Arcadia · Phoenix
Arcadia — The Ranch & Battery
A 9.2 kW system and two home batteries on a 1960s ranch — sized so the hottest night of the year is an inconvenience, not an emergency.
The home
A renovated brick ranch under the citrus canopy of old Arcadia, with the original electrical panel and a family's memory of a July night when a monsoon cell took out the block for nine hours and the house hit ninety degrees inside by morning. They wanted solar, but the real ask was backup — a home that stays cool and lit when the grid doesn't. The bill savings were the bonus.
What we built
A 9.2 kW rooftop array feeding two stacked home batteries, about 26 kWh together, wired to a backup subpanel rather than the whole house. We walked the home with the owners and picked the circuits worth keeping alive — kitchen, network, primary-bedroom AC zone, and lights — and sized the batteries to carry those through a full desert night, recharging from the panels each morning. On APS's time-of-use plan, the same batteries discharge through the 3-to-8 pm peak every day, so the system earns its keep between outages.
When the grid drops, the switchover is fast enough that the Wi-Fi doesn't blink. The owners found out it worked the way most people do here — a neighbor knocked to ask if their power was out too.
Specifications
| System size | 9.2 kW |
|---|---|
| Panels | 22 × 420 W monocrystalline |
| Storage | 2 × ~13 kWh home batteries (≈ 26 kWh) |
| Backup | Essentials subpanel — kitchen, network, primary AC, lights |
| Est. production | ≈ 15,500 kWh / year |
| Timeline | 7 weeks |
| Cost band | $38,000–$46,000 (before tax credit) |
When the grid went down in July, our block was dark and our kitchen wasn't. We noticed only when a neighbor knocked.
— Marcus & Toni, Arcadia
Want the lights to stay on?