Gravity batteries. Get a million gallon Tank on 10-20m stilts, pump water into it with ONLY waste electricity.
Let water flow out of it and power a turbine during times where electricity is needed.
Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#22Please don’t increase your energy consumption just because you are generating an excess. As a world, we need to lower our energy use (as I’m sure you are well aware). I’d urge you to consider those extra watts as a much needed contribution to the cause.
Fuck yoo cause. Energy is mine!
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#23Gravity batteries!
This. Best idea so far. If you can implement it.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#24You can sell it to your local utility company. You will get paid for it, and another power plant somewhere (maybe a coal power plant) will need to produce 1 kW less power.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#25I'd buy Tesla Powerwalls¹ and charge 'em up. One of them can store upto 13.5 kWh of energy and going by your comment below (190 kWh/30 days = 6.3 kWh/day, which seems in line with "I have an extra KW of power generation for ~8 hours" for peak days), it seems two of them costing $14k as per their calculator can handle 4 days worth of surplus.
Not sure if the economics would work out in your favor² but I personally consider going off-the-grid worth the cost.
¹https://www.tesla.com/powerwall
²subsidies: https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/learn/incenti... (could potentially knock off 50% of the cost if you qualify)
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#26Gravity batteries. Get a million gallon Tank on 10-20m stilts, pump water into it with ONLY waste electricity. Let water flow out of it and power a turbine during times where electricity is needed.
But then OP still has too much electricity — s/he just has too much electricity at different times!
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#27Please don’t increase your energy consumption just because you are generating an excess. As a world, we need to lower our energy use (as I’m sure you are well aware). I’d urge you to consider those extra watts as a much needed contribution to the cause.
That makes no sense. If the energy is here, what's the benefit of not using it?
It makes a bit of sense. If you use all energy, you a) generate heat b) increase your energy consumption habits. The alternative is of course to reflect the sunlight. Not that this one case would make a difference, but still makes sense as a mindset.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#28Please don’t increase your energy consumption just because you are generating an excess. As a world, we need to lower our energy use (as I’m sure you are well aware). I’d urge you to consider those extra watts as a much needed contribution to the cause.
That makes no sense. If the energy is here, what's the benefit of not using it?
Assuming the panels are connected to the grid, then the power will be consumed by neighbors - not wasted.
EDIT: I see it was right there in the first line of the post that the plan is to unplug from the grid. I would reconsider this decision. If you stay connected, you can share your excess capacity - if not then you use it or lose it. Why put yourself in that position?
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#29Please don’t increase your energy consumption just because you are generating an excess. As a world, we need to lower our energy use (as I’m sure you are well aware). I’d urge you to consider those extra watts as a much needed contribution to the cause.
That makes no sense. If the energy is here, what's the benefit of not using it?
Instead of consuming the extra energy, OP could also provide it to another customer through the grid, by selling it back to the utility company. This would reduce the total amount of energy that needs to be generated from non-renewable sources. If OP increases their own consumption instead, those non-renewable kWh are still being generated and causing environmental impact somewhere.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do with extra electricity?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes no sense. If the energy is here, what's the benefit of not using it?
Assuming the panels are connected to the grid, then the power will be consumed by neighbors - not wasted. EDIT: I see it was right there in the first line of the post that the plan is to unplug from the grid. I would reconsider this decision. If you stay connected, you can share your excess capacity - if not then you use it or lose it. Why put yourself in that position?
I personally support municipalities making it illegal to go completely off the grid.