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Halve the cost and I suspect energy utilities as we know them are in trouble too. Currently solar is a no brainer in my country of Australia. Typically around

Halve the cost and I suspect energy utilities as we know them are in trouble too. Currently solar is a no brainer in my country of Australia. Typically around a 6 year payoff for a 20 year benifit. Batteries are about break over ~10 years payback. But if you could half that it's becomes something many people will do. And once that starts happening it's a death spiral for utilities as they will have a every reducing customer base for a business with large fixed costs. As they put these expenses onto a shrinking base it only encourages more people to swap. So for a country with a large suburban population that has the solar battery option this is going to hit utilities hard. Their market could shrink to largely providing high density areas where households dont have the roof space to generate their own power.

reitzensteinm 7y ago
Are you aware of anyone that's actually cut the grid connection? There's a big difference between generating enough energy over a year to be net zero, and being able to instantaneously supply power from batteries and solar throughout the year.
- Animats 7y ago
  That's a problem in Hawaii. Hawaii got rid of net metering in 2015, because the utility was paying for solar power at a flat rate regardless of demand or time of day. Homeowners can still sell power to the utility, but at something like wholesale market rate. Or they can get batteries. Utilities fear being required to maintain electrical distribution and generating capacity and only getting revenue on cloudy days. This is a real issue in Hawaii, which has so much sun and no local fuel sources, but less of a problem elsewhere. It's a good problem to have.
amluto 7y ago
Residential batteries are currently BS. They serve three purposes IMO: 1. A degree of backup. Solar alone is crappy at backup power. Solar plus battery is okay as long as one’s house is wired appropriately to shed load. 2. They can reduce peak loads. This is called “peak shaving”. If the utility can rely on it, it can genuinely reduce equipment costs to the utility. As far as I know, almost no residential rates give any incentive for peak shaving. Commercial rates give an extremely strong incentive. 3. Batteries can arbitrage nonsensical rate schedules. PG&E will buy a limited but large amount of peak energy from me for over 50 cents/kWh, and it doesn’t really matter that I’m just selling them power that I bought from them for about 12 cents/kWh a few hours earlier. This is the magic of NEM2PS + EV-A (now unavailable, but NEM2PS + EV2-A is still available and is not all that different). It is, IMO, crazy. Home batteries would need to come down considerably in cost (way more than 2x) to make them worthwhile without these crazy incentives.
- sitkack 7y ago
  Easier to just increase the cost of power more than 2x.

reitzensteinm 7y ago

Are you aware of anyone that's actually cut the grid connection? There's a big difference between generating enough energy over a year to be net zero, and being able to instantaneously supply power from batteries and solar throughout the year.

Animats 7y ago
That's a problem in Hawaii. Hawaii got rid of net metering in 2015, because the utility was paying for solar power at a flat rate regardless of demand or time of day. Homeowners can still sell power to the utility, but at something like wholesale market rate. Or they can get batteries. Utilities fear being required to maintain electrical distribution and generating capacity and only getting revenue on cloudy days. This is a real issue in Hawaii, which has so much sun and no local fuel sources, but less of a problem elsewhere. It's a good problem to have.

amluto 7y ago

Residential batteries are currently BS. They serve three purposes IMO: 1. A degree of backup. Solar alone is crappy at backup power. Solar plus battery is okay as long as one’s house is wired appropriately to shed load. 2. They can reduce peak loads. This is called “peak shaving”. If the utility can rely on it, it can genuinely reduce equipment costs to the utility. As far as I know, almost no residential rates give any incentive for peak shaving. Commercial rates give an extremely strong incentive. 3. Batteries can arbitrage nonsensical rate schedules. PG&E will buy a limited but large amount of peak energy from me for over 50 cents/kWh, and it doesn’t really matter that I’m just selling them power that I bought from them for about 12 cents/kWh a few hours earlier. This is the magic of NEM2PS + EV-A (now unavailable, but NEM2PS + EV2-A is still available and is not all that different). It is, IMO, crazy. Home batteries would need to come down considerably in cost (way more than 2x) to make them worthwhile without these crazy incentives.

sitkack 7y ago
Easier to just increase the cost of power more than 2x.