Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

if you generate excess energy, can you store it for a later time when you need more energy (presumably summer time)?


You would need batteries which are quite expensive at this time.


There are no sensible storage methods that would allow you to store enough energy from summer to make any reasonable contribution towards winter.

Batteries a great for powering your house for a few days. Not really beyond that. Unless you buy a ridiculous amount of batteries.


Batteries are also great for using at night!


Why would I? I’m on NEM 2.0. The grid is my “battery”. Every KWh I generate that isn’t used is sent back to the grid. In exchange I get an IOU for the equivalent $/KWh price during that time. This is the retail $/KWh which includes transmission costs.


> presumably summer time

Assuming you have batteries, you discharge and charge them on a daily cycle, not a yearly cycle, to make the most money/have the most benefit. There are predictable time of day based troughs and peaks in the price that you can take advantage of.


It's a lot more efficient to sell back to the power company. I'd be more comfortable with having a dual fuel generator for apocalyptic situations vs a bunch of batteries.


Some (all?) electric companies in CA do net metering, where you can sell them your excess electricity at any time and storage essentially becomes their problem.


While you wait decades for home battery storage technology to improve, you can make a water battery in the meantime with a few things from the hardware store.

https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/power-your-home-with-a-water...


You have to be joking, right? That's a 55 gallons of water as a battery that require 5.5 hours to charge and store 3.9 Wh of energy. Not enough to even power a 10W LED lamp for half an hour. A 10,000 mAh power bank is 37Wh.


You can buy a residential battery today that provides real value. The limitation on batteries is for grid scale supply.


This system only had enough power to run a small light, IIRC.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: