So, where does lithium come from? It comes from the Earth, of course, but it doesn't require strip mining or blowing the tops off mountains like other resources do...most often, lithium is found in briny underground ponds. The liquid is pumped out and left to dry in the sun. TANSTAAFL https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lithium+pond+photos&iax=1&ia=image... Mining is mining. There isn't a "green" form. Tearing holes in the ear…
Also many municipalities don't allow battery 'grid-tie' with the option of 'off the grid' living. For example, Connecticut has laws which don't allow houses to have batteries that would allow a house to be self sustaining and have a connection to the grid. This is because if you have batteries which cause a back flow during a power outage to the power station, an electrical worker could get shocked down the road. The…
>This is because if you have batteries which cause a back flow during a power outage to the power station, an electrical worker could get shocked down the road.
If I were an electrical worked I'd treat a power line like it was live regardless of whether there is a power outage or not.
We have all lived through the improvements in construction with tools that don't need to be plugged in and phones that are unplugged. The next logical step is homes that are unplugged and self power generating. There is an incredible gap in society in the U.S. created by the tax code whereby if you make $25,000 and are a family of 5, you receive enough tax and food benefits and medical insurance to be equal to the person that makes $65,000 per year. And if your income increases to $45,000, you will be losing money, so there is no motivation to reach that point. The Living Off The Grid topic has gone viral because those stuck in the gap seek a way up without increasing income, because it's hard to increase income without hurting oneself. But the idea of downsizing and saving up has become popular with it. Getting a little plat of land and a trailer or a tiny house for a time while saving up.... growing food, having chickens, all are ways to save up and gain without actual cash income increase. Adding solar power to the mix helps prevent power bills. It is also a terrific way to fire the local monopoly power company, who may or may not in your area have any decency of customer service. Without competition, why would they have to care. But the off grid movement is pulling the carpet out from under these government allowed monopolies and forcing competition. In the same stroke, it removes the tax burden from the homeowner that was included in the electric bill. If you have a solar or wind power system and charge your Tesla car too, then you have a completely tax free energy system. It sounds like it's taking away from the government, but the neat thing is, this can also be used to alleviate financial strain on the government. If you can provide a self powered mobile home with rain-water collection to section 8 housing, then the government is also saving on those utility expenses. And land is cheaper a little further out. I recently bought 10 acres in Creek county Oklahoma. The power company wanted $10,000 to add one pole into the land and connection. I opted that it was better to spend that money on a solar power system. The same was true of water with huge expense, so I opted for rainwater and later to add a well. The up front costs associated with being on the grid for many rural areas, or adding more power poles is really more than costs will continue to be as they come down down down for self power generation. This is all exciting to me. We have to consider total impact. Hydro power is still a hugely terrific producer of energy. Rain that fills the lake.... the lake is a battery.... stored to produce energy. So rain makes our energy. This is still a much better solution than building batteries for large power needs. Yet the infrastructure and labor required to put in poles and wires is too high for homes in light of these modern developements. I look forward to an exciting and bright future. ~David Webster Offgridquest.com and Facebook's Living off the Grid
It's very hard to beat lead-acid on: - $/Wh - number of cycles - ability to be recycled at eol - loss of capacity over the lifetime of the battery (or beyond!) - safety It is easy to beat on - power density - weight - maintenance - mechanical stability (especially for fluid based cells) - installation cost (lead/acid requires a sealed enclosure venting to the outside to get rid of free oxygen and hydrogen) The same b…
I'd imagine in this case they are looking at the economy of scale they'll be able to gain when producing these out of the gigafactory. I'd be interested to see the $/Wh cost difference once it comes fully online.
Tesla batteries retail for $30K@85KWh, so approximately $350/Wh, Lead-acid deep discharge is about $10000/100KWh, so approximately $100/Wh. That's a pretty large gap.
significant drop in efficiency due to the distribution itself This is usually less than the efficiency drop involved in a round trip through a battery. It's not as big a factor as you think.
I'm not just talking about electrical loses, though that is a factor. Having to build 2-3 times the capacity because power generation can't be distributed throughout the day is a huge inefficiency.
Having to build 2-3 times the capacity because power generation can't be distributed throughout the day is a huge inefficiency.
This seems to me the big benefit here -- enough penetration of home backup batteries means public power generation doesn't have to be built up to provide massive peak surges. Further, trickle charging the backup batteries during the evenings/nighttime and allowing them to meet some needs during the day also means a higher net usage of generated power, so perhaps levels of generation could go down altogether.
There's also then the capitalistic angle -- if you want more peak power at your house, you can buy more batteries in lieu of (or in concert with) installing secondary power systems.
But reducing gross energy production due to higher net utilization would be a really cool thing, so long as the total cost to the macro system (considering full life of the battery vs. load taken off power plants) is a net positive.
But still the question is, why would I want that? I'm all for distributed power generation, but it can still be optimized better when it's connected to a grid.
Arguably with money cheap at the moment, it's a good investment.
(One must still be cautious - even with 0% interest rates - since the principal is still repayable. If your part of the economy goes bad, a default on a 0% loan is just as bad/likely as a default on a 5% loan.)
The 'living off the grid' angle is a red herring. The main application of this would be solving the peak load problem, ie smoothing out the load on power stations throughout the day. It is not clear to me how a LiPo batter is better suited for this than other battery types though, especially since weight is not a concern for a stationary battery in your home.
I wonder if this even needs to be something in the home. Wouldn't it also make sense to install these things, in bulk, in a place where they could service several homes? Say, at the block level. If it is part of power distribution infrastructure as opposed to a consumer product, then that simplifies some of the safety and maintenance issues; concerns like weight or volume are even less important if they are housed in a dedicated structure.
Yawn. I've been following this concept, and a wide array of very talented scientists working on it, for years now.
Any of the below projects, should they ever see the light of day (you'd think out of this many, at least one will make it eventually), stands a good chance of being quite superior for this application in just about every way:
It will be interesting to see the market reaction to this regarding the value of electricity generation companies. Governments that lean too heavily on taxes or state run monopolies for energy generation should also be concerned. There are places that tax generation from sources like the wind (for example, Nova Scotia), so I wouldn't be surprised if we see solar tax appear.
Thinking about it, why wouldn't utilities jump at this and make it a standard part of every install? It would allow them to lower the demand-based generation due to every house having a local buffer of storage. They could easily monitor the levels on all the packs in a sector and know ahead of time when they are going to need more capacity which they can fill with better generators like gas turbine or nuclear.
Can someone explain to me why being able to build off the electrical grid is worth all this effort since you're still going to need running water, sewage, bins collecting, broadband and a number of other things?
From the research I've done on solar power systems (for powering homes) the market does not have an obvious pre-packaged solution that is made for storage of excess capacity generated by your solar panels. One commonly suggested (and substantially cheaper) option is to just set things up so you don't have local battery storage and just redirect all excess power back to the utility company. The problem with that has a…
"You're giving power back to the utility company at a fraction of what you purchase electricity for."
Not if your region was forced to subscribe to a feed-in-tarriff subsidy scheme for solar. Around here, there was a time when solar generated power earned 10x the value of the same amount of energy purchased from the grid. That multiplier has fallen thankfully, but is still greater than one.
So, where does lithium come from? It comes from the Earth, of course, but it doesn't require strip mining or blowing the tops off mountains like other resources do...most often, lithium is found in briny underground ponds. The liquid is pumped out and left to dry in the sun. TANSTAAFL https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lithium+pond+photos&iax=1&ia=image... Mining is mining. There isn't a "green" form. Tearing holes in the ear…
Also many municipalities don't allow battery 'grid-tie' with the option of 'off the grid' living. For example, Connecticut has laws which don't allow houses to have batteries that would allow a house to be self sustaining and have a connection to the grid. This is because if you have batteries which cause a back flow during a power outage to the power station, an electrical worker could get shocked down the road. The…
Any reasonable grid company should not only not prohibit this, but welcome it and pay for energy people feed back into it. I can call mine any day and have a bi-directional meter put in so I can charge for it, should I ever choose to install solar panels.