The audit first
Storage is a circuit list, not a box
Anyone can bolt a battery to a wall. The engineering is the list: which circuits carry the house through an outage, how many hours each one honestly needs, and what the well pump demands the instant it starts. We audit first, size second, and the battery you get is the one your house argued for — never the one the distributor had on the pallet.
The blackout drill
Every Nightbank system ends its first year with a practice outage: the street disconnect opened on purpose, the house watched on the app, the runtime logged against the audit. When the real February storm arrives, it is the second time your house has done this.
Services & rates
Storage pricing, installed
Cash prices from last quarter’s valley installs — permits, the interconnection filing for export-limited storage and the ten-year battery warranty already inside the number. Net metering still runs behind the meter: the bank charges on afternoon sun the utility would have credited at wholesale, and discharges into your own evening. The load audit at the free survey decides which row your house earns.
13.5 kWh whole-home battery$11,900 installed
LFP cabinet, critical-circuit subpanel, automatic transfer, garage-wall placement
27 kWh two-cabinet system$19,400 installed
A second cabinet for rural wells, medical equipment and multi-night outages
Battery + new array bundlequoted from the model
A shade-modelled array sized to charge the bank through the Tyndall winter
Battery retrofit, any array$12,300 installed
Another builder’s panels, our storage — load subpanel and transfer included
Smart panel upgrade$3,850 installed
Circuit-level control so the bank sheds the dryer before it sheds the furnace
Annual capacity test & drillincluded, every year
Cell health from the log, runtime re-proven, storm season entered on evidence
The named circuits, carried
The audit lists them, the contract names them, and the drill proves them: fridge, furnace board, well pump, medical circuit, internet — whatever your list says, written down before the deposit clears.
Chemistry, cared for
LFP cells that refuse to charge below freezing without being told to, mounted on the conditioned garage wall and derated honestly in the model. The battery trade’s failure stories are cold stories; ours are mounted where cold cannot write one.
Runtime, published
Hours per circuit from the audit, printed in the contract. If a storm outlasts the published runtime on circuits we sized, the upgrade that closes the gap is ours — one claim in nine winters, on a 2016 well pump we should have flagged.
How it goes
Audit to blackout drill
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Week 1
The load audit
Two hours at the panel with a meter and a clipboard: what starts, what runs, what the well pump draws at first crank, and which circuits the house actually needs after dark. The circuit list you leave with is the document the whole system is built from.
Weeks 2–3
Design, permits, interconnection
Cabinet placement, subpanel schedule, the transfer scheme drawn for the inspector and the utility’s export-limit filing. You sign the contract once; the milestone dates ride inside it, and the permit set is ours to chase.
Day one
The install
Subpanel circuits moved, cabinet set, transfer switch wired and torqued to recorded values. Most homes are a single day; the bank charges from the grid that evening, and the app is live before the crew leaves the driveway.
Every autumn
The test & the drill
A capacity test against the as-built rating, cell health read from the log, and in year one the practice outage, scheduled like a dentist appointment. The grid quits on purpose once so it never surprises you by accident.
2025 — 2026, the valley
Banks, commissioned
Six storage systems from last season, photographed at commissioning with the audit sheet still in the folder. Every caption names what the bank carries — because that list, not the kilowatt-hours, is what the owner bought.
Before you call
Dark questions, plainly answered
The five every valley kitchen reaches once the flashlight batteries are bought. The shop line below answers seven to five — and later, during storm season.
What will it actually carry, and for how long?
Whatever your audit says, for as long as the audit says — that is the whole method. A typical valley house banks the furnace board, fridge, well pump, internet and a lighting circuit for fourteen to twenty hours; adding the dryer takes a second cabinet and an honest conversation. The runtime table is printed in the contract, and the drill checks it against reality.
Do batteries work in a cold Tyndall garage?
Ours do, because they are LFP cabinets that block charging below freezing at the cell level — the failure mode the cheap tier ships with — and we mount them on the conditioned wall anyway. The winter derate is in the model from day one, so the February runtime number was always the February number.
Will it work with the array another company installed?
Yes — storage retrofits are half our week. We read the existing array’s interconnection paperwork, match the battery’s chemistry and export limits to it, and re-file with the utility where the storage changes the agreement. Panels do not care who bolted them down; paperwork does.
Why keep net metering if the battery covers the night?
Because the bank makes net metering better, not redundant: afternoon production the utility would credit at wholesale charges the battery instead, and discharges into your own evening at retail. The array runs the meter backwards by day, the bank runs the house by night, and the true-up month gets quieter every year.
What happens when the battery is full and the sun is still up?
The array exports, the bank floats, and the app shows the overflow as a credit line instead of a shrug. If your tariff pays more at peak than midday — most valley tariffs do — the smart panel can be set to sell the late-afternoon surplus instead of storing it. The audit decides; the setting stays yours.
The audit opened the panel, watched the well pump start, and crossed two things off the list a salesman had promised. The battery that followed was smaller than the quote I had elsewhere — and the February drill, which felt theatrical in October, was the least dramatic fourteen hours of the ice storm. The house simply never noticed the street was dark.
Our medical circuit was the whole conversation. They sized around it, printed the runtime with the equipment’s real draw, and re-ran the drill with the actual machines on. When the storm took the ridge for two nights, the only thing that stopped was the conversation about a generator — we never needed to have it.
I bought the battery for outages and accidentally bought a tariff machine. It charges on cheap afternoon sun, runs the house through the expensive evening, and the bill dropped before the first storm. The annual capacity-test email is my new favourite piece of mail, which says something about my life.
Free load audits across the Tyndall Valley, most within the week · (555) 026-4817 · night@nightbankenergy.example
Book the load audit
Two hours at the panel, a circuit list in your hands, and a fixed quote behind it that names the runtime. Storm season books three weeks out; the rest of the year is faster. night@nightbankenergy.example