This is something I've been curious/interested in for a long time, so its good to see that somewhere out there (random Pacific islands aside), there's communities making it work.
Some rough numbers I did a month or two ago - Tesla offers a megapack that has 3.9 MWh at a cost of $2.4m. "In 2021, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. home was 10,632 kilowatt-hours (kWh). Or about 886 kWh per month." That's about 30 kWh per day; my community has 45 houses, so use of 1.35 MWh in total, so a megapack will provide power for 3 days for the community at a cost of ~50k per house. Probably not worth it and I'd expect 3 days to be overkill. But a community that was double our size will have a cost of about 25k per unit for 1.5 days of power - which doesn't sound too bad to me.
Another thing I've found interesting is Anker seems to be getting into the home power business - https://www.anker.com/anker-solix/home-energy-solutions?ref=... - which I'm hopeful about, since it doesn't seem like anyone except Tesla has been able to make something that feels simple/easy/attractive. Every time I've look at Powerwall alternatives I'm been unimpressed by the offerings; maybe Anker can deliver.
I recently installed an Enphase home backup system as a DIY project (crazy, I know). The biggest problem with any home-backup system is moving the loads onto their own sub-panel. When the utility goes down, power needs to flow into the home, but not to the rest of the neighborhood. To do this, a switch needs to physically disconnect the utility meter from the main loads panel. If this isn't possible (such as when the meter is integrated into the panel), all the loads need to move to a sub-panel. This is the hard part.
Once the meter and main panel are separate, the various backup solutions become pretty similar. The disconnect switch installs between the two, with the solar and battery attached. Sometimes the disconnect switch + solar + battery are all in one unit (like the Bluetti EP900), while sometimes the solar inverter, battery, and switch are all separate units (like Tesla or Enphase). The Tesla switch and battery are sleek & glossy, but the inverters are ugly. The Enphase stuff isn't quite as shiny, but at least the boxes look consistent.
Performance-wise, the systems seem pretty similar as well. Most systems are around $10K for 10KWh of capacity, with somewhere around 6-9 KW of peak discharge rate. I imagine these prices will drop a lot over the next decades. If the battery becomes obsolete, just install a different system. Once the home is correctly wired, swapping the storage system should be pretty straightforward.
Is it currently possible to do this with a battery setup, for which its normal state is to feed power to the grid with anti-islanding?
Either you'd need two power connections to the panel - one for the every day anti-islanded backfeed, and then a second with the physical lockout to a different inverter output that operates without the grid.
Or the lockout on the main breaker would need to control a logic-level switch that told the inverter to disable anti-islanding, for power flowing through a separate non-locked-out breaker. This would seem like a better solution, but the inverter/battery manufacturer would have to design for it and get NRTL approval.
You don't move the loads to the sub panel. You make a new main panel, move the feed to that, and turn the old main panel into a sub panel. Much easier.
The National Electrical Code contains the rules for this sort of thing, plus whatever extra rules your local jurisdiction adds. I bought a copy of the code itself plus an "Illustrated Guide to the National Electrical Code" to learn this stuff. There are lots of YouTube videos for electricians, by electricians. DIY channels can also be helpful, but they don't always follow code.
In my case, the local utility requires the electrical meter to be accessible (obviously) and to be a certain distance from the gas meter (obviously). Because of the way my house is shaped, there simply isn't room to move the electrical meter, so a sub-panel was the simplest option. Anything else would involve tearing open the driveway, which would be worse. It really depends on the situation.
It'll give you a really good introduction to house electrical systems, things like "any panel that is connected directly to the utility is the main panel, any panel that is connected to a panel with a shutoff is a sub panel".
You don’t need an isolation switch if you use a sol ark 15k or EG4 18k, you can just tie the grid straight in and they have isolation built in if the grid goes down.
I like the distributed architecture. Each solar panel has its own inverter, as well as each battery. If I want more panels or batteries, I just add them in parallel with the existing panels or batteries. If a panel or battery goes down, the remaining ones keep working. Avoiding high-voltage DC also makes the project more DIY-friendly. The downside is that Enphase requires users to take online classes before they grant access to the installer app (easy but time-consuming).
Right now I have 3.8KW of solar and a single 3.3KWh battery. We are producing more than we use most months, so the solar is good but the battery is undersized. If we have an extended grid-down scenario like what happened in Texas, the system will mainly provide daytime backup plus a few evening hours. This is still better than nothing, and we can easily add more batteries as we have the budget.
Thanks for the info. Do you know how much you saved by doing the install yourself? Did you also do the solar install? I was considering using a battery to time shift power as my power provider has free nights.
I installed the solar first, which cost about $10k for parts, plans, and permits. I got quotes between $18k - $26k for the same-sized system professionally installed, so this was a great savings for 3-4 weekends of physical effort.
I don't know how much I saved on the battery, since I didn't get any quotes. The battery was vastly more time and effort, since I had to move my house onto that backup loads panel.
If you just want to shift usage, the backup panel may not be necessary. The Enphase batteries do support a fully grid-tied mode, where they simply connect to your main panel as a branch circuit. I'm sure other brands do too. This would be an easy DIY weekend project, as opposed to a months-long home re-wiring project. The Enphase mandatory training would be the biggest downside for using them here.
Not the person you asked, but Enphase has a reputation of being much more reliable then the Tesla stuff. You can have up to 40kWh of batteries. I think the peak wattage is also higher per kWh than powerwalls.
Also, we tried to get Tesla to install solar on our roof, and will never do business with them (especially that half of the company) again. There's a reason their solar market share is plummeting. Many news stories have been written on this subject. I won't repeat them here.
LG and Generac also make home batteries. From what I can tell, their offerings are also fine.
The main limitation of all the existing systems (vs. the recently-announced Anker) is that they scale amperage linearly with capacity. This is a pain because the batteries produce way more current than you need, but you have to pay for an electrical bus that can handle peak output. This is why the enphase is limited to 40kWh.
I'd strongly recommend against trying to do the installation of the Enphase yourself. It's extremely hands on.
I didn't see much in the way of details on the Anker site regarding their system. It seems none of the companies selling their systems make it as easy as tesla to order one.
I never stop to be amazed how average consumption figures in the US are often at least 100 per cent bigger than in Europe. At least for water and electricity, let alone fuel.
Just a thought that naturally pops up... :
If you take the reasoning one step back, wouldn't it be easier to optimize the consumption side (low hanging fruit) in favour if optimizing the cost per unit of energy? The latter seems a lot of effort, at least for the devs.
I believe that US households on average get a higher percent of their energy from electricity than do European households. For a proper comparison we need to compare energy use, not electricity use.
The average US household used 77 million BTU of energy in 2015 [1]. That's 1.94 TOE (tons of oil equivalent).
The EU average in 2014 was 1.3 TOE. It ranged from a little under 0.5 (Malta) to around 2.7 (Luxembourg) [2]. UK and Germany were around 1.4, France around 1.7, Italy around 1.9. Belgium was just under 2.
I would imagine in the southern states where it's 40 degrees C+ every day for 3 months-4 months or more on end the heatpump (aka reverse cycle a/c) is basically kept on constantly. Let's say it draws 1kw on average, that's 24kwh right there. They actually draw more than that. There's no way around it if you want to live comfortably. But I think the whole society is designed so much around driving everywhere and living in detached houses that the low hanging fruit is actually to install solar/batteries for these guys.
Personally I am convinced by now the difference is mainly cultural, how people live. Some things ~2x size (i might be off a bit but the list is large, I am open to be convinced otherwise) :
Fridge
Clothes dryer
Food plate fullness
Amount of conservatives in food
Car HP and m2 parking space
PC PSU wattage
ml in medium drink
amount of ice cubes in cold drinks
Tap water full flow rate
Breakfast calories (bacon/eggs)
Sugar in bread
Amount of packaging material resp. content
kg of luggage in flights
Number of short flights / person
Cars/ bicycles ratio
Still, it just amazes me. Its not because of wealth or temperature.
Again, I am open to corrections, I am curious about other's thoughts and want to learn.
its pretty easy to understand when you spend significant time in both.
european cities: typically built for density. I'm never more than a 10 minuite walk to a grocery store. I can hop on a train or tram to get to work and I can usually stop to get groceries for the day on the way. if you're in a city like athens, you can get fresh fish and meat. was probably dreaming of finding a mate or eating fresh acorns on the other side of the pasture barely a day ago.
USA: Its a hellish landscape of urban sprawl. want to get sone milk or eggs? its illegal in most place for there to exist a grocery store within walking distance. be prepared to walk along the side of a busy road to get to a convenience store which might have what you are looking for. maybe there's a sidewalk if you're lucky. Every damn trip requires a car. your work place is probably 30 min drive minimum. there is no other way to get to work. since getting to the store requires effort, you're going to go get a week's worth of groceries to save time. fresh meat? nah, killed weeks ago in a centralized slaughter house and shipped accross the country after a life of being fed corn farmed with chemical fertilizers and shipped to the animals in temperature controlled facilities. better keep a large fridge to hold it all. wouldn't want it to spoil before you eat it.
you literally can't live in the USA without increasing your consumption. its built into the dna of our infrastructure.
> If you take the reasoning one step back, wouldn't it be easier to optimize the consumption side (low hanging fruit) in favour if optimizing the cost per unit of energy?
Yes, absolutely.
In general, if you talk to a good solar sales rep, they'll first ask if you have done energy efficiency projects. If you have good quality windows, insulation, appliances, etc, not only are you going to be more efficient up front but you'll need a smaller array+battery overall.
There are also tax benefits for doing some of those projects together so you get some upside there too.
Developers won't make homes below a certain square footage because it's not profitable for them. That means that there will always be an amount of square footage that will need to be cooled and warmed, despite the space being largely unused.
Most people, like the couple in this article, aren't buying green 1350sqft homes, they're buying 2500 sqft McMansions because those are what are available in the market.
> Probably not worth it and I'd expect 3 days to be overkill. But a community that was double our size will have a cost of about 25k per unit for 1.5 days of power - which doesn't sound too bad to me.
If you're not looking to go completely off-grid, I think you want to double it again. At basic level, battery pack is there to soak solar power during a day and give it off when the solar is down.
16 hours is enough to cover most or all of that..
I think the model could work if the local community basically "sold" the battery storage capacity to the users.
Pay few cents for kWh to store it for 24 hours, anything in excess can be sold back to residents at slightly lower than market price, producing some money for maintenance and upgrades.
Realistically you could get that number 6x smaller, because people could voluntarily cut their usage from 30kwh to 15 when the power is out, and 1.5 days of power is probably overkill when 12 hours would get you through 99% of power out scenarios in America.
On top of that, when the grid is functioning normally, you could use the batteries to get cheaper electric rates with time of use pricing.
You probably should divide all those number of days estimates by at least 2 or 3, because in many (most?) places the times when power failures are most likely are also the times when households need the most electricity.
For example here in western Washington outages are most likely during winter, which is also when we are using the most electricity. My daily winter use is 3.5-4 times my daily summer use, perhaps even more on those years when we get a week of near record cold.
Some of the Bluetti home power stuff looks nice to me as an individual and not requiring any community cooperation. It’s not as sleek as a power wall but I have space for it
It'd become much more sustainable to do what you're talking about if it was accompanied by energy saving measures. Do it well and you could easily aim for 5kWh per day per house by minimising heating and cooling choices.
25k per unit, assuming the battery lasts 5 years, is uneconomically high at $5k/year per home.
A 100kw generator can produce enough power for 100 homes, costs ~$50k all in, and ~$1k per day in fuel costs to run during an outage. Assuming the generator also lasts 5 years, that's only $100/year per home, 50x less than the battery solution.
Batteries are for the foreseeable future way too expensive.
anker, being a Chinese manufacturer, doesn't have much chance to penetrate the western markets. even assuming they can develop a dependable product. but I wouldn't trust more than a headphone, or a wall charger from them.
I agree on being careful with China goods in general, but Anker is one of the very few very trustworthy brands out there. IIRC, the only fuck-up regarding batteries they did was with the 535 power banks, and they handled that one very solidly [1].
This story of decentralization has played out before. The hazard is that private grid infrastructure becomes affordable by the upper class, they stop soliciting politicians to maintain infrastructure. Once the middle class can afford it, then the votes evaporate, and the lower class is absolutely fucked. A half rotten water supply or electric grid becomes fully rotten every time there’s stress on the system.
Phasing out natural gas in new construction is going to cause this passion play in slow motion. Have you priced out induction stoves? Phew.
> Phasing out natural gas in new construction is going to cause this passion play in slow motion. Have you priced out induction stoves? Phew.
More than two thirds of US households already have electric stoves, and normal non-induction electric stoves are about the same price as gas ones. A ban on gas stoves would only affect rich people for the most part.
Indication stoves are claimed to be as good as gas. However the cheapest induction stove in the US is 3x the price of the cheapest gas or electric. And if you go stove shopping you with find lots of options for gas or regular electric, but often only one induction model - if you want some combination of features and are willing to pay - you often still can't get it with induction. (dual ovens, number of burners, burner configuration, non-standard widths - there are lots of options that are at least interesting to someone who is cooking)
Respectfully - all of these "issues" get solved when you go from ~1%->100% market share.
100x increases in manufacturing volumes will do amazing things for final cost. Expanded market share to 100% will lead to every features imaginable being offered to the market.
Ending gas stoves, and gas distribution in general, is a huge win. Just as phasing out incandescent light bulbs was a huge win. Each "infrastructure grid" that we run to every building (Electricity, Water/Sewer, Roads, IT, natural gas) is overwhelmingly expensive to build and maintain. And if you don't maintain it - you blow up San Bruno[1]. It would be great to delete one!
Agreed. I was shocked at the cost of an induction stove top in the US when I looked recently. £350 buys you a great induction stove top in the UK (I paid less for a neff nN50 just before COVID). $1000 only just buys you an entry level one on the US.
The problem is we are not at a high market share (in the US), and it will be a while before they gain.
I hate my current stove, but no way am I paying the cost for a new one. I also have vacations and other things I want. (As a programmer my income is well above average, so I have to assume the costs are only more prohibitive for most people)
I claim that ordinary electric coil stoves are as good as gas for nearly every non-commercial use case, and the moderate popularity of gas stoves was almost entirely manufactured by the gas industry. I understand that some things are harder, like using a wok, but there are easy workarounds, and most Americans never try to do these things anyway.
Electric stoves are also strictly better at a lot of things - very high heat, very low heat, cleaning, repairing, not polluting the air, etc.
People act like home cooks are too braindead to remove a pan from a hot coil for 45 seconds while it cools down so the food doesn't burn. As though this is a good reason to burn fossil fuels and pollute your home.
And then the step up to induction is even more so a no brainer. That way, just the benefits of gas (fast hot, fast cool) are added on top of electric. Without the cleaning hassles.
Induction stoves are really not expensive,fast and easier to clean. Also the pans are easier to clean (less chance of burnt grease inside and outside). The shift from gas to electric is a tiny step compared to combustion to EV. I guess it is more a hard-to-shift cultural thing?
Won't happen but a bit of communism would help. Government specs and purchases induction stoves and sends a trucks around and replaces all the crap electric stoves one neighborhood at a time. Basic idea better to just do it as a coordinated project than piecemeal.
Other thought about decommissioning gas lines. When doing infrastructure projects that require digging moving gas utilities is a big big hassle and expense. Getting rid of natural gas lines would make that stuff easier.
When it comes to cooking, non-induction electric stoves are a downgrade from gas stoves, even if they're the same price. Induction stoves are at least an upgrade in some respects, but a downgrade in terms of cookware compatibility. Phasing out gas stoves might be the future, but I wouldn't describe it as something that only affects rich people.
This is total nonsense. I used to believe it as someone who only grew up with gas. Now, I've worked as a professional cook and lived in a variety of places with a variety of electric stoves at different price points. Electric is absolutely just as good as gas if you are a competent cook. It makes no difference whatsoever what the source of heat is on my stove anymore.
I have no professional experience, but I've used gas, coil top, glass top induction, and glass top non-induction. Of those four types induction is by far my favorite, but having to replace half of our pots and pans was annoying.
I would not be surprised if professional electric stoves are better, but the consumer experience is lacking. Coil top stoves often heat unevenly. The non-induction glass top experience is overall not great, with them seemingly being a downgrade from coil tops in all aspects other than cleaning and aesthetics.
As a non-chef this has always been my suspicion, so I'll happily support you. I'm sure the immediacy of the temperature change matters to a degree (zing!) but how hard is it to wait a few seconds?
Its not a few seconds. The difference between high and low heat can easily exceed 1-1.5 minutes for gas vs typical electric most people have.
This makes cooking very difficult. When you turn down the knob from high to low, the element continues to cook your food at high to medium heat for another minute. This can burn or overcook your food. The converse of turning the knob from low to high is less bad, but can still be quite problematic.
You can easily anticipate this and turn down the nob early. When you inevitably fail to anticipate it, just remove the pan/pot from the stove for that time period. This is not rocket science. I get headaches from the gas fumes while cooking and I regret making the change every day. Yes I have a powerful vent hood. It is not enough for me personally.
Perhaps you are a better cook than I am. I look at physical signs like color changes, bubbling, texture changes etc, to move on to the next step. I can't always anticipate these changes ahead of time, and if I make a mistake in the anticipation, then getting back to the right temperature can easily add a few minutes to the cooking and potentially cause harm to the taste.
Of course, there are hacks like physically removing the pot that work, but it is added complexity on top of gas stoves.
The above obviously does not mean the gas stoves are objectively better - it only establishes that on one critical dimension gas is better than electric.
> ... downgrade in terms of cookware compatibility.
Induction plate adapters exist [1] - I haven't used one specifically for that purpose, but have used a diffuser plate which works on a similar principle.
The adapters are around AUD $20-50 which sounds like a cheap way to to start migrating your cookware collection to ferro bases.
I gather they're not great -- somewhat inefficient, and will necessarily have a more torpid response to temperature changes on the induction cooktop, shouldn't be used at high-temperatures -- but they do mean you don't have to replace all your cookware instantly.
If someone needs high temp and doesn't have a suitable pan already, cast iron is ridiculously cheap.
If they're so bad, then why do so many people have them, and seem to be able to cook good food on them?
I appreciate that there are better stoves out there that might make certain things easier but the stove is not the thing that's holding back my cooking.
I disagree. For all common tasks (and most uncommon tasks) that Americans do with a stove, non-induction electric stoves are as good or better than gas.
I’ve cooked on both and prefer gas. For pots with curvature (woks), induction doesn’t work well. Induction is nice for boiling water/soups, but frying is better with gas. Gas is also more user friendly as a broiler in the oven for toasting than a slow to heat electric element.
Obviously some good gas stoves will still be better than bad electric ones, so I'm not discounting your individual experience, but I don't think your experience generalizes well.
The only thing gas has any claim of being better at is woks. Or anything else that really must have all that extra heat blasting up the sides of the pan. In every other way induction just kicks the crap out of gas. Far more powerful, faster to change heat settings, more precise. I grew up using OG electric coil stoves, had gas for the next 20 years, and induction for the last year. I could never go back to gas. Electric coil at least has the upside of being stupidly hot when you want. The high end temperature for gas isn't great.
gas is also incredibly wasteful. the efficiency of a resistive element stove is in the 80-90% range while for gas, it is in the 20s if you are lucky. most of the heat in a gas stove is lost to the environment.
The “better” you report is just perception. there is zero evidence or measurements to back that up.
Errr, assuming that your electricity comes from a combustion source and a simple cycle power plant, at _best_ the work derived from the heat is about 35%. You need to account for that in your 80-90% calculation. (That is, .9 * .35 = .315 using the upper range of your guesstimate.)
In other words, the waste heat has already been lost to the environment at the power generation source in that case.
As always "it depends"... (In this case on the power generation mix in your local grid)
The specific mix depends on the local grid, but nobody in the US gets electricity entirely from combustion, unless you're in like an Alaskan village that only has a generator.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has provisions where low-income households can get an electric or electric induction stove fully reimbursed, up to $840. Middle-income households can get half the price of the stove reimbursed.
Apparently, individual states have to do stuff, so it might be like the medicaid expansions where some states opt out of providing stuff for poor people to make a political point.
Off-topic but I just don't get why we means-test this. So what if 1% of Americans get $840 so long as the other 99% also get $840 towards a new stove. Surely the cost of means testing and administration is more than 1%?
I don't understand the math that you're doing. 10% of Americans qualify as low income. We're talking about 31 billion to replace the stoves for every low income person and 310 billion dollars to replace the stoves for everyone. Do you really think that means testing cost $280 billion dollars?
That's more money than the entire state budget for every state but California.
On the flip side, do you think looking at a single tax return for 10 seconds cost more than $840?
> do you think looking at a single tax return for 10 seconds cost more than $840?
This isn't the real cost. The real cost is when people turn down promotions at work or new jobs because it puts them 2,000 above the poverty line, and they no longer qualify for subsidies. That means that in 10 years they cannot become comfortably middle class after another 3 promotions or new jobs.
That's why we shouldn't have welfare cliffs. Earning 1 more dollar should never incur 2 dollars of benefit loss. That's an argument against hard cut offs and having benefits as a linear function of income.
I wholeheartedly agree that welfare cliffs are one of the most problematic elements of US subsidies. They punish people for bettering their situation and being more independent.
Any help should gradually Fade Out and provide an incentive for earning more.
It's still a punishment though. It means instead of a 2k raise you got a $0 raise, and why should you take that risk, plus extra learning required for the promotion?
Stop means-testing for things like this, and raise taxes at the higher brackets to cover it.
The thing is, means-testing affects the people with the lowest incomes who don't qualify the most. It's like an extra tax on the lowest earners (of the class of people who don't qualify fully).
If you just passed the poverty threshold and get a 2k raise, that 2k is going to be "taxed" twice - once with regular taxes and once with losing out on your benefits. That's just not fair.
Whereas if I make 150k/year or 180k, depending which bracket you want to put it at (also idr where the brackets are exactly), as a single person, I can afford to have my taxes on everything over 120k/180k/whatever go up by a bit to make sure I'm reimbursing that 3k that I got from the government in various grants just to make sure I was doing ok.
And if you look at it real close, tax brackets are indeed a sort of means testing, so in the end it all works out.
I agree with you, but I think you're talking about welfare cliffs, not means testing.
Well designed subsidies for the poor don't have sharp monetary drop offs like these [1].
Ideally it would be something like for every extra dollar you earn, you get 10 cents less benefit. That way if you get up $1,000 raise, your subsidies go down by a hundred bucks, but you're still up $900 total. There should be no magic number where if you make $1 more you lose a huge benefit.
nobody should lose $500 of food stamps because they picked up a shift and earned and extra $100. that doesn't mean every single American needs food stamps. If you make $150k, you dont need food stamps, and the government shouldnt be giving them to you.
No, what I'm saying is, if you make a 1000 raise, your subsidies should go down by 0. Otherwise you're effectively being taxed by losing the subsidies (even if gradually).
Make the subsidies universal. You make 500k a year and want food stamps? Sure thing. You're being taxed so much on every dollar above 180k that it hardly makes a difference.
That seems completely backwards to me. If you make more you should have be effectively taxed more, just gradually. Why would we ever want to have higher taxes just so someone who makes a hundred or 500K gets food stamps they don't need. You just get a bunch of people that don't need food stamps using food stamps as a tragedy of the commons. If you make 100k you still have to pay for everyone else's food stamps, so you want to use them too.
How is it a tragedy if everyone is using the food stamps? That means they find value in them. So they're paying for them in taxes, then spending them. Where I come from that's called getting what you pay for.
That's no more a tragedy than everyone paying for then using the highway. We don't really means test the highway right? Why shouldn't the rich have to pay for their own roads? ;)
I think you're totally correct. Unfortunately, lots of people have trouble thinking rationally about people getting things they don't deserve (for whatever definition of "deserve").
So far I believe only one state has opted out, Florida. It's not really comparable to opting out of expanded Medicaid because at least with expanded Medicaid a state could make a somewhat colorable non-political argument for not participating.
Under the ACA Medicaid expansion the federal government covered 90% of the cost and the state covered 10% of the cost. I believe some of the states claimed that they could not afford that 10%.
With the energy efficiency rebates under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) each state has to administer the rebates for that state's consumers, but the allows the states to use a portion of their gran for for the cost of that, including hiring staff.
So basically a state just has to apply, get the administrative money to cover setting up a program to distribute the rebates, then get their share of the IRA and BIL money and distribute it.
In Florida deSantis used his veto to block authorization for the state to get and use the $5 million portion of their grant that would be for administration and so Florida residents will not be getting the $174 million in energy efficiency improvement rebates, or the $173 million in appliance rebates, or the $7 million for a training program for electrification contracts, or other smaller grants from those laws. All in all, Florida is turning down $377 million.
deSantis has not given a reason, but it is likely part of his "Fight Back Against the Woke Agenda" theme he's basing his campaign on. Reducing emissions and increasing energy efficiency is "woke" in current far right circle.
Other recent actions taken in his fight against "woke"ness are tax breaks for purchasing gas stoves and killing a bill that would have directed state agencies to consider lifetime cost of ownership when purchasing cars.
My Bosch 36" mid-range induction cook top was about $2500. High-end ones are like $4000-8000 or even more. So nobody's getting a luxury anything for $850.
One of the few durable consumer goods that is a lot cheaper in Germany: a new 60cm (24”) Bosch induction range is about 800 EUR. 80cm ones are also available, but I wasn’t looking at them, as 60cm works better with our existing kitchen, though I doubt they start at 2500 EUR.
One for simmering sauce, one for boiling pasta, and a third for frying up some sausage, veggies, etc. Three at a time isn't unreasonable if you know how long everything takes and do it in parallel to all finish at the same time.
Mine is very similar to [0]. We use 4 pits max, which i think is comfortable. 7kW combined, it does a kind of qos when you set all pits to max power, which works out just fine. It has pause/resume and a countdown timer per pit that works intuitively. I would say the price is not a holding back factor. That's why I really do not get what people in this thread are talking about.
> Phasing out natural gas in new construction is going to cause this passion play in slow motion. Have you priced out induction stoves? Phew.
Two things here. For one, natural gas has to be removed from the market as the supply of gas is finite, it's bound to raise in price anyway due to CO2 taxes, it emits toxic particulates associated with lung disease, it's more efficient to run a heat pump than burn any kind of fossil fuel, and it's a major fire/explosion hazard particularly when maintenance is neglected.
The other side is, if you're worried about electricity going down, you can always grab a gas cylinder for a camping stove and live off of that for a week and more - personally, I have an Enders Explorer portable grill that can double as a stove and two 5kg cylinders of gas, mostly to run outdoor BBQs but also usable in case of a prolonged grid outage.
... which is still insanely wasteful because methane synthesis from scratch is just 50-60% efficient, and capacities are going to be limited - we need all the synth-fuel we can get for long distance air flight and transoceanic ships because these two usecases can't reasonably be shifted towards electric propulsion.
Making synth-methane just to burn it in a stove which loses a lot of heat to the environment compared to an induction stove.
Banning natural gas appliances doesn't stop natural gas production. It's a byproduct of oil production. Fly over any oil field, and you'll see natural gas being burned as a waste product everywhere. Only when natural gas prices go up do oil companies start capturing it to sell.
The thing is, when we start closing down oil fields, there also won't be any gas any more, and synthesizing it is incredibly energy inefficient - particularly if you just burn it.
If you worry about electricity going down you can buy a portable generator powerful enough to run at least some of the stove. Odds are you have never had your electric stove using the full power it can in theory consume (all burners on high and the oven heating), so long as your actual use is less than the stove needs this works.
Heat pumps are great, but it sometimes gets cold enough where I live that they are less efficient than a modern gas furnace. (not every year, but still often enough that I need to plan on those days or my pipes will freeze)
I don't live in a house, but in an apartment. Running a gas grill works - it's the same stuff that the gas stove is burning - but running a generator indoors is just asking for getting killed off by CO poisoning.
Yeah it's hard to really push amps unless you actually use every last burner. My cooktop technically wants a 50A circuit, but what I have available is a 40A circuit and it has never been any issue. I'd basically need to have all five burners going, and probably near or at their maximum setting. Not an issue I've run into, which is why I'm being kinda lazy about upgrading the wiring and breaker to 50A.
Is it ironic that the technology is being developed and tested in poor neighborhoods? [0]
> Honghao Zheng, an analytics manager for Chicago's electric company, ComEd, described the microgrid as the seed of something bigger. Moving from a centralized energy model to a decentralized one is the goal, he said.
> Zheng said what's novel about the Bronzeville project is that this grid, unlike others, is not a "one-way street" of power — it's designed to be able to "cluster" with other microgrids, such as the one at the nearby Illinois Institute of Technology. Later this year ComEd plans to test the grids' "island" function, meaning its ability to disconnect from the larger grid.
> "This is only a starting point," Zheng said. "We are also thinking about how to expand this kind of innovative technology."
A microgrid as it's known right now disconnects itself into an island that provides power for everything inside of it when the larger grid goes down. But what they're building now is a cluster of microgrids such that one microgrid can send its excess power to neighboring microgrids so they all have power. If this all works out then the rich folks aren't simply isolating themselves, they are also providing resiliency to their less-fortunate neighbors.
What are some examples of this type of decentralization scenario playing out before? What you’re saying makes sense to me, but my hope would be that the decentralization would serve more as a supplement than a replacement - therefore still requiring ongoing maintenance and investment to main infra. The alternative without these microgrids and other microinfra is almost guaranteed to result in the half or fully rotten systems you predict as the prevailing recent political climate doesn’t give much confidence in terms of getting such massive projects planned and completed successfully (US-centric response).
When solar was becoming affordable, there was a lot of talk in the industry about "grid defection" exactly as you describe, but it didn't come to pass.
Now that energy storage is getting radically cheaper too, I think there's a decent chance that what you predict could happen. It would be... enormously bad.
And I agree load growth plays a part in all this. The big growth will come from electric vehicles--once cars are all electric, that will roughly double the electricity demand.
Roofs generally last for 30 years. In my neighborhood at least, which was all built-out in a 3 year period in the mid-1970s, most of the roofs were replaced about 10-15 years ago (they're rated for 30 years, but everyone pushes their luck as far as possible). Because they replaced their roof pre-~2014 it wasn't cheap or common to do so and thus very little solar was installed at that point.
Those who have had their roof replaced in the last 5-7 years went ahead and put solar on top. My guess would be that when the neighborhood "cycles" through new roofs again in ~15 years, more than half will elect to put in solar or solar/battery combo. We are due for a new roof in 2-3 years and plan on doing solar at that time, and possibly even battery.
Natural gas stoves are unhealthy[1]. Poor people already have worse health than rich people for a multitude of reasons [2].
So if more poor people get access to places with electrical stoves, their health improves.
I only looked at walmart.com: Cheapest gas stove was 122US$, cheapest induction 222US$. If the 100US$ difference is relevant, you're neither building a house nor looking to rent an apt without a kitchen anyway.
It's unhelpful to link to Google searches as sources; the first page of results is usually just news or blog articles very thin on facts.
The risks to health of natural gas stoves (basically, just the production of NO2 and particulate matter) are almost all due to insufficient ventilation. Houses will need more and better (active) ventilation going forward anyway, as increasing insulation standards for homes mean they don't "breath" as much as they used to. So there's other ways to mitigate those health risks that don't involve banning something that many people enjoy using.
Poor people as a whole indeed do have overall worth health than rich people, but switching to electric stoves won't move the needle almost at all. Gas stoves are most linked to pediatric asthma[0], but in terms of stuff that affect poor people more than rich people, that's hypertension, arthritis, smoking, and obesity[1], none of which care what kind of stove you cook with at home.
This is what happens when general public service infrastructure becomes so bloated and ineffectual that even at huge scale it can not compete with small scale alternatives.
At some point it becomes more efficient to put in a natural gas/water/electric storage in your back yard than pay for public service delivery.
The electric grid is what it is today because several problems can only be addressed at scale. There is no way that individuals will accept all the reliability, maintenance and risk that comes with running their own electrical infrastructure. More importantly, location is a very important metric here.
I always feel that comments on solar or renewable energy on this site come from a California-centric perspective. In almost all regions of the planet, power generation at scale provides security, resilience, stability, reliability and other metrics that are always superior to smaller, individual power generation sources.
> This story of decentralization has played out before.
Citation needed.
This reads just like a really strong defense of centralized systems, ignoring the robustness and economic benefits of a decentralized grid, purely to push a political agenda.
I'm willing to bet most people on here have never actually experienced living with decentralized infrastructure, and only have an abstract understanding of what it entails. I live on the edge of a state forest where the only centralized service we have is electricity (we still have solar). We have gas bottles for cooking and hot water, and when one runs out we switch it over and get it replaced. For sewerage we get the septic tank pumped, and for water we collect rainwater. If we have a dry year or use too much, we have to pay for water cartage. If the pump goes down, I'm either fixing it myself or paying someone else to fix it on short notice.
Now, I chose this and it's how I grew up, so I wouldn't have it any other way. But the beauty of centralized systems is that they offset these burdens to an authority that handles all of that for you. If I were unable to pay for a new pump, well, I would have no water. A centralized system paid for by taxes guarantees that everyone will always have access to water under fairly mild conditions.
The failure of centralized systems and people resorting to locally decentralized solutions isn't indicative of decentralized solutions being better, but more a failure of governance and bureaucracy. I mean, there's a reason we all moved from decentralized systems (like getting water from a well) to centralized systems in the first place. That's not to say that decentralized anything doesn't also have advantages, only that the distinction really matters, and people should be sure of what it is they're advocating for when they want to decentralize infrastructure like electricity and water that are vital for survival.
What? Nobody is saying that decentralized systems can't have centralized backups, or that you can't have a hybrid system. Your whole comment is predicated on a false dichotomy.
Is there a good technical analysis on whether microgrids are helpful in the context of a first world country with a reliable, well-run large electricity grid?
On the face of it, larger grids seem better. I simply don't believe this claim in the NYT article: "microgrid also eases the burden on the local utility, because it can disconnect from the larger grid during a period of overload". (Either the microgrid doesn't have enough power or has too much; either way it'd be better to share its resources, no?)
As a PG&E customer I'm stretching a lot to assume "a reliable, well-run grid". I've got my own picogrid here with solar and a generator because our grid is so badly run. But I'm still a technocrat optimist and think most grids can be run at very large scale well. Am I wrong?
Microgrids aren’t exactly new; essential campus type facilities (hospitals, universities, emergency services, military facilities, etc.) have often run their own grids. The major difference is that it is now starting to get affordable for residential.
The particular problem it solves is mostly the cascade. You can disconnect to insulate from cascading failure, you can probably restart a microgrid easier since it’s less things to sync, etc. And a cascade can happen for all sorts of reasons, whether that be operator error (2003 Northeast blackout), a natural disaster that hits the wrong way (hurricane/tornado/earthquake/tsunami) or intentional human disaster (Ukraine)
Here is a nice link to a university microgrid explanation [0]. They claim that it allows them to isolate the failure (external or internal) and continue to provide power to the rest of the campus in 1/10 of a second:
> Prior to the installation of the microgrid, Illinois Tech experienced three or more power outages each year, at a cost of up to $500,000 annually in restoration expenses, lost productivity, and ruined experiments that often cannot be recovered.
> "microgrid also eases the burden on the local utility, because it can disconnect from the larger grid during a period of overload". (Either the microgrid doesn't have enough power or has too much; either way it'd be better to share its resources, no?)
Maybe, but probably not. The microgrid is often much more expensive than the regular grid, and provides noisy power that the grid doesn't want. Think diesel generators. Getting those power sources to sync up with the grid is tricky and adds much higher costs to equipment that most places don't need.
Some utilities will give you a discount on your power if a few times on their busiest days you agree to disconnect from the main grid and run your backup. These are days when power is most expensive for everyone (the grid is running their more expensive power sources), so that the microgrid is also using expensive power balances out. It is generally only considered worth doing this if you already are thinking about having a microgrid that can work when the local power goes out. However if you are already thinking about installing such a system you can save a lot of money by being able to separate from the regular grid on demand - but it isn't enough to pay for the install and maintenance costs of the microgrid.
Now if your microgrid is solar you provide clean power that is easy to sync up with the rest of the grid. To make solar work as a micro grid requires expensive batteries (which need to be maintained and replaced correctly). So for solar installs connecting to the grid makes sense if you can as it is cheaper. Even if you do want the microgrid for power outages, you can get by on a much cheaper system if you don't buy a system large enough to handle your worst case usage (which is a long sequence of cloudy days in winter)
Microgrids are probably too small (we want economies of scale here), but it would make a whole lot of sense to move some of the storage near the generation when more and more energy gets shifted to solar.
Something like a big battery pack at every substation to handle the local loads when solar is down and help with peaks
During a period of overload, which I interpret to mean the demand exceeding both traditional supply and micro grid supply, there has to be some kind of disconnection to protect the grid. When that disconnection happens, micro grids can at least still power limited number of appliances.
Making the grid larger and more extensively shared power decreases the probability of overload but increases the inconvenience when such overload does happen.
Tesla's Powerwall + Virtual Power Plant software allow individuals to profit from arbitraging electricity prices while doubling as a distributed energy grid. Combine that with Megapacks (buffer battery arrays for municipalities) and you've got a distributed energy grid that absorbs load effectively, and makes money for its participants..
My friend lives in a small neighborhood north of SF in Marin County, but down a small road that frequently washes out. They were constantly losing power and would be down for days if not longer during big storms that drop a lot of limbs and wash the road out. Rather than deal with the urgency of restoring power to them and all that entailed, PG&E just installed a Powerwall in every house. Many of the houses already had solar so now when the main power line is cut, they can go for days/weeks and live relatively normally. Batteries are going to make a lot of things much easier.
And in a sane world, few would have a physical internet connection unless you’re really pushing serious data (which probably doesn’t need to be from home anyway).
I’ve toyed with shutting my router and modem at night on a timer because it’s a waste of 15-20w of electricity for nothing.
Your cellphone's 4G connection might be fast enough to handle a 4K stream, but there isn't enough RF spectrum to handle 500 devices in the same block trying to stream 4K. That's why you still need physical internet connections.
If I option-click the wifi icon on my laptop, it says "NSS 2" -- that is, the Number of Spatial Streams is 2. My laptop and router have identified two different spatial paths between them and are using their multiple antennae to send different data down the different paths.. NSS=2 is the limit for my router because it only has 2 antenna, but those routers with a ring of antennae that look like they were designed by the Dark Lord Sauron to top a tower in Mordor can fire correspondingly more simultaneous spatial streams. Cell towers with antenna arrays can do even better.
There is plenty of spectrum, just not for old single-antenna tech.
>If I option-click the wifi icon on my laptop, it says "NSS 2" -- that is, the Number of Spatial Streams is 2. My laptop and router have identified two different spatial paths between them and are using their multiple antennae to send different data down the different paths..
Doesn't that use 2x the spectrum? If so that doesn't really solve the problem. Sure, you're getting 2x the speeds, but also using the 2x the spectrum which is still a shared resource.
Emphatically not. Every chunk of space, propagation direction, and polarization has its own spectrum. Draw a box, count the photons. If you point a satellite dish at different satellites, you see different signals, even if the frequencies are the same.
The same trick works for "virtual antennas" built out of phased arrays of real antennas, except you can steer them in microseconds and without any motors. MIMO leverages this.
Plus cell connections and tethering are usually data capped. I don't know where the parent is coming from but within the last few months I got gigabit fiber installed and I'll do anything I can to never lose these speeds.
There could become a point where technology has advanced so far that cell tech is all there is. Imagine everything was just wireless and the internet penertrated everywhere
Wireless is a seriously limited resource. There will never be sufficient spectrum available to support all the fixed services that are needed. And the heavier the loading, the slower the network runs.
On the other hand, whenever you run a length of fiber, you create a whole new spectrum which is available 24 hrs a day.
That is the promise of 5G though. You personally won't notice any difference but it should support more people in the same area in the same limited spectrum.
20w idle is insane. Probably save more in the long run if you just get a more efficient router so it's not using so much juice during the times you have it on too.
I turn off my wifi off at night. This saves some energy and still allows me me to connect physically if I need to for work or whatever.
It may sound insane, but for folks that are operating gigabit or multi-gigabit fiber connections (certainly not the standard, but definitely becoming more available), the amount of CPU needed to route at gigabit+ speed, the switch chips that need juice, the WiFi radios that have 4+ antennae all needing amplification having a baseline power requirement, there's a surprising amount of juice required. If you're running one of those combo cable "modem" + router + WiFi access point jobbies, that's even more radios that need juice.
I didn't start getting a reasonable understanding until I started watching ServeTheHome videos, where they usually toss each device on some sort of Kill-a-Watt style meter, and then start putting the device under load to see how it changes.
The beast my ISP sends out says 5w power save (when does that activate when something is always connected?), 18w typical and 36w max (probably with usb devices plugged in).
Interesting. I own my modem. I guess that's not an option everywhere. Plus, options for modems are more limited than options for routers (or so it seemed a few years ago).
Cell providers seem to advertise ridiculously high bandwidth numbers (far beyond what a home user might need), but don’t say much about latency. If I want to edit code over ssh or play an online video game, I care more about the latter, and those things don’t seem like non-sane things to do, to me.
Indeed, one thing I disliked it that Canadian incumbent providers used to (and maybe continue to) refuse to peer freely at IXs. So my closest POP (by their shit routing) for my VoIP provider was in US while on mobile vs my independent home ISP could use the local POP.
It is likely that your broadband provider will look at the fact that your router is often "losing connection" and infer that your cabling is dodgy, then reduce your connection speed to try to "help". Also, 15-20W is a little high - my modem uses 3.9W.
Yep, as far as I know they did. I think technically PGE still "owns" them, but that doesn't mean much. PGE has some sort of SLA requirement that they were trying to reach but it was taking dozens of hours of their teams' time to restore power to their little neighborhood when much bigger / more important areas were also waiting on restoration so apparently this was the workaround.
Wouldn’t that be double dipping from the power company? The homes with powerwall pay for the electricity to load the powerwall days before they are forced to use it as backup when PGE can’t fix the lines fast enough.
To give some idea of the arbitrage potential, in Texas right now the price is usually $20-$30 / MWh for much of each day, but rises into the hundreds or even low thousands during times of peak demand, usually for 4-6 hours each day. This pattern is very common during the hottest ~4 months of the year.
As the cost of this equipment goes down, this can totally become commonplace, what I fear is the HOA being the monopoly energy, telco, water, and sewage provider that can then charge ridiculous rates because it simply resell from the upstream provider. They can also make the rules on what, if any, value a homeowner can derive from solar panels on their roof, perhaps even going so far as to say that they belong to the HOA and are required to have them on their roof.
If you don't think the HOA is acting in your benefit do you not feel you can affect change by going to the meetings and building a coalition of your neighbors to take control?
HOAs serve as a launching pad for lesser politicians and can do some pretty twisted stuff in my experience -- they frequently serve as platforms for tiny tyrants.
Also, they are often corrupted by corporate influence.
I wonder how a fee charged to be on the board of an HOA would change this sort of behavior. I wonder how increasing it would change the nature of of decision making.
A kickback -- maybe getting a $5,000 vacation in exchange for voting for a superfluous service contract -- can easily offset an extra $50/month fee... for the one board member who cast the corrupt vote.
Same as all politics: it's a shared cost, but somehow I benefit more than you do.
Not to mention HOAs usually come with a fee sometimes hefty enough to seem like a second mortgage payment. I'm with you I don't understand why anyone would pay hundreds of thousands for something then let the worst members of their neighborhood make decisions about what they can do with it.
My understanding is that some areas of the country have very little housing available that isn't encumbered by an HOA. I absolutely refuse to buy a house subject to an HOA, but I guess that means there are some places I would have a tough time relocating to in that case.
This has been my stance on the issue, but I am just pessimistic for the first generation of HOA leadership because it tends to attract nosy, controlling busybodies that love draconian rules. It’s not until those people die off or move where new leadership has an opportunity to flourish.
Additionally, my statement was more generalized view of how it could be used, obviously if a homeowner finds themselves in this situation, the strategy would be to gather neighbors support and demand it to be changed or just do a hostile takeover of the HOA.
Sure, if I have time. The point of a republic form of government is that you vote every few years and then live your life. While it does take time to figure out who to vote for you don't have to figure out every petty issue, some of which you don't even care about (in a pure democracy you have to decide, and that means learn about them even though you don't care)
HOAs are too small to attract good people to run. (nations are too large and attract tyrants)
HOAs are in many cases a collection of opinionated amateurs making binding decisions on behalf of their disinterested neighbors. See also 'special assessments' And that's the best case scenario. HOAs can get a tad 'authoritarian' at least according to John Oliver: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os&pp=ygUPam9obiBvbGl...
For ones serving municipalities or communities, sure. My electric company is a co-op, but it is also not a dedicated reseller as it generates most of its power and usually has surplus it sells to PG&E.
With an HOA, the very land your home is built on has this sort of lien via a “special property assessment” and you are subject to their policy or risk having your home taken in a 100% legal way. My electric company cannot do that to me.
If I don’t pay my property taxes the local municipality takes my house too, and they spend money on all kinds of stuff that doesn’t benefit me directly or perhaps at all.
It's mildly ironic that one of the drivers of solar, battery and EV uptake in the US is private individuals responding to the fallability of the grid and planning for when their connection fails.
Grid fragility leads to distributed resilience while driving down the cost of the tech you mentioned as volume ramps. Innovation cannibalism. Systems working as intended.
Funding goes to shareholders, not infrastructure, which is neglected to juice profits. Micro grids ensures funds stay local, and are governed by the users. What would have become profits is now infrastructure and user savings.
Edit: Poor people already die because they can’t afford their utility bills. Micro grids will help more than convincing utilities to be benevolent and reduce utility bills.
(Have advocated for low income solar and installed more than one rooftop solar system on the roof of those not of means; their electric rates are locked in for decades, as the systems have a 25 year warranty and will continue to produce after that, while utility fuel prices will continue to rise as will their demand to see a return on equity; AMA)
Most electric utilities have programs designed to reduce load because they don't want to expand capacity. Programs like replacing your inefficient old fridge, or incandescent to LED bulbs and such.
This is going to be especially true as EV adoption takes off. It could be hard to keep up with increases in demand.
> Most electric utilities have programs designed to reduce load because they don't want to expand capacity. Programs like replacing your inefficient old fridge, or incandescent to LED bulbs and such.
I don't think there's anything wrong with going for the cheaper option first (reducing demand via consumer incentives), before building more infrastructure when it's truly needed.
Re: EV adoption - I think smart charging will play a large role. E.g. if you come home from work at 1800, do you need to start charging immediately if you're going to leave the house at 0830 the next day? Spreading out EV charging demand over the evening and early morning could reduce the need to add more capacity.
The reasonable option is probably to trickle charge in case you need to go to the store, then ramp up after peak hours.
From a public policy standpoint that matters more while you’re grid powered, but with batteries peak draw affects overall power availability, so you’d still want to charge the vehicle slowly while the AC is on and cooking is happening. Same class of problem, different scale.
It could also be ideal for many people to charge at work during the day. Fleet vehicles would need to charge at night. Plus, if we're using renewable, that's less energy storage needed for the solar generated during the day.
> Most electric utilities have programs designed to reduce load because they don't want to expand capacity.
It's not just that. For society at large, the less electricity is consumed the better for the environment - all power generation comes at a serious cost: nuclear may be the most efficient but raises the question of security (especially in earthquake-prone areas or potential hurricane/flood zones), environmental contamination caused by mining, waste storage and nuclear weapon material proliferation; solar takes up a lot of space and requires energy-intensive and polluting production steps; windmills are a danger to flight; all fossil fuels are bad due to CO2 and the impact of however they are mined; running water is bad for fish migration; dam water consumes large amounts of land and is a perfect target to hit in a war (as the Russians showed in Ukraine a few weeks ago); geothermal carries a risk of earthquakes.
That still doesn't make sense to me. There won't be any reduction in load. Load will continue to increase as we electrify more things. Currently, increased load is what is leading to power outages in certain areas.
I'm not sure about that. Home solar will offload unused power to the grid. And the utility will often only give you kWh credits which don't roll over forever. Homeowners are paying for the utility's infrastructure expansion on their own dime and giving them some proportion of free power. The utility goes from being the primary generator of power to being primarily an interconnection system. That means poor people are getting subsidized power from rich people.
Throw in the strong incentive for homeowners to perform power arbitrage and the whole system gets more stable.
Technological progress like this is almost always made possible through middle and upper class investment in what start as luxury products. Capitalism drives the innovation cycle which brings scale and efficiency.
This is how complex and innovative products become mainstream and affordable. The opposite of poor people dying in heat waves, solar reduces peak stress on the grid making it more resilient and driving down costs.
This content is not on the internet. Can I also submit links to any local site that requires a subscription in order to view the article? Or does this specific site get an exception?
> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so.
Yes, you can submit any local site with a paywall. For what is worth, it is part of the "community guidelines" for HN to not complain about paywalls (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html ). Someone will probably post a pirated archive link shortly (edit: they already have).
I think it is time to reconsider these guidelines. I believe that this community should stand for freely accessible information on the Internet. As it is, we are being gamed: we are used to upvote and popularize content behind paywalls. The owners do not make it freely available, but still get the benefits of the community.
I have nothing against paywalls and paid content (in fact, I subscribe to news publications myself), but I believe they have no place on HN. Either it's on the Internet, or it isn't.
I pitched an energy arbitrage system back in 2005, but it was just too far in front of the available technology. The idea was to build small grid co-ops, where endpoints could buy/sell computing power, even just electricity based on demand. Batteries, even idle smart-washing machines and IOT stuff endpoints could provide energy and cycles for whatever.
The tech is becoming possible now, but expect utility companies to launch a threatening offensive against people to stop the de-centralization movement from happening. Nicholas Carr's "The Big Switch" in reverse.
My off grid community runs a micro grid for the residents and projects here. Our all solar micro grid runs a coffee plantation, 7 cabins, 5 houses, a gym, a dojo, a lounge/kitchen/dining hall, water production, purification, and distribution, a small school, and several apartments and workshops.
It’s totally feasible for many areas and power is comparably priced or cheaper than the local utility while being much more reliable.
I always wondered if flywheels[0] would be a good alternative to batteries to store energy. Flywheels can absorb peak current, help stabilize grid frequency[1] and can
have high efficiency.
But I haven't seen much on the topic, and a lot in chemical batteries.
What are the prices and downsides of flywheels? Does anyone have an up date comparison of commercial solutions with TeslaWall and similar?
For transparency, I'm not very well versed on this topic. That said, one concern I've always had with flywheel systems is that it ends up being a crazy heavy thing spinning at a decent rate. I don't know how valid it is but many years of being around maker communities and stuff has given me a respect for heavy things spinning at decent speeds.
They do seem like they would be a simple effective way to get some brownout or power flicker protection though!
A flywheel can provide frequency stabilisation, or it can provide energy storage, but it can't do both at the same time.
To provide frequency stabilisation is must be synchronised to the mains (eg run at a constant speed), while to provide storage it must be non-sychronised, eg slow down when loaded, and speed up when charging.
Of course you can use non-synchronous flywheels with synchronised inverters, but then you can do that with batteries, wind-generators, etc.
> A flywheel can provide frequency stabilisation, or it can provide energy storage, but it can't do both at the same time.
Ah, that's a good point to know. I thought flywheels could to both at the same time. Do they also help with keeping the load resistive? I guess their high inertial mass would add some inductance, which is how they stabilize the frequency?
Do you have some resources about this topic to share to a layman like me?
flywheels solve a narrow problem and are worse than batteries at delivering long term energy. The examples linked in other comments are around 10 kWh of energy. Most north american houses consume around 30-80 kWh per day. The real problem with flywheels is scale and longevity. How many flywheels can you name that have been in service for 20 years? Lithium batteries have won the short duration energy storage race and most other solutions are for edge cases.
Fascinating read! Microgrids and solar energy hold immense potential for a sustainable future. Exciting to witness these advancements shaping our energy landscape.
In Australia the people once owned their own power grid.
But then successive governments bought into the Neo-Liberal scam and sold it to their mates.
And (of course) any investment in new technology promptly stopped, and prices have (of course) risen dramatically.
If we had maintained community ownership of our power generation, the old style Coal powered generators would have gradually given way to Solar and Wind power, as the technology increasingly became more efficient and affordable. It would have been so painless and progressive that we would have barely noticed it.
TFA, and other articles I can find about Heron's Nest install, just refer to a 'battery' (255kWh) but don't mention type. So I'm assuming it's a Li-ion variant.
But with several dozen home's worth, it feels like it'd be close to where the cost / scaling of a flow storage system would be much more compelling over a conventional Lithium system.
(I'm grid-connected, with solar, eyeing off storage systems, but here in AU our prices are high and our options are small. Flow storage looks to be an objectively superior design, but at single-dwelling scale the pricing is just not competitive, at least not yet, and not here.)
Rich is obviously very relative, but for many reading on this site, $300-400k is a reasonable home price (the price cited in the article). And the couple in the article paid even less. “The couple, who paid in the low $200,000s for their 1,350-square-foot, three-bedroom home, moved into the community last July.”
The first microgrid they discuss was built by a local not-for-profit electric cooperative. It's a nice example of how there can be benefits to the grid as well as the consumers served by the microgrid. There are not a lot of details out there on the grid benefits, but I suspect a decent one would be moving load off of peak demand times.
That is a _lot_ of acreage for solar. What I’m curious about though is what do we do when the solar panels degrade? We haven’t solved that problem yet as far as I know; we’re looking at up to 1/4 less energy output in 25 years (give or take, results may very, blah blah pedantic the usual fine print here)
Haven’t read the article because it is behind a paywall. Based on the title, I have a comment. I hope the battery tech catches up fast that we can have safe (one that is not vulnerable to runaway fire even at as low probability as LFP batteries of today are), and also hold about 50KwH of energy so as to serve as an effective buffer for most households.
