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Tesla's Powerwall + Virtual Power Plant software allow individuals to profit from arbitraging electricity prices while doubling as a distributed energy grid. Co

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..

mikeyouse 3y ago
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.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  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.
  - gruez 3y ago
    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.
    - themitigating 3y ago
      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
      - Johnythree 3y ago
        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.
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      With enough beamforming there's spectrum. 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.
      - gruez 3y ago
        >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.
        jjoonathan 3y ago
        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.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      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.
    - chankstein38 3y ago
      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.
  - mnw21cam 3y ago
    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.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    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.
    - belthesar 3y ago
      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.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        Idle, though?
        Scoundreller 3y ago
        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). https://www.192-168-0-1login.org/datasheet_6208_coda-4582.pdf https://www.192-168-0-1login.org/datasheet_6208_coda-4582.pd...
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      I can’t choose my ISP’s modem. And I don’t think they care about my electric bill. I do disable their wifi and run my own wifi/router.
  - bee_rider 3y 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.
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      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.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    In rural Marin County wireless internet service is very widespread. I see Ubiquiti equipment on most roofs, and these days some Starlink as well.
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  Did PGE pay for powerwall and installation?
  - mikeyouse 3y ago
    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.
    - YeBanKo 3y ago
      Do you know if they pay the same rate to PGE when they use power from the batteries that would have paid if they bought from the grid?
      - r00fus 3y ago
        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.
        YeBanKo 3y ago
        It depends on terms. That’s why I think the rate maybe reduces. It would be also strange if powerwalls with installation were just gifted to them.
usefulcat 3y ago
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. https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/systemwideprices https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/systemwideprice...

mikeyouse 3y ago

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.

Scoundreller 3y ago
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.
- gruez 3y ago
  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.
  - themitigating 3y ago
    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
    - Johnythree 3y ago
      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.
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    With enough beamforming there's spectrum. 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.
    - gruez 3y ago
      >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.
      - jjoonathan 3y ago
        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.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    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.
  - chankstein38 3y ago
    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.
- mnw21cam 3y ago
  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.
- giantg2 3y ago
  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.
  - belthesar 3y ago
    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.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      Idle, though?
      - Scoundreller 3y ago
        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). https://www.192-168-0-1login.org/datasheet_6208_coda-4582.pdf https://www.192-168-0-1login.org/datasheet_6208_coda-4582.pd...
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    I can’t choose my ISP’s modem. And I don’t think they care about my electric bill. I do disable their wifi and run my own wifi/router.
- bee_rider 3y 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.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    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.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  In rural Marin County wireless internet service is very widespread. I see Ubiquiti equipment on most roofs, and these days some Starlink as well.
YeBanKo 3y ago
Did PGE pay for powerwall and installation?
- mikeyouse 3y ago
  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.
  - YeBanKo 3y ago
    Do you know if they pay the same rate to PGE when they use power from the batteries that would have paid if they bought from the grid?
    - r00fus 3y ago
      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.
      - YeBanKo 3y ago
        It depends on terms. That’s why I think the rate maybe reduces. It would be also strange if powerwalls with installation were just gifted to them.

usefulcat 3y ago

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. https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/systemwideprices https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/systemwideprice...