4 ms·

I’d love a shed sized battery sitting on the corner of my property if it could give me 5-7 days of power.

by Aboutplants 3mo ago

zx8080 3mo ago
It's called diesel fuel.
rsyring 3mo ago
That would you pay for that shed size battery?
- SturgeonsLaw 3mo ago
  Depending on just how much more cost effective sodium battery tech gets, that might not be a questionable proposition
- AussieWog93 3mo ago
  I mean, I pay around $2,000 (AUD) per annum for electricity from the grid. If this battery plus some solar panels could get us free power for the next 20+ years, that's easily worth $15-$20k or so.
  - scarecrowbob 3mo ago
    I am about 2 years in to my off-grid solar setup. The cost for the easement was looking to be about $25k, plus about 30k for the wire, transformer, et. I live in middle of nowhere so I just built out a system myself. I am about 8k into it. It's not the biggest system (6kw inverter, 4kw panels, 15kwh storage) but it's fine for one old man living a 2kM in the high desert.
    - lostlogin 3mo ago
      Just to clarify - you were looking at 50k+ for an on grid setup and solar + battery has cost you 8k so far?
      - scarecrowbob 3mo ago
        Yes. I live in a very rural spot with a difficult-to-deal-with Electric Association, with a Ute reservation on one side and unpowered parcels on other sides; I don't think that the easement is a typical issue. And to be clear, I didn't count my labor in designing or implementing the system. I suspect that would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of another $10K if I had to get a hands-off, turn-key version of this same system. And at some point I will likely double much of the capacity, at which point I will be able to run a mig welder at night if I want...
- CyanLite2 3mo ago
  You can get a 16kWh LFP battery for $2-3k USD.
bickfordb 3mo ago
For something like a battery backup that last decades that doesn't need maintenance, maybe you could bury it out of the way (like under a deck or lawn?), maybe even under the frost line.
- someothherguyy 3mo ago
  might need to be in some special containment at that size, depending on the technology -- some sodium ion battery implementations are very toxic / highly reactive / flammable.
- pixl97 3mo ago
  Underground is a big problem with it comes to water permeation and flooding. The other potential problem with a lot of energy systems that use things that have hydrogen in them is running power over the systems for long periods of time can start to leak hydrogen. You'll always want to ensure you have ventilation to ensure whatever is outgassing can escape the system. You'll end up with explosions, hydrogen embrittlement, or interesting corrosion in ways you didn't think were possible.
scarecrowbob 3mo ago
I'm writing this from my off grid shack. I have 15kwh of lifepo, and even if it weren't hooked to 4kw of solar I could still run my fridge, charge my phone, and run the fan in my fireplace for 4-6 days... longer if I dump the fridge. It's 6U of deep 19" rack space. So 2 x that isn't an entire shed-sized battery. Though I'd happily have a shed-sized battery... I suspect that delivering and covering something that size would cost more than the batteries I already have, though.
- defrost 3mo ago
  > It's 6U of deep 19" rack space. If the GP commenter is typing in from the UK .. that's a not uncommon garden tool shed size. By contrast modern Australian farm sheds have clouds forming within them and host birds that seasonally migrate from one side to the other.
  - rbanffy 3mo ago
    You’ll be fine as long as you don’t go near the corners. The spiders are… vicious…
- UltraSane 3mo ago
  They make hyper-insulated refrigerators for use on ships with limited electricity that use either vacuum insulated panels or aerogel insulation.
  - scarecrowbob 3mo ago
    Fortunately for me, I could just bop down to the bog box store and buy a more appropriate fridge from vevor; horses for courses. I've never had to turn off my fridge, though it does have interesting-to-me usage patterns; it's weird what you can learn once everything you use has a watt-meter. I can look at the weekly graph and recall when I turned on a hammond organ or cooked in my instapot.
trainsarebetter 3mo ago
Check out https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery-Emulator https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery-Emulator Re use old ev batteries unmodified for battery storage

I’d love a shed sized battery sitting on the corner of my property if it could give me 5-7 days of power.

zx8080 3mo ago

It's called diesel fuel.

rsyring 3mo ago

That would you pay for that shed size battery?

SturgeonsLaw 3mo ago
Depending on just how much more cost effective sodium battery tech gets, that might not be a questionable proposition
AussieWog93 3mo ago
I mean, I pay around $2,000 (AUD) per annum for electricity from the grid. If this battery plus some solar panels could get us free power for the next 20+ years, that's easily worth $15-$20k or so.
- scarecrowbob 3mo ago
  I am about 2 years in to my off-grid solar setup. The cost for the easement was looking to be about $25k, plus about 30k for the wire, transformer, et. I live in middle of nowhere so I just built out a system myself. I am about 8k into it. It's not the biggest system (6kw inverter, 4kw panels, 15kwh storage) but it's fine for one old man living a 2kM in the high desert.
  - lostlogin 3mo ago
    Just to clarify - you were looking at 50k+ for an on grid setup and solar + battery has cost you 8k so far?
    - scarecrowbob 3mo ago
      Yes. I live in a very rural spot with a difficult-to-deal-with Electric Association, with a Ute reservation on one side and unpowered parcels on other sides; I don't think that the easement is a typical issue. And to be clear, I didn't count my labor in designing or implementing the system. I suspect that would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of another $10K if I had to get a hands-off, turn-key version of this same system. And at some point I will likely double much of the capacity, at which point I will be able to run a mig welder at night if I want...
CyanLite2 3mo ago
You can get a 16kWh LFP battery for $2-3k USD.

bickfordb 3mo ago

For something like a battery backup that last decades that doesn't need maintenance, maybe you could bury it out of the way (like under a deck or lawn?), maybe even under the frost line.

someothherguyy 3mo ago
might need to be in some special containment at that size, depending on the technology -- some sodium ion battery implementations are very toxic / highly reactive / flammable.
pixl97 3mo ago
Underground is a big problem with it comes to water permeation and flooding. The other potential problem with a lot of energy systems that use things that have hydrogen in them is running power over the systems for long periods of time can start to leak hydrogen. You'll always want to ensure you have ventilation to ensure whatever is outgassing can escape the system. You'll end up with explosions, hydrogen embrittlement, or interesting corrosion in ways you didn't think were possible.

scarecrowbob 3mo ago

I'm writing this from my off grid shack. I have 15kwh of lifepo, and even if it weren't hooked to 4kw of solar I could still run my fridge, charge my phone, and run the fan in my fireplace for 4-6 days... longer if I dump the fridge. It's 6U of deep 19" rack space. So 2 x that isn't an entire shed-sized battery. Though I'd happily have a shed-sized battery... I suspect that delivering and covering something that size would cost more than the batteries I already have, though.

defrost 3mo ago
> It's 6U of deep 19" rack space. If the GP commenter is typing in from the UK .. that's a not uncommon garden tool shed size. By contrast modern Australian farm sheds have clouds forming within them and host birds that seasonally migrate from one side to the other.
- rbanffy 3mo ago
  You’ll be fine as long as you don’t go near the corners. The spiders are… vicious…
UltraSane 3mo ago
They make hyper-insulated refrigerators for use on ships with limited electricity that use either vacuum insulated panels or aerogel insulation.
- scarecrowbob 3mo ago
  Fortunately for me, I could just bop down to the bog box store and buy a more appropriate fridge from vevor; horses for courses. I've never had to turn off my fridge, though it does have interesting-to-me usage patterns; it's weird what you can learn once everything you use has a watt-meter. I can look at the weekly graph and recall when I turned on a hammond organ or cooked in my instapot.

trainsarebetter 3mo ago

Check out https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery-Emulator https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery-Emulator Re use old ev batteries unmodified for battery storage