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Iron flow batteries already exist commercially, are even more non-toxic/safe, and they don't require heating up (and keeping hot, while using) the battery. htt

Iron flow batteries already exist commercially, are even more non-toxic/safe, and they don't require heating up (and keeping hot, while using) the battery. https://essinc.com/iron-flow-chemistry/ https://essinc.com/iron-flow-chemistry/ The utility industry isn't really that interested in storing power for an entire season. Very little ROI compared to a system that allows them to balance minute-to-minute or day/night...or transmission infrastructure improvements. Got excess generating capacity? Send it somewhere that doesn't. I hope that some day in the near future we see home-scale or neighborhood-scale iron flow battery systems so that homeowners, apartment buildings, and small neighborhoods can go off-grid.

pjc50 5y ago
I've never really seen the advantage in going off grid per se, since it increases the amount of wasted capacity in both generation and storage, and running a few wires is cheap enough in urban environments. The most efficient arrangement might be a global grid.
- projektfu 5y ago
  I am not off grid, but the thing that would draw me to it is as an individual sustainability goal. Perhaps it would be more expensive to initially set up and run, but it should be sustainable for 20-40 years. There is the side benefit of reducing the demand on energy to acheive this sustainably. Spending less on technology and energy means working less. In other words, we pay in our own time for the time technology saves us. To quote Thoreau: 'One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country.” But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day’s wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the mean while have earned your fare, and arrive there some time to-morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.' Walden, chapter 1, Economy.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  Utilities around the US are working in numerous states to get favorable legislation letting them pay a fraction of what they do now for solar and wind energy fed back into the grid by residential and commercial customers. Once you even out your meter and reach net generation, any further generation into the grid you'll soon be getting bupkus for. Sorry, but I got better things to do than line the pockets of my state's for-profit utility company. In rural areas, getting connected can mean tens of thousands of dollars...if they even offer it to you at all. No matter where you are, you have to pay a monthly connection fee. It really adds up, and given how cheap solar and wind are now, you don't really get anything for it. Battery storage systems a couple years ago were very expensive, but prices are crashing and safer tech like lithium iron phosphate are becoming more commonplace. Heatpump systems have gotten so efficient that I'm pretty sure my next furnace isn't going to be a furnace, but an electric heatpump. In my area, we lose electricity for a day or so in the winter, 1-3x a season. A year or two ago we were without power for 3 days. Everyone has generators; expensive, noisy/annoying (especially given they conduct a weekly "exercise"), wasteful, polluting, and expensive to maintain. Having at least a large battery backup would mean I don't freeze, I can cook, take a hot shower, do my laundry, and my food doesn't spoil. And I don't need to pay the electric company for a product that just isn't very reliable and is increasingly irrelevant.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > Battery storage systems a couple years ago were very expensive, but prices are crashing and safer tech like lithium iron phosphate are becoming more commonplace. Unless you live in a mild climate and/or have a full Passivhaus-level construction and/or live in a very small building, there are no current batteries that will get you through a winter of heating. I live in New Mexico, have some of the best insolation numbers around (outside of Arizona), generate around 93% of my annual electricity use, including heating (air source heat pumps) from a 6.6kW PV array. A battery system large enough to store my winter needs built with any currently available technology would be completely untenable, both in terms of cost and size. I pay $7.71 as a monthly connection fee, and I get back my excess summer production as "free kW" during the winter, an arrangement I much prefer to being paid directly. The "free kW" are a 1:1 match for my over-production.

pjc50 5y ago

I've never really seen the advantage in going off grid per se, since it increases the amount of wasted capacity in both generation and storage, and running a few wires is cheap enough in urban environments. The most efficient arrangement might be a global grid.

projektfu 5y ago
I am not off grid, but the thing that would draw me to it is as an individual sustainability goal. Perhaps it would be more expensive to initially set up and run, but it should be sustainable for 20-40 years. There is the side benefit of reducing the demand on energy to acheive this sustainably. Spending less on technology and energy means working less. In other words, we pay in our own time for the time technology saves us. To quote Thoreau: 'One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country.” But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day’s wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the mean while have earned your fare, and arrive there some time to-morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.' Walden, chapter 1, Economy.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
Utilities around the US are working in numerous states to get favorable legislation letting them pay a fraction of what they do now for solar and wind energy fed back into the grid by residential and commercial customers. Once you even out your meter and reach net generation, any further generation into the grid you'll soon be getting bupkus for. Sorry, but I got better things to do than line the pockets of my state's for-profit utility company. In rural areas, getting connected can mean tens of thousands of dollars...if they even offer it to you at all. No matter where you are, you have to pay a monthly connection fee. It really adds up, and given how cheap solar and wind are now, you don't really get anything for it. Battery storage systems a couple years ago were very expensive, but prices are crashing and safer tech like lithium iron phosphate are becoming more commonplace. Heatpump systems have gotten so efficient that I'm pretty sure my next furnace isn't going to be a furnace, but an electric heatpump. In my area, we lose electricity for a day or so in the winter, 1-3x a season. A year or two ago we were without power for 3 days. Everyone has generators; expensive, noisy/annoying (especially given they conduct a weekly "exercise"), wasteful, polluting, and expensive to maintain. Having at least a large battery backup would mean I don't freeze, I can cook, take a hot shower, do my laundry, and my food doesn't spoil. And I don't need to pay the electric company for a product that just isn't very reliable and is increasingly irrelevant.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Battery storage systems a couple years ago were very expensive, but prices are crashing and safer tech like lithium iron phosphate are becoming more commonplace. Unless you live in a mild climate and/or have a full Passivhaus-level construction and/or live in a very small building, there are no current batteries that will get you through a winter of heating. I live in New Mexico, have some of the best insolation numbers around (outside of Arizona), generate around 93% of my annual electricity use, including heating (air source heat pumps) from a 6.6kW PV array. A battery system large enough to store my winter needs built with any currently available technology would be completely untenable, both in terms of cost and size. I pay $7.71 as a monthly connection fee, and I get back my excess summer production as "free kW" during the winter, an arrangement I much prefer to being paid directly. The "free kW" are a 1:1 match for my over-production.