They even told me the power from a hypothetical solar rig is sold to the grid utility, not stored, and they give a discount on future winter rates as payment. This seems like a lousy deal.
In South Africa we’ve had load shedding on and off since 2008. It’s becoming pretty standard for middle class homes to have inverters with batteries and optionally solar.
It does create an issue though that when a load shedding window ends, a whole lot of batteries start charging all at once (especially during non-daylight hours).
Also due to load shedding, I don’t get full use of my batteries. Ideally I would like my batteries to pretty much fully discharge over night with energy from my solar during the day, however, because load shedding is somewhat irregular here, I have it set to not go too low so it has enough energy to tide me over.
If individuals are allowed to opt-out, that changes the financial promises made to the utilities. Of course this was mostly done at a time before it was economically feasible for anyone to go off-grid with solar and batteries.
I quite honestly prefer this arrangement. I have zero desire to own and be responsible for the maintenance and safety of tens of thousands of dollars worth of on-premises solar/battery/electrical transfer switch gear. I'm quite happy to pay the local utility to run a cable to my electrical panel and have them be responsible for everything outside the walls of my house.
Unfortunately over here we have a monopoly awarded state owned power producer which has a history of incompetence and corruption.
Maybe at some point our grid can be trusted to be reliable, but in the meantime everyone is either installing their own batteries or having no electricity for hours at a time. Tragic, but what else can you do.
Vermont utility proposes to install battery storage in most homes https://environmentamerica.org/updates/vermont-utility-propo...
There's a lot of solar power here in the state and a good argument for locally "shared" batteries in terms of maintainance, fire safety, etc.
Not much to say on that ATM, back of envelope looks good, there's a report in the works.
How is that opting out of the grid?
Are you sure you're answering the question that was asked?
But your batteries will last much much longer at the lower cycle depth
But in terms of using it for UPS purposes, it lasting longer would mean I won’t need to expend capital again as soon.
So I guess it depends on what you want out the battery.
I did some math when I bought the battery and it seemed it would probably pay itself back before needing to be replaced, but it was questionable at our energy prices.
I bought the system mostly for UPS reasons though, especially as I work from home and on a personal note, sitting in the dark several evenings a week or being unable to make coffee when you want, sucks.
> illegal to install grid-charged battery backups in home.
I don't know but I am guessing the objections is with the "in home" not the battery backup.
Certainly most of us who think of buying electric vehicles would want to actually drive them around.
The difference is what side of the electrical box your equipment is on.
Now imagine you produce 95% yourself. Instead of typical 15kw installation you only need 500w for when sun doesn’t shine. Thats a reduction of 30x! Far cheaper inverters, thinner lines, etc. Unfortunately no one in the supply chain has wants this because thats lost profit.
The added benefit is that well, it's a battery strapped to a car. So if you have an extended power outage, you simply drive your car to a charger elsewhere and come back with a full charge. I'm sure Minnesota wouldn't be stupid enough to outlaw EV charging.
Then when the weather event comes, you still get electricity at home supplied by your car. If the weather event is localized, drive your car to a place with electricity and charge it there and drive back. It's the best.
I don't think I'd do very much to prepare for that scenario.
You might plan on riding out a storm, thinking utilities might be out a day or two max. Day 5, still no utilities, no known date for resumption of services, and supplies are running extremely low. How do you get out?
If you forecast that your supplies will be very slim on day 5, and you haven't left for greener pastures by day 3 or 4, then the the worst case is already unfolding. GTFO before the worst-case ever happens.
But in that worst case: One can call on someone else for help. This is one of those situations where it's time to cash in some favors, and/or where it pays off to always be friendly and helpful with to the neighbors even if they really seem like a bunch of assholes. (The time to start being friendly with the neighbors is right now, by the way.)
(My own backup plan only keeps me rolling both semi-comfortably and independently for about 24 or 48 hours without power in the winter, so I'm leaving after the first night or ASAP. I don't have the complications and niceties offered by something like an F-150 Lightning, but finite resources remain finite no matter their form.)
I think I'd be sorting weather events into two buckets: "I can get somewhere that wasn't hit hard with 50-100 miles of range" or "I need to travel a distance measured in states and refueling will be needed". So the difference between "full battery" and "half battery" is pretty tiny, and I can do plenty of house-powering.
When I think of evacuating a long distance, I think of something like a hurricane where you should be getting out of the way before it hits. If you're in the aftermath of a storm, you don't need to go more than 100 but less than 300 miles.
Oklahoma City is a bit over 200 miles if I needed to go to the city the next state over. Shreveport is just under 200mi.
If something is making me leave DFW then 50mi isn't going to get me anywhere. That's not even going across the metro area.
Lake Dallas dam breaking after major flooding in the Trinity River would cause quite a bit of destruction in DFW and potentially make things pretty unlivable around here and force a lot of people out of here and into the surrounding areas. Also an event that wouldn't necessarily be seen days ahead of time.
I grew up in South Houston, so I had a number of times of hurricanes coming through and not necessarily destroying my house but making the surrounding areas pretty unlivable for days to weeks. Maybe it gets cleaned up enough in a couple of days, maybe it doesn't.
If I had an EV that I could use to run house-sized stuff with, and the power were off for an indefinite time due to a storm or something, then I'd like to think that I'd use that EV just as sparingly as I would my little Jackery device and portable solar panel (that I can coax at most about 80W from on a perfectly-sunny day).
I can use my rig to [sparingly] run some lights, a small fan, and to keep portable electronics going -- with hardwired Internet if that is something that is useful/extant for information or to pass the time with.
But I'm not going to use it to run the fridge, the home theater, the thirsty desktop PC, or using the laundry machines or the HVAC. I'm also not cooking with it.
I have a portable heater that will keep me warm, and enough fuel to do this for a day or two. I know how to keep the water running to keep pipes from breaking. I don't need the fridge: When the power goes off, I can unload the important stuff into my Orca cooler along with the last contents of the self-refilling ice bin in the freezer and it'll stay fine for days. If it's stupid-cold outside, the frozen stuff that I'd like to try to keep can go outside in a tote. I have a propane grill for quick outdoor cooking with plenty of fuel, and a butane burner for indoor cooking that also has a reasonable amount of fuel for making coffee or frying some eggs or whatever.
I've tested these methods off-grid. They work.
While I do enjoy the wonders of modern electrification rather immensely, and TBH I'd find myself struggling to get through a day without some small aspects of it, I don't need a ton of it to feel reasonably comfortable for a limited time.
In this very limited use (which is not dissimilar to car-camping inside of a house), a suitable EV can probably cope for a few days without substantially reducing its immediately-useful range. It'a a small drop in a large bucket of battery power.
It can probably also keep the fridge running, and run a furnace that burns dinosaurs: If the regular F150 Lightning has a 98kWh battery, and one draws an average of 500W from that battery (which is a rather hefty average if living lightly post-disaster), then one uses ~12% of its capacity (or about 28 miles of its 230 mile range) per 24-hour day.
Over two days (48 hours), that's only 56 miles spent of 230 possible miles.
What kind of disaster can you imagine where "losing" that 56 miles of range would be of any consequence -- where 56 miles means the difference between "Oh, we got this. Everything is fine." and "ZOMG if only we could drive a little further! But we can't! We're RUINED!!!"
I can't think of any that have happened around here in my own lifetime,
And given the fact it might be harder to find a working and available charger while leaving in an emergency I wouldn't want to rely on finding one along the way to wherever I'm going.
If you're part of an organized evacuation, you're doing this before the storm -- correct?
And if that's the case, then: It doesn't matter how long an EV will or will not run the stuff inside of your home, because you won't be there.
Leaving a burning building is still evacuating the burning building. Evacuating a burning building doesn't mean it's an orderly thing before the fire starts.
I admit it's less efficient to have 2 energy stores, but given we're already discussing potentially life threatening situations, I'm not really looking to optimize for anything except having as many resources as feasible on hand.
Money is limited, so sharing resources between situations lets you be prepared for more situations.
If I lived in eg Texas, I’d maybe have a BEV that could power my home and a separate vehicle for long range travel. Bit of a luxury.
So it would be legal if it were only charged by your house's solar panel? That doesn't sound like a big problem to me.