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I would love a 5-20kwh battery backup in my home, I even have a place for it. But when I called my local solar/battery installer they said that it was illegal t

I would love a 5-20kwh battery backup in my home, I even have a place for it. But when I called my local solar/battery installer they said that it was illegal to install grid-charged battery backups in home. I live in Minnesota. They even told me the power from a hypothetical solar rig is sold to the grid utility, not stored, and they give a discount on future winter rates as payment. This seems like a lousy deal.

lazide 2y ago
Keep in mind, they also might be lying.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  This is totally reasonable. I can't find any confirmation of this anywhere.
BenjiWiebe 2y ago
Is a grid-charged battery backup different than a UPS? I guarantee there's UPSs in use in Minnesota.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  I asked and they said "yeah it's the same and yeah it's still illegal." The difference is what side of the electrical box your equipment is on.
jonathanlydall 2y ago
Aside from it benefiting energy companies, is there any justification for such a law? In South Africa we’ve had load shedding on and off since 2008. It’s becoming pretty standard for middle class homes to have inverters with batteries and optionally solar. It does create an issue though that when a load shedding window ends, a whole lot of batteries start charging all at once (especially during non-daylight hours). Also due to load shedding, I don’t get full use of my batteries. Ideally I would like my batteries to pretty much fully discharge over night with energy from my solar during the day, however, because load shedding is somewhat irregular here, I have it set to not go too low so it has enough energy to tide me over.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Utilities get a local monopoly and guaranteed tariffs in exchange for the considerable investment in building out the supply grid and generating capacity, and the obligation to maintain it. If individuals are allowed to opt-out, that changes the financial promises made to the utilities. Of course this was mostly done at a time before it was economically feasible for anyone to go off-grid with solar and batteries. I quite honestly prefer this arrangement. I have zero desire to own and be responsible for the maintenance and safety of tens of thousands of dollars worth of on-premises solar/battery/electrical transfer switch gear. I'm quite happy to pay the local utility to run a cable to my electrical panel and have them be responsible for everything outside the walls of my house.
  - jonathanlydall 2y ago
    I agree it would be much more efficient on the whole if the grid manages energy storage in bulk. Unfortunately over here we have a monopoly awarded state owned power producer which has a history of incompetence and corruption. Maybe at some point our grid can be trusted to be reliable, but in the meantime everyone is either installing their own batteries or having no electricity for hours at a time. Tragic, but what else can you do.
  - skybrian 2y ago
    Or perhaps someday the utility will give you a battery: Vermont utility proposes to install battery storage in most homes https://environmentamerica.org/updates/vermont-utility-proposes-to-install-battery-storage-in-most-homes/ https://environmentamerica.org/updates/vermont-utility-propo...
    - defrost 2y ago
      Locally in Western Australia we're having discussion between residents, council and state power about distributed small shipping container sized batteries, one per 200 homes. There's a lot of solar power here in the state and a good argument for locally "shared" batteries in terms of maintainance, fire safety, etc. Not much to say on that ATM, back of envelope looks good, there's a report in the works.
syntaxing 2y ago
There’s been some pretty big deals from Ecoflow (I don’t own any of their products nor affiliated). The Delta Ultra was on sale at Home Depot for $2800 before tax, 6 kWh battery, 7kWH continuous supply, with 21kWH peak wattage. Everything is built in including inverter. You can install their smart panel (probably requires a permit) and it’ll switch between grid and battery for you. I’ll be surprised these are illegal in your town but there’s but some crazy local laws.
- Firaxus 2y ago
  As someone who is interested in getting some kind of back up battery at some point, ty for making a recommendation. But could you clarify what you mean by the kWH unit you used on 7 and 21? Seems like those should just be kW, a unit of power rather than kWh, a unit of energy.
  - syntaxing 2y ago
    Oops, you’re totally right. That was a typo, it’s 7 kW continuous and 21 kW peak
murkt 2y ago
I have a 3.5 kWh battery backup in my apartment, since December 2022. Which is proving to be immensely helpful right now. I’m living in Kyiv, Ukraine and we have <10 hours of electricity daily these weeks, because lots of power stations are destroyed by Russians, and nuclear power stations are undergoing repairs and fuel recharge.
dzhiurgis 2y ago
Because grid use (transport) costs 2-3x more than the power itself. Now imagine you produce 95% yourself. Instead of typical 15kw installation you only need 500w for when sun doesn’t shine. Thats a reduction of 30x! Far cheaper inverters, thinner lines, etc. Unfortunately no one in the supply chain has wants this because thats lost profit.
kccqzy 2y ago
You might as well just buy an electric vehicle with V2L or V2H functionality, and then add a generator outlet to your electric panel. The added benefit is that well, it's a battery strapped to a car. So if you have an extended power outage, you simply drive your car to a charger elsewhere and come back with a full charge. I'm sure Minnesota wouldn't be stupid enough to outlaw EV charging.
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  There have been weather events and suchlike where it has been impossible to charge an EV, though gas was still available.
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    You charge the EV before the weather event. Not during. Then when the weather event comes, you still get electricity at home supplied by your car. If the weather event is localized, drive your car to a place with electricity and charge it there and drive back. It's the best.
    - edmundsauto 2y ago
      My concern would be draining the fuel reserves in a vehicle to power my home reduces my mobility. It seems like mixing objectives and in an emergency, I want to keep my super spare backup if I needed to flee.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        So you're worried about a weather emergency that takes out your power, followed a few days later by a second emergency that requires you to evacuate a long distance? I don't think I'd do very much to prepare for that scenario.
        vel0city 2y ago
        It can be the same emergency. It doesn't have to be a second one. You might plan on riding out a storm, thinking utilities might be out a day or two max. Day 5, still no utilities, no known date for resumption of services, and supplies are running extremely low. How do you get out?
ridgeguy 2y ago
Perhaps you could circumvent the regulatory inconvenience by getting your "battery" in the form of a Ford F150 Lightning pickup truck. It can power your home during grid outages, and of course can be charged from solar and/or the grid. One vendor is here: https://www.sunrun.com/ev-charging/ford-f150-lightning https://www.sunrun.com/ev-charging/ford-f150-lightning
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  Ouch, starting price $57k (98 kwh battery) and around $70k for the recommended model with 131 kwh. It's a rather large vehicle with poor "gas mileage" of about two miles per kwh. A normal sized electric car gets around 2x that, giving higher grid bills or needing bigger solar arrays (thus, more real estate). Idk if the Ford uses LFP batteries these days. Certainly most of us who think of buying electric vehicles would want to actually drive them around.
vitaflo 2y ago
Might want to check with a diff installer. Lots of solar installers in MN advertise battery backups. In fact a new law signed recently (and goes into effect in the next couple months) adds tax incentives for battery backups in homes.
weberer 2y ago
>it was illegal to install grid-charged battery backups in home So it would be legal if it were only charged by your house's solar panel? That doesn't sound like a big problem to me.

lazide 2y ago

Keep in mind, they also might be lying.

jvanderbot 2y ago
This is totally reasonable. I can't find any confirmation of this anywhere.

BenjiWiebe 2y ago

Is a grid-charged battery backup different than a UPS? I guarantee there's UPSs in use in Minnesota.

jvanderbot 2y ago
I asked and they said "yeah it's the same and yeah it's still illegal." The difference is what side of the electrical box your equipment is on.

jonathanlydall 2y ago

Aside from it benefiting energy companies, is there any justification for such a law? In South Africa we’ve had load shedding on and off since 2008. It’s becoming pretty standard for middle class homes to have inverters with batteries and optionally solar. It does create an issue though that when a load shedding window ends, a whole lot of batteries start charging all at once (especially during non-daylight hours). Also due to load shedding, I don’t get full use of my batteries. Ideally I would like my batteries to pretty much fully discharge over night with energy from my solar during the day, however, because load shedding is somewhat irregular here, I have it set to not go too low so it has enough energy to tide me over.

SoftTalker 2y ago
Utilities get a local monopoly and guaranteed tariffs in exchange for the considerable investment in building out the supply grid and generating capacity, and the obligation to maintain it. If individuals are allowed to opt-out, that changes the financial promises made to the utilities. Of course this was mostly done at a time before it was economically feasible for anyone to go off-grid with solar and batteries. I quite honestly prefer this arrangement. I have zero desire to own and be responsible for the maintenance and safety of tens of thousands of dollars worth of on-premises solar/battery/electrical transfer switch gear. I'm quite happy to pay the local utility to run a cable to my electrical panel and have them be responsible for everything outside the walls of my house.
- jonathanlydall 2y ago
  I agree it would be much more efficient on the whole if the grid manages energy storage in bulk. Unfortunately over here we have a monopoly awarded state owned power producer which has a history of incompetence and corruption. Maybe at some point our grid can be trusted to be reliable, but in the meantime everyone is either installing their own batteries or having no electricity for hours at a time. Tragic, but what else can you do.
- skybrian 2y ago
  Or perhaps someday the utility will give you a battery: Vermont utility proposes to install battery storage in most homes https://environmentamerica.org/updates/vermont-utility-proposes-to-install-battery-storage-in-most-homes/ https://environmentamerica.org/updates/vermont-utility-propo...
  - defrost 2y ago
    Locally in Western Australia we're having discussion between residents, council and state power about distributed small shipping container sized batteries, one per 200 homes. There's a lot of solar power here in the state and a good argument for locally "shared" batteries in terms of maintainance, fire safety, etc. Not much to say on that ATM, back of envelope looks good, there's a report in the works.

syntaxing 2y ago

There’s been some pretty big deals from Ecoflow (I don’t own any of their products nor affiliated). The Delta Ultra was on sale at Home Depot for $2800 before tax, 6 kWh battery, 7kWH continuous supply, with 21kWH peak wattage. Everything is built in including inverter. You can install their smart panel (probably requires a permit) and it’ll switch between grid and battery for you. I’ll be surprised these are illegal in your town but there’s but some crazy local laws.

Firaxus 2y ago
As someone who is interested in getting some kind of back up battery at some point, ty for making a recommendation. But could you clarify what you mean by the kWH unit you used on 7 and 21? Seems like those should just be kW, a unit of power rather than kWh, a unit of energy.
- syntaxing 2y ago
  Oops, you’re totally right. That was a typo, it’s 7 kW continuous and 21 kW peak

murkt 2y ago

I have a 3.5 kWh battery backup in my apartment, since December 2022. Which is proving to be immensely helpful right now. I’m living in Kyiv, Ukraine and we have <10 hours of electricity daily these weeks, because lots of power stations are destroyed by Russians, and nuclear power stations are undergoing repairs and fuel recharge.

dzhiurgis 2y ago

Because grid use (transport) costs 2-3x more than the power itself. Now imagine you produce 95% yourself. Instead of typical 15kw installation you only need 500w for when sun doesn’t shine. Thats a reduction of 30x! Far cheaper inverters, thinner lines, etc. Unfortunately no one in the supply chain has wants this because thats lost profit.

kccqzy 2y ago

You might as well just buy an electric vehicle with V2L or V2H functionality, and then add a generator outlet to your electric panel. The added benefit is that well, it's a battery strapped to a car. So if you have an extended power outage, you simply drive your car to a charger elsewhere and come back with a full charge. I'm sure Minnesota wouldn't be stupid enough to outlaw EV charging.

throwaway81523 2y ago
There have been weather events and suchlike where it has been impossible to charge an EV, though gas was still available.
- kccqzy 2y ago
  You charge the EV before the weather event. Not during. Then when the weather event comes, you still get electricity at home supplied by your car. If the weather event is localized, drive your car to a place with electricity and charge it there and drive back. It's the best.
  - edmundsauto 2y ago
    My concern would be draining the fuel reserves in a vehicle to power my home reduces my mobility. It seems like mixing objectives and in an emergency, I want to keep my super spare backup if I needed to flee.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      So you're worried about a weather emergency that takes out your power, followed a few days later by a second emergency that requires you to evacuate a long distance? I don't think I'd do very much to prepare for that scenario.
      - vel0city 2y ago
        It can be the same emergency. It doesn't have to be a second one. You might plan on riding out a storm, thinking utilities might be out a day or two max. Day 5, still no utilities, no known date for resumption of services, and supplies are running extremely low. How do you get out?

ridgeguy 2y ago

Perhaps you could circumvent the regulatory inconvenience by getting your "battery" in the form of a Ford F150 Lightning pickup truck. It can power your home during grid outages, and of course can be charged from solar and/or the grid. One vendor is here: https://www.sunrun.com/ev-charging/ford-f150-lightning https://www.sunrun.com/ev-charging/ford-f150-lightning

throwaway81523 2y ago
Ouch, starting price $57k (98 kwh battery) and around $70k for the recommended model with 131 kwh. It's a rather large vehicle with poor "gas mileage" of about two miles per kwh. A normal sized electric car gets around 2x that, giving higher grid bills or needing bigger solar arrays (thus, more real estate). Idk if the Ford uses LFP batteries these days. Certainly most of us who think of buying electric vehicles would want to actually drive them around.

vitaflo 2y ago

Might want to check with a diff installer. Lots of solar installers in MN advertise battery backups. In fact a new law signed recently (and goes into effect in the next couple months) adds tax incentives for battery backups in homes.

weberer 2y ago

>it was illegal to install grid-charged battery backups in home So it would be legal if it were only charged by your house's solar panel? That doesn't sound like a big problem to me.