9 ms·

Why batteries both thrill and terrify the U.S. utility industry

159 points by dotluis 12y ago

DanKlinton 12y ago
This Elon Musk guy sounds more and more like Tony Stark from Iron Man :)
- falcor84 12y ago
  Musk was indeed was an inspiration for the movies (and did a cameo on Iron Man 2) http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984745_1985495,00.html http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
  - gohrt 12y ago
    It seemed to me that Iron Man (comic) was an inspiration for Elon Musk's persona.
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Rooftop solar would have a very hard time supplying the same current feed your power company has. A few back-to-nature Californians may be satisfied with the battery-solar combo straw man in this article; most of us want our TV and microwave too.
- taf2 12y ago
  Really - I am not so sure... my brother in CA tells me after installing solar panels on his home his bill from the power company went from 3 digits to $4 per month. He isn't really a back-to-nature Californian either...
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Maybe we need 200 Amps from the power company for peak demand (frozen pizza + ball game + blender) but don't really pull much most of the time. Batteries limit not peak but total draw over the day. Hm.
    - venomsnake 12y ago
      200 amps even at the ultra low voltage the US has is still 20 kilowatts. That is tumble drier, oven with stove tops, washing machine + everything else in the house and you still have 10 kilowatts to spare.
      - jarek 12y ago
        Also chances are pretty good not everyone will have everything going at the same time, so you would be able to borrow power from your neighbours' systems without needing a big utility with standby coal.
      - mahyarm 12y ago
        Heat based energy needs are usually cheaper with gas, which is most of what you listed.
- mabbo 12y ago
  The threat isn't that people don't need any power from the electric company, it's that people need very little of it. Demand dropping to 5% of your usual business model might as well be demand dropping to 0%.
  - sethhochberg 12y ago
    Especially when you're dealing with physical infrastructure (like power lines) that has relatively fixed upkeep costs regardless of demand.
    - tcas 12y ago
      Here in NYC ConEd charges a very large fixed fee for that physical infrastructure. Last month I used 96kWh but paid $43.35 (basically $0.45/kwh). Around $20 of that is fixed fees, to pay for the basic infrastructure, billing, meter reading etc...
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Some of that drop can be beneficial to the power company. They are always on the edge of capacity, because building more capacity is very (billions) expensive, and at first you don't need all of it, so the marginal cost of expansion is huge. Deploying solar across the area could postpone the need for generator expansion, and save money for current customers.
    - hga 12y ago
      Depends on the type of capacity. I gather that peaking power is typically provided by gas combustion turbines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine#Industrial_gas_turbines_for_power_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine#Industrial_gas_tur...), which have much lower capital costs and much higher operating costs (including maintenance). But if you need more baseline, then, yeah, you're going to be spending a lot of money, although I'd expect modern gas powered baseline plants to be relatively cheap (don't ask about nuclear, and fuel handling is much easier than coal, plus coal is nasty dirty stuff that needs exhaust cleaning, and disposal of ash).
- reportingsjr 12y ago
  The batteries that Tesla uses can far, far surpass what a power company would be willing to provide to a residential unit. The most powerful model s on the road right now has a ~310kW motor in it. That is an order of magnitude above what most house circuit breakers are rated for (200A-300A, 24kW to 36kW). There are even small RC batteries out there that can push 150A+ for a few seconds on their own.
kefka 12y ago
Why are they so scary? They're just a whole bunch of 18650's, with integrated cooling chambers and nice chargers. I just picked up a pack of 10 from ali express for $14. The charger was $10 and can charge 2 batteries in about 1/2 hour. The American markets don't see them unless you crack open dead laptop batteries and test.
- mullingitover 12y ago
  I've seen plenty of 18650s outside of laptops. They're extremely popular in the electronic cigarette scene.
  - defective 12y ago
    Yep, and we inherited them from the flashlight enthusiasts.
jarrettc 12y ago
The article suggests that solar panels could be an "existential threat" to power companies. For those of you who are familiar with the math of solar panels, how realistic is that prediction? How much of a normal home's energy needs could be supplied by solar panels, assuming the panels covered the entire surface area of the roof? How much is the ROI on solar panels likely to improve in the foreseeable future? (I've heard estimates of 5-8% annual return for 2014.)
- djrogers 12y ago
  I installed a 10kw system ~15 months ago on my 3600sq ft house. Average electricity costs was ~$6k/year before the panels, the first year on solar to total cost for the year was $300. That $300 worth of electricity for the year is before I've been able to talk the wife in to replacing our incandescent bulbs, swapped out our old pool pump, etc etc - I could easily get that down to below 0 with a small investment in bulbs. So in my case at least, it was trivially easy to get to a net-zero usage. A few $$ notes - the system cost $37k, I got 11.1k of that in a tax credit from the feds, so my net cost was 26k. I'm saving 5.7k/yr, which means my break even point for the system is 5 years. In 5 freaking years I'm making money from my solar panels! And I don't have to write a $500 check to PG&E every month. It's a beautiful thing... BTW - the above numbers (plus my severe aversion to debt) are why I'm so against solar leases. If we had a solar lease, we'd still be stuck with monthly payments, would have trouble selling our house, and would be stuck for 20 years.
  - Pxtl 12y ago
    Where you located? Are we talking Texas or Michigan?
  - chdir 12y ago
    How many units does $500 fetch where you live? Would be curious to know a breakdown of the bigger portion of the pie in those units.
  - mrfusion 12y ago
    $6K/year sounds really high no? My neighbor pays $100-150/month for a 3200 sqft house.
rdl 12y ago
Even if this didn't make sense in California (it might), it makes huge sense in Hawaii -- power is $0.30-0.50/KWh, and they're starting to look at higher charges for grid-connected solar users (connection fees), and lower purchase prices for power. If I could handle peak and steady state loads off-grid there, I'd be very tempted. I was assuming water pumping storage, or scheduling loads, and a diesel or propane generator for extreme peaks (running tools), but this might work too.
- amalag 12y ago
  This was from last year, I don't know if things are still this way there. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-boom-so-successfull-its-been-halted/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-boom-so-su...
msandford 12y ago
From the article: ...said Ellen Hayes, a PG&E spokeswoman. “Having a solar panel that isn’t connected to the grid is like having a computer that’s not connected to the Internet.” Patently false. It's a great way for them to rationalize their continued existence. But as rooftop solar takes off and the "smart grid" fails to materialize I suspect that you're going to start to see federated neighborhood grids running at 48VDC. Anything less than 50V isn't regulated by the NEC which is why you're supposed to hire an electrician for new or major upgrades to your house wiring but nobody cares if you put in low voltage pathway lighting, doorbells, networking, etc. That means that although you'll have to buy thick copper wires, people can wire themselves up with their neighbors LEGALLY to share power. That's a big deal. It doesn't take all that many people to be connected to substantially smooth out fluctuations. Most A/C doesn't run all the time, it's only supposed to be about 15 minutes out of every hour. So if I and four neighbors team up then we might need 5kW of solar panels between us instead of 5kW each. At least if it's somewhere sort-of temperate where A/C isn't crucial at night. The power electronics to make this happen are getting cheaper by the day. Sure it means having to talk to your neighbors and some retrofitting, but that's doable. And with a lot of new equipment having VFDs in them from the factory (refrigerators, mini splits, even a lot of A/C compressors) it means that the cost of converting them drops even more.
- mrfusion 12y ago
  I might be mistaken but I think 5KW can power your whole AC and a few other appliances, no?
  - watty 12y ago
    Yes, most of the time. My small house routinely exceeds 5 kW though.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      What appliances/devices are you using when that happens?
diafygi 12y ago
For people who want to learn more about the complexities in this topic, I highly suggest listening to the Energy Gang podcast[1]. A ‎senior editor at Greentech Media, principal lobbyist at a huge energy lobby firm, and the founder of Sun Edison get together once a week to talk about at latest news. I work in the new energy industry, and everyone I know in this industry listens to this podcast. For example, a few months ago, they talked extensively about how Hawaii's utility is basically falling apart since it can't find a way to compete with solar now that solar is at grid parity, and solar+storage is on the verge of reaching off-grid parity[2]. What happens when half of your customers simply leave? We're about to find out over the next few years. Also, if you want to learn more about tech entrepreneurship in the solar, I recommend reaching out to the SfunCube[3]. [1]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/podcast https://www.greentechmedia.com/podcast [2]: https://soundcloud.com/the-energy-gang/can-the-us-government#t=19:55 https://soundcloud.com/the-energy-gang/can-the-us-government... [3]: http://www.sfuncube.com/ http://www.sfuncube.com/
nullgeo 12y ago
Oh how funny, 130 years ago Tesla scared the hell out of some battery company.
bdamm 12y ago
Even if individual homes can sustain themselves on solar power, there are many homes and even more businesses that cannot. Even if people are storing power in batteries and charging them up for later use when power is cheap (determined locally) you still need the utility to be that conduit to get the power from the (distributed) sources to the (distributed) consumption. Can the existing grid handle this kind of workload? Yes, if it is managed well and controls are in place to prevent delivering more power into the network than it can handle.
dmritard96 12y ago
The interesting situation is that companies regulated as a utility, presumably because a competitive environment for infrastructure isn't always practical (defacto monopolies) is facing competition hence creating some interesting questions.
nostromo 12y ago
Another reason: consumers subsidize industry. Look up your local utility rates for high demand users. (These usually include things like factories or data centers.) They pay a lot less for energy than you do at home -- even though the power plant doesn't care if the electricity is used for your hair dryer or smelting aluminum. If the consumer goes solar, industry will suddenly have to pay their fair share of the bill.
- hga 12y ago
  You're ignoring all the ways it's cheaper to provide service to big, compact consumers like factories or data centers, vs. a big branching distribution network, more transformers and metering and billing costs. And then there's math is not optional details like power factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor), although I don't know how they play out for these different sorts of consumers, but it's important to realize the grid past power plants is anything but simple and passively operated. Plus factories can negotiate schedules of when they're pulling X amount of power, and most of them can shut down during extreme peak demand. It costs power companies a lot to avoid brownouts and blackouts during those worst periods of a year, and most of us home consumers don't have a firm deal to conserve during them. The biggest devil in the details of all of this is what comes after whatever is producing power, solar cells or conventional power plants, baseline and peaking. That is, after all, what this topic is about.
- maratd 12y ago
  I experienced the exact opposite with PSE&G in NJ. I had both a residence and an office in the same municipality. I was paying a higher rate per kWh at the office. Almost twice as much. When I asked them about it, they said it was because I was at an address marked as a business. I think this depends heavily on state-level regulation of the utility and market conditions for your segment.
  - mikeyouse 12y ago
    To be fair, you're talking about a third distinction in the eyes of utilities. They typical tier pricing by residential, commercial and industrial. It's not uncommon for commercial power to be more expensive than residential, but it's extremely uncommon for industrial power to cost more.
grecy 12y ago
This is materializing in Australia right now. My parents just put 5kW of solar on their roof, and are still tied to the grid, selling some back for a tiny fraction of what they buy it for at night. The government has now mandated that everyone on the grid must pay an "access" fee every month, even if they use nothing, and they are limiting how many people in any neighborhood can go solar and sell power back to the grid. It's no secret the government are doing this to protect their friends in the coal and electricity industry.
- TrainedMonkey 12y ago
  So what would happen, if government did not mandate that? Some people would go completely off grid, this would raise prices for everyone else. In some communities it would not be economical for electric company to operate at all[0]. Moreover they can't just leave this over to the cities because rich communities would go off grid and raise prices for others in the area. While I am sure there is "friendship" angle you are coming from is real issue is far more complex than that and there is no simple solution. [0] And given utility status of electrical companies they are mandated by the government to do so anyways.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Another issue is sunlight. Most folks own land but not the right for sunlight to fall on it. Someone next door can shade your roof with their large solar collector; now you HAVE to connect to the grid. Such disputes will interfere with the smooth deployment of roof-mounted solar energy panels.
elihu 12y ago
What is the price of a residential battery? Let's say you need 10 kilowatt hours to last from sunset to dawn (you might need more some nights, but if you're still on the grid, 10 kwh might be enough most of the time, which is what matters). The Tesla model S has a 60 or 85 kwh battery. I don't know what the cost of the battery alone is, but it's probably pretty expensive. For fixed residential, you wouldn't need to use the most energy dense cells available, so it might be cheaper. Wikipedia has a price per kwh comparison, showing lead acid considerably cheaper, though that might not be up-to-date with the price Solar City and Tesla pay for Lithium Ion cells. If lead-acid is $250 per kilowatt hour, that puts a 10 kwh battery at $2500. Not too bad, but if they only last six years or so, that's a pretty big part of the ongoing cost of maintaining the system. How does lithium ion compare on price and longevity? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_battery
- jared314 12y ago
  > The Tesla model S has a 60 or 85 kwh battery. I don't know what the cost of the battery alone is, but it's probably pretty expensive. As of 2013, the 60 and 80 kwh batteries are approximately $10k and $12k respectively. [1] [1] http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/2013-model-s-price-increase http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/2013-model-s-price-increase
ChuckMcM 12y ago
This is something I've been considering of late. I was an 'early adopter' for Solar and have had 5kW of panels on my roof for 14 years now. Initially we were on a 'watt for watt' type rate schedule with a flat true up at the end of the year (basically net usage would be billed every 12 months). This was a good deal for me, and a bad deal for PG&E apparently. Over the years they have morphed that into something much more in their favor and with the help of "smart" meters have factored in various timing aspects which all work toward increasing how much I pay PG&E even though I am using about the same amount of power that I was before. The only answer then is to go 'all in' and just cut them out of the equation. But battery maintenance is a huge challenge with lead-acid packs, a fire risk with lithium ones. I'd love to have a locally owned and operated 'storage depot' where I could shove my excess power to the depot, and pull power when I needed it (like being grid tied) but consolidate and amortize the cost of maintaining the power storage component across a bunch of customers.
- Raphmedia 12y ago
  Can you legally do something like use the solar power for your lighting or small appliances and use the company's electricity for your heating? With different sockets and wires?
  - joshred 12y ago
    Why wouldn't you be able to?
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      If you are asking why I don't end up with a $0 bill it is because PG&E builds a per kwH 'cost' schedule that includes various tiers of usage. But they don't adjust how much credit I get by baseline usage. As a contrived example, let's say Baseline is 200kWH and .10 per kWH, and I use 300kWH which is billed at 200kWH at 'baseline' rate, and 100kWH at 'premium' rate of .125 per kWH. My "billed" cost is $32.50, If I then generate 300kWH I get "credit" for 300 baseline rate kWH or $30.00, and have to eat the difference between the baseline rate and the premium rate or generate and extra 25 kWH to cover the difference. I've had extended phone conversations with them and they completely understand that this is exactly the situation, they are pretty pleased with themselves for getting it through the regulators.
oblio 12y ago
One thing to note - while this all sounds very exciting and optimistic, a huge percentage of energy is actually generated by coal fueled plants: http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/ http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/ - 40%. Let that sink in for a while. More than 1 century after the introduction of gas and oil fueled power plants and more than half a century after the introduction of nuclear power plants, coal is still powering almost half of the world. Perhaps even this PC on which I'm writing this comment. Don't expect a revolution. Expect an evolution that will take another half a century or more :)
- mikeash 12y ago
  For a counterpoint, it should be considered that coal would be a lot more expensive if externalities were accounted for. Coal power poisons the atmosphere, the water, and the land, and kills thousands of people each year. If you account for those costs, coal becomes substantially less attractive, but most places allow power producers to avoid paying for a lot of those costs. That doesn't mean you're wrong, of course. Coal has tremendous inertia, and accounting for externalities is hard. But the ubiquity of coal is partly due to a cheapness which is somewhat illusory, and we'd be better off if we accounted for it properly which would naturally push alternatives harder.
- okaybutthen 12y ago
  Only because right now the economics of coal fueled electric plants are favorable. Coal based plants will die down as cost per kWh of ocean tide, wind, solar, etc are optimized.
yason 12y ago
Since they also make stationary batteries I wonder what would it cost to manufacture small flywheel energy storage units for homes instead. To an extent, those are used in bigger grids to balance out peak production and peak consumption: they rotate in a vacuum on magnetic bearings and require very little if any maintenance. Those big boys probably cost a lot but a consumer-grade flywheel which could spin for, say, 24 hours and be slightly less efficient (wrt. input-to-output and friction losses) could still be a big deal to even out daily usage.
jcromartie 12y ago
Entropy will increase... Everything will become increasingly decentralized and democratized thanks to the miniaturization and increasing efficiency of technology. It's all but inevitable. The only thing that can stop it is politics.
jhallenworld 12y ago
I learned recently that nearly ideal batteries already exist for the purpose of storing energy from solar: nickel-iron batteries (side note: Edison made more money from selling these batteries than from any other invention). They last a very long time (50 years), are durable (not damaged by full discharge) and can be made from cheap materials. The energy density is not high, but this is probably not a major issue for home energy storage.
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  Nickel-zinc looks more attractive. What you do need on such application is a fast discharge, and nickel-iron doe not have it. Now I'm wondering what would it take to create an iron-zinc battery, and how to make it last... Nickel is not a metal you want to waste around.
- infogulch 12y ago
  I didn't know about NiFe batteries. With a long lifetime, deep discharge durability, and cheap non-toxic construction they look quite promising. Except overall efficiency isn't great, and it looks like they require regular maintenance. Of course, maintenance becomes less of a problem at neighborhood/grid-local scale.
cportela 12y ago
Thank you for posting this as the print link. Literally a simple task, but again thanks.

159 points by dotluis 12y ago

DanKlinton 12y ago

This Elon Musk guy sounds more and more like Tony Stark from Iron Man :)

falcor84 12y ago
Musk was indeed was an inspiration for the movies (and did a cameo on Iron Man 2) http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984745_1985495,00.html http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
- gohrt 12y ago
  It seemed to me that Iron Man (comic) was an inspiration for Elon Musk's persona.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

Rooftop solar would have a very hard time supplying the same current feed your power company has. A few back-to-nature Californians may be satisfied with the battery-solar combo straw man in this article; most of us want our TV and microwave too.

taf2 12y ago
Really - I am not so sure... my brother in CA tells me after installing solar panels on his home his bill from the power company went from 3 digits to $4 per month. He isn't really a back-to-nature Californian either...
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Maybe we need 200 Amps from the power company for peak demand (frozen pizza + ball game + blender) but don't really pull much most of the time. Batteries limit not peak but total draw over the day. Hm.
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    200 amps even at the ultra low voltage the US has is still 20 kilowatts. That is tumble drier, oven with stove tops, washing machine + everything else in the house and you still have 10 kilowatts to spare.
    - jarek 12y ago
      Also chances are pretty good not everyone will have everything going at the same time, so you would be able to borrow power from your neighbours' systems without needing a big utility with standby coal.
    - mahyarm 12y ago
      Heat based energy needs are usually cheaper with gas, which is most of what you listed.
mabbo 12y ago
The threat isn't that people don't need any power from the electric company, it's that people need very little of it. Demand dropping to 5% of your usual business model might as well be demand dropping to 0%.
- sethhochberg 12y ago
  Especially when you're dealing with physical infrastructure (like power lines) that has relatively fixed upkeep costs regardless of demand.
  - tcas 12y ago
    Here in NYC ConEd charges a very large fixed fee for that physical infrastructure. Last month I used 96kWh but paid $43.35 (basically $0.45/kwh). Around $20 of that is fixed fees, to pay for the basic infrastructure, billing, meter reading etc...
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Some of that drop can be beneficial to the power company. They are always on the edge of capacity, because building more capacity is very (billions) expensive, and at first you don't need all of it, so the marginal cost of expansion is huge. Deploying solar across the area could postpone the need for generator expansion, and save money for current customers.
  - hga 12y ago
    Depends on the type of capacity. I gather that peaking power is typically provided by gas combustion turbines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine#Industrial_gas_turbines_for_power_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine#Industrial_gas_tur...), which have much lower capital costs and much higher operating costs (including maintenance). But if you need more baseline, then, yeah, you're going to be spending a lot of money, although I'd expect modern gas powered baseline plants to be relatively cheap (don't ask about nuclear, and fuel handling is much easier than coal, plus coal is nasty dirty stuff that needs exhaust cleaning, and disposal of ash).
reportingsjr 12y ago
The batteries that Tesla uses can far, far surpass what a power company would be willing to provide to a residential unit. The most powerful model s on the road right now has a ~310kW motor in it. That is an order of magnitude above what most house circuit breakers are rated for (200A-300A, 24kW to 36kW). There are even small RC batteries out there that can push 150A+ for a few seconds on their own.

kefka 12y ago

Why are they so scary? They're just a whole bunch of 18650's, with integrated cooling chambers and nice chargers. I just picked up a pack of 10 from ali express for $14. The charger was $10 and can charge 2 batteries in about 1/2 hour. The American markets don't see them unless you crack open dead laptop batteries and test.

mullingitover 12y ago
I've seen plenty of 18650s outside of laptops. They're extremely popular in the electronic cigarette scene.
- defective 12y ago
  Yep, and we inherited them from the flashlight enthusiasts.

jarrettc 12y ago

The article suggests that solar panels could be an "existential threat" to power companies. For those of you who are familiar with the math of solar panels, how realistic is that prediction? How much of a normal home's energy needs could be supplied by solar panels, assuming the panels covered the entire surface area of the roof? How much is the ROI on solar panels likely to improve in the foreseeable future? (I've heard estimates of 5-8% annual return for 2014.)

djrogers 12y ago
I installed a 10kw system ~15 months ago on my 3600sq ft house. Average electricity costs was ~$6k/year before the panels, the first year on solar to total cost for the year was $300. That $300 worth of electricity for the year is before I've been able to talk the wife in to replacing our incandescent bulbs, swapped out our old pool pump, etc etc - I could easily get that down to below 0 with a small investment in bulbs. So in my case at least, it was trivially easy to get to a net-zero usage. A few $$ notes - the system cost $37k, I got 11.1k of that in a tax credit from the feds, so my net cost was 26k. I'm saving 5.7k/yr, which means my break even point for the system is 5 years. In 5 freaking years I'm making money from my solar panels! And I don't have to write a $500 check to PG&E every month. It's a beautiful thing... BTW - the above numbers (plus my severe aversion to debt) are why I'm so against solar leases. If we had a solar lease, we'd still be stuck with monthly payments, would have trouble selling our house, and would be stuck for 20 years.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  Where you located? Are we talking Texas or Michigan?
- chdir 12y ago
  How many units does $500 fetch where you live? Would be curious to know a breakdown of the bigger portion of the pie in those units.
- mrfusion 12y ago
  $6K/year sounds really high no? My neighbor pays $100-150/month for a 3200 sqft house.

rdl 12y ago

Even if this didn't make sense in California (it might), it makes huge sense in Hawaii -- power is $0.30-0.50/KWh, and they're starting to look at higher charges for grid-connected solar users (connection fees), and lower purchase prices for power. If I could handle peak and steady state loads off-grid there, I'd be very tempted. I was assuming water pumping storage, or scheduling loads, and a diesel or propane generator for extreme peaks (running tools), but this might work too.

amalag 12y ago
This was from last year, I don't know if things are still this way there. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-boom-so-successfull-its-been-halted/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-boom-so-su...

msandford 12y ago

From the article: ...said Ellen Hayes, a PG&E spokeswoman. “Having a solar panel that isn’t connected to the grid is like having a computer that’s not connected to the Internet.” Patently false. It's a great way for them to rationalize their continued existence. But as rooftop solar takes off and the "smart grid" fails to materialize I suspect that you're going to start to see federated neighborhood grids running at 48VDC. Anything less than 50V isn't regulated by the NEC which is why you're supposed to hire an electrician for new or major upgrades to your house wiring but nobody cares if you put in low voltage pathway lighting, doorbells, networking, etc. That means that although you'll have to buy thick copper wires, people can wire themselves up with their neighbors LEGALLY to share power. That's a big deal. It doesn't take all that many people to be connected to substantially smooth out fluctuations. Most A/C doesn't run all the time, it's only supposed to be about 15 minutes out of every hour. So if I and four neighbors team up then we might need 5kW of solar panels between us instead of 5kW each. At least if it's somewhere sort-of temperate where A/C isn't crucial at night. The power electronics to make this happen are getting cheaper by the day. Sure it means having to talk to your neighbors and some retrofitting, but that's doable. And with a lot of new equipment having VFDs in them from the factory (refrigerators, mini splits, even a lot of A/C compressors) it means that the cost of converting them drops even more.

mrfusion 12y ago
I might be mistaken but I think 5KW can power your whole AC and a few other appliances, no?
- watty 12y ago
  Yes, most of the time. My small house routinely exceeds 5 kW though.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    What appliances/devices are you using when that happens?

diafygi 12y ago

For people who want to learn more about the complexities in this topic, I highly suggest listening to the Energy Gang podcast[1]. A ‎senior editor at Greentech Media, principal lobbyist at a huge energy lobby firm, and the founder of Sun Edison get together once a week to talk about at latest news. I work in the new energy industry, and everyone I know in this industry listens to this podcast. For example, a few months ago, they talked extensively about how Hawaii's utility is basically falling apart since it can't find a way to compete with solar now that solar is at grid parity, and solar+storage is on the verge of reaching off-grid parity[2]. What happens when half of your customers simply leave? We're about to find out over the next few years. Also, if you want to learn more about tech entrepreneurship in the solar, I recommend reaching out to the SfunCube[3]. [1]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/podcast https://www.greentechmedia.com/podcast [2]: https://soundcloud.com/the-energy-gang/can-the-us-government#t=19:55 https://soundcloud.com/the-energy-gang/can-the-us-government... [3]: http://www.sfuncube.com/ http://www.sfuncube.com/

nullgeo 12y ago

Oh how funny, 130 years ago Tesla scared the hell out of some battery company.

bdamm 12y ago

Even if individual homes can sustain themselves on solar power, there are many homes and even more businesses that cannot. Even if people are storing power in batteries and charging them up for later use when power is cheap (determined locally) you still need the utility to be that conduit to get the power from the (distributed) sources to the (distributed) consumption. Can the existing grid handle this kind of workload? Yes, if it is managed well and controls are in place to prevent delivering more power into the network than it can handle.

dmritard96 12y ago

The interesting situation is that companies regulated as a utility, presumably because a competitive environment for infrastructure isn't always practical (defacto monopolies) is facing competition hence creating some interesting questions.

nostromo 12y ago

Another reason: consumers subsidize industry. Look up your local utility rates for high demand users. (These usually include things like factories or data centers.) They pay a lot less for energy than you do at home -- even though the power plant doesn't care if the electricity is used for your hair dryer or smelting aluminum. If the consumer goes solar, industry will suddenly have to pay their fair share of the bill.

hga 12y ago
You're ignoring all the ways it's cheaper to provide service to big, compact consumers like factories or data centers, vs. a big branching distribution network, more transformers and metering and billing costs. And then there's math is not optional details like power factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor), although I don't know how they play out for these different sorts of consumers, but it's important to realize the grid past power plants is anything but simple and passively operated. Plus factories can negotiate schedules of when they're pulling X amount of power, and most of them can shut down during extreme peak demand. It costs power companies a lot to avoid brownouts and blackouts during those worst periods of a year, and most of us home consumers don't have a firm deal to conserve during them. The biggest devil in the details of all of this is what comes after whatever is producing power, solar cells or conventional power plants, baseline and peaking. That is, after all, what this topic is about.
maratd 12y ago
I experienced the exact opposite with PSE&G in NJ. I had both a residence and an office in the same municipality. I was paying a higher rate per kWh at the office. Almost twice as much. When I asked them about it, they said it was because I was at an address marked as a business. I think this depends heavily on state-level regulation of the utility and market conditions for your segment.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  To be fair, you're talking about a third distinction in the eyes of utilities. They typical tier pricing by residential, commercial and industrial. It's not uncommon for commercial power to be more expensive than residential, but it's extremely uncommon for industrial power to cost more.

grecy 12y ago

This is materializing in Australia right now. My parents just put 5kW of solar on their roof, and are still tied to the grid, selling some back for a tiny fraction of what they buy it for at night. The government has now mandated that everyone on the grid must pay an "access" fee every month, even if they use nothing, and they are limiting how many people in any neighborhood can go solar and sell power back to the grid. It's no secret the government are doing this to protect their friends in the coal and electricity industry.

TrainedMonkey 12y ago
So what would happen, if government did not mandate that? Some people would go completely off grid, this would raise prices for everyone else. In some communities it would not be economical for electric company to operate at all[0]. Moreover they can't just leave this over to the cities because rich communities would go off grid and raise prices for others in the area. While I am sure there is "friendship" angle you are coming from is real issue is far more complex than that and there is no simple solution. [0] And given utility status of electrical companies they are mandated by the government to do so anyways.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Another issue is sunlight. Most folks own land but not the right for sunlight to fall on it. Someone next door can shade your roof with their large solar collector; now you HAVE to connect to the grid. Such disputes will interfere with the smooth deployment of roof-mounted solar energy panels.

elihu 12y ago

What is the price of a residential battery? Let's say you need 10 kilowatt hours to last from sunset to dawn (you might need more some nights, but if you're still on the grid, 10 kwh might be enough most of the time, which is what matters). The Tesla model S has a 60 or 85 kwh battery. I don't know what the cost of the battery alone is, but it's probably pretty expensive. For fixed residential, you wouldn't need to use the most energy dense cells available, so it might be cheaper. Wikipedia has a price per kwh comparison, showing lead acid considerably cheaper, though that might not be up-to-date with the price Solar City and Tesla pay for Lithium Ion cells. If lead-acid is $250 per kilowatt hour, that puts a 10 kwh battery at $2500. Not too bad, but if they only last six years or so, that's a pretty big part of the ongoing cost of maintaining the system. How does lithium ion compare on price and longevity? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_battery

jared314 12y ago
> The Tesla model S has a 60 or 85 kwh battery. I don't know what the cost of the battery alone is, but it's probably pretty expensive. As of 2013, the 60 and 80 kwh batteries are approximately $10k and $12k respectively. [1] [1] http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/2013-model-s-price-increase http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/2013-model-s-price-increase

ChuckMcM 12y ago

This is something I've been considering of late. I was an 'early adopter' for Solar and have had 5kW of panels on my roof for 14 years now. Initially we were on a 'watt for watt' type rate schedule with a flat true up at the end of the year (basically net usage would be billed every 12 months). This was a good deal for me, and a bad deal for PG&E apparently. Over the years they have morphed that into something much more in their favor and with the help of "smart" meters have factored in various timing aspects which all work toward increasing how much I pay PG&E even though I am using about the same amount of power that I was before. The only answer then is to go 'all in' and just cut them out of the equation. But battery maintenance is a huge challenge with lead-acid packs, a fire risk with lithium ones. I'd love to have a locally owned and operated 'storage depot' where I could shove my excess power to the depot, and pull power when I needed it (like being grid tied) but consolidate and amortize the cost of maintaining the power storage component across a bunch of customers.

Raphmedia 12y ago
Can you legally do something like use the solar power for your lighting or small appliances and use the company's electricity for your heating? With different sockets and wires?
- joshred 12y ago
  Why wouldn't you be able to?
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    If you are asking why I don't end up with a $0 bill it is because PG&E builds a per kwH 'cost' schedule that includes various tiers of usage. But they don't adjust how much credit I get by baseline usage. As a contrived example, let's say Baseline is 200kWH and .10 per kWH, and I use 300kWH which is billed at 200kWH at 'baseline' rate, and 100kWH at 'premium' rate of .125 per kWH. My "billed" cost is $32.50, If I then generate 300kWH I get "credit" for 300 baseline rate kWH or $30.00, and have to eat the difference between the baseline rate and the premium rate or generate and extra 25 kWH to cover the difference. I've had extended phone conversations with them and they completely understand that this is exactly the situation, they are pretty pleased with themselves for getting it through the regulators.

oblio 12y ago

One thing to note - while this all sounds very exciting and optimistic, a huge percentage of energy is actually generated by coal fueled plants: http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/ http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/ - 40%. Let that sink in for a while. More than 1 century after the introduction of gas and oil fueled power plants and more than half a century after the introduction of nuclear power plants, coal is still powering almost half of the world. Perhaps even this PC on which I'm writing this comment. Don't expect a revolution. Expect an evolution that will take another half a century or more :)

mikeash 12y ago
For a counterpoint, it should be considered that coal would be a lot more expensive if externalities were accounted for. Coal power poisons the atmosphere, the water, and the land, and kills thousands of people each year. If you account for those costs, coal becomes substantially less attractive, but most places allow power producers to avoid paying for a lot of those costs. That doesn't mean you're wrong, of course. Coal has tremendous inertia, and accounting for externalities is hard. But the ubiquity of coal is partly due to a cheapness which is somewhat illusory, and we'd be better off if we accounted for it properly which would naturally push alternatives harder.
okaybutthen 12y ago
Only because right now the economics of coal fueled electric plants are favorable. Coal based plants will die down as cost per kWh of ocean tide, wind, solar, etc are optimized.

yason 12y ago

Since they also make stationary batteries I wonder what would it cost to manufacture small flywheel energy storage units for homes instead. To an extent, those are used in bigger grids to balance out peak production and peak consumption: they rotate in a vacuum on magnetic bearings and require very little if any maintenance. Those big boys probably cost a lot but a consumer-grade flywheel which could spin for, say, 24 hours and be slightly less efficient (wrt. input-to-output and friction losses) could still be a big deal to even out daily usage.

jcromartie 12y ago

Entropy will increase... Everything will become increasingly decentralized and democratized thanks to the miniaturization and increasing efficiency of technology. It's all but inevitable. The only thing that can stop it is politics.

jhallenworld 12y ago

I learned recently that nearly ideal batteries already exist for the purpose of storing energy from solar: nickel-iron batteries (side note: Edison made more money from selling these batteries than from any other invention). They last a very long time (50 years), are durable (not damaged by full discharge) and can be made from cheap materials. The energy density is not high, but this is probably not a major issue for home energy storage.

marcosdumay 12y ago
Nickel-zinc looks more attractive. What you do need on such application is a fast discharge, and nickel-iron doe not have it. Now I'm wondering what would it take to create an iron-zinc battery, and how to make it last... Nickel is not a metal you want to waste around.
infogulch 12y ago
I didn't know about NiFe batteries. With a long lifetime, deep discharge durability, and cheap non-toxic construction they look quite promising. Except overall efficiency isn't great, and it looks like they require regular maintenance. Of course, maintenance becomes less of a problem at neighborhood/grid-local scale.

cportela 12y ago

Thank you for posting this as the print link. Literally a simple task, but again thanks.