3 ms·

Most of the time, the grid is reliable. How much investment do we actually want to prevent a few hours of downtime once in a blue moon? And even if we do want

Most of the time, the grid is reliable. How much investment do we actually want to prevent a few hours of downtime once in a blue moon? And even if we do want to invest in large amount of grid storage (which we would need to anyway, if we want to transition to renewables), I'm not sure pushing this down to the individual house is sensible. Its a great way to limit economies of scale and make maintenance/inspection harder.

chii 1y ago
> I'm not sure pushing this down to the individual house is sensible. why not? Having distributed buffers ought to make the system more resilient in most cases wont it? Not to mention that these home level batteries can be used to smooth out power usage and lower peak loads. In fact, having an EV car act as this same battery would be an even more efficient use of resources.
- UltraSane 1y ago
  because installing and monitoring 1 million small batteries is vastly more work than 100 huge batteries.
  - hem777 1y ago
    Not if 1 million people install and monitor them instead of 100 people.
    - UltraSane 1y ago
      100 huge batteries are going to be monitored and maintained far better than 1 million.
    - 12_throw_away 1y ago
      Given how the average consumer monitors, maintains, and secures their home PC ... this is a level of assurance we want to put on the power grid?
  - megous 1y ago
    How many people will turn off AC and will not bake that cake, or wash clothes, when they know they're going off their own battery vs some electricity distributor's battery shared by others? And if someone is dumb enough to do high load stuff on their own battery during a blackout, then it's less of a problem for others. Also individual failures will cover less homes. Incentives and consequences will be different and differently spread. And on individual level, you can also chose whether you want this or are fine with outage. (I'm against mandating this)
- vel0city 1y ago
  Why not? Maybe because I'd rather not have to spend that much of my own capital on something I'd generally never use. I'd rather not spend the maintenance on that thing I'd generally never use. And finally, I'd rather not take up the space in my home with a large thing I'd generally never use. I'd prefer for the power coming to my house to just not go out. The grid operator can install batteries in places other than my home. The grid operator can maintain them for me. The grid operator can get cheaper loans than I can for installing them, they're staffed with supposed experts in this stuff, just have them handle it on their premises.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 1y ago
    Do you have any reasons besides that?
    - vel0city 1y ago
      Sure. Having large batteries is an additional fire risk in my home for once again something I'd generally never need. If these batteries are in my home but managed by the grid operator I'd probably have to allow their people into my home to service them which I'd rather not have to do if it's something I'd generally never use. Also, this further just makes having stable electricity yet another thing in the wealth gap. Only those wealthy enough to afford the high upfront capital costs, the ongoing maintenance cost, and the space to store it get reliable electricity, fuck everyone else! Or we can just focus on investing in a stable and clean grid and share that cost with everyone, all you need is to just be connected. But hey if I get a massive battery bank I'll have power for when the end times come. I won't be able to go get groceries anymore and eventually the fiber line and radios around me will go quiet but at least I'll be able to play videogames. For a few hours at least. Don't get me wrong, I'm an Eagle Scout, be prepared and all that. I've got a big pile of charcoal, a chunk of propane, a camping stove, several day's supply of water and canned/non-perishable foods, some batteries for lanterns, etc. The cars all get topped off when big storms seem possible. If the big outage comes this will be more worthwhile than being able to turn on the TV for a few hours, and cost significantly less than several dozen kWh of batteries. And if the power is out for more than a week or two I'll have far bigger concerns than being able to post on Hacker News.
- joha4270 1y ago
  The peak load of a house is substantially higher than the per-house peak load of a city. People don't all turn on their ovens/dryers/hairdriers at the same time. You could distribute this capacity at each house and feed it back to the grid during peak times. But is TCO of 1000 * 100kWh same price as 100MWh worth of capacity? If you're going to have the battery anyway(a car) its hard to compete with, but once you need more capacity, I'm not sure it makes sense to distribute it quite as much.
  - trollied 1y ago
    In the UK, the grid used to have to manage the load when millions of people would all put the kettle on during popular TV advertisement breaks.
  - Scoundreller 1y ago
    With places that have time-of-day rates, I wonder what will happen when enough systems get advanced enough to precisely kick-off/on (or slow down/speed up) in unison at precise times. I’ve set this up on my “smart” thermostat to speed up just before rates go up and kick off for a while once they do (and it was a pain to setup, somehow this functionality was not baked in)
pjc50 1y ago
Mandating battery storage is nonsense. Making the regulatory system better for it is not, though; it would be good to make it possible for consumer battery systems to do "islanding" properly so they can be true backups.
- Filligree 1y ago
  Or at least not making it illegal. Regulate it all you want, make sure it's safe, but please let's let homeowners install a transfer switch if they're willing to pay for it. In a longer outage it'd be a massive benefit to have even just a few houses here and there that retain power.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Where is it illegal?
    - zekrioca 1y ago
      In many countries which want to keep the system centralized.

chii 1y ago

> I'm not sure pushing this down to the individual house is sensible. why not? Having distributed buffers ought to make the system more resilient in most cases wont it? Not to mention that these home level batteries can be used to smooth out power usage and lower peak loads. In fact, having an EV car act as this same battery would be an even more efficient use of resources.

UltraSane 1y ago
because installing and monitoring 1 million small batteries is vastly more work than 100 huge batteries.
- hem777 1y ago
  Not if 1 million people install and monitor them instead of 100 people.
  - UltraSane 1y ago
    100 huge batteries are going to be monitored and maintained far better than 1 million.
  - 12_throw_away 1y ago
    Given how the average consumer monitors, maintains, and secures their home PC ... this is a level of assurance we want to put on the power grid?
- megous 1y ago
  How many people will turn off AC and will not bake that cake, or wash clothes, when they know they're going off their own battery vs some electricity distributor's battery shared by others? And if someone is dumb enough to do high load stuff on their own battery during a blackout, then it's less of a problem for others. Also individual failures will cover less homes. Incentives and consequences will be different and differently spread. And on individual level, you can also chose whether you want this or are fine with outage. (I'm against mandating this)
vel0city 1y ago
Why not? Maybe because I'd rather not have to spend that much of my own capital on something I'd generally never use. I'd rather not spend the maintenance on that thing I'd generally never use. And finally, I'd rather not take up the space in my home with a large thing I'd generally never use. I'd prefer for the power coming to my house to just not go out. The grid operator can install batteries in places other than my home. The grid operator can maintain them for me. The grid operator can get cheaper loans than I can for installing them, they're staffed with supposed experts in this stuff, just have them handle it on their premises.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 1y ago
  Do you have any reasons besides that?
  - vel0city 1y ago
    Sure. Having large batteries is an additional fire risk in my home for once again something I'd generally never need. If these batteries are in my home but managed by the grid operator I'd probably have to allow their people into my home to service them which I'd rather not have to do if it's something I'd generally never use. Also, this further just makes having stable electricity yet another thing in the wealth gap. Only those wealthy enough to afford the high upfront capital costs, the ongoing maintenance cost, and the space to store it get reliable electricity, fuck everyone else! Or we can just focus on investing in a stable and clean grid and share that cost with everyone, all you need is to just be connected. But hey if I get a massive battery bank I'll have power for when the end times come. I won't be able to go get groceries anymore and eventually the fiber line and radios around me will go quiet but at least I'll be able to play videogames. For a few hours at least. Don't get me wrong, I'm an Eagle Scout, be prepared and all that. I've got a big pile of charcoal, a chunk of propane, a camping stove, several day's supply of water and canned/non-perishable foods, some batteries for lanterns, etc. The cars all get topped off when big storms seem possible. If the big outage comes this will be more worthwhile than being able to turn on the TV for a few hours, and cost significantly less than several dozen kWh of batteries. And if the power is out for more than a week or two I'll have far bigger concerns than being able to post on Hacker News.
joha4270 1y ago
The peak load of a house is substantially higher than the per-house peak load of a city. People don't all turn on their ovens/dryers/hairdriers at the same time. You could distribute this capacity at each house and feed it back to the grid during peak times. But is TCO of 1000 * 100kWh same price as 100MWh worth of capacity? If you're going to have the battery anyway(a car) its hard to compete with, but once you need more capacity, I'm not sure it makes sense to distribute it quite as much.
- trollied 1y ago
  In the UK, the grid used to have to manage the load when millions of people would all put the kettle on during popular TV advertisement breaks.
- Scoundreller 1y ago
  With places that have time-of-day rates, I wonder what will happen when enough systems get advanced enough to precisely kick-off/on (or slow down/speed up) in unison at precise times. I’ve set this up on my “smart” thermostat to speed up just before rates go up and kick off for a while once they do (and it was a pain to setup, somehow this functionality was not baked in)

pjc50 1y ago

Mandating battery storage is nonsense. Making the regulatory system better for it is not, though; it would be good to make it possible for consumer battery systems to do "islanding" properly so they can be true backups.

Filligree 1y ago
Or at least not making it illegal. Regulate it all you want, make sure it's safe, but please let's let homeowners install a transfer switch if they're willing to pay for it. In a longer outage it'd be a massive benefit to have even just a few houses here and there that retain power.
- immibis 1y ago
  Where is it illegal?
  - zekrioca 1y ago
    In many countries which want to keep the system centralized.