Balcony solar without storage is actually pretty dumb when we already have integrated battery/inverter/solar mppt units available for a few hundred dollars.
All we need to do is have something like this hub inbetween to ensure grid isolation when an outage occurs.
For crticial loads you would just plug those directly into the all in one battery unit. Almost all of them these day also have a <20ms UPS pass through function as well. When the grid goes down it can isolate the battery from backfeeding the house but the solar will still function ans the critical loads will still function.
Why bother? Power companies will complain they are losing money and regulators will allow them to buy energy from residential solar panels basically for free (NEM 3.0). This is California.
California has spent decades convincing people to convert to solar panels and EVs and now that many have switched, they doubled electricity prices and told us not to charge when it’s too hot. Now they want solar panel owners to pay a surcharge for “connecting to the grid”, upwards of $100/month or more than my actual solar bill. It’s all a scam.
It's not a scam. Connecting to the grid has enormous value, and keeping the grid up has real costs. A model where your generation pays you retail prices doesn't make sense.
California's current net metering system, which is more reflective of the true benefits and costs of solar to the power system, has been incentivizing people to add storage to keep their solar rather than get paid big money to feed back midday low-value solar, which is a big win.
The new rule here requires you to pay for part of your imports (up to ~60%), even if you export more. I know people who installed batteries in the inverters because of this. It is more expensive overall (hybrid inverter + LFP batteries) but has other benefits (blackouts are not a problem, most months you don't even use the grid). I imagine that once sodium-ion battery production scales and costs decline, this will become the "default" option for a solar installation.
In more well-run locations, power companies are providing incentives to install batteries because they help reduce the load on the grid.
These are plug-in solutions, though. The whole idea is that a permit isn’t required. If approved in your area, you don’t need to work with the power company at all. You just buy one and plug it in.
The plug-in stuff doesn’t play by the same rules as the big installs.
Yes, and non plugin-in batteries don't just need a permit - typically the power company also directly controls the battery, via a web API that the manufacturer provides (at least in Australia, this is a condition for access to the incentives).
When we got our solar system in CA, our electric bill went to zero. We calculated the payback to be 9 years. Eventually, they stopped buying back electricity and changed the way they metered and our bill was as high as ever. We save a bit because we're able to charge our electric car at times of peak PV output.
We left California last year for this and many other reasons. They just don't want anyone to be productive here.
NEM 3.0 is more fair. The grid is expensive and just as expensive if it is needed to be fully utilized 1% of the time or 100% of the time.
The problem is California forcing new construction to buy overpriced solar from builders that makes little sense compared to commercial solar installations + grid.
Completely agree with you, Govts sacred duty is to protect the super rich and utilities are the biggest monopolized cash cows (Eg: Warren Buffet). However,if people work with their local governments and change the building code to allow plug-in solar and plug-in batteries, that will continuously upgrade every home to become more and more energy independent and with the explosion of products, eventually be grid free. The biggest costs are labor, permits and delays; if its just products that people can plug and play, the adoption will be faster than just rooftop solar (or rooftop + batteries).
Also, most utilities have tiered rates (higher utilization at higher rates), if you can have plug in systems that can bring the total kwh down, it immediately lowers the peak rate.
The only bottleneck is making products that are safe to plug in, and this will happen as building code creates a standard to plug-in.
I assume plug-in batteries are considerably more workable in the UK on 240V, since they could charge and deploy at double the rate of a plug-in system here. Of course 240V plugs exist in North America, but they're generally only installed for dryers, ranges, and EV chargers, so people don't tend to have one just free.
What percentage of buyers do you imagine are gonna buy a battery big enough to saturate 15A*120V=1800W for a substantial length of time? The average home uses 30 kWh per day = 1250W. Batteries don't need to handle peak load. Approximately nobody has a whole home UPS.
Also 240V power strips are fairly common in my circles. They're marketed as PDUs. GPU servers consume slightly less power on 240V because server PSUs tend to be more efficient at 240V.
The standard governing this is UL 1741 in the US or VDE-AR-N 4105 in the EU. both require certified inverters to detect grid loss and immediately cut off.
The new sodium batteries are a lot safer than the lithium chemistries. And we already do have type of home batteries they are just called UPS systems. The real game changer will be when 3-5kwh plugin batteries fall below $150-200pkwh as at those prices batteries will make sense even for apartment owners/renters with no solar to use it to demand shift as time of day electricity prices get more common.
How many houses in Britain have wiring that is less than 800 W away from starting a fire? How many of those houses have the disposable income to buy a plug in battery?
Yes, more electricity means more risk of fire. But 800W batteries do not seem like a major safety issue
While the potential for fires shouldn't be dismissed, for batteries designed to be stationary rather than mobile (such as in an e-bike), you can use a chemistry optimized for stability rather than optimizing for compact weight and size.
The power grid has the potential to be insanely dangerous. We largely have eliminated that danger because of tight regulations and codes.
Look up backfeeding, which is a huge concern with this stuff. It is entirely possible for anyone sharing a transformer with you to send power back up the lines to your house in a dangerous way. That’s why you shouldn’t just plug a generator in with a suicide plug when the power’s out.
A grid tied battery without the right protections is electrically identical to a generator with a suicide plug. We want some standards here.
Not really. If it was off grid it wouldn’t be a problem, but connecting to the grid requires that all of the power generating equipment get along and operate safely.
Anything that starts getting into shared territory requires regulations. Similar to how wireless equipment needs to comply with regulations so we can use the frequency spectrum.
What was the breaking point for modern British society where housing unwieldy and potentially hazardous electrical equipment in your living room seems like a completely normal and just thing to do?
Bluetti already has a product for this available in the EU. I have been posting eveywhere that they need to bring it tk fhe US.
https://www.bluettipower.eu/products/balco-transfer-hub
Balcony solar without storage is actually pretty dumb when we already have integrated battery/inverter/solar mppt units available for a few hundred dollars.
All we need to do is have something like this hub inbetween to ensure grid isolation when an outage occurs.
For crticial loads you would just plug those directly into the all in one battery unit. Almost all of them these day also have a <20ms UPS pass through function as well. When the grid goes down it can isolate the battery from backfeeding the house but the solar will still function ans the critical loads will still function.
Why bother? Power companies will complain they are losing money and regulators will allow them to buy energy from residential solar panels basically for free (NEM 3.0). This is California.
California has spent decades convincing people to convert to solar panels and EVs and now that many have switched, they doubled electricity prices and told us not to charge when it’s too hot. Now they want solar panel owners to pay a surcharge for “connecting to the grid”, upwards of $100/month or more than my actual solar bill. It’s all a scam.
It's not a scam. Connecting to the grid has enormous value, and keeping the grid up has real costs. A model where your generation pays you retail prices doesn't make sense.
California's current net metering system, which is more reflective of the true benefits and costs of solar to the power system, has been incentivizing people to add storage to keep their solar rather than get paid big money to feed back midday low-value solar, which is a big win.
> Connecting to the grid has enormous value
Yet in most locales it's illegal to disconnect from the grid.
If disconnection were legal for those who want to be energy self-sufficient, then charging just to connect would be more defensible.
The new rule here requires you to pay for part of your imports (up to ~60%), even if you export more. I know people who installed batteries in the inverters because of this. It is more expensive overall (hybrid inverter + LFP batteries) but has other benefits (blackouts are not a problem, most months you don't even use the grid). I imagine that once sodium-ion battery production scales and costs decline, this will become the "default" option for a solar installation.
In more well-run locations, power companies are providing incentives to install batteries because they help reduce the load on the grid.
These are plug-in solutions, though. The whole idea is that a permit isn’t required. If approved in your area, you don’t need to work with the power company at all. You just buy one and plug it in.
The plug-in stuff doesn’t play by the same rules as the big installs.
Yes, and non plugin-in batteries don't just need a permit - typically the power company also directly controls the battery, via a web API that the manufacturer provides (at least in Australia, this is a condition for access to the incentives).
When we got our solar system in CA, our electric bill went to zero. We calculated the payback to be 9 years. Eventually, they stopped buying back electricity and changed the way they metered and our bill was as high as ever. We save a bit because we're able to charge our electric car at times of peak PV output.
We left California last year for this and many other reasons. They just don't want anyone to be productive here.
The solar situation in CA is truly mind boggling for a state that is ostensibly progressive.
NEM 3.0 is more fair. The grid is expensive and just as expensive if it is needed to be fully utilized 1% of the time or 100% of the time.
The problem is California forcing new construction to buy overpriced solar from builders that makes little sense compared to commercial solar installations + grid.
These are problems not inherent to solar, but to places that are underdeveloped and under-regulated.
Plenty of places in modern and developing countries don’t have these issues.
Completely agree with you, Govts sacred duty is to protect the super rich and utilities are the biggest monopolized cash cows (Eg: Warren Buffet). However,if people work with their local governments and change the building code to allow plug-in solar and plug-in batteries, that will continuously upgrade every home to become more and more energy independent and with the explosion of products, eventually be grid free. The biggest costs are labor, permits and delays; if its just products that people can plug and play, the adoption will be faster than just rooftop solar (or rooftop + batteries).
Also, most utilities have tiered rates (higher utilization at higher rates), if you can have plug in systems that can bring the total kwh down, it immediately lowers the peak rate.
The only bottleneck is making products that are safe to plug in, and this will happen as building code creates a standard to plug-in.
Hahahahahahah
I assume plug-in batteries are considerably more workable in the UK on 240V, since they could charge and deploy at double the rate of a plug-in system here. Of course 240V plugs exist in North America, but they're generally only installed for dryers, ranges, and EV chargers, so people don't tend to have one just free.
What percentage of buyers do you imagine are gonna buy a battery big enough to saturate 15A*120V=1800W for a substantial length of time? The average home uses 30 kWh per day = 1250W. Batteries don't need to handle peak load. Approximately nobody has a whole home UPS.
Also 240V power strips are fairly common in my circles. They're marketed as PDUs. GPU servers consume slightly less power on 240V because server PSUs tend to be more efficient at 240V.
I thought plug-in solar was coming 10+ years ago.
Why? Just make it possible to buy "shares" in a larger battery bank, if you must.
Home batteries make total sense for off-grid systems or as a backup power source. But plug-in batteries are not designed to do either.
If one is not modifying the house wiring how does this prevent backflow into the grid? Does it shutdown completely on power loss from the mains?
The standard governing this is UL 1741 in the US or VDE-AR-N 4105 in the EU. both require certified inverters to detect grid loss and immediately cut off.
yeah, it’s called anti-islanding. UL 3700 is the thing to look at if you want to read more about some of the safety precautions
This will lead to some new and exciting ways of starting a housefire.
The new sodium batteries are a lot safer than the lithium chemistries. And we already do have type of home batteries they are just called UPS systems. The real game changer will be when 3-5kwh plugin batteries fall below $150-200pkwh as at those prices batteries will make sense even for apartment owners/renters with no solar to use it to demand shift as time of day electricity prices get more common.
Why that number in particular? Are you thinking of payback period of something else?
How many houses in Britain have wiring that is less than 800 W away from starting a fire? How many of those houses have the disposable income to buy a plug in battery?
Yes, more electricity means more risk of fire. But 800W batteries do not seem like a major safety issue
While the potential for fires shouldn't be dismissed, for batteries designed to be stationary rather than mobile (such as in an e-bike), you can use a chemistry optimized for stability rather than optimizing for compact weight and size.
Wild that we have to ask permission to be able to make this stuff.
The power grid has the potential to be insanely dangerous. We largely have eliminated that danger because of tight regulations and codes.
Look up backfeeding, which is a huge concern with this stuff. It is entirely possible for anyone sharing a transformer with you to send power back up the lines to your house in a dangerous way. That’s why you shouldn’t just plug a generator in with a suicide plug when the power’s out.
A grid tied battery without the right protections is electrically identical to a generator with a suicide plug. We want some standards here.
Not really. If it was off grid it wouldn’t be a problem, but connecting to the grid requires that all of the power generating equipment get along and operate safely.
Anything that starts getting into shared territory requires regulations. Similar to how wireless equipment needs to comply with regulations so we can use the frequency spectrum.
I can’t help feel without ampacity and voltage upgrades to most domestic home circuits this is like a fart in the wind.
What was the breaking point for modern British society where housing unwieldy and potentially hazardous electrical equipment in your living room seems like a completely normal and just thing to do?
I guess you've never come across electric heaters or if you want to go into the bedroom electric blankets ( 5000 fires per year in the UK in 2011 )
Presumably it helps that these things have their own fire suppression systems, time of use tariffs are cheap, and everybody needs a win.
(I'll be putting mine outside)