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Comment by snowwindwaves | Hacker News Reader

Utility scale solar makes sense since they usually build it in sunny places, solar panels on your house are great if they will pay themselves off (you live in a sunny place with expensive electricity you get to avoid buying or you get a subsidy) but I think residential battery systems are not currently sensible if you have a grid connection. If the purpose of the battery is for when the power goes out just get a little gas or diesel powered generator.

The article notes the perfect application of solar plus battery; places with no utility connection and the only initial loads will be LED lights and the users will not be accustomed to toasters, air conditioning, etc

"The pledge to provide power could face challenges as it remains difficult to provide electricity in remote towns and villages. The government said it would distribute solar power packs with a battery bank to un-electrified households in such areas."

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I think the primary concern here is to first provide electricity to the quarter of the population who are not connected to the grid.

The population who are not having electricity in India is either because they live in a remote place where there is no connection or they are too poor to afford electricity. So what they need now is electricity, so their children can study in a better lit room.

Air conditioners and toasters are still considered a luxury by a majority of the population.

If executed properly, I think this initiative will really make a change.

This article from last week argues that a swamp cooler might be adequate and actually necessary in large parts of India as average temperatures rise, humidity allowing. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16290934/india-air-condit...

The climate change is real and every room in the city is having at least one cooler. The village, on the other hand, has a more natural way of doing things.

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/02/17/38687611...

Solar's best use case is remote places with no connection. Like, back when solar was much more expensive than it is now, it was still getting commercially used as the cheapest option to power offshore oil drilling platforms.

I'd at least want to price out providing some villages with free solar power rather than a grid connection.

We are saying the same thing, led lighting off grid is an appropriate use of solar and battery

Battery systems still make sense on the Indian grid if they can replace backup generators.

Not yet. Backup generators have lifespans in decades and cost less than $1000 per kW of power with energy only limited by fuel. What will the batteries be charged by when some huge storm makes it cloudy and rainy for days? Batteries as a backup power source sound great until you have to depend on them and they run out.

Batteries plus solar to run some led lights where there is no utility makes perfect sense though.

I wonder what the state of technology is for this yet. Most existing battery and solar installations can't be used when a blackout occurs, to protect the safety of workers rapairing lines. Seems like a bit more work needs to occur to be able to isolate the house from the grid, and then run the house system in isolation.

The problem isn't that the technology doesn't exist, it is that it is expensive to purchase and install. Automatic transfer switches will switch a load from utility to backup source when utility goes bad and tell the backup source to start.

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