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Comment by intrasight | Hacker News Reader

For $3000 this would be easy to justify just to keep my computer and network operating. I work at home and our power goes out too frequently. Is usually just for 10-20 seconds and my UPS takes care of that. But sometimes it is out for several hours - I'll say several times per year. If I can't work, I can't bill.

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Where are you seeing $3000? When I set it to 1 Powerwall it tells me:

One 14 kWh Powerwall battery $5,500 Installation and supporting hardware starts at $1,000 Total estimate $6,500 Requires $500 deposit for each Powerwall

I don't see $3000 - that's my point. But for $3000 I'd buy one.

The powerwall 1 (are they still selling them?) is at exactly that price point, albeit with half the energy storage capacity.

Ah, right, I follow you now, thanks.

Hm for that price I can install a natural-gas generator. Have power for days if necessary, full power on all circuits.

Which still ties you to the 'grid' insofar as you need the natgas supply chain, even if you have a huge reservoir you'll eventually run out. Having said that, batteries and solar panels don't have an unlimited life span either.

I'm looking at buying a petrol powered generator for reasons other than home power generation, but it will be reassuring to know we have backup power at home, but I don't think I'm allowed to store any more than 25L in one container on my suburban property. I guess that would be 25L plus each of our two cars with full tanks.

It would be fairly trivial to convert a petrol powered generator to run on propane from the barbecue gas cylinder, I've had experience installing gas kits on carburettor engines in cars.

Good points. But for me, I live on 80 acres and it happens that the county natural gas pipeline runs under it. The easement (signed in the 60's) included the right to connect to the pipeline at will. When we built the house, we exercised that right.

So even though I am rural, I don't have to buy liquid propane to heat my house. I'm tapped into a 100,000 home supply line. Its been depressurized maybe twice for maintenance in 50 years.

Not a solution for everybody. But a pretty good one for me! And everybody else on the line.

Nice setup! How much did connecting to the pipeline cost? Making an individual connection to something so large sounds expensive, but obviously I have no actual clue.

Fortunately there was a hairpin(?) connection across the road, so I agreed to connect there. That means they didn't have to depressurize just for me. Cost nothing (easement terms). However they charged me for the pipe to run the 200' from there to the house! I could have negotiated that better.

"Which still ties you to the 'grid' insofar as you need the natgas supply chain, even if you have a huge reservoir you'll eventually run out. Having said that, batteries and solar panels don't have an unlimited life span either."

That is my thought - however, a previous comment in this thread indicates that the powerwall batteries are cloud connected and remote controlled by tesla ... so I am not sure how that pans out when you lose power and network connectivity at the same time (as happens where I live several times throughout the winter, sometimes for 24+ hours).

3 of my 4 adjacent neighbors have natural-gas generators. That gives you an indication of the power reliability here. Note that I don't blame the utility, and I'm not in some backwater ($1M+ homes around me). It's just that we really like our trees here, and sometimes a branch will break in a storm and take out the neighborhood.

My gripe with the generators is they are noisy. A Powerwall would be silent and would handle the typical outage situation. But so probably would a 3000VA UPS, which would only cost $1500.

Falling branches don't cut buried power lines. This has everything to do with crappy infrastructure and nothing with love for trees.

Good luck finding someone willing to pay to have squillions of kilometres of above ground power lines buried.

Sydney alone has 63,000 kilometres[1] of overhead power lines. One estimate puts the cost at $23.37 billion.[2]

1. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/29/1027926858231.html

2. https://www.ipart.nsw.gov.au/files/7b5531d9-cf65-4b1b-ae7b-9...

Some places even managed to get entire sewer systems buried. Granted, that happened on a very different level of urgency (you really want shit to flow, and it only flows downward), but it gives the appropriate perspective on any excuses that are based on the natural scale of infrastructure.

Is not a good analogy since nobody builds a sewer system above ground and then replaces it with one below ground.

The point is that for sewers there was no choice so we just swallowed the cost and got on with it. For power there was so we went for the cheaper less reliable option.

According to your citations, that figure is for all of urban and suburban Australia, not Sydney and would be spread out over 30-40 years

That'll learn me for skim reading and cherry-picking to suit my narrative.

It's easy enough to do, at least you cited.

How do you convert VA to kWh?

For the price of a natural gas generator I can get 14kWh battery based storage and I can go off-grid if I want, that's terrific.

A $5000 natural gas generator can run an air conditioner as long as you like. A Powerwall might last an afternoon.

A $1000 generator will provide plenty of power to run everything other than HVAC.

Neither will get you off grid, but neither will a Powerwall until you spend a lot more on solar.

Natural gas generators don't have tax credits for their purchase.

So is not possible to self-install them?

If you use a laptop a ups can power your router and modem for quite a long time.

Or you can buy a huge ups for a lot less than 3000 and power a desktop machine too.

What's the running cost of a huge ups?

>What's the running cost of a huge ups?

A UPS will require a battery replacement every 10 years or so, regardless of whether you ever have to go on battery power or not. The UPS should automatically sense the status of the battery and warn you when a replacement is needed.

Pick a model from one of the major manufacturers and look up the replacement battery costs to get an idea of what it will cost.

I don't understand. Why would it cost anything to run it? It's just a big battery. Maybe a small charge to keep it topped off?

It was a genuine question, I have ever used or needed one, therefore I have little to no idea how they operate.

It's just a big battery that you can plug things into full time. When power goes out it instantly switches to battery power. It recharges when the power comes back.

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