Unless you have multiple meters the utility company only sees your exported energy AFTER your house consumes what it wants. The analogy I like is this: you pick a basketful of apples from your tree. You use some of those apples to make pies, some to make applesauce and you give the remaining apples to your neighbor. Your neighbor is grateful for the apples, but doesn’t know how many apples you originally picked, only that they got half a basketful. The utility is like your neighbor, only less friendly – and the apples in this analogy are kilowatt-hours of electricity.

By the way this same “net usage” principle is why a partial backup battery solar system may only see SOME of your usage as we mentioned in Quirks, above.

The Kilowatts are Stacked Against You

The ratios may be stacked against you. *aig*

Before assuming that selling electricity back to the utility is your best option, pay attention to the rates. In Northern California and many areas of the country your electricity cost has at least two components: the cost of generation of the energy (free in the case of solar – discounting amortization and maintenance of the equipment), and the cost of distributing that energy over the poles and towers, under the ground, through the transformers and wires that comprise the grid. As explained earlier, some utilities will give a FULL credit for what you export, some will give full credit less “Non-bypassable” charges – including “minimum delivery charges”. Unpopular plans, like NEM (Net Energy Metering) 3.0 in California mean that excess energy is reimbursed at a paltry $0.05 per kilowatt hour. But the minimum cost to import that energy is about $0.35 per kWh. Under NEM 3.0 to break even you have to export 6 to 12 times as much energy as you import. Ah, but it is costly and not allowed by most utilities to generate that much EXTRA energy, and nor is it practical to do so, especially in the winter. It’s also worth noting that if you are connected to the grid there is some cost to maintain that grid and the utility needs to recoup that cost in order to provide you a service.

These factors create a problem just as with roadways that are funded with gasoline taxes. Less gasoline consumption equals less road funding = deteriorating roads for all drivers. Less electric energy consumption from the utility results in less funds for maintenance of the grid. It’s also a bit unfair to those in apartments or with insufficient income to afford their own solar generation – because those folks are “left behind” to pay for those grid maintenance costs.

The one thing I will leave you with in this discussion, however, is that you almost always will get more value out of USING that energy than it sending it back to the utility. Some ways to do that are described in “Energy Hacks”, below.

Battery Or No Battery?

A close look at Chart 1, you’ll notice that the battery system (green graph) is providing all of the energy to run the house after the sun gives out around 3:30 PM in the winter.
Moreover, the battery is being charged from about 8:20 AM until the battery is fully charged at about 1 PM. Thereafter excess energy is then sent back to the grid. You can even tell from the graph that the energy sent back to the grid on this relatively productive winter day is less than the amount of energy imported in the morning (1).
Another take away – the battery didn’t discharge from midnight on because it was set to maintain a minimum 25% charge for emergencies. In this case setting that minimum lower (e.g. 5%) may have avoided ALL of the grid imports on this day!

One obvious takeaway is that the battery is charged “for free” and is used to cover the cost of energy from 3 PM through midnight. Indeed for our home system that energy will generally last until about 2:30 PM the following day. That means for this winter cycle we use ALMOST *NO* energy from the utility at all! One reason energy was imported (other than the 25% reserve) is that the prior day production was low. Notice how the battery level at the end of this day was 60%, but it was only 25% in the morning.

Even if you have a great energy export rate, a well sized battery can prevent almost all import costs!

Some assume that with JUST a battery they can MAKE money by buying it at off-peak rates and selling it back at peak rates (provided that option exists). And yes, that CAN work, but usually won’t unless these things are true:

The rate differential is at least 15% (charging and discharging the battery incurs an average 11 to 14% LOSS). Don’t believe the 6% or 11% figures – those are under IDEAL conditions. My actual loss from December 2023 to October 2024 was 14.6% – calculated as follows 1 – (total_discharge_kWh / total_charge_kWg) = 1 – (2602 / 3029)
You can actually GET a higher export value for exported energy (or a higher value than the import cost).
You do not have to then also IMPORT energy during the peak period, or a significant amount of off-peak energy.
You are able to export energy while also supplying your home. Remember the apple analogy? If your home load is high, both the battery discharge capacity, and the home load consumption will prevent you from discharging. For example, if your battery discharge rate is 5 kW and you’re running a 4 kW oven, the MOST you’ll be able to discharge is 1 kW.

Let’s do some quick math on the these points to make it clear. Let’s divide the day up between off-peak, generation time (the sun is shining and producing ample energy to supply the home), and peak (non-generation) periods a typical home may use 10 kWh during generation time (all of which is offset by solar production), 7 kWh during PEAK non-generation time, and another 10 kWh during the remaining time (which is usually also off-peak like late night and early morning where there is no generation). Let’s further assume peak rates are $0.50, off peak $0.30. The energy you would need for the non-generation period totals 17 kWh: $3.50 is peak, $3.00 is off peak.

We have these three choices:

(A) Use the energy in self consumption mode only (don’t discharge to the grid unless the battery is fully charged);
(B) FULLY (as much as possible) discharge the battery to the grid during the peak and earn per kWh exported;
(C) Limit exports so that you only discharge as much energy to the grid as is NOT needed to offset off-peak usage.

The last strategy isn’t easy to implement, because we have to guess how much energy will be required through the peak and off peak periods until generation resumes. The best strategy depends on the USABLE battery size and the export rate.

If the export rate is less than the off peak import rate, exporting energy only makes sense after there is no non solar peak or off-peak energy to offset.

Compare Table 1 with a favorable export rate and Table 2 with an unfavorable export rate below. Both are daily comparisons at different battery sizes, utilization and rates. Two obvious takeaways are that a battery CAN save if there is a good export rate (Table 1). The size of the battery relative to non-solar use dictates how much savings are possible. In both cases the maximum savings/earnings are achieved if there is sufficient battery to cover all PEAK and off peak usage. In Table 1, Exporting All possible energy during Peak is clearly the winner, but a Limited Export strategy also works – but no strategy has a positive cashflow unless the battery is > 18 kWh. That’s not to say a smaller battery is of no help, compare the 0 sized battery to the others and all battery options reduce the net cost by about $2 to $5 per day.

Usable Battery Size	Self Consume	Export ALL Peak	LIMIT Export
0	-6.50	-6.50	-6.50
5	-4.30	-4.30	-4.30
10	-2.46	-1.92	-2.46
20	0	3.36	0.36

Table 1: Battery Usage Options at $0.60 Export rate;
7 kWh @ 0.50 peak and 10 kWh @$0.30 off peak

If the export rate is unfavorable (e.g. $0.05 in the case of NEM 3.0), then limited export or self consumption are the best choice, – if the battery is sufficiently large. Trying to export energy is a money losing strategy. However as in the prior case ANY battery will reduce the costs!

Usable Battery Size	Self Consume	Export All	Limit Export
0	-4.90	-4.90	-4.90
5	-2.70	-2.70	-2.70
10	-1.26	-2.21	-1.26
20	0	-1.77	0.23

Table 2: NEM 3.0 ($0.05 Export rate);
5 kWh @$0.50 peak and 8 kWh @ $0.30 off

Partial Or Full Backup?

When installing a battery system there are a number of constraints. Most them were described in Part 1, but briefly: there are three important specifications: total capacity in kWh, peak discharge rate in kW, and sustained discharge rate in kW. Because of these limitations, it’s often recommended to install a PARTIAL back up system where some number of circuits (essential circuits) are covered by the battery should the grid go down, and the other (non-essential) circuits lose power. The reasons to NOT backup things include: a very high starting or sustained energy draw (e.g. an AC, Heat Pump or pool pump motor) vs a desire to protect things like refrigerators, lights and comfort power like TVs, routers and commonly used lights.

But there is an often UNDOCUMENTED sinister side to this arrangement. Specifically a battery system can normally see all the solar inputs, the battery charge and discharge and the use of the essential circuits. But unless monitoring devices called “CTs” (current transformers) are installed, the system cannot see the rest of the circuits. This creates three problems:

1. Your system won’t know how much energy you are actually using… so what your system says you imported or exported from the grid is NOT what the utility company sees and this can be confusing. If you refer to Chart 3 below, you can see that energy coming from the grid that does NOT go through the solar/battery panel isn’t observable by the components that come after the solar/battery breaker.
2. Normally battery systems are configured to charge the battery with excess solar production (meaning energy would flow back to the grid). However because the system doesn’t see the non-essential consumption, it may elect to charge the battery instead of using the solar energy to run your air conditioner or space heater.
3. You won’t be able to know how much energy you are using at any given time with the system app. This makes it harder to chase down energy hogs.

**Chart 3**: A Line diagram of a solar system with a battery backup that can run when the grid is down.
1. The main meter/grid power.
2. The breaker that ties the grid to the solar/battery system. Other breakers/circuits in this panel are NOT backed up.
3. The internal disconnect. If there is no power coming in, the FranklinWH aGate (brains) throws a “switch” disconnecting the solar and battery from the grid.
4. The “essential loads” panel which is backed up and will continue to run if there is solar power OR battery power (or both).
5. The solar panel “combiner” box – attaches to the panels on the roof.
6. The FranklinWH aPower (battery).
NOTE: I elected NOT to connect the AC to a smart circuit and instead plan to connect an EV charger.

In my home system we elected to NOT include a radiant under-tile floor heater, the AC and 8 or so other circuits, unfortunately including what we thought was an “unused” bathroom plug that is the source of the power to our security cameras. One take away here… make sure you know what ALL your circuits control before making choices for a
partial backup system.

As you might guess, the floor heating system uses some significant power when it’s running for 5-6 hours a day and 850 watts per hour is up to 5.1 kWh per day or 153 kWh per month ($51 at the best off-peak rates)! It was more than a little disappointing when we got our electricity bill for the first full month and saw a LOT more imported energy than we expected. Mind you the bill was about 10% of what we had paid the previous year, so we weren’t complaining much. We plan to move this circuit to the backup panel to avoid the “gotcha” since we clearly have sufficient battery to make it possible.

However the other catch to this situation is that WHEN one uses power matters. (See Energy Hacks, below).

Energy Hacks

I see lots of commercials about doing your laundry, running your dishwasher and charging your EV at late night or morning. That makes sense if you have to pay to import energy because it moves those activities to the lower rate period. However the LOWEST rate period for a solar system is when it’s producing enough energy to cover the consumption… that is DURING DAYLIGHT hours. So that proverb about making hay while the sun shines, applies also to electricity usage.

If you have solar energy… use it while you have it! *aig*

The MOST cost effective way to use generated energy is use it when it’s sufficient to run your appliances… Most of the time that will be from about 11:30 AM to about 2:30 PM and even later in the summer months. You’ll have no conversion losses (except from the DC power on the roof to the AC power for your house). However its a good idea to make sure there is sufficient energy to also charge the battery system in case you need it for an emergency outage, and to avoid the peak rates which start right about sunset. For a bigger battery, it’s optimal to gain enough charge to see your home through all the peak and off peak hours until generation begins again. Another trick is to stage your heavy appliance usage such as doing the washer and dryer loads before or after you may need that power for your air conditioner. Indeed, tracking when you have excess solar production can be quite helpful to saving energy.

When Do I Have Excess Solar?

Ideally there would be an easy to use automation that does useful things like charge the EV, run the AC, and more WHEN there is more energy available from the sun than is needed. Figuring that out manually is doable IF you can see the actual energy from the viewpoint of your utility in real time. I ended up using Emporia Utility Connect, and Emporia VUE energy monitors to supplement my monitoring regimen because my partial-backup FranklinWH system doesn’t see the full picture. Either or both of those tools paired with Emporia Smart Plugs allow me to do some automation. One of those is a “Greener Hack” I describe below.

Optimizing Payback (Getting Paid for Excess)

We touched on the “export” option, but the gist is pretty simple. Unless you can export energy at a greater profit than the cost to import it, it doesn’t make sense to try to export energy to offset your bill. Under NEM 3.0 a strategy of extreme self consumption is usually most cost effective, and the least prone to rate changes.

Getting a Little Greener

Our house has a natural gas furnace. It is not “green” by any means, but it runs well, and because our blower/thermostat IS battery backed up, we can heat our home even if there is no grid power. However watching electricity flowing back to the utility made me realize I could do even better!

I bought three 750/1000W space heaters with mechanical thermostats and NO remote control. Notice the maximum energy usage is 1000 Watts which is 8.3 amps at 120 Volts. I paired each of them with Emporia Smart Plugs that have a maximum sustained usage of 10 amps (1200 Watts). Why mechanical thermostats? Because most of the fancy heaters these days – especially those with remote controls will NOT come on when the power comes on. Those with mechanical thermostats can be set up so that when the power is on, they will run and produce heat up to the maximum mechanical thermostat setting WITHOUT needing intervention.

IMPORTANT Safety NOTE: Your smart plugs generally can NOT handle a typical space heater load. Nor should you use extension cords or power strips. The typical extension cord and power strip is undersized for the current used by a space heater and may overheat and catch fire.
BEWARE!

Using the Emporia App, I set up those smart plugs in the “Excess Solar” option. I’m not entirely sure how their algorithm works, and I had a few surprises, but mostly it seems to work.

Here are some screenshots from the Emporia app.

A smart plug configured to turn on when there is excess solar. Notice the Cyan color indicating it’s on. This smart plug just turns a lamp on to let us know when we have energy to “burn” on things like laundry and space heater.

The configuration of “Excess Solar Management” looks like this. It is under the “Connect” device which watches what our meter is reporting to our utility company in real time.

This is how the smart plugs are configured. “Excess Solar Indicator” is turned on if there is excess solar followed by each of the items listed and “on”. It can also change the living room thermostat.

The “meter” status with one of the space heater plugs overlaid on it. The app, unfortunately doesn’t let you plot more than one thing at a time.

Time of Use Plans and Battery Systems

Curiously, my experience is that most systems (FranklinWH, Enphase, and more) don’t take FULL advantage of rates. In the FranklinWH system for example, I had to set up a plan to force my system to NOT import during the off-peak time and instead import during a “super-off-peak time” which I created. This rate doesn’t actually exist, but the problem is that off-peak is Midnight to 3 PM. But charging the battery at midnight means burning money by importing from the grid. However if I force it to wait until noon, then my solar system gets a crack at charging the battery for FREE before the Time of Use plan drinks costly juice from my utility. And if the sun has been insufficient to the task, it makes sense to spend a couple of hours charging the battery before the “Mid Peak” and “Peak” rates kick in and drain more from my wallet. But this is true for me because my off-peak rate is $0.334 but the summer peak rate is an appalling $0.724 – that’s more than enough difference in rates to make up for the roundtrip losses using the battery. Setting this up in the current FranklinWH app is a bit too tedious to explain, unfortunately. I’d point you to Reddit where it’s been discussed. When you switch between modes or edit the Time of Use schedule and rates watch it carefully! I made a mistake and instead of playing out my battery at off-peak, it elected to import from the grid to cover my household use instead. My utility company netted an extra $2 a day from me due to that mistake!

Questions To Ask

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering… what questions should I ask my installer, and what things should I try to discover for myself.

How long have you been in business? When did you do your first residential solar panel installation? When did you do your first do a solar + battery system? How many total installations have you done to date? Is residential or commercial solar systems your primary company focus?
Are you the company that will do the installation? Or are you a broker, or reseller, or sales organization? If the installer, do you have a C-10 Electrical contractors license?
Do you stock equipment like solar panels, inverters and batteries?
What is a typical work-start to system-completion timeframe, currently? What causes the bulk of that time to pass?
Do you do warranty repairs, or monitoring of the systems you install?
Is the crew you use your employees, or do you contract out some or all of the work?
Are your skilled workers paid competitive rates?
> Why this question? An increasing number of utilities (e.g. Pacific Gas and Electric) will not certify/allow interconnect if the workers are not paid “competitively”.
Can you quote me systems that optimize my return on investment? Please be sure to include the expected total cost over 5, 10, 15 and 20 years. (This is especially important if you are thinking of getting a lease, a Power Purchase Agreement, or financing the purchase with a loan).
Do your estimates and financial models include degradation of components like solar panels, batteries and inverters? What annual energy cost increase (or decrease) is assumed in the model?
> A model that assumes NO cost increases may be conservative, but might also be more accurate than one that outrageously assumes cost increases.
Tell me how you affix racks and panels to my roof. What methods do you use and what guarantees do you have regarding roof penetrations and roof leaks.
Does the system you propose have tools that will make it easy for me to monitor and track my daily and monthly energy consumption? I.e. can I expect the system to agree with my utility company to within, say 5%?
Why did you propose these panels, inverters (and batteries) over others?
> It may be familiarity, cost, or availability that leads them in one direction or another. And it might be profit.
Do you have any reference accounts for a system similar to the one you are proposing that I can compare daily and monthly costs with my own? Preferably another house in the same area or neighborhood?

If any of those questions make your proposer/installer hesitate, I’d suggest treating them with circumspection. Also, it’s rather useful to get more than one estimate from more than one installer because two estimates sometimes reveal things you may not think about. For example one estimate might include a larger battery and a smaller number of panels or vice versa.

Finally my $0.02 on the cost: it’s unwise to try to pay the “lowest possible cost”. If you want your installer to stay in business to support you and do repairs under warranty, you need to pay them enough to make a profit that keeps them in business.

Disclaimer of Warranty and Stuff

If you’ve got general questions, I’m a night photography guy who is nerdy enough to dig into the minutia of things like this. I’m not making myself available to answer every (or any) question you may have. But I can recommend some resources worth looking into.

* Reddit subgroups [Solar, FranklinWH, Enphase, Electrical, EmporiaEnergy]
* YouTube Channels: [Gary Does Solar some very practical advice from a Brit, Solar Time with Martyna – some interesting comparisons of panels and the effects of shading)

Related Topics:
* Tech Connections: My Furnace is Too Big; Your HOUSE can Store Energy, too

If you want to ask, feel free to ask. If I see enough interest in a direction I’d like to go, there might be a third article in this series!

Going Solar – Part 1

2 Replies

Last Updated: 2026-02-17

PHOTO 1: Award Winning Solar Photo by the Author (click for more information)

This is NOT about photographing the sun, at all. In particular it’s not about the upcoming total solar eclipse visible from the central to North East! This is a public service column about the good, the bad and the ugly of using solar panels and/or battery systems.

Being the engineering geek that I am, I have invested a lot of effort into researching, cost modeling and using a photo voltaic solar panels + battery system. In this column I hope to provide some thoughtful comments and insights into the benefits, and pitfalls of having such a system. Let me however give a bit of background so you understand the context.

Photo 2: Our modest (18 panel) solar system. Note the chimney shadow from late afternoon and how they avoided placing panels where they would be shaded.

Why Did I Go Solar (+Battery)?

A desire to avoid taxes. My father passed away 5 years ago and I inherited a portion of his IRA. Contributions to an IRA/401k are tax deductible but withdrawals from such an account are taxable. I was required to take a full distribution so it was the primary impetus for my solar journey. I had been paying attention to, but not dipping my toe into solar – frankly because our electricity costs for our modest house were relatively low… that is until some brutal summers kept us indoors with massive use of an air conditioner. But the 30% Federal Tax Credit was hanging there before my eyes so by investing in a solar system from my inheritance, the taxes would be covered almost entirely AND I get an energy production system and emergency standby power during a grid outage as a side benefit. I really needed for the system to be completed by the end of 2023 for the finances to make sense otherwise I’d be paying for the system in after tax dollars. Fortunately my installer: Cinnamon Energy Systems of Los Gatos, California delivered for me! My situation is unique here since most people will be paying for a system out-of-pocket in after-tax dollars. In fact, our battery/solar system has a name: the “Byron L Christenson Memorial Power System” in honor of my father.

Chart 1: PGE Electricity Rates (cents per kWh). This does NOT include minimum monthly bill or natural gas charges or other miscellaneous charges on the utility bill. That’s a 79% increase in 5 years. In 2025

Steep, ongoing increases in electricity rates. I live on the West Coast in Pacific Gas and Electric territory. PG&E (together with Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric) are the largest utilities in the United States. They are FOR PROFIT companies. Coincidentally PGE and SDGE have the most expensive electricity rates in the United States with one exception: rates in Hawaii are slightly higher. In 2022, for example, the national average was$0.1504 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). My PGE charges in November, 2022 were $0.3779 / kWh – TWO AND A HALF times as much as the national average. And it’s gotten worse. From 2019 to 2024 PGE rates went up by 79% in total. And they are asking for 4% increases each of the next 3 years. In January, 2024 my rate is $0.4323 per kWh (and that’s actually a reduction from what it would have been because with solar self-production, I was able to stay in the lowest tier rather than paying $0.4728 per kWh). With the current sky rocketing rates, the system pays for itself a LOT faster than it will if energy rates were lower. Our utility bill on the current trajectory will become the single LARGEST recurring cost after health care insurance and ahead of real estate taxes! As we reach retirement, retiring the bulk of the electric bill makes a more affordable post-income period.

Being Green. This is actually the least of the reasons. I’m pro-planet, pro-environment but I also know that it will take about ~~2-3 years~~ (1 YEAR!) of energy production from my system to become “carbon neutral”. Carbon neutral means that the CO² produced during the manufacture, transportation and installation of this system will be offset by the CO² saved from fuels used to produce energy. Three years is not a long payback period! Indeed, it is now February, 2026 and since installation our system has produced 25 MWh (Megawatts) of power. In California, that saved about 17.8 tons of CO² based on the mix of energy used to produce power. The battery took about 2.05 tons to mine, manufacture, ship and install; while the panels about 5.5 tons. That means the “break even” point of 7.55 tons was reached in less than a year. Interesting note: the average California household uses about 6 MWh per year (national average is about 11.8 MWh per year). Curiously, our total electricity usage has INCREASED because, for example, running the AC while the sun is shining to keep things cool costs us nothing. We used to tolerate much warmer indoor temperatures to save money (electricity cost from the utility peak at $2.10 per HOUR to run the AC – on average we ran it 4-5 hours a day – and incurred $250-$350 monthly bills JUST for the AC).

We acquired a used EV (in mid 2024) and have charged the vehicle with 90% excess solar production (the other 10% came from the grid) and again, even though EVs require more energy (and CO²) to build than conventional internal combustion engine cars, I can fill my EV with 100% non-polluting FREE energy. One added benefit: I never visit “gas stations” anymore – except to get a snack. My EV is a big mobile battery as well as transportation. Will I replace my natural gas furnace + AC system with a heat pump? Yes, our AC died and we replaced it with a heat pump in 2025. We kept the furnace for now and use it most of the time in the winter. Generally when heat is needed it is when the sun is not producing much – or ANY energy (in Part 2 I discuss a hack to consume less resources). Will I replace our natural gas dryer, cooktop and water heater? Eventually, yes. And when I do, most of the energy those require will come from *free* power generated on our roof and squirreled away in our batteries for those rainy days that do come. But to be clear, for that to happen we will need more solar panels and a larger battery system.

So in short, I’m saving money for the long term, helping the planet, and enhancing the value of my home. What’s not to love?

Is Solar All They Say It Is?

There is not a single answer to this question. It depends. The POTENTIAL cost savings and clean energy benefits are clear, but does it make financial sense for everyone? Probably not. Where we live we have 4 significant factors in our favor:

1. Our home has an unshaded back-of-the-house roof that faces SOUTH (the ideal direction for maximal solar power generation)
2. Our climate is mild (cooler temperatures are more conducive to energy generation). Heat both reduces production and takes a toll on the materials. A mild climate also helps moderate the need for energy for heating and cooling.
3. Due to our climate we have more “clear sky days” than much of the rest of the country. But its worth noting that even dreary, dismal rainy days can produce energy, too!
4. Our electricity costs are extremely HIGH and increasing much faster than inflation.

Beware the Charlatans and Scam Artists.

Many solar companies are struggling due to regulatory and non-sensical billing policies established by Public Utilities Commissions – I’m not talking about those, however there are rampant problems with the Solar industry. It’s rife with charlatans, scams, and lies. I cringe every time an add pops up saying “If you live in (STATE) the state HAS to give you FREE solar panels”. Every word of that is a lie. While a “lease” or “Power purchase agreement” MIGHT make sense for some people, I would generally offer that you should avoid them. Why? Because no one is giving you free solar panels! You’ll pay for them via the long term power purchase or lease agreement and in both of those cases you actually own nothing. Those installers ARE making money because the gross cost for those arrangements will always be more than the cash cost for you to buy the system and own it. Another reason I cringe is that the lies told to lure customers in include everything from saying that the Federal Tax credit can be used to cover a re-roof (they can’t), that the Federal Tax credit is a rebate (it’s not, and not everyone will be eligible), that if you don’t lease or use a PPA that your maintenance costs will be very high (solar panels are among the most reliable components typically with 25 year manufacturer warranties, batteries and inverters are less reliable, but are more reliable than most of your appliances!).

The good news is that some solar companies are going out of business (ADT, Vivint) because they rushed in to take advantage of a “market” with a bad business structure, did a poor job or ran out of people to scam or, worse, they closed shop under one name and opened back up under a new name.

Why Local Clean Energy Production is a Great Goal.

Ultimately it’s clear that local production of energy (with local storage) is good for creating a more resilient power grid. The more energy is produced locally, the less stress there is on the grid, and the less there is a need to build costly power plants and infrastructure, the more resilient it is, and the cleaner the overall energy mix becomes. Utilities SHOULD be prioritizing cleaner, lower cost energy to move away from using polluting, limited resource fossil fuels. But of course those for-profit companies don’t share that sentiment because it undercuts their money making ability.

Why Utilities Need to Be Public and Not for Profit.

Unfortunately Pacific Gas and Electric is a poster child for what happens when a shareholder-owned, profit-driven company seeks to maximize profits. It has managed to blow up a gas pipeline destroying homes and killing 8 people, burn down at least 4 California towns killing more than 95 people in the process. In fact it’s the only utility company I know of that has been convicted of manslaughter and has filed for bankruptcy twice. Ok, got that off my chest, but it is really another inducement to produce my own energy. By the way it’s also why some communities have created public utilities for example Silicon Valley Power is Santa Clara’s not-for-profit energy source. Their rate is 0.166 / kWh. San Jose is exploring going public, as well as others. And there are options in some communities to use different power generation. For example Silicon Valley Clean Energy can provide power to residents on the San Francisco Peninsula from Mountain View down to Gilroy, but PG&E delivers that electricity and the delivery charge is MORE than the national average total charge for power.

Common Myths and Misconceptions About Solar

**Chart 2**: at (1) the battery ran out and energy came from the grid (2). By the end of the day (3) the battery supplied all the house energy needed up to midnight. This was also a low electricity usage day for the house.

If you have enough solar generation to cover your monthly usage, that is enough.

Untrue! Here are a few of the reasons

In winter, there is less daylight (so less production), typically more cloudy weather (compare Chart 2 above, with Chart 3 below), and a lower sun-angle. You would need to design a system to generate all the energy you need in WINTER… but
In summer, the longer hours of daylight and often clearer skies mean you may produce three times as much energy as you do in the winter. Unless you consume it all, you are producing “excess” energy. Extra energy is of great value, sometimes, but often not (see #6, below).
Your solar system only produces energy when there is sufficient light. It doesn’t have to be direct, clear-sky sunlight, but it needs to be strong enough to generate a reasonable amount of energy. Even on overcast days our system generally produces enough energy to meet the needs of the house… though as you notice in Chart 2 sometimes it’s a struggle to do so.
Most people consume energy 24 hours a day. And your daily usage no doubt is different day-to-day. For example if one day of the week you do the laundry you will use more energy on that day than most others – especially if that day also turns out to be unseasonably warm or cold requiring more heat or cooling. For example, our Christmas dinner saw us using 4 hours of oven time – the 16 kWh we used in those 4 hours just running our oven was about same amount of energy we use in a full DAY! So capacity needed varies from day to day and month to month. Oh, and most of that energy was used AFTER sunset!
Producing energy is not the only criteria. For example if you want to run your Air Conditioner, it’s not enough to provide the 12 amps (2.7 kW) or so of energy you need to keep it running, you also need for your system to provide (for a time) the 60 amps of energy it takes to get that AC started! This is called peak load. Many appliances have this number printed on them even though they do not continuously use that much energy. The grid is a good source for those short-bursts of extra peak-load energy, though you CAN install enough battery peak load capacity to provide that energy. If you happen to be baking something, heating water, have a fridge in a defrost cycle all while trying to run your AC you may have to overprovision your system to meet that peak load.
Unfortunately everywhere in the US (and the world) is a bit different about what happens with any extra energy you create. In some areas you can ship that excess energy to the utility company and they will pay you for it (and sell it to your neighbors at a marked up price). But what you are paid can be anywhere from equal to or MORE than what you’re charged to import energy to something as small as 1/10th of the cost of import. Indeed, some utilities will not allow you to export energy at all (or will not pay for it) because export of energy can overtax the grid! And to make matters MORE complicated, the rules are changing constantly. Any paybacks you rely on may disappear in 1 to 10 years due rate changes, additional charges, etc. “Net Energy Metering” (NEM) is different everywhere.
You might NOT be able to produce enough energy to meet your peak and capacity needs! You need sufficient unshaded roof or ground space to install the needed panels. For example there is one tall tree about 100 meters (340 feet) away in the late afternoon path of the winter sun that causes our production to dip for about an hour even on clear-sky days. See the Chart 3, below, which captures a “good” winter solar production day. Also compare with Chart 2 which was a not great production day. About 4 weeks later, the sun remains higher in the sky so we don’t see a production dip at all after mid January. The takeaway on this is that your own trees, neighbors trees, power poles or other objects might put an unexpected dent in your production. Clearly the loss in this particular example is miniscule.

**Chart 3**: A good day of energy production
1. Importing from the grid
2. Charging the battery
3. Clear day generation.
4. Shading from a tree.
5. Battery charged now exporting to the grid
6. Running at night on batteries.

If I get solar and battery I can go off-grid and keep the power company out of my pocket.

It would be lovely if this was true. The answer to this is nuanced. Some municipalities by law require homes to be attached to the utility grid. This is generally a requirement of “habitability” (that is, a house would be considered unlivable if it didn’t have energy), but if you read through the previous misconception (it’s enough to have solar panels) you’ll see that there are plenty of times where not having the grid means your house will have to “brown out” (insufficient energy compared to demand) or black out (no energy at all). Also read above because having batteries may also not be sufficient.
And even if you CAN produce enough energy you will definitely have to change your energy usage habits significantly from what you’re probably used to (or spend a kings sum on a huge system) to go truly and completely off grid. In short, you’ll likely have a least a minimum monthly bill and as much as I’ve revealed my distaste of for profit utility companies, the truth is they are USEFUL and it costs money to maintain them and the wiring to and from your house.

Solar Panels are All I Need

What many people don’t know (I didn’t know) is if you have a solar panel system that is “grid tied” (meaning connected to your utility to back-feed that extra power that you produce as well as supply power to your house when there is insufficient solar production)… IF THE GRID GOES OUT your SOLAR SYSTEM SHUTS DOWN. It doesn’t matter if it’s noon and the sun is creating 4 times as much energy as you need. The reason is safety. If the grid goes down, a worker trying to repair a downed line could literally be electrocuted if the sun comes out and sends energy back through your house into the grid. Stated another way, if your HOUSE is producing energy, there is no way for a worker to insure safety because they can’t turn off the sun and therefore all grid attachments require electronics to automatically shut off back feeds if there is no grid power and the simplest way to do that is to make the solar system shut down completely.

Does that mean I can’t have solar if there is no grid? No. You can still have solar, but you need “islanding” capabilities. That is, your system must DISCONNECT from the utility grid and form your own “private grid” if there is no power on the utility grid. Such systems are often paired with battery systems so that a battery can supply the backup power… but it costs more to have such components.

It is also true that different systems handle shade differently. In some systems something as small as a single leaf on a solar panel can reduce the panel production by 33%. Indeed the shadow of a powerline across a panel can make a panel produce ZERO power if it happens to shade each of the separate zones in the panel.

If I Have a Battery or Battery System I Can Be Independent!

**Chart** 4: Using the grid for only 4% of household energy needs. Total imports were 4.4 kWh**

This is mostly true! We’ve already discussed some of the many complications of having sufficient total generation as well as enough peak power (see number 5 above).

However Chart 4 shows our electricity utilization for a week in December.
Note that “aPower” is the name of the battery system by FranklinWH.

We still needed grid power – but we only imported 4%** of our energy. The rest came from the sun directly (the yellow pie), or from the sun through the battery (the green pie). This also underscores the earlier point that almost half of our energy use was when the sun wasn’t shining, or was insufficient to meet the household energy demand.

**This graph states that we imported 4.4 kWh, but the actual number is about 7 kWh. That’s a fairly trivial difference in THIS case. Chart 4 does NOT show how much energy we exported during that week (it was significant – 47.6 kWh). In Part 2 of this article I’ll spell out why why the stated export and import amounts don’t agree with our power company and why that might matter a LOT.

Indeed there was a much worse week where we had to import almost 30% of our power because the weather was dark and bleak. By using 94% (or 70%) less electricity, we clearly have that much of a reduction on the electricity charges for our utility bill. And it’s a good thing because PG&E had not yet started processing our “Permission to Operate” so we got paid zero for the 100s of kWh we sent to the grid until it was approved.

Having a battery that has sufficient peak load isn’t sufficient to be independent. There is also a matter of capacity. We have weathered two utility power outages due to violent winds – each less than an hour for us, though it lasted in some cases DAYS for our area neighbors, and it isn’t because our battery would have seen us through the days of outage. It is because we are in a critical power area. The power lines that feed our house also feed a nearby hospital, and 4 emergency response bases (fire and police stations). Indeed two years ago we had about 4 total hours of outage over 3 days. Our across-the-street neighbors had NO power for 40 hours because they are served by different (non-critical) feeder lines!

Our current system has enough battery capacity for about 20 hours of normal load – that’s enough for us to get well into the next day for sunlight to provide energy, but as you can see from Chart 2… a bad day of production may mean the battery won’t last through a longer outage / or until the sun can provide all the household needs.

What Do I Really Want in A Solar System?

This article has already become wordy, but here are some of my recommendations. I will publish a second article on “things that go wrong“, energy hacks, and more.

But assuming you are thinking about solar for yourself, here are my recommendations.

Before you consider solar, take a look at the current status of your roof, and the energy efficiency of your house. It might be wise to spend money first on resolving air leaks, insulation inefficiencies and attic and roof repairs.
Take a look at your electric service (or be sure any bid you get has considered what you have). It can get pricey to upgrade electrical panels or home wiring systems to meet code requirements.
Understand your tax situation if a Federal or State credit, rebate or incentive is what you’re seeking. The 30% Federal Tax credit was planned to be around for 5 years, but to get that money you have to file your taxes, AND be paying as much tax as your credit will net you. Unfortunately, that credit was removed by the Trump Administration in 2025. If you are on a low fixed-income you might never be able to recoup the credit by doing a purchase. This is one area where a lease (to own) may make more sense because of a quirk in the law that allows the lessor to claim the credit and pass it on to you even if you would not have a sufficient tax liability to recoup the credit yourself. Also, while the residential credit disappeared, there is still a way for businesses to lease you a system and pass that credit to you. But beware… one way I’ve seen this work is be severely inflating the cost of a system so the business can make a profit. E.g. my sister in law was quoted a 75 THOUSAND dollar system for her small house where a 25 thousand dollar system was the better answer.
Seek out bids from reputable, well established solar + battery businesses. If they haven’t been in business for at least 4 years, and don’t have good marks on the normal review sites avoid them. If your neighbors have solar – ask them. Of my surrounding neighbors 4 have solar. One used a national company that used a contractor from out of the area to do the install. The contractor and the national company went out of business. One used the same company I did (though I didn’t know it at the time), and another used a large regional company that as of this writing is still in business, but getting hammered pretty hard by the latest rate changes and high interest rates.
Do some investigation on the components, methods and limitations of any system you consider. Not all estimators/installers appreciate the complete landscape. They tend to stick to what they know (if indeed they know!). In part 2 I provide a list of question I suggest you ask.