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Anker’s Solix home solar battery system is its answer to Tesla’s Powerwall
- caycep 3y agoI might be about to wade into solar for my place (So Cal). But home equipment reviews on the Internet are..mixed at best. How to evaluate what's the latest/greatest and most reliable, etc? Tesla has the biggest name but reports of support post-install are...mixed at best.
- smithcoin 3y agoI’ve found YouTube to be a helpful reference. In particular I follow this channel: https://youtube.com/@WillProwse https://youtube.com/@WillProwse
- hedora 3y agoAvoid tesla at all costs. Thanks to NEM 3, you will want batteries. Find an installer that has been around for 5-10 years, and that has a good reputation. Even the best equipment can be installed improperly, and the installs are complicated. (You wouldn’t rewire a house by first choosing the brand of circuit breakers and outlets; instead, you’d pick a good electrician, then follow their advice). Different equipment brands specialize in different types of installations, so I won’t recommend anything without more information.
- falcolas 3y agoAs a customer, I'm a fan of Anker products. I haven't had to return one yet, and I have a few of their batteries and a ton more cords/hubs/etc. I look forward to seeing the price for these home-scale battery packs.
- bradhe 3y agoWas going to come say the same. I feel like Anker is just killing it on many dimensions right now. I'm always happy with their products and they're quite innovative, too.
- drcongo 3y agoThey're very high on my trust-o-meter too. Never bought a bad product from them, and if someone asks me a question that should really have a very long and boring answer like "which USB-C cable should I buy?" I tend to just tell them to buy Anker.
- reportingsjr 3y agoI've had major issues with the couple USB hubs I have purchased from them.I've totally written off their hubs at this point. It's been disappointing since their cables, chargers, etc have been pretty good.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoI guess you missed this news: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23486753/anker-eufy-security-camera-cloud-private-encryption-authentication-storage https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23486753/anker-eufy-secu...
- neilv 3y agoThat's very disappointing. I've liked Anker products, starting with being able to get quality batteries for older laptops and handhelds. Today, I'll lean towards the Anker brand for any product, when I see it in Amazon search hits (amidst the hundred random-brand-spam listings for the same cheap product, and the handful of hits for real brands likely commingled with counterfeits). If it turns out that Anker only made the mistake of hiring a stereotypical criminally-negligent/insidious IoT product team, then healing could begin by Anker dragging every person responsible out to the parking lot, and telling them to go defecate on some other brand. Because the value of Anker is trustworthiness.
- George83728 3y agoI find their products hit or miss. I've burned through half a dozen of their USB-C to USB 2.0 adapters for my mouse (low power draw, how could it even burn them out?) Thankfully those adapters are dirt cheap, and the other products I've gotten from them have worked fine.
- Eumenes 3y agoThese battery + solar controller + inverter all-in-one things are very overpriced. You can DIY one for 1/4th of the price, with better components, and learn something along the way. I will say the software/apps they come with can be nice.
- post_break 3y agoThese also store a lot of energy and can burn your house down. If you know what you're doing sure, but your home owners insurance might have something to say if it is the cause of a fire.
- falcolas 3y agoUsing batteries which don't fail in a self-perpetuating fire (like lead-acid) is a good first step towards a safe DIY battery solution.
- Eumenes 3y agoLiFePO4 batteries can help in that respect - they also have superior cycle life. I wouldn't jump into an entire home solar setup as a noob, but a simple 100w panel with a small battery can be fun and accessible.
- Scoundreller 3y agoMaybe Europe is different, but in Canada (and maybe US), you often don’t own your condo balcony. You get exclusive use of it, which means the HOA/condo corp/strata gets a lot of say in what you can or can’t have on it.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoThat's weird and I don't understand why anyone would be ok with that
- Scoundreller 3y agoscarcity creates all kinds of unfortunate decisions.
- pkaye 3y agoWill these be qualified for the IRA subsidies? I guess it depends where the batteries are made.
- dawnerd 3y agoI don’t think the power companies like it when you feed power into a system like that (basing off their balcony solution). Definitely curious how their solution ends up costing though.
- Scoundreller 3y agoWill these “guerilla solar” units that plug into a receptacle to back-feed get approved for use? Like, I understand we have the technology to monitor if grid disappears and self-disable, and a lot of hard-wired rooftop solar does that, but unsure if any soft-wired units have been approved. My fridge is inverter drive and likely operates off DC at its core. Hopefully Samsung or somebody in the future will put a 48VDC port and anyone can plug in a solar panel and it will soak up whatever juice comes off that and use grid for the rest. That avoids batteries (because the fridge does thermal banking), electricians (because 48V is usually excluded), and inverter drive fridges tend to be continuous drive, so running slower when the sun is marginal or full-speed when full works nicely. And it puts some juice into the thing I really depend on if the power goes out (even if only during the day). And consumers can cheaply add some phase change materials for a boost in thermal banking (like really salty water bottles). Put a couple USB charging ports and 12V ports on it too that switch between solar & grid. My router and modem sit on the top of my fridge and use 12V And then we do away with the increasingly unnecessary DC->AC->DC conversion cycles. Seems like the lowest hanging fruit to inexpensive mass (mild) solarization. I always question why we choose between 0kW solar installs OR multi-kW residential installs when we could do massive 250w solar rollouts at low cost with very high efficiency.
- George83728 3y agoIs there even a proper full size DC plug standard suitable for residential use? Besides USB I mean, since USB-C is designed for dainty little gadgets, not full blown appliances.
- Scoundreller 3y agoI find most 12V stuff like modems and routers run off a 2.1mm or 2.5mm barrel jack. (And of course it doesn’t imply 12V). You’d need to bodge a double ended connector. Maybe screw terminals would be ideal so you can cut your wall wart cable and wire it up. Most devices will have a bridge diode inside (total waste of electricity, but not going there right now). I guess a cigarette lighter port could make sense but now we might be asking too much on the BoM.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y agoCan someone in India recommend me a cost comparative to lead acid batteries for home use? I want a 5-10-15kwh pack but a 5kwh lead acid would cost inr 80-90k while lithium would be double. Sure lithium has more life but warranty wise every seller only says 3-5 years. Same as lead acid so why bother with more expensive?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> lithium has more life but warranty wise every seller only says 3-5 years Anyone know why this is?
- bryanlarsen 3y agoAfter about 600 0-100-0 cycles a lithium battery will be down to about 80% capacity, which is enough to trigger a warranty claim. And 600 cycles once a day is only 2 years. Also using the battery at an extremely hot or extremely cold temperature will also reduce its lifetime. OTOH, if you keep that battery between 20-80% and only use it at indoor temps, you can probably cycle it daily for 20 years.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoWhy the divergence between India and other countries, where 10 years is the norm [1]? (Climate makes sense.) [1] https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/powerwall/Powerwall_2_AC_Warranty_USA_1-1.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/powerwall/Pow...
- hedora 3y agoClimate can be addressed with proper battery management. For instance, nissan leaf batteries used to die after a few years (I think they fixed this in recent years), but battery failures for other cars of similar age are unheard of. I wonder if the batteries in India are being produced domestically, and the manufacturers are trying to catch up.
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- yumraj 3y agoPG&E offers plans where off-peak rates are substantially cheaper than peak. So, for example, currently Peak rates are 56 cents/kWh while off peak are 25 cents/kWh.[0] Not sure if the economics will work out, as in a really long ROI for most people, but even without Solar some of these battery packs can potentially time-shift power for homes, reducing effective rate to be the off-peak rate. [0] https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...
- hcurtiss 3y ago56 cents/kWh? Wow, that's shockingly high. Where is this? For context, in the Wllamette Valley in Oregon we're presently paying 15.7 cents fully loaded. Absent regulatory charges, it's only about 13.4 cents. People in Oregon would, I think, riot if energy prices quadrupled. Surprised there's not more noise wherever you are (California?).
- yumraj 3y agoBay Area CA at least. Not sure where all, but the link is PG&E, so probably everywhere PG&E serves.
- Scoundreller 3y agoThis is why solar and net zero metering are huge in California. Of course, anyone that can’t install solar really gets destroyed by all this.
- lxm 3y agoIt gets higher. Southern California Edison's (Los Angeles and surrounding counties) top rate is 74c https://www.sce.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/TOU_Rates_TOU-D-5-8PM-Summer-WD_06012023_0.jpg https://www.sce.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/TOU_Ra... Granted, they have other TOU rates that price the same time span slightly cheaper.
- shon 3y agoI’ve found Anker’s small batteries to be of high quality. I own a Tesla Powerwall which works well and has nice integrated software and seemed like the best option without a heavy DIY lift as of a few years ago. Great to see competition here as it will drive more innovation. It will be interesting to see how the software picture will evolve: Smarter appliances and electric vehicles that talk to the power controller to charge or do more work when there is excess power would be a big level up for these systems.
- 0_____0 3y agoIt's difficult to get large battery packs right. In order to limit the possibility of catastrophic runaway of the pack you have to have extremely robust inter-cell or inter-module thermal isolation and heat rejection. These features are basically non-existent at the handheld power bank scale. It'll be interesting to see Anker enter this space of large batteries. Either they'll work really well and you'll see them quietly get installed in lots of places, or they'll be in the news when they have a series of runaways and light some balconies on fire. That being said, a lot of the risk gets taken out with lower charge and discharge currents vs a vehicle application.
- black_puppydog 3y ago> now European apartment and condo dwellers can get in on home energy storage by sacrificing the walk-out space that was totally worth the extra monthly rent or mortgage. I feel seen. XD
- pwm 3y agoI know next to nothing about these but a friend of mine was grumbling the other day about why can't he just use his electric car's huge battery to power his house. It sounded like a great thing? During the day his solar panels charge his car and at night it could power the house (to some extent). I remember him saying something like this is being trialled in Japan maybe? Anyone knows more about this?
- tk75x 3y agoThat functionality is called "vehicle-to-grid" or V2G sometimes. The F-150 lightning has that capability built in, and there are several companies working to bring devices to market which will act as an interface between the vehicle and your home's electrical panel.
- hedora 3y agoIt’s coming soon. Our car’s battery capacity is comparable to the house batteries, so during extended rainy power outages, I’d love to be able to fast charge the car, drive it home, and top off the house battery. (Adding 50% per trip.) The only other alternative is installing and maintaining a propane generator, but that’s more time then a few round trips into town per year (especially since the grocery store has a fast charger, and we invariably need to purchase food during these events). Also, they ended up rationing propane this year, since the delivery progress with the big trucks was hampered by road conditions, and demand was unprecedented.
- perviouslyiner 3y agoTechnology Connections made a video where he tested using vehicle-to-load as the only house power for a day - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO5fJ8z66Z8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO5fJ8z66Z8
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- hedora 3y agoIt’s strange that these articles compare to power walls, but not the many other competitors on the market. Tesla has been aggressively doing everything it can to lose in this market. Other options are LG, Enphase and Generac. (Ordered roughly in increasing size of target install.) These anker units look pretty impressive, based on kWh, but the article doesn’t mention kw. One problem with enphase is that you can’t keep scaling kwh without also scaling peak amperage, and their biggest distribution bus only supports 40kwh of batteries.
- tzs 3y ago> In Germany [...] Just plug Anker’s inverter directly into any standard home power socket to feed energy back to your appliances with any excess diverted to the battery. That's legal? In the US, at least for generators, it is illegal in most jurisdictions to do that. You have to add a transfer switch that disconnects your house from the grid before you supply non-grid power to your house wiring. That's so people's generators won't energize the lines that the linesmen are trying to fix during a power outage.
- bombcar 3y agoGermany allows 600 watts for now. And linesmen assume all the lines are live and/or cross ground the supposed dead ones. Because the law doesn’t stop idiots.
- l0b0 3y agoBut does it spy on you? I investigated solar installs for a bit where I live, and out of the two main bids, both of them required an Internet connection at install time, and one of them required a persistent connection. This is horrendous.