"television-size batteries" ... this isn't a very useful descriptor. television sizes and shapes are all over the place. most home batteries i've been looking at are closer to a CRT television in shape (and weight!) though that'd be very silly to reference in 2023. but an LED is way thinner than any home batteries i've ever seen. there must've been something better to compare them too.
I love GMP. We got a large solar installation a few ago to update the one that my husband put up in the 80s before we met. GMP gave us one of the cash incentives to buy our EV.
They are doing great things. Thanks for recognizing them.
Vermont is trying hard to do some shit right. I say that as a proud 6th- or 7th- gen.
I can't wait to hear the conspiracy myth the MAGATs will weave around this. "Allow one of these batteries in your home and Jeff Bezos will suck your family onto the moon with his giant magnetic penis!"
I know stuff about this stuff! I work in Solar and just went to a training session for a new generation batteries from Enphase. They’re nice people and they’re not Elmo.
A lot of the batteries like the Powerwall operate similarly, and they’re all reasonably good. I just went to an Enphase training where they described how their equipment performed during the Texas freeze and the Maui fires.
In an outage, all these batteries run down to a set minimum level of charge and then turn off. Every hour or so, they use a bit of the remaining charge to wake up and check in with the rooftop solar. They’re like “girl, is the sun shining? Can you recharge me?” If it’s sunny, Solar says “I got you” and charges the batteries. If it’s dark and stormy or Armageddon smoke fires, Solar keeps snoozing. Eventually the battery runs out of that remaining charge, and turns off for reals. The only way that battery is waking up is if the grid comes back, or a Tesla (and friends) tech shows up with a special generator to recharge your very expensive dead battery.
The thing about the Enphase system is that their microinverters can wake themselves up when the sun shines, and they can jump start that totally dead battery without the grid or a tech+generator. In Texas there were a lot of people who spent $$$ on Tesla systems only to be without power in a real emergency. No one is buying batteries for a 2 hour outage. They want disaster-proof power for the major outages.
But Sunshine Moonshine, why doesn’t solar work in an outage? It’s a safety thing. Your regular grid-tied solar system will turn off in an outage because if there’s a human repairing downed powerlines, we don’t want solar power from your roof electrocuting my friends while they’re doing repairs.
These sweet little Enphase microinverters know when they’re off grid ($ extra equipment required) and they’ll power your house in an outage, EVEN WITHOUT A BATTERY. It’s a bit more complex than basic solar but it is rad and I love it!
I’m an enginerd, not a sales person. I work for an OR/WA installer and know nice folks at a bunch of companies up here because the companies here are mostly pretty great, if people want insider info. We’re all friends and volunteer together.
Solar Oregon is a great resource, and OSSIA (our trade org) has lots of info. Stay away from “solar reviews” please. Those guys are just a lead gen machine.
Also, this Vermont plan sounds sweet! That will mean a lot of jobs for electricians and muscular young people who can lift these massive batteries.
Do you know anything about transparent solar panels? As a Michigan State grad I got all excited by the raves in the alumni magazine, but it doesn't appear to be available for little guys like me. Am I right about that?
There are some that don’t have the back sheet - that white thin plastic-ish coating behind the cells. But the cells are still normal opaque. They look cool in carports and stuff like that. I think those nearly transparent cells are still super rad future stuff that the mortals don’t get to play with yet.
Oh that stuff is rad. It’s possible to get it but it’s not as straightforward to design and install, and outside the scope of most regular solar installers. I did one design with onyx glass on a new school, and the electrical was a challenge. Tricky. Quirky. And then once I had a workable solution, I’d have to scrap it because it wasn’t code compliant. I think ultimately we had to request a code variance to make the project work.
I have a short attention span and I like my residential projects because I can measure it today, design it today, and put it on the roof in a day or two once we have the permit. I have a hard time with the bigger projects that have so many stakeholders and architects and engineers and contractors and months of delays... sorry what were we talking about?
So getting technical info from onyx, or maybe it was the glass contractor, or maybe it was the architect? All of that was so tedious. Brains with more focus than mine can handle it.
Definitely sexy, definitely possible. A bit tricky.
So I guess it's going to be awhile before I can use this on my house but I should maybe start asking the giant building developers in Kendall Square if they're considering it.
As a proud owner of a grid-tied 4kWh Sunpower system, it's really frustrating to lose power on a sunny day due to a blown transformer or something. Seems there should be a selector switch to insulate the home from the grid at such times.
Ooh if you have the right sunpower / SMA inverter there’s a simple add-on outlet option for backing up I think like 1200 watts or something. Secure Power Supply.
I don't know a lot about it, but these were their top of the line units almost four years ago. 400W each, and individual inverters built in to each one.
Oh okay, then the secure power supply is out. That was a feature that was built into some of the string inverters(the single large inverter on the wall), but if your panels have the inverters built in, then that’s a different creature.
There were sunpower panels with their own sunpower microinverters and then they followed those with sunpower panels that had Enphase inverters. I’ve seen the Enphase models paired with Tesla powerwall battery systems but I can’t recall seeing the other sunpower AC modules paired with storage. Not that it didn’t happen, just that I haven’t seen it. You’re going to need an AC coupled battery system (Tesla) with an automatic transfer switch. It typically means 1 or more powerwalls plus a controller box that serves as the transfer switch and the brains to control the whole system.
It’s a simple concept that takes a lot of electronics to accomplish: isolate the house from the grid (so you don’t send solar power back to a downed power line and kill someone), trick the solar into turning on by faking a grid signal (voltage/frequency), and have a way to capture and/or use the energy that the panels are producing (batteries to capture, loads to use).
Most Solar inverters just push the energy out, so if you’re not using much energy when solar has a lot of energy to give, it has to go somewhere. When the grid is good, that energy goes through your meter, you get credit for your contribution to the grid, and your neighbors use that energy you produced. If the grid is down, and your solar is producing, it needs a brain device to route that energy to your house loads, or into a battery, OR the brains controller will turn the solar off, because there’s nowhere for that energy to go.
In the short term you could get some of those UPS uninterrupted power supplies for your tech. I don’t know if there’s a clean way to power refrigeration with those. I’m sure the EE’s know what it would take. But you should check with your solar contractor and see if they’re doing battery upgrades. Lots of us are going back to our solar clients to add batteries, so it’s a known quantity.
there is . . . it's called an Automatic Transfer Switch . . . it cuts your generator/solar/wind/etc, source off from the grid during an outage and reconnects when the grid comes back.
automatics aren't cheap though . . . there are manually operated switches available for less but many don't have the safety features the utility requires.
if you have a battery backup you can set your entire house (or a part like heating, refrigeration and lighting) up as a giant Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) . . . this, of course, costs even more and may require separating the UPS-backed circuits from the rest of the house if so it is best done by licensed electrician (lots of safety/code* issues).
* the National Electric Code may seem arbitrary and overly complicated but believe me it has been developed over years by watching thousands of people die from electrocution and fires caused by installations many thought were bulletproof . . . there is even a rule that you can't install a 120v outlet flat in a countertop because if the rule wasn't there people would do that and electrocute someone the first time they spill salty water on it or drop a fork in it!
Even when I was dumb enough to do almost anything, I knew better than to fuck with electricity. I got the shit knocked out of me as a kid, one of the few lessons I took to heart. Now with only one eye, I'm done taking chances.
This is pretty cool, but we’re either going to need a hell of a lot more lithium, or a breakthrough in battery technology that allows us to manufacture good batteries without lithium, because there is not enough lithium on the planet to scale this up.
26 million tons of commercially extractable lithium out of an estimated 100 million tons of total lithium on the planet (not counting the huge amount dissolved in sea water which may or may not ever be recoverable) will last a while. The problematic one is cobalt but that is dropping out of much of battery formulations except for the battery in your phone which uses a high percentage of cobalt, small as your phone battery is. Nickel is energy intensive to refine but there is lots of it. Battery recycling is coming on line. Too soon to worry.
Aside from the recent discovery of a huge lithium deposit in Utah, ISTR reading something from MIT about a new battery formulation using aluminum and sulfur, both of which are ridiculously cheap and plentiful. Just remember to recycle your soda cans.
"Speaking of which, we need to do a story soon on Maine’s referendum, coming in November, to create a statewide public power utility nonprofit to buy out and replace its commercial electric utilities, how cool is that? Needless to say, the utilities are spending big against it."
Oh my goodness, yes! Usually I stop watching Hulu in October because of all the political ads (I don't have the budget for the ad-free subscription), but I've been getting ads against this referendum all damn summer! It was aggravating enough to make me just cancel my subscription.
Vermonter here! We're very happy with our Powerwall and with Green Mountain Power overall. We've already not noticed a couple of brief outages - the only reason we even know about them is by checking the app. The power transfer is seamless. It's a great backup, and we're happy to add to capacity when it's needed. I hope this program spreads to other states.
Please remember we are only on about the second cycle of battery development. From blunt force chemicals (Dry cells, lead acid, etc) to more exotic lithium electrolytes. Solid state batteries are in the works which will make Tesla obsolete. Will there be development problems, glitches, and setbacks? Sure, any new tech has that. But by about 2035 IC cars will be museum pieces and OFF THE ROADS. (The new cars will fly, too also.) OK, sorry about the optimism, but we need to move forward, including the battery/generator grid.
Thomas Edison supposedly said there are liars, damn liars and battery salesmen. Solid State batteries? Maybe, but I won't hold my breath. Lithium batteries will continue to improve, so we should be OK even without major new battery developments. But there probably will be new developments.
"buy out and replace its commercial electric utilities, how cool is that? Needless to say, the utilities are spending big against it." Proving, once again, that privatizing all the utilities in the US was a colossal fucking mistake, and those rich fuckwads should give the damn money back.
We've been doing just that ... buying out commercial electrical utilities... here in Mexico and their US "investors" with the help of the Biden Administration are doing everything they can to prevent the state company (CFE) from doing just that. USMCA, "the rules", blah, blah, blah!
There are a couple places that are still cheap: The North East Kingdom, where a couple of Wonketeers live, the border area (colder in winter) and southwest, across Lake Champlain from the Ticonderoga Paper mill. Smelly, with sulfery rain. But cheapest lakefront property evah!
Me and Mrs. H. stayed in a B&B on the Vermont side of the line many years ago. Not only was the water disgusting from the sulfur, but the bed would creak if I twitched my little toe. We ended up dragging the mattress on to the floor so we could fuck ourselves stupid.
"investing in television-size batteries" .... So how big is "television" any more? I don't even know when was the last time I saw a broadcast receiver. If they're talking about Video Display Panels, there doesn't seem to be any particular limit, there's one the size of a building in Times Square.
Are we talking about the old cathode ray style? A bit old fashioned, but we still say "bigger than a breadbox" even though no one uses them anymore. (Suggested replacement: Bigger than a beatbox)
Batteries are fucking fuck expensive, especially when you are talking about powering your house for a few days, even the cheap Batteries (FLA, flooded lead acid) are astronomical, $8k for 6kw, and limited lifetime, 5/ 10 years, and at that is for a system that provides about half of my energy needs with natural gas as the main heating source.
The rest of a system, panels, inverters, wiring, etc is also expensive, but coming down, plus they have a very long lifetime, 25 year warranty, or so.
the other nice thing is the switchover time is supposedly as fast as a UPS so things won't power off when switching from grid to battery. i also like how they are pretty modular in that you can daisy-chain additional packs to the same system. like i'm *pretty sure* i could run my entire upstairs (plus fridge and a couple main floor circuits) off 3kW so might start with that... but if not i can add a new packs that will hook up easy.
the EcoFlow ones i was looking at can scale up to 25kW. you can get 7.2kW with an automatic transfer switch for $6299... then there is the 30% rebate on top of that making it a bit under $4500. that is quite a bit cheaper than $8000. LFP will last longer than lead-acid. and smaller and lighter.
I’d love to have a backup battery for power outages instead of having to roll out a portable gas generator just to run our well-pump so we can have water. Not hot water, btw. That takes too much energy and time when you have to also run the well-pump and also run extension an cord from the fridge. What’s that you say? They make whole house generators so you don’t have to do all that? Yeah, those are expensive and most run on natural gas. And while we have a natural gas pipeline easement running through the back of our property, we don’t have natural gas lines supplying our street. It’s quite a thing. Of course, we also have proper high-speed internet provided to both ends of our road and surrounding area, but our stretch has old line DSL or satellite if you feel extra desperate. Why? Nobody knows! Not even the local providers, the utility companies, or the state. (They fucking know why.)
"television-size batteries" ... this isn't a very useful descriptor. television sizes and shapes are all over the place. most home batteries i've been looking at are closer to a CRT television in shape (and weight!) though that'd be very silly to reference in 2023. but an LED is way thinner than any home batteries i've ever seen. there must've been something better to compare them too.
I love GMP. We got a large solar installation a few ago to update the one that my husband put up in the 80s before we met. GMP gave us one of the cash incentives to buy our EV.
They are doing great things. Thanks for recognizing them.
Vermont is trying hard to do some shit right. I say that as a proud 6th- or 7th- gen.
I can't wait to hear the conspiracy myth the MAGATs will weave around this. "Allow one of these batteries in your home and Jeff Bezos will suck your family onto the moon with his giant magnetic penis!"
I know stuff about this stuff! I work in Solar and just went to a training session for a new generation batteries from Enphase. They’re nice people and they’re not Elmo.
A lot of the batteries like the Powerwall operate similarly, and they’re all reasonably good. I just went to an Enphase training where they described how their equipment performed during the Texas freeze and the Maui fires.
In an outage, all these batteries run down to a set minimum level of charge and then turn off. Every hour or so, they use a bit of the remaining charge to wake up and check in with the rooftop solar. They’re like “girl, is the sun shining? Can you recharge me?” If it’s sunny, Solar says “I got you” and charges the batteries. If it’s dark and stormy or Armageddon smoke fires, Solar keeps snoozing. Eventually the battery runs out of that remaining charge, and turns off for reals. The only way that battery is waking up is if the grid comes back, or a Tesla (and friends) tech shows up with a special generator to recharge your very expensive dead battery.
The thing about the Enphase system is that their microinverters can wake themselves up when the sun shines, and they can jump start that totally dead battery without the grid or a tech+generator. In Texas there were a lot of people who spent $$$ on Tesla systems only to be without power in a real emergency. No one is buying batteries for a 2 hour outage. They want disaster-proof power for the major outages.
But Sunshine Moonshine, why doesn’t solar work in an outage? It’s a safety thing. Your regular grid-tied solar system will turn off in an outage because if there’s a human repairing downed powerlines, we don’t want solar power from your roof electrocuting my friends while they’re doing repairs.
These sweet little Enphase microinverters know when they’re off grid ($ extra equipment required) and they’ll power your house in an outage, EVEN WITHOUT A BATTERY. It’s a bit more complex than basic solar but it is rad and I love it!
I’m an enginerd, not a sales person. I work for an OR/WA installer and know nice folks at a bunch of companies up here because the companies here are mostly pretty great, if people want insider info. We’re all friends and volunteer together.
Solar Oregon is a great resource, and OSSIA (our trade org) has lots of info. Stay away from “solar reviews” please. Those guys are just a lead gen machine.
Also, this Vermont plan sounds sweet! That will mean a lot of jobs for electricians and muscular young people who can lift these massive batteries.
Do you know anything about transparent solar panels? As a Michigan State grad I got all excited by the raves in the alumni magazine, but it doesn't appear to be available for little guys like me. Am I right about that?
There are some that don’t have the back sheet - that white thin plastic-ish coating behind the cells. But the cells are still normal opaque. They look cool in carports and stuff like that. I think those nearly transparent cells are still super rad future stuff that the mortals don’t get to play with yet.
This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about: https://onyxsolar.com/.
Oh that stuff is rad. It’s possible to get it but it’s not as straightforward to design and install, and outside the scope of most regular solar installers. I did one design with onyx glass on a new school, and the electrical was a challenge. Tricky. Quirky. And then once I had a workable solution, I’d have to scrap it because it wasn’t code compliant. I think ultimately we had to request a code variance to make the project work.
I have a short attention span and I like my residential projects because I can measure it today, design it today, and put it on the roof in a day or two once we have the permit. I have a hard time with the bigger projects that have so many stakeholders and architects and engineers and contractors and months of delays... sorry what were we talking about?
So getting technical info from onyx, or maybe it was the glass contractor, or maybe it was the architect? All of that was so tedious. Brains with more focus than mine can handle it.
Definitely sexy, definitely possible. A bit tricky.
So I guess it's going to be awhile before I can use this on my house but I should maybe start asking the giant building developers in Kendall Square if they're considering it.
As a proud owner of a grid-tied 4kWh Sunpower system, it's really frustrating to lose power on a sunny day due to a blown transformer or something. Seems there should be a selector switch to insulate the home from the grid at such times.
Ooh if you have the right sunpower / SMA inverter there’s a simple add-on outlet option for backing up I think like 1200 watts or something. Secure Power Supply.
I don't know a lot about it, but these were their top of the line units almost four years ago. 400W each, and individual inverters built in to each one.
Oh okay, then the secure power supply is out. That was a feature that was built into some of the string inverters(the single large inverter on the wall), but if your panels have the inverters built in, then that’s a different creature.
There were sunpower panels with their own sunpower microinverters and then they followed those with sunpower panels that had Enphase inverters. I’ve seen the Enphase models paired with Tesla powerwall battery systems but I can’t recall seeing the other sunpower AC modules paired with storage. Not that it didn’t happen, just that I haven’t seen it. You’re going to need an AC coupled battery system (Tesla) with an automatic transfer switch. It typically means 1 or more powerwalls plus a controller box that serves as the transfer switch and the brains to control the whole system.
It’s a simple concept that takes a lot of electronics to accomplish: isolate the house from the grid (so you don’t send solar power back to a downed power line and kill someone), trick the solar into turning on by faking a grid signal (voltage/frequency), and have a way to capture and/or use the energy that the panels are producing (batteries to capture, loads to use).
Most Solar inverters just push the energy out, so if you’re not using much energy when solar has a lot of energy to give, it has to go somewhere. When the grid is good, that energy goes through your meter, you get credit for your contribution to the grid, and your neighbors use that energy you produced. If the grid is down, and your solar is producing, it needs a brain device to route that energy to your house loads, or into a battery, OR the brains controller will turn the solar off, because there’s nowhere for that energy to go.
In the short term you could get some of those UPS uninterrupted power supplies for your tech. I don’t know if there’s a clean way to power refrigeration with those. I’m sure the EE’s know what it would take. But you should check with your solar contractor and see if they’re doing battery upgrades. Lots of us are going back to our solar clients to add batteries, so it’s a known quantity.
Sunpower has their own proprietary storage system, too.
https://us.sunpower.com/home-solar/solar-battery-storage
It all comes down to $$$. As in, I don't have enough to make it happen.
there is . . . it's called an Automatic Transfer Switch . . . it cuts your generator/solar/wind/etc, source off from the grid during an outage and reconnects when the grid comes back.
automatics aren't cheap though . . . there are manually operated switches available for less but many don't have the safety features the utility requires.
if you have a battery backup you can set your entire house (or a part like heating, refrigeration and lighting) up as a giant Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) . . . this, of course, costs even more and may require separating the UPS-backed circuits from the rest of the house if so it is best done by licensed electrician (lots of safety/code* issues).
* the National Electric Code may seem arbitrary and overly complicated but believe me it has been developed over years by watching thousands of people die from electrocution and fires caused by installations many thought were bulletproof . . . there is even a rule that you can't install a 120v outlet flat in a countertop because if the rule wasn't there people would do that and electrocute someone the first time they spill salty water on it or drop a fork in it!
Even when I was dumb enough to do almost anything, I knew better than to fuck with electricity. I got the shit knocked out of me as a kid, one of the few lessons I took to heart. Now with only one eye, I'm done taking chances.
This is pretty cool, but we’re either going to need a hell of a lot more lithium, or a breakthrough in battery technology that allows us to manufacture good batteries without lithium, because there is not enough lithium on the planet to scale this up.
26 million tons of commercially extractable lithium out of an estimated 100 million tons of total lithium on the planet (not counting the huge amount dissolved in sea water which may or may not ever be recoverable) will last a while. The problematic one is cobalt but that is dropping out of much of battery formulations except for the battery in your phone which uses a high percentage of cobalt, small as your phone battery is. Nickel is energy intensive to refine but there is lots of it. Battery recycling is coming on line. Too soon to worry.
Aside from the recent discovery of a huge lithium deposit in Utah, ISTR reading something from MIT about a new battery formulation using aluminum and sulfur, both of which are ridiculously cheap and plentiful. Just remember to recycle your soda cans.
Can they use non-Nazi sourced batteries instead? Otherwise this is a great plan.
Batteries will come from various manufacturers.
As long as the Tesla batteries don't explode....
"Speaking of which, we need to do a story soon on Maine’s referendum, coming in November, to create a statewide public power utility nonprofit to buy out and replace its commercial electric utilities, how cool is that? Needless to say, the utilities are spending big against it."
Oh my goodness, yes! Usually I stop watching Hulu in October because of all the political ads (I don't have the budget for the ad-free subscription), but I've been getting ads against this referendum all damn summer! It was aggravating enough to make me just cancel my subscription.
Vermonter here! We're very happy with our Powerwall and with Green Mountain Power overall. We've already not noticed a couple of brief outages - the only reason we even know about them is by checking the app. The power transfer is seamless. It's a great backup, and we're happy to add to capacity when it's needed. I hope this program spreads to other states.
Please remember we are only on about the second cycle of battery development. From blunt force chemicals (Dry cells, lead acid, etc) to more exotic lithium electrolytes. Solid state batteries are in the works which will make Tesla obsolete. Will there be development problems, glitches, and setbacks? Sure, any new tech has that. But by about 2035 IC cars will be museum pieces and OFF THE ROADS. (The new cars will fly, too also.) OK, sorry about the optimism, but we need to move forward, including the battery/generator grid.
Thomas Edison supposedly said there are liars, damn liars and battery salesmen. Solid State batteries? Maybe, but I won't hold my breath. Lithium batteries will continue to improve, so we should be OK even without major new battery developments. But there probably will be new developments.
Considering how badly people drive in just two dimensions, I am perfectly happy that we don't have flying cars and prolly never will.
Yeah, a ton of metal falling out of the sky because of that guy who thought he could keep going a little past E.
Ah…The Jetsons….
Great book that expands on this whole subject... on Prime day no less!
https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1632865688/ref=asc_df_1632865688/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312126345020&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2958463278853726117&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003426&hvtargid=pla-435309931398&psc=1
Oh, thanks! I'll go you one better and toss up a Wonkette-gets-a-tiny-cut link: https://amzn.to/3rQhwOe
The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future, by Gretchen Bakke PhD, 2017
"buy out and replace its commercial electric utilities, how cool is that? Needless to say, the utilities are spending big against it." Proving, once again, that privatizing all the utilities in the US was a colossal fucking mistake, and those rich fuckwads should give the damn money back.
We've been doing just that ... buying out commercial electrical utilities... here in Mexico and their US "investors" with the help of the Biden Administration are doing everything they can to prevent the state company (CFE) from doing just that. USMCA, "the rules", blah, blah, blah!
All the more reason for me to move to VT when I retire. Tesla batteries are expensive so leasing them from the local utility is a great solution.
There are a couple places that are still cheap: The North East Kingdom, where a couple of Wonketeers live, the border area (colder in winter) and southwest, across Lake Champlain from the Ticonderoga Paper mill. Smelly, with sulfery rain. But cheapest lakefront property evah!
Me and Mrs. H. stayed in a B&B on the Vermont side of the line many years ago. Not only was the water disgusting from the sulfur, but the bed would creak if I twitched my little toe. We ended up dragging the mattress on to the floor so we could fuck ourselves stupid.
"investing in television-size batteries" .... So how big is "television" any more? I don't even know when was the last time I saw a broadcast receiver. If they're talking about Video Display Panels, there doesn't seem to be any particular limit, there's one the size of a building in Times Square.
Are we talking about the old cathode ray style? A bit old fashioned, but we still say "bigger than a breadbox" even though no one uses them anymore. (Suggested replacement: Bigger than a beatbox)
Batteries are fucking fuck expensive, especially when you are talking about powering your house for a few days, even the cheap Batteries (FLA, flooded lead acid) are astronomical, $8k for 6kw, and limited lifetime, 5/ 10 years, and at that is for a system that provides about half of my energy needs with natural gas as the main heating source.
The rest of a system, panels, inverters, wiring, etc is also expensive, but coming down, plus they have a very long lifetime, 25 year warranty, or so.
oh whoops. forgot the link! these ones here :
https://us.ecoflow.com/products/delta-pro-portable-power-station?variant=40627186368585
the other nice thing is the switchover time is supposedly as fast as a UPS so things won't power off when switching from grid to battery. i also like how they are pretty modular in that you can daisy-chain additional packs to the same system. like i'm *pretty sure* i could run my entire upstairs (plus fridge and a couple main floor circuits) off 3kW so might start with that... but if not i can add a new packs that will hook up easy.
Thanks!
the EcoFlow ones i was looking at can scale up to 25kW. you can get 7.2kW with an automatic transfer switch for $6299... then there is the 30% rebate on top of that making it a bit under $4500. that is quite a bit cheaper than $8000. LFP will last longer than lead-acid. and smaller and lighter.
Nice!
I’d love to have a backup battery for power outages instead of having to roll out a portable gas generator just to run our well-pump so we can have water. Not hot water, btw. That takes too much energy and time when you have to also run the well-pump and also run extension an cord from the fridge. What’s that you say? They make whole house generators so you don’t have to do all that? Yeah, those are expensive and most run on natural gas. And while we have a natural gas pipeline easement running through the back of our property, we don’t have natural gas lines supplying our street. It’s quite a thing. Of course, we also have proper high-speed internet provided to both ends of our road and surrounding area, but our stretch has old line DSL or satellite if you feel extra desperate. Why? Nobody knows! Not even the local providers, the utility companies, or the state. (They fucking know why.)