If you've got property with a slope you can build a gravity battery. Pump water and store it uphill, later release the water and spin a turbine to recover a portion of the energy.
Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
11–20 of 21 posts
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#12Like you suggested, convert to Hydrogen[1] to store for winter or filling a H2 EV.
https://newatlas.com/energy/lavo-home-hydrogen-battery-stora...
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#13If you've got property with a slope you can build a gravity battery. Pump water and store it uphill, later release the water and spin a turbine to recover a portion of the energy.
Would pumping up into a tank in the roof work? Any idea of the amount of energy vs weight can be stored?
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#14Buying an EV and charging during daytime hours when export is restricted is the most cost effective mechanism for consuming this excess solar generation if batteries for storage and consumption aren't an option. Too much clean energy is a great problem to have.
Fully agree, this is probably the most viable future option.
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#15I mean, wouldn't the simple and easy solution be to store that 30% energy and use it at night to reduce your load then? A quick search suggests home battery systems that store 30kw hrs might be around 9,000 euro. Plus the various inverters, etc. Reducing peak load has to be more efficient than removing the CO2 after the fact, at least until that load is no longer generated by fossil fuels. It also lets you reduce you…
Sure, 30kW storage is fine, but it implies you use all the energy every day (or night). In the summer months my current set up uses basically 0 grid hours (as I already have some storage for night time). The 30% really is an excess after storage, running home appliance, charging batteries etc.
If you store 30% for 3 hours, that's 90% of peak generation. It seems, by law, you could then finish selling that excess power for the next ~1.3 hours at your maximum rate (less storage inefficiencies).
You could figure out what time of day rates are highest, because that would imply you're releasing the most pressure on fossil fuel generators.
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#16Do you have an electric oven? Bake fresh bread (or other food) for yourself and your neighbors.
Fresher, healthier, lower transportation costs, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#17If you've got property with a slope you can build a gravity battery. Pump water and store it uphill, later release the water and spin a turbine to recover a portion of the energy.
Would pumping up into a tank in the roof work? Any idea of the amount of energy vs weight can be stored?
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#18Do you have an electric oven? Bake fresh bread (or other food) for yourself and your neighbors. Fresher, healthier, lower transportation costs , etc.
I LOVE the simplicity of it!
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, 30kW storage is fine, but it implies you use all the energy every day (or night). In the summer months my current set up uses basically 0 grid hours (as I already have some storage for night time). The 30% really is an excess after storage, running home appliance, charging batteries etc.
If you store 30% for 3 hours, that's 90% of peak generation. It seems, by law, you could then finish selling that excess power for the next ~1.3 hours at your maximum rate (less storage inefficiencies). You could figure out what time of day rates are highest, because that would imply you're releasing the most pressure on fossil fuel generators.
That's a very good idea, probably also the easiest to implement since my set up is API driven.
Re: Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?
#20Do you have an electric oven? Bake fresh bread (or other food) for yourself and your neighbors. Fresher, healthier, lower transportation costs , etc.
I LOVE the simplicity of it!
When I was younger, one of the parents in the neighborhood was a bread delivery driver. I can still remember her ranting about an incident one snowy winter day. She couldn't drive as fast as all the other trucks on the highway and they were complaining to her over the radio. Her response was "I have no traction, I'm hauling a load of bread!"
A truck carrying bread is pretty close to the weight of an empty truck. The fuel efficiency of this truck is better than a truck hauling a load of flour. But... my guess is that per kilogram of cargo, hauling flour is much more fuel efficient than hauling bread and therefore it is better for the environment to haul flour around and then bake the bread as close to the source of consumption as possible.