Discovery: the outage interview
Ask about the last three outages: duration, season, what failed, what it cost (spoiled food, hotel nights, flooded basement from a dead sump, missed work). Then ask what must stay on. The answers convert directly into a backed-circuits list and hours-of-autonomy target — and the homeowner has just built their own justification.
The generator question, answered first
Standby generators are the incumbent. Present the comparison before the homeowner asks:
- Battery: instant transfer, silent, no fuel or exercise cycles, daily TOU value, indoor-air clean — limited duration without solar.
- Generator: long-duration as long as fuel flows — but noise, maintenance, fuel dependency, and zero value the 360 days nothing fails.
- Hybrid truth: deep-winter, multi-day-outage homes sometimes deserve generator or battery-plus-generator; saying so when true wins referrals.
Make the battery earn money between outages
Where rate plans and programs allow, the same hardware does daily work: charge cheap or from solar, discharge at peak, and enroll in utility virtual-power-plant programs that pay annual incentives for event participation. Showing '$430/year in program credits plus bill arbitrage' transforms the proposal from insurance into infrastructure.
Quote it like an engineer
The proposal should show the backed-up panel schedule, expected autonomy at typical loads, recharge behavior with and without solar, and the install scope (panel work included — see the load-calculation playbook). Overselling 'whole home for days' is the category's biggest review-generator; under-promising autonomy and over-delivering is the durable play.
