Anker’s Solix home solar battery system is its answer to Tesla’s Powerwall
theverge.com
theverge.com
Like, I understand we have the technology to monitor if grid disappears and self-disable, and a lot of hard-wired rooftop solar does that, but unsure if any soft-wired units have been approved.
My fridge is inverter drive and likely operates off DC at its core. Hopefully Samsung or somebody in the future will put a 48VDC port and anyone can plug in a solar panel and it will soak up whatever juice comes off that and use grid for the rest. That avoids batteries (because the fridge does thermal banking), electricians (because 48V is usually excluded), and inverter drive fridges tend to be continuous drive, so running slower when the sun is marginal or full-speed when full works nicely.
And it puts some juice into the thing I really depend on if the power goes out (even if only during the day).
And consumers can cheaply add some phase change materials for a boost in thermal banking (like really salty water bottles).
Put a couple USB charging ports and 12V ports on it too that switch between solar & grid. My router and modem sit on the top of my fridge and use 12V
And then we do away with the increasingly unnecessary DC->AC->DC conversion cycles.
Seems like the lowest hanging fruit to inexpensive mass (mild) solarization.
I always question why we choose between 0kW solar installs OR multi-kW residential installs when we could do massive 250w solar rollouts at low cost with very high efficiency.
Drawback: any excess power that one does not use oneself is fed into the grid without compensation.
It's a step in the right direction, I guess?
They are approved at up to 600 Watts in Germany, and that will probably get increased to 800 Watts soon. You can just plug the inverter output into an outlet. This is called "balcony power plants" here, and lots of municipalties are subsidizing it currently. You can't get net metering, but you can offset some of your load with minimal cost and paperwork.
And 600w is probably below the average usage anyway.
The old ones (Ferraris meter?) just ran backwards, which is attractive of course. Our new meter has a P1 port which can integrate into eg. Home Assistant
Would you mind explaining this sentence? I know very little about these things but I'd like to, are you saying that rooftop solar switches itself off if there's no grid power? And if so, why?
But this is so that they don't supply power when eg an electrician flips a breaker to safely do work. Then better not have the system still energized by solar...
I guess the risk with smaller, plug in systems is that they're simpler without such precautions? And you would have 2 live prongs sticking out, which would be bad of course
The cheapest ones just cut power when the sine is lost and then make their own, and cut power when they see it return and then sync.
Maybe screw terminals would be ideal so you can cut your wall wart cable and wire it up. Most devices will have a bridge diode inside (total waste of electricity, but not going there right now).
I guess a cigarette lighter port could make sense but now we might be asking too much on the BoM.
Those little barrel jacks are fine for what they are, but I can't imagine powering a toaster oven with one. Cigarette lighter ports might fit the bill, at least mechanically. I haven't seen one of those in many years and forgot about them.
A kilowatt at 12V is going to be 85 amps and too hot for something rated for 15 amps.
Not sure what’s approved for DC use in general. Standards bodies will probably disagree with using something typically used for AC with DC because of the risk of plugging the wrong thing into it.
https://www.neutrik.com/en/products/power/powercon-20-a
https://www.te.com/usa-en/products/connectors/automotive-con...
Not practical in the USA with split-phase 120/240 (or 120/208 open wye) as you need to connect to both hot legs of the system to feed everything. In 230V countries they mostly have 2 wire service with (I hear some have three phase 230/400) so its easier to evenly back-feed a 2 wire system.
> I always question why we choose between 0kW solar installs OR multi-kW residential installs ...
Agreed. I have a small home server setup that draws 40W idle and I toyed with the idea of replacing the UPS with a small 1-2kW battery inverter plugged into the wall.
My concern with rogue solar installs is how does that interact with the utility company? Their smart meters will see reverse flow of current and if I do not have an "official" solar install, will they force me to adopt one or disconnect my system as it is not approved? So I would only build a system which draws from the utility as needed (cloudy days) and dumps excess power - never back feed.
No idea if this would work in practice, but you might be able to backfeed your battery with a regulated 11.9V onto the 12V lines and backfeed at 4.9V on the 5V lines, so when the power supply shuts off and puts 0V on the 5V and 12V lines, the battery will start back feeding, but when the grids power supply puts out 5V and 12V, no current will move.
(Will need blocking diodes to avoid back-feeding the battery that’s kept topped off by its mains charger)
Saves you some DC->AC->DC conversions. You might need a 3.3V leg as well. And maybe negative voltages if those are used for anything anymore?
Just choose which half of your house you want to power :)
But presumably these shutoff when grid mains is lost.
What does this do?
You might have noticed how much time it takes to freeze something - that's because lots of energy need to be extracted from liquid water to turn it to ice. And that without even changing temperature - it all happens at 0°C. With other materials, you can have a similiar effect at other temperatures. This can be used to create a system that keeps a certain temperature even if energy flows into or out of it (until the phase transition is complete).
Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_material
Using this you can avoid hearing water during high demand times.
Melting water ice into liquid water at 0°C takes approximately as much energy as heating the same amount of water from 0°C (assuming that it is already/still liquid) to 80°C.
With a material that has a transition temperature of e.g. 21°C, a room could be kept at a very pleasant temperature even when energy is flowing into or out of it.
In California, touching a breaker box is at least $10,000, so to amortize the cost of the paperwork, you need to put in a multi kw system. On top of that, you need to anchor it to the ground somehow, so that it doesn’t fly around in 50-100mph winds (which will happen about once during the lifetime of the panels).
Portable systems exist, of course. You could get one of those.
Also, a multi-kw system isn’t physically that big.
Not sure if the economics will work out, as in a really long ROI for most people, but even without Solar some of these battery packs can potentially time-shift power for homes, reducing effective rate to be the off-peak rate.
[0] https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...
Of course, anyone that can’t install solar really gets destroyed by all this.
Granted, they have other TOU rates that price the same time span slightly cheaper.
Tesla has been aggressively doing everything it can to lose in this market. Other options are LG, Enphase and Generac. (Ordered roughly in increasing size of target install.)
These anker units look pretty impressive, based on kWh, but the article doesn’t mention kw.
One problem with enphase is that you can’t keep scaling kwh without also scaling peak amperage, and their biggest distribution bus only supports 40kwh of batteries.
Great to see competition here as it will drive more innovation. It will be interesting to see how the software picture will evolve:
Smarter appliances and electric vehicles that talk to the power controller to charge or do more work when there is excess power would be a big level up for these systems.
It'll be interesting to see Anker enter this space of large batteries. Either they'll work really well and you'll see them quietly get installed in lots of places, or they'll be in the news when they have a series of runaways and light some balconies on fire.
That being said, a lot of the risk gets taken out with lower charge and discharge currents vs a vehicle application.
The only other alternative is installing and maintaining a propane generator, but that’s more time then a few round trips into town per year (especially since the grocery store has a fast charger, and we invariably need to purchase food during these events).
Also, they ended up rationing propane this year, since the delivery progress with the big trucks was hampered by road conditions, and demand was unprecedented.
I want a 5-10-15kwh pack but a 5kwh lead acid would cost inr 80-90k while lithium would be double.
Sure lithium has more life but warranty wise every seller only says 3-5 years. Same as lead acid so why bother with more expensive?
Anyone know why this is?
OTOH, if you keep that battery between 20-80% and only use it at indoor temps, you can probably cycle it daily for 20 years.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/powerwall/Pow...
For instance, nissan leaf batteries used to die after a few years (I think they fixed this in recent years), but battery failures for other cars of similar age are unheard of.
I wonder if the batteries in India are being produced domestically, and the manufacturers are trying to catch up.
I look forward to seeing the price for these home-scale battery packs.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23486753/anker-eufy-secu...
I've liked Anker products, starting with being able to get quality batteries for older laptops and handhelds. Today, I'll lean towards the Anker brand for any product, when I see it in Amazon search hits (amidst the hundred random-brand-spam listings for the same cheap product, and the handful of hits for real brands likely commingled with counterfeits).
If it turns out that Anker only made the mistake of hiring a stereotypical criminally-negligent/insidious IoT product team, then healing could begin by Anker dragging every person responsible out to the parking lot, and telling them to go defecate on some other brand. Because the value of Anker is trustworthiness.
It's been disappointing since their cables, chargers, etc have been pretty good.
That's legal?
In the US, at least for generators, it is illegal in most jurisdictions to do that. You have to add a transfer switch that disconnects your house from the grid before you supply non-grid power to your house wiring.
That's so people's generators won't energize the lines that the linesmen are trying to fix during a power outage.
And linesmen assume all the lines are live and/or cross ground the supposed dead ones.
Because the law doesn’t stop idiots.
Thanks to NEM 3, you will want batteries. Find an installer that has been around for 5-10 years, and that has a good reputation. Even the best equipment can be installed improperly, and the installs are complicated. (You wouldn’t rewire a house by first choosing the brand of circuit breakers and outlets; instead, you’d pick a good electrician, then follow their advice).
Different equipment brands specialize in different types of installations, so I won’t recommend anything without more information.
I feel seen. XD
One local person spent thousands of dollars only to find that out. The electrician and province should be sued by the homeowner for lack of info and lost money.
But you'd still need to run a line from the shed to the house anyway to distribute the power. Minimum three feet deep the correct gauge and encased in the appropriate conduit sent to a subpanel then the main panel.
That's a lot of time work and effort.
So I've been looking into DIY my own "small system" on a spot that is oriented perfectly. Problem is I can only get like 2KW worth of panels. Too small of a job for an installer but even more perfectly suited for a DIY project.
I know reddit is a dicey topic these days but found the r/DIYSolar to be a useful sub to ask questions and get great answers and/or clarification as to where to look for answers.