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Hope it'll be available in Europe. I'd like to store some photovoltaics generated energy "because I can" (still get loltastic money for feeding it into the grid

by kriro 12y ago

Hope it'll be available in Europe. I'd like to store some photovoltaics generated energy "because I can" (still get loltastic money for feeding it into the grid, yay subsidies). Less reliance on the grid is good. I'm rooting for decentralized power (I'm envisioning battery stores in communites that form local grids) but there's obvious issues to be solved. Very interested in the announcement, pricing etc.

ghshephard 12y ago
It will be interesting to see how this works in California. Everyone I know who has Photovoltaics, also has a switch which is required to disable them the instant the mains power goes down. The battery is still quite useful in that scenario, but it would be even more useful if you could supply your house with power from batteries, after an event results in the grid losing power.
- tempestn 12y ago
  That requirement (appropriately called "anti-islanding") is to avoid islanding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islanding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islanding An alternative is to automatically disconnect your home from the grid in that situation, rather than disabling the PV. This is referred to as intentional islanding. (Although I suppose that could be disallowed in some jurisdictions, for no good reason that I can think of. At the very least though, you should be able to manually disconnect once the anti-islanding has kicked in, and then fire the PV and/or battery-powered inverter back up.) Depending on your equipment you may still have to shut down before reconnecting to the grid, once grid power is back up. (Depends on whether your inverter is capable of re-synchronizing with the grid, and again I suppose based on regulations in your jurisdiction.)
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    This sounds a lot like the ATS (Automatic Transfer Switch) which, is a massive switch that switches from Mains grid to generator during a power outage in some of the buildings I've worked at (And scares the crap out of you if you are in the same room when it switches over - very, very loud).
danans 12y ago
Some cities already have their own grid-connected electric utility (the cities of Alameda and Santa-clara in the Bay Area, for example). But for a community grid to completely disconnect from the larger grid and still provide reliable service, it would have to recreate some of the redundancy inherent in today's massive complicated grid. These batteries might help achieve some of this redundancy for an independent community grid, but the total installed battery+generation capacity would have to far exceed peak demand. Another thing the grid connection gets you is the ability to charge your battery with cheap, but intermittent renewable electricity being generated at distant wind farms. You also still have the problem of building, financing, and maintaining the local power distribution infrastructure in your community.

by kriro 12y ago

ghshephard 12y ago

It will be interesting to see how this works in California. Everyone I know who has Photovoltaics, also has a switch which is required to disable them the instant the mains power goes down. The battery is still quite useful in that scenario, but it would be even more useful if you could supply your house with power from batteries, after an event results in the grid losing power.

tempestn 12y ago
That requirement (appropriately called "anti-islanding") is to avoid islanding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islanding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islanding An alternative is to automatically disconnect your home from the grid in that situation, rather than disabling the PV. This is referred to as intentional islanding. (Although I suppose that could be disallowed in some jurisdictions, for no good reason that I can think of. At the very least though, you should be able to manually disconnect once the anti-islanding has kicked in, and then fire the PV and/or battery-powered inverter back up.) Depending on your equipment you may still have to shut down before reconnecting to the grid, once grid power is back up. (Depends on whether your inverter is capable of re-synchronizing with the grid, and again I suppose based on regulations in your jurisdiction.)
- ghshephard 12y ago
  This sounds a lot like the ATS (Automatic Transfer Switch) which, is a massive switch that switches from Mains grid to generator during a power outage in some of the buildings I've worked at (And scares the crap out of you if you are in the same room when it switches over - very, very loud).

danans 12y ago

Some cities already have their own grid-connected electric utility (the cities of Alameda and Santa-clara in the Bay Area, for example). But for a community grid to completely disconnect from the larger grid and still provide reliable service, it would have to recreate some of the redundancy inherent in today's massive complicated grid. These batteries might help achieve some of this redundancy for an independent community grid, but the total installed battery+generation capacity would have to far exceed peak demand. Another thing the grid connection gets you is the ability to charge your battery with cheap, but intermittent renewable electricity being generated at distant wind farms. You also still have the problem of building, financing, and maintaining the local power distribution infrastructure in your community.