The Myth of Going Off the Power Grid 281
Lasrick writes: Dawn Stover uses Elon Musk's announcement that Tesla will soon be unveiling plans for a battery that could power your home as a starting point to explore the idea that "going off the grid" is going to solve climate change. "The kind of in-house energy storage he is proposing could help make renewables a bigger part of the global supply. But headlines announcing that a Tesla battery 'could take your home off the grid' spread misconceptions about what it takes to be self-sufficient — and stop global warming." Stover worries that shifting responsibility for solutions to climate change from governments to individuals creates an 'every-man-for-himself' culture that actually works against energy solutions and does little to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, "smart grid" technology would be much more efficient: "With a smarter grid, excess electricity generated by solar panels and wind turbines could be distributed to a network of on-the-grid home and car batteries. Some utilities have also experimented with using home water heaters as an economical substitute for batteries."
Energy storage in the grid is 100% efficient! (Score:2, Interesting)
"Putting energy in a battery throws away 30% to 40% right off the top in charge and discharge inefficiencies as shown above. If you have access to the grid, it makes no economical sense to give that up! Energy storage in the grid is 100% efficient and virtually unlimited whereas storing energy in batteries is limited and not only throws away 30% of your energy, but also:"
Source: http://www.aprs.org/off-grid-maybe.html
Re:Energy storage in the grid is 100% efficient! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you manage to keep the utilities from imposing excessive fees then I agree. The only way to do that though is to divorce the service connection from the usage cost, and they don't want to do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, since solar power is measured in W/m^2/y, just put a solar tax on real estate, with grid power consumption as a deductible.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The "grid" doesn't store energy, it delivers it -- and nowhere near 100% efficiency either. Power is generated "on demand". While there are spots around the country/globe where utilities experiment with storing excess production -- flywheels, exotic batteries, thermal wells, etc., it is a very rare exception.
Re: (Score:3)
The grid is fine in higher density populated area. As you go more rural it makes spence to have off grid options.
Power outages can last for days where you are waiting for help, but all the people are working to get the denser arias first.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, burning a lump of coal in a power station also throws away a lot of the stored energy in the coal - accumulated conversion and transmission losses make the grid somewhat less than 100% efficient.
Re: (Score:2)
HAve a look at 'line loss'. The grid isn't 100% either. A lot depends on how local the net demand is.
Re: Energy storage in the grid is 100% efficient! (Score:5, Informative)
Vastly more efficient than battery, I'll grant, but let's try to stay accurate.
Modern Li-ion batteries have a round-trip efficiency of about 85%. Grid transmission has losses of about 7% from the power station to you, but will likely be higher if it is peer-to-peer. They are actually in the same ballpark.
But TFA is just stupid. The tiny handful of first-world survivalist kooks trying to go off the grid are not what is causing global warming. The massive expansion of coal burning in India is a somewhat bigger problem, by many orders of magnitude. Maybe we should focus on that instead. Solar-to-battery would be a good solution to many Indian and African villages that are not on the grid at all.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm interested in how Musk is going to ramp up battery manufacture, as the current Li-ion techniques actually do have major ecological and environmental impact during the mining, refining and manufacturing processes. As a result, placing solar-to-battery in each Indian village will release huge amounts of toxins at the start, and then again after the panels/batteries wear down and are no longer operating efficiently.
I see wave generators and wind turbines as being a bigger part of the solution here, but at
Re: (Score:3)
Solar is also doomed because eventually it will have to scale up to the point where enclosing the entire sun simply isn't enough.
Wind would buy as a bit of breathing room before we'd have to worry about significantly affecting weather patterns.
Re: (Score:2)
Solar is also doomed because eventually it will have to scale up to the point where enclosing the entire sun simply isn't enough.
Good lord, are you on crack? How do you think Planet Earth handled its energy needs before Homo Sapiens got here?
Re: (Score:2)
Solar is also doomed because eventually it will have to scale up to the point where enclosing the entire sun simply isn't enough.
If you can limit the population, and the energy use per capita, energy requirement will reach an upper limit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Enough for what? A quick back-of-envelope calculation seems to suggest total solar output works for 1W/10kg of nonsolar matter in the Solar System. That's enough to, for example, nanomotors and slow microchips, or several classes of living organisms for that matter.
We are currently having problems because we've used stored energy that's running out to boost our output for a given
Re: (Score:2)
Grid transmission has losses of about 7% from the power station to you, but will likely be higher if it is peer-to-peer.
Seeing as how the losses are basically per 'step' on the grid, peer to peer sharing would normally mean that you're sharing power with your neighbors - IE 100 feet away and no transformers, not many miles and lots of transformers and other switching equipment.
Re: (Score:2)
Seeing as how the losses are basically per 'step' on the grid, peer to peer sharing would normally mean that you're sharing power with your neighbors - IE 100 feet away and no transformers, not many miles and lots of transformers and other switching equipment.
If your neighborhood is sunny, and the other side of town is under a passing cloud, it is more likely that you will be sharing power over a fairly long distance, where there will be significant resistive losses as well as voltage conversion loses.
Re: (Score:2)
Modern Li-ion batteries have a round-trip efficiency of about 85%.
And some of the high-power, super-fast-charge Li-* batteries coming into production have efficiencies in the high 90s.
They have to. One of the limits on the charging and discharging rate of the batteries is the inefficiency. That lost energy doesn't just disappear. It turns into HEAT, INSIDE the battery. If you can dump 3/4 of a high-capacity battery's capacity into it in a couple minutes, without melting it down or setting it on fire, i
Re: (Score:2)
I wondered about that quote as well but the article was including limited battery capacity versus virtually unlimited grid capacity. At the end of the day when the batteries are fully charged, excess solar power cannot be saved unlike with a grid-tie solution.
Re: (Score:2)
Smart controllers can switch supply to a different load when they detect the batteries are "full". You can switch to a water pump, for example. My controller will even charge a second battery bank, if I had one.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Honestly, the problem is simply the sheer number of people. The fact of reality is that we don't need 7 billion people. The vast majority of that 7 billion are nothing more than "users". They simply churn the resources we have and contribute little towards the advancement of the human species in culture, science, or otherwise. In 100 years from now, when all us are dead, and a completely different group of humans is inhabiting the Earth, no one will care that this vast majority of humans ever even existed.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> The fact of reality is that we don't need 7 billion people.
This just in: 6,999,999,999 people say the fact of the reality is they don't need YOU.
Re: (Score:2)
if you start speaking like that, why do you think artists are necessary? it doesn't make sense.
Re: Energy storage in the grid is 100% efficient! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a kook - it's just going to cost me more to connect to the grid than it costs to make and store solar power.
Last time I upgraded the system, in order to qualify for a subsidy, I had to get a quote to connect to the grid - which ends about 600 metres up the road. It was going to cost ~AUD$30K, plus tree-clearing costs, to get a standard domestic service, i.e. single-phase 230VAC, not including air-conditioning (air-con requires higher amperage supply). The solar upgrade (new 1320ah batteries, additional 960W of PV, installation and controllers, etc) was just over $20K.
Re: (Score:2)
The massive expansion of coal burning in India is a somewhat bigger problem, by many orders of magnitude. Maybe we should focus on that instead. Solar-to-battery would be a good solution to many Indian and African villages that are not on the grid at all.
And here you do the classic mistake of assuming that the big problem when it comes to carbon emissions is the third world. It is not. Not in absolute numbers, and especially not in numbers related to the population. The BIG problem is the US, which combines absurdly high carbon emissions with a big population. If I recall correctly US emits about 3 times as much carbon as India does in absolute numbers, and about 12 times as much per capita(!).
If there is any place where we could easily and cheaply cut carb
Re: (Score:2)
> Grid transmission has losses of about 7% from the power station to you, but will likely be higher if it is peer-to-peer.
Methinks your second statement is dead wrong. If my neighbor is producing more electricity with his PV than he's using right now, it flows on the local distribution wire 100' from his house to the street, 100' down the street, and 100' to my home. That 300' of relatively little electricity a very short distance has virtually no line losses. You save both on the transmission and on the
Re: Energy storage in the grid is 100% efficient! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
8% tax free return is pretty damn good. S&P 500 does not do 8% consistently, no way in hell.
It's OK, but not stellar.
And since it is solar power, it is also clearly stellar.
Re: (Score:2)
That's only if you don't count the unused solar energy as waste.
But....Profits! (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. As long as monopolistic energy companies spend their time legislating new fees to prevent the average person from being able to afford rooftop solar panels and wind turbines under the banner of "not choosing winners" ...a net-zero utility bill simply isn't possible in today's (political) climate - not in the US.
This isn't likely to change, either. So, that leaves one option: Every man for himself. A house, and maybe even an entire neighborhood could be built around the idea of having some ability to cut utility costs by utilizing smart appliances, solar power, and electric cars with big honking batteries. But if you generate more power than you need, you better store it - where I live, you'll get an extra fee every month for generating your own power AND the power company only takes your excess in exchange for WHOLESALE rates.
Net-zero would be my only incentive, and it's looking less likely without being investigated by the IAEA
Re:But....Profits! (Score:5, Insightful)
Regular electricity is generated. It's then sold wholesale, where the local utilities then buy it and sell it at a regulated (5-10%) profit. In between the wholesale price, the 5-10% profit, and what you pay, is the cost of maintaining the distribution and transmission networks. These costs are nonzero. As the distribution utilities are traditionally regulated ("nonregulation" is really a misnomer, regulation still exists in those markets), those costs will still be borne by the ratepayers.
If users of rooftop solar get net zero pricing, then they shift all of the upkeep costs to those without rooftop solar - as PV prices go down, these costs will be borne more and more by the poor and/or those who rent (in many cases, one and the same.)
If you want to not pay for system upkeep, disconnect yourself. Spend the money on a vast solar array and a basement full of batteries (what, you though 24h of storage was enough? Not all the time, it's not.) Then realize the traditional model costs less to you.
Re: (Score:2)
At least where I am, they pay me something like 3.2c, but it also runs my meter backwards. If I put an extra 10kwh on the grid during the day, I can draw that same 10kwh at night for net zero. And I "made" 32c.
I don't need a battery system, the "grid" acts as one, and with one year billing cycle, power I put on during the summer I can draw back in winter for no charge.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't need a battery system, the "grid" acts as one, and with one year billing cycle, power I put on during the summer I can draw back in winter for no charge.
Yes, but you won't get that forever for free.
If everyone did it, then the power company would have to provide power during the winter and everyone's bill would be zero.
The math simply doesn't work.
Net-zero billing works when very few customers are doing it, it falls apart at any kind of scale.
Why should a public utility (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
With due respect inqrorken, your post is full of inaccuracies about the power system in the United States. (I have no idea about other countries).
> Regular electricity is generated. It's then sold wholesale
This is true for everywhere except the Southeast, AK, HI, and the non-California land west of the North Dakota-to-Texas set of states.
> where the local utilities then buy it and sell it at a regulated (5-10%) profit.
Absolutely wrong. In the areas where there is a wholesale market and in the areas wh
Re: (Score:2)
Capacity upgrades are generally a small percentage of O&M budgets. The majority goes to preventative and corrective maintenance (e.g., tree trimming, transformer r
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Holy Dooley! Was that mis-keyed? How the hell do you manage 100 (one hundred) kWh per day? I've got a household of 2 adults and 2 teenagers all with their own computers, TV, etc, and we rarely get above 10 (ten) kWh/day.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I use about 3500 kWh/year.
Sorry you should figure how to reduce the power consumption, but well, at that price you seem not to care. Main problem with the climate catastrophe ... how energy can be so cheap that you don't care about reducing consumption is beyond me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As I start to compose this, it's 16:52 on Saturday here. 2 adults and 2 teenagers in the house. Moving into Autumn, outside air temp is about 21 C, no need for air-con atm (don't have it, anyway). Current loads: 2 laptops, 1 desktop, some household lighting (mix of halogen and CFL), I just heard the refrigerator switch on, maybe the freezer is also going. The charge controller remote display in the kitchen says the load is 19.1 amps - that's a combination of 4.1 amps @ 24VDC, and 15 amps of 240VAC - the ho
Re: (Score:2)
Well, there you go - it's 19:55 here, and Legend of Korra Book 3 just went on - the TV went on, the sound system went on, there's more lights on, and the battery voltage dropped to 24.2. Don't want to let it get lower, so the generator is going to run for an hour or so, just to keep the battery voltage up.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But...you want it both ways! You want the reliability of the power company, and to spend less. You want to use your own power when its convenient for you, but have them on standby for when you need them but apparently don't want to pay. You want to force feed power back to them, but they don't want it, they want to sell power not store it for you so you can save money.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're only proving my point, Coward. Why should I pay out of my own pocket to generate solar, and then pay the utility some more the utility to take my excess energy?
If I can't make my own home efficient enough to stand on it's own, I'm not spending the money. If the local power company wants solar, they can do it on their dime, I'll stick to my utility fees, TYVM.
If a neighborhood/city decided to invest in it's own smart grid, and treat every electricity source on equal-footing, that'd be interesting.
Re:But....Profits! (Score:4, Insightful)
Do what they do in Germany. Buy the local grid infrastructure and make it work for you. The animals buy the farm, and work it for themselves instead if being the product.
Public ownership it very strong regulation is the only long term future for the grid. Utilities will go into a death spiral.
Watt is this article about? (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be an article more about condemning Tesla's batteries that about energy. In fact the word "watt" appears nowhere. Before you can have a discussion about energy you need to be armed with some facts about actual energy needs and potentials. This is just more anti-Tesla propaganda.
Re:Watt is this article about? (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems to be an article more about condemning Tesla's batteries that about energy. In fact the word "watt" appears nowhere. Before you can have a discussion about energy you need to be armed with some facts about actual energy needs and potentials. This is just more anti-Tesla propaganda.
As well as anti-reality.
"Stover worries that shifting responsibility for solutions to climate change from governments to individuals creates an 'every-man-for-himself' culture that actually works against energy solutions and does little to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions."
Right - because central planning is a much better idea <eye roll>.
The bottom line is that when I reduce my carbon footprint I save money, at least in the long run. I've invested hundreds of dollars in the last year in getting LED lights throughout the house. I'll make that money back within 5 years - I can already see the difference on my light bills. Next year I'm hoping to start my solar farm on my very large southern-facing roof. I'll likely have negative light bills when I'm done and it'll pay for itself within 3 or 4 years (yes, that's less than average and there's a reason for that having to do with my air conditioning and the solar panels taking heat off the house).
So, yeah, we need the grid upgraded. But at this stage we need a lot of people trying a lot of different things so that we can find out what works and what's economical. Ultimately, if it doesn't save me money it ain't gonna happen.
Re: (Score:3)
You should feel lucky. Most of my roof is southern facing, but the local utility here won't take excess power without charging a bunch of extra fees, plus a really low rate. Additionally, they won't allow you to maintain/bank credit. The only way towards an ROI in under a decade is to use/store everything I generate.
Re: (Score:2)
What about using one of those plug-in grid-tie inverters? That will limit your peak power to 15 or 20 amps or 1800 or 2400 watts per standard circuit. Being plug-in it can be considered a temporary installation which avoids many regulatory issues.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Watt is this article about? (Score:5, Informative)
What I was trying to show is that in order to solve an engineering problem you have to have sound engineering principles. If you're talking about energy you use words like "watt" and numbers like Kilowatt Hours and maybe even joules and other terms that the author is probably unfamiliar with.
For example, If I equip my home with 5,000 watts (peak) solar panels that generate 35 kwh of energy. 15 kwh which I use immediately that leaves 20 kwh excess which I can store. If my storage system is 75% efficient I can then use another 15 kwh at night which will make me capable of being off grid. What's wrong with that?
Re: (Score:2)
In what way is my math wrong?
In what way is the idea wrong?
If the storage efficiency is wrong (which it isn't) then I just add more solar panels or reduce my energy consumption.
Before you challenge an engineering concept you need to provide some proof. BTW this system works and many systems are now in use. You haven't shown how this is a bad idea.
Again if it can't be expressed in numbers it is not science.
Re: (Score:2)
For starters: the storage efficiency is around 95%
The rest you have to google.
Re: (Score:2)
OK. SO lets say I actually average 35 kwh/day on an annual basis. I generate 70 kwh/day with PV and other passive means. I store about half that. Hopefully I can use less during the night than during the hot days in summer. If I store thermal radiation with a heat sink it will help heat during winter.
All of this is dependent on the local climate but I believe it is doable. All of the comments so far have said it isn't doable, to be off grid, that is. Plainly the collectivists on this forum are more numerous
Going off the grid completeletly is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not use the grid as a reservoir..like a battery or capacitor?
When your local production exceeds your demand..push the rest into the reservoir
When you have a deficit..draw from it
Many people who advocate being off the grid are extreme isolationists..who value isolation over practicality
Sometimes, being a bit dependent, and interconnected, is good
Re: (Score:3)
Many of us already do this, we use grid intertie syncing inverters.
It is done all over the USA by a lot of people that have Solar installations. Granted I only have a small 5Kwh install but it's enough.
Re:Going off the grid completeletly is stupid (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that many utilities pay far less per kWh than they charge you. As a result, you're generating most of your power when you don't need it (during the day when you're at work), getting almost nothing for it, and then you're consuming most of your power when you're not generating it, paying full price for it.
The result? You end up saving very little.
It starts to make sense to have batteries to let you use the power you generated, giving you a much greater return. The only issue here is the cost of the batteries... which Tesla is trying to drive down as much as they can.
Re: (Score:3)
DING! DING! DING! This is exactly the problem.
The icing on this is going to be, in the end, the power companies will *have* to come around to providing a smart grid AND fair buy-back rates (sans fees), as no one will use them for anything other than a backup supply. Otherwise, you'll start to see people putting up their own miniature grids to sell/share power on a local basis. (Think housing addition in the burbs, where ALL of the homes have panels, batteries, and electric cars.)
Even with maintenance costs
Re:Going off the grid completeletly is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would they? The grid has no inherent storage capability into which to dump your day-time excess energy. It costs the power company to manage your bit of excess you're trying to dump into the grid.
A few days ago I saw a nice graph showing PG&E's averaged output power during a typical 24h. It's a slanted U-shape, with the bottom somewhere around noon, then a sharp increase between 6PM and 9PM, tapering off after midnight and dropping slightly after 7AM. If they took away the solar-generated power fed into the grid by individual installations, the U becomes much deeper and PG&E projected that it will get deeper in the near future.
The HUGE problem this energy generation/consumption pattern creates is that the baseline generators must provide the bottom of the U and not a Joule more. Everything else, especially the evening spike, must come from coal and NG power plants. Since in time the ratio between the peak and the baseline increases, more dirty and greenhouse gas emitting power plants MUST BE BUILT. In fact, all these 3 to 5kW solar installations make the greenhouse gas situation worse if the excess energy is not stored, which is contrary the feel-good but incorrect assumption about how all these solar panels help save the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would they? Because it's the only way out of the death spiral. Of they don't people will go off (their) grid and they will die. Providing cheap storage and distribution is the only long term future for them.
Re: (Score:3)
They take forever to ramp up/down. A NG turbine can ramp up down as needed. The only clean baseline that can ramp up/down is hydro but thats pretty much tapped out in the 1st world. This is what the greenies do not get the grid is not some battery, you need to balance inputs with outputs. Some heavy industry does this aluminum smelting etc that can shift it's demand to use up excess capacity and often get the power for next to nothing. Smarter building can help we have extremely little cogeneration whe
Re: (Score:2)
You got that wrong.
If you are producing more power during the day, the meter runs backwards. Or at least it should, they installed a second meter to measure what I generate so they could subtract it from what I used.
So if you generate 10 during the day, use 5, and then use 5 at night, your net cost is zero.
The 3.2c they pay me is just gravy.
Re: (Score:2)
Some utilities do that, run the meter backwards. Others measure what you use and what you take out of the grid and put back in separately, bill you for what you used from the grid, and pay you a much smaller amount per kWh for what you put back in.
Re: (Score:3)
The cost of cycling an EV battery is about 50 cents per kWh (source [batteryuniversity.com]). In many cases, electricity from the grid is far cheaper than that from the battery, even when the battery can be charged for free.
Assuming that Tesla can cut that cost in half, things start to get interesting. It would then make sense to use the battery whenever the difference between what you pay for electricity and what you can get for it is less than 25 cents (plus a few cents to account for losses in the battery). But the profit, if a
Re: (Score:2)
The idea of having the ability to be an island is actually very beneficial IF it's sustainable. If we could design a battery that can store 100 KW of energy, is durable, is safe, uses resources that are green and reusable that would make it even more viable. 100 KW = 3 days worth of electricity for the average American.
Why is it so beneficial being off the grid?
1. Much lower cost of infrastructure and limited to non existent maintenance for residential applications (this is not applicable to industrial appl
Re: (Score:2)
Why not use the grid as a reservoir..like a battery or capacitor?
Makes total sense, but the problem is that too many people think that reservoir should be provided at no cost.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Who pays for the distribution grid? Who pays for the "storage". That "storage" is in fact dispatchable generators that are used when needed and still need to be maintained.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The customer who does not have the ability to use PVs will pay. They would be businesses and apartment dwellers. Those who use PV will see no difference as their net zero bill will still be zero.
Re: (Score:2)
Why shouldn;t the utility act in the same way?
Re: (Score:2)
A more appropriate analogy would be the delivery of those veggies to your home. You expect the delivery truck to pass buy every day whether you intend to buy or not. But you don't want to pay the cost of that truck traveling the extra distance to so it can be ready.
And if you are growing your own veggies, requiring that
Re: (Score:3)
Why not use the grid as a reservoir..like a battery or capacitor?
Because that is not how the grid actually works.
When your local production exceeds your demand..push the rest into the reservoir
What actually happens is the dispatchable grid producers generate less electricity. There is very little storage.
When you have a deficit..draw from it
What actually happens is that the grid producers generate more electricity from their dispatachable plants.
Re: (Score:3)
This is all a semantics game. Personally, when I think "off grid" I'm thinking "grid-tied, but I generate as much juice as I can through solar cells". Excess gets sold to "the collective" and on rainy days I pull from the battery that is the grid. Unless you live in a Seattle-esque climate, that is an achievable goal for most single family homes for not a whole lot of money. It takes pressure off the central grid and through tax incentives isn't even much of a financial hardship to implement.
Being entir
Re: (Score:3)
Why not use the grid as a reservoir..like a battery or capacitor?
Cuz it aint one.
When your local production exceeds your demand..push the rest into the reservoir
When you have a deficit..draw from it
When you have excess so does everyone else and when you have a deficit so does everyone else. Little capability exists to buffer energy at scale in current systems.
Many people who advocate being off the grid are extreme isolationists..who value isolation over practicality
Practical is more often than not determined by how many are willing to spend how much to get a desired result.
Alternative to batteries (Score:4, Interesting)
Some utilities have also experimented with using home water heaters as an economical substitute for batteries
Many large buildings used to make ice overnight when the electricity rates are low (in some parts) and melt the ice to cool the building during day time reducing the load on the air conditioner. Such techniques would be effective if the electricity rates vary. Like the old long distance plans, having a peak and off-peak pricing alone would encourage the consumers to schedule their washing machines and dishwashers during the off-peak hours.
Re: (Score:2)
having a peak and off-peak pricing alone would encourage the consumers to schedule their washing machines and dishwashers during the off-peak hours.
This has been implemented in many places in Canada and EU. I'm not sure about the US but I'm sure smart meters are making their way into residential neighborhoods by now.
It's also why many appliances have timers such as dish washer.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Electricity is cheaper at night if you have two meters.
One for daytime and one for night.
An ordinary household meter does not know if it is day or night, it simply counts kWh ...
powering house with PV (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
None the less our electric bill is down at least 80% from pre-PV days.
Does that include the cost of the system?
Going off grid misconceptions (Score:2)
Very first world/American view. (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it: Half of India does not know when their next meal is going to be. Which means the other half has food security. Still they live in a hand to mouth existence. Half the rest are better off than hand to mouth. Half of the better than hand-to-mouth have decent disposable income. This 1/8 of the population of India is 125 million strong, as big an economy as Japan and bigger than many European countries. Living in a sea of dirt cheap labor, none of the labor saving devices would sell there. But anything not doable by throwing more people in, electric power or cell phone etc will have big markets there. Add Africa and South America, you can bet they will leap frog over the developed countries in off grid power, like India did with cell phones a decade ago.
Climate change is not the point (Score:3)
The point of wanting to go off the power grid is not to solve climate change. The point is to have a workable alternative should the power grid go off you.
Living off the grid (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been living off the grid since 1997 with a solar powered system. The power is converted to AC with an 8000 watt inverter for my home and excess power is stored in a lead acid battery bank. My system wasn't purchased as complete but was built up for an approximate 5 year period until I could be completely self sufficient. I do have to use a gasoline generator to charge the battery bank when the sun doesn't shine for a few days. Other alternatives need to be developed to supplement solar for that very reason. The problem with the grid tie system is the power companies will never allow you to earn any income from your sale of the electrical product. They derate the price so that you will never get a payment from them. You could get an almost zero bill but it will never come out with you making anything. I never connected to the grid so I wouldn't become lazy and not complete my system. I know of the utility company's plan from others who have a grid tie system or have called them to ask of their approach to solar power returns. The greatest expense is the batteries. I am now going on my third set of expensive deep cycle batteries to keep my stuff going. A better battery would be so great. The Edison or Ni Fe battery sounds like the ideal approach to getting a reliable type that requires little maintenance. I haven't researched the Tesla battery yet but I am glad someone is at least doing something instead of just complaining. I am getting older now and the lead acid batteries are too heavy to just lug around for the changes after a few years of use. I value my independence and hear from my neighbors how they lost power during a storm when they needed it the most. I know this isn't the way for everyone but for those who are willing to try to breakaway from the socialist system of being hooked up for life this is the only way to go for now.
Re: (Score:2)
Have lived of-grid for over twenty years. Have a large battery bank, but only 600W of solar cells. That runs my house and workshop without ever needing to run a generator. The only concessions needed are no electric heating or cooling. I rely instead on good insulation and wood heating.
The main barrier to Solar living is the typical American mentality, "I'm not going to live without my Air-conditioner/Clothes-dryer/Electric Heating".
To my mind, frugal living gives many bonuses beside the ability to survive
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. My jaw dropped upthread when I saw someone quote usage of 100 kWh/day.
It gets to 35 and even 40 deg C and >90% humidity here in summer, but you can manage that sort of heat without refrigerated air conditioning, if you really want to.
Re: (Score:2)
It gets to 35 and even 40 deg C and >90% humidity here in summer, but you can manage that sort of heat without refrigerated air conditioning, if you really want to.
And that is the thing, most people don't want to. At least not anyone who has enjoyed AC at some point in their life.
don't feed monopolies (Score:3)
California ratepayers have lost billions of dollars to our friendly utilities. You may recall Enron, who devastated the entire state by manipulating utility prices. Now we have the power plant at San Onofre shutting down because the utilities and the government overseers were incompetent. Because the California Public Utility Commission exists to assure Wall Street profits, and not ratepayer protection, we have a few billion more in costs that ratepayers are expected to pay (shareholders are still raking in big dividends/profits).
So do you think it is a good idea to continue dependence upon the energy monopoly? How did you feel about the Microsoft monopoly? Is it good to have profit seeking telephone and cable and oil and water monopolies? When was this ever a good idea for ordinary consumers?
Re: (Score:2)
Thank $DEITY I have SMUD. They are probably one of the few reasonable utilities in California. It is "customer owned" not a public corporation like PG&E
Stopping = Myth (Score:2)
Leaf to Home (Score:3)
Storing excess solar in one's car battery sounds like a plan. The leaf has a 24KW capacity with a 170km range. For a modest 2 person household that uses less than 10KW a day and typically drives a max of 60km in a single day in the suburbs, it makes sense.
If the economics match up, of course and I'm sure they won't at least until the price of solar panels and electric cars falls drastically with economies-of-scale and/or subsidies. $AU40K for a hatchback (on Nissan's website) sounds excessive; these things aren't mass-sold in my country.
Renewables are defuse (Score:2)
The big problem with maintaining a centralized energy grid is that renewables like wind and solar are defuse. They don't lend themselves well to big centralized power stations and make more sense just on everyone's roof.
Here is my ideal.
Everyone gets solar panels on their roofs and maybe a small wind turbine if they're in a really windy area. Possibly this stuff is bought and paid for by the government and the government will technically own the panels but they're just installed on everyone's roof.
Then you
My Off Grid Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a 36 panel system that theoretically can create ~40kwh/day on the average day. I have 20 batteries (used to be 24) to cover overnight and overcast/bad weather storage.
First off there's no question that I don't have anywhere near enough batteries. My solar guy used a variety of online calculators to figure out the size and needed and both underestimated my requirements and overestimated the amount of daily discharge the system could handle. As a result we bought a vastly undersized battery system (~1350AH when it was new, more like 750AH now) that we ended up discharging around 75% nearly every night. This is turn is a deadly drain on your batteries and drew down my system sharply to its current capabilities. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations show that I need a system more like 3000AH in capacity to properly power the whole house for a couple of days (if needed). My propane backup generator gets run far more than it ought right now.
Leaving that annoyance to one side though, being off-grid and responsible for my own power (and water; I have an excellent well) is nothing short of awesome! It's my power! I can do what I want, run what I want, and the only thing I have to worry about is what my supply is (when it's at night).
Mind you I've done all kinds of things to be more efficient of course. I am in an ongoing process of replacing all of my CFLs and the handful of incandescents still around with LEDs as I find LEDs that are both price-rational and workable for the task. I just replaced 42 halogen track lights with some excellent LEDs I tracked down from a company named Torchstar and that made a huge difference--I basically hadn't used those tracks at all since we built the house since they were so energy expensive. The house itself is an ICF (Insulated Concrete Form) house and very efficient (13" thick walls), with the entire house heated with radiant heat as opposed to a more typical forced air system. Over the years I've learned to take advantage of a strong sunlight day and run dishwashers and the clothes when the sun is out.
My biggest intermediate goal is to replace the battery stack with something more appropriate. There are several high-amp setups out there that I should be able to make work and I hope to do so next spring (I'm going to be driven to this anyway by the slow death of my current stack). Longer term I'd like to add even more panels until I'm up to 54, not so much for added storage (there's only so much you can put in the batteries and I should have that covered) but to increase the surface area of collection during a cloudy day (the panels will make power even in overcast, so more in that case is better). I think my inverters (two of them, 4000W each) are sized appropriately, though I'll have to add another charge controller when the new panels go in. I just built a new shed to house all of the batteries (it's also ICF) and will be rigging it with a solar heating system this summer; this will keep the batteries warm and toasty during the harsh winters. Even longer term (years), I want to enclose the upstairs deck with a greenhouse, which would help make me more self-sufficient food wise.
I wouldn't change it for the world, honestly....being utterly independent is just a different but good feeling.
If anybody has questions, just ask!
Ferret
Re: (Score:3)
Finally, someone on here who gets it. The independence of being off-grid is just, well, incomparable to anything else - especially when the grid here was out for 3 days in 2011 after a cyclone. All my grid-connected neighbours had to throw out the contents of their freezers and refrigerators, and they didn't have flushing toilets (no electricity=no water pumps. They had to put buckets out in the rain to catch water).
Have you considered a dual battery system instead of a single large system? Plasmatronics co
Re: (Score:2)
You are living my dream! Are you living alone or with family in your house?
The core of the issue (Score:3)
The core of the issue has nothing to do with going off-grid and everything to do with matching production from renewal sources to the actual load on the grid. Without that we get into the situation that Germany finds itself in, which is two fold: (1) That electricity prices fall to zero during the day due to all the solar, and as subsidies go away the owners can't make money from providing power to the grid. And (2) The base load differential between day and night is so great that the traditional generation (i.e. coal) cannot run continuously at critical mass and so becomes extremely inefficient and uneconomical. So coal power generation companies in Germany are also going bankrupt.
Ultimately consumers with PV systems will be forced to pay spot rates and feel the pain. This is already beginning to happen in many parts of the country... where day-time electricity rates are lower but the buy-back is also lower, and night-time rates are higher and have a higher buy-back.
The idea with using the electric car battery (or some other form of temporary storage) is to use it store energy when prices are cheap and inject it into the grid when prices are expensive. This also has the side effect of reducing the base load differential between day and night, so other generation sources such as nuclear and coal can operate efficiently (and thus profitably) to make up the difference.
There is nothing nefarious going on. Really, going entirely off-grid is not something anyone should be trying to do unless they actually live somewhere with a flaky grid (or no grid). And the reality is that electricity prices are going to fluctuate even more between day and night, or rainy vs not, or windy vs not, as more renewable energy sources are brought online.
-Matt
Hmm guess we are at stage II/III (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
With a sufficiently frugal existence, it's rather easy to "live off the grid." Humans did so for millions of years before there was a grid; it's simply inconvenient to do so today.