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Retr0id 8 hours ago [-]
> Create a battery birthday club. Buy each friend a battery on their birthday until everyone has one.
At that point, wouldn't it be easier if everyone just bought their own? And then whoever has the latest birthday doesn't have to wait a year to get theirs.
cbarnes99 8 hours ago [-]
I think the point is that breaking it up makes the cost more palatable. It's also easier to convince people to spend a bit of money for people they care about than a bunch for themselves that they don't strictly need. People also often struggle to think of gift ideas for birthdays.
deepfriedbits 7 hours ago [-]
True, but you're still buying an entire battery yourself in the course of a calendar year.
I love the spirit behind this but it's strange advice. I consider myself lucky to have a healthy roster of adult friends, and I still think getting 16 of them to spend significant money on each other's birthday would be a big ask to pull off.
underdeserver 7 hours ago [-]
The first friend gets to share their experience with the group, that can then decide to keep buying for other members or not.
mathgeek 6 hours ago [-]
“Sorry y’all, now that I have mine I gotta say, not worth the price”
usern20260720 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah strike me off the birthday gift list
carabiner 7 hours ago [-]
Best gifts are sub $5 and from a thrift store, like a funny shirt or mug.
oytis 8 hours ago [-]
But then you still have to buy birthday presents on top of that
Retr0id 8 hours ago [-]
If everyone's giving everyone the same gift, it's not really a "gift" any more, more of a p2p buy-now-pay-later arrangement (which isn't a terrible idea, but it's suboptimal for those with later bithdays).
chalupa-supreme 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah this pretty much just a “tanda” except everyone pitches in to get the battery instead of paying out to the birthday person.
Might as well just have an annual theme and try to negotiate a bulk discount.
ruined 7 hours ago [-]
it's simple. if i were part of an economy, we would all just act rationally. that way everything would be efficient
cactusplant7374 8 hours ago [-]
Not everything needs to be optimized. Probably only rich people would engage in such a scheme anyway.
Retr0id 8 hours ago [-]
The whole premise here is cost optimization.
hobojojo 6 hours ago [-]
It's not cost optimization its payment on installments..
Personally, I find it less convenient to have more than 1 bill and a group of 30 paying on average every 12 days probably makes it less convenient for anyone. But there are some strange consumers who like to delude themselves.
t098i3 5 hours ago [-]
I've heard of people doing this kind of rotating "Everyone pays $X in each week/month, a different person decides how to spend it each week/month" thing. It's mostly for building social connection/community.
Think about it like a secret santa with a $20 limit - wouldn't it be more efficient for everyone to just do what they want with $20? You're "purchasing" time and connection with friends.
domenkozar 8 hours ago [-]
That's step one, next is your friends.
benj111 8 hours ago [-]
No. This is how building societies work.
You may not have £100,000 but if you get 1000 people with £100 then you can buy a house.
Obviously the birthday system doesnt address the interest, but I'm sure your friends would be ok paying interest right?
rcktmrtn 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, but I think the missing ingredient is that building societies "bid" to decide who gets to go first. Whoever is willing to take the smallest loan/pay back fastest gets preference.
Reinventing building societies seems very cool to me -- it's a little more nuanced than the birthday thing, but it's a system that can work with assets that generate value.
iwontberude 7 hours ago [-]
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lowbloodsugar 7 hours ago [-]
It's just fantastically naive on so many levels.
toomuchtodo 8 hours ago [-]
It is like an energy storage cost cutting rotating potluck. blitzar mentions bulk buying in a comment, which is a great idea to drive down cost. Not sure what the EU version of that looks like, the US versions are:
Europe has quote a bit of renewable generation currently that is curtailing or otherwise going unused, and needs all of the battery energy storage it can get (residential, commercial, utility scale) to convert curtailment into realized clean energy offsetting potential fossil energy usage (gas and coal).
> Hundreds of millions of solar panels have been installed in Europe, turning solar into the region's biggest source of power during summer months, but the system around it hasn't kept up. A record amount of electricity is being wasted because grids can't handle the surge in output, with about 40 terawatt-hours of electricity expected to go to waste in the coming months. The glut of solar power is pushing power prices deep below zero during peak solar hours, eroding returns for producers and forcing them to shut down plants, with consumers potentially paying twice for the subsidies and compensation.
iwontberude 7 hours ago [-]
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isoprophlex 8 hours ago [-]
> You are also safer during a power outage. The STREAM 5000 provides up to 3 kW of off-grid output. Keep essential devices on its backup output and reserve some battery capacity, and your refrigerator, lights, router, and laptop can keep running when the grid goes down. An ordinary grid connection does not back up the whole house automatically; the backup output must be configured correctly.
Being able to cut over your entire house from grid power to a battery requires an invasive, expensive change to most connections. I wish people would stop breathlessly promoting batteries (which are good! we need decentralized storage!) because "you can use them to run your fridge, router, etc". Yes you can, but for almost all consumers it's an order of magnitude more effort and cash compared to just buying and plugging in a battery.
ssl-3 8 hours ago [-]
And the proposed battery solution only works at up to 3kW. My electric range uses more than that, and my water heater, clothes dryer, and aircon each come close.
And, sure: I can get by very well with refrigeration, networking, computing and/or TV, and lights during a power outage. But those loads need to be segregated, or it just doesn't work. That adds more expense.
And since those segregated loads don't even come anywhere near 3kW, it isn't clear to me how I'm to be maximizing my local use of surplus power events.
There are grid-interactive battery solutions from companies like EG4 that can go betwixt the entire house and its grid connection, but this isn't it.
croemer 7 hours ago [-]
Why do you need to segregate them? Can't you switch the rest off? Or is the problem that otherwise you'd supply neighbors as well?
ssl-3 7 hours ago [-]
Just because it's the real world. :)
If things aren't segregated and the power goes off while I'm cooking, the aircon is running, the water heater is doing its thing, or whatever, then: I exceed 3kW.
3kW is the maximum that the device can supply. If load exceeds maximum, then something will (must) fail.
Hopefully it fails gracefully, but I mean: I've been married before and I understand how terrific and fantastic it can be when things go slightly wrong at home when I'm not around to address them. The less Rube Goldberg my creations are, the more peaceful my life is.
(None of this modern name-brand grid-tied stuff is any particular danger to linemen. It won't output anything on those terminals if it doesn't have an AC waveform to synchronize with.)
7 hours ago [-]
Aachen 8 hours ago [-]
Not necessarily the point. If it provides a normal wall outlet I'm happy to plug essentials around for the one time per 1-2 decades this happens for longer than 4 hours and the fridge/freezer/laptop needs a boost
EvanAnderson 8 hours ago [-]
As long as you're not opening the fridge / freezer during the outage (and you have sufficient thermal mass of food in it) you don't need to worry about "boosting" it during a power outage of only 4 hours. I don't recall the rule of thumb off the top of my head, but for at least 6 hours I'd expect the contents of normal fridge / freezer to be just fine (as long as there's thermal mass there).
jonathanlydall 8 hours ago [-]
Can confirm from years of load shedding in the past in South Africa where my area had 4 hour outages.
That duration was tough for various reasons, but fridge and freezer were not really an issue.
I was very happy when they changed to 2 hour outages (albeit twice as many), and then even happier with not having load shedding for about 2 years now.
Aachen 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, thanks, indeed I'd start doing this *after* 4h if I have such a battery since fridge, freezer, and laptop are all in different places and they'll run for 90 minutes to cool or charge and it's probably not bad to get around to all towards the end of the first day with no stress. It was just an arbitrary starting point really. Freezer contents are also all fine after 24h but maybe some edges got towards the thawing point. I've not tried it out and simply wouldn't care to find out
DontchaKnowit 7 hours ago [-]
They said longer than 4 hours
rtkwe 8 hours ago [-]
The issue there is the plug would be on the battery which you're unlikely to have mounted in a convenient location for things like your main fridge, router, and computer. For me all 3 of those are pretty far away from the most likely places I'd put a battery bank. I have a mobile one I keep charged up for emergencies and long power outages and have a small portable solar panel for it for multiday outages.
Aachen 7 hours ago [-]
Ah, right I was picturing an oversized car battery that you can lug around. Extension cord then? Not sure but this seems surmountable without having to rewire the house and get a permit or licensed unit for feeding the grid
rtkwe 6 hours ago [-]
The size the article is talking about are usually around 100 pounds or ~50kg at least. My solution is the much smaller Anker Solix C1000 and it's outboard battery extension. It can output up to 1800W sustained with a 2.4 KW peak and the two units together have about 2100 Wh of capacity. They're small enough to move around by hand when disconnected but can't do the kind of peak shifting the OP article was talking about so they're purely backup or car camping power. I used them to power my WFH setup while my electrical service was being upgraded a while ago though and it worked well enough.
coldpie 7 hours ago [-]
I dunno. TBH I'd rather just let the food go bad than bother with the expense and hassle of having a battery and keeping it charged. I guess other locations may have less reliable grids than I do, but I've only experienced one power outage that lasted so long[1] that our food went off in my entire 40 years living in the Twin Cities area.
[1] About 96 hours, major storm took down a ton of trees through the whole metro area that took days to clear.
SkyPuncher 2 minutes ago [-]
I’ve generally come to this opinion as well. The only thing I would seriously consider auxiliary power for is the furnace.
Winter storms tend to come in cold stretch’s that can cause major freeze havoc.
microtonal 7 hours ago [-]
I can't even remember the last power outage we had that was not self-inflicted (a year ago our old microwave oven permanently tripped the residual current device).
Also, according to the article, it seems to pay itself back in 11-12 years. I'd rather pay the little extra to not have a huge lithium battery in our appartment that cannot be extinguished with a normal fire extinguisher if it decides to ignite itself.
Aachen 7 hours ago [-]
The device's primary use would be using excess solar power from during the day, or excess wind on rare occasions. This would just be a nice benefit and I just meant that it doesn't have to keep up with the whole house during an outage to still help out in a pinch
smcameron 6 hours ago [-]
Must be nice. I live in Virginia, outside Richmond. For the past 8 years, the power company has failed to provide me with even 3 nines of power availability (that means at least 9 hours of outage every year for the past 8 years. Just had a 17 hour outage as of last night, lost everything in my fridge. Again.)
m463 3 hours ago [-]
I think you're right -- depending on the country.
It seems australia has very low friction
and US with our power companies, significantly more
- where you going to find an electrician?
- do you need someone to design your grid-tie plan?
- when will the power company approve your connection?
I've had friends wire their house, have to really work to plan the setup, and be stuck with a working system offline while PG&E approves slowly
Another point: People might be better served NOT buying a battery, instead getting an EV and wiring it into their house.
The cost/invasiveness of cutover is dropping. There is a relatively new category called "plug in solar" where the inverter/battery is smart enought to detect, sync and use grid power.
The Stream system: Connect the device to the grid to enable it to feed power into the grid or draw power from it when solar energy is insufficient. This can be done via a standard home outlet (if permitted), or through a circuit breaker. [0]
I disagree. During an outage, you need your fridge and a few other essential items. A novice can plug into the back. The device tells you the load and whether you are exceeding. And you can test it at any time. For $600 you can get started without an electrician.
it's the easiest, safest , most affordable and most reliable emergency solution ever available.
brk 8 hours ago [-]
For a relatively small battery like that, it's not going to last for days. In the typical outage where that battery would carry you, you can typically just leave the fridge closed and it will stay cold enough to prevent 99% of your stuff from spoiling. For most people (at least the US), it's not super easy to get at the plug in the back of the fridge anyway.
Running HVAC is usually more of a concern, especially in winter or peak of summer, and those aren't device that you can hot-plug, and a small battery wouldn't help there anyway.
I like the idea of whole-house batteries, but to really make it practical you're talking about thousands of dollars to the battery, install, etc. And you still don't have extensive run time, which is why I think you see most people still leaning towards permanent or portable generators way more than batteries.
jerf 8 hours ago [-]
People need to make decisions about how much resiliency they want. A medium-sized battery greatly enhances your options in an outage. A "solar generator" expands them yet farther. A whole-house generator somewhat farther. It's a lot easier and cheaper if you don't insist that your "resiliency" be "I live my life with no compromises whatsoever".
But I would advocate that "zero resiliency" needs to be seen as being socially irresponsible. It is socially irresponsible that as soon as a service goes out that you are immediately in an emergency. You should not offload basic resiliency on to emergency services. Yes, if you take a direct hit from a tornado you're going to be leaning on emergency services, but the house a quarter mile from touchdown that may be out for three or four days needs to be able to deal with that. If nothing else, emergency supplies are a lot cheaper when it's not an emergency.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and especially so when perfect is so much more expensive and so much less relevant than the good.
munificent 8 hours ago [-]
> It is socially irresponsible that as soon as a service goes out that you are immediately in an emergency. You should not offload basic resiliency on to emergency services.
Sure, but that's not a remotely accurate description of a house without a backup battery or generator.
I grew up in hurricane country and weathered many bad storms. Losing power does not put you immediately in an emergency. If you don't open the fridge much, your perishables will last a couple of days. Non-perishables will last much longer. Having a battery is the difference between "we can hang out and grill dinner for 5 days before we need to hit the road" and "we can hang out and grill dinner for 6 days before we need to hit the road". That distinction does not significantly change your strategy.
Losing water is a much bigger emergency but is thankfully rarer and a backup battery won't help.
Climate change will change this story somewhat in the South. If you are in a very hot climate, elderly, or have other health issues, then losing electricity and air conditioning in the summer can be an immediate emergency. Again, though, A/Cs consume so much electricity that a backup battery won't help you much.
I think you're significantly overestimating the emergency value of a battery backup. Loss of electricity is rarely a rapid emergency. In cases where it is, a generator will at least give you as much power as you care to store fuel.
jerf 7 hours ago [-]
> > It is socially irresponsible that as soon as a service goes out that you are immediately in an emergency. You should not offload basic resiliency on to emergency services.
> Sure, but that's not a remotely accurate description of a house without a backup battery or generator.
I don't mean it as one. Resiliency is my end goal, and "a reasonable amount" at that, not "I can reboot civilization from the zombie hordes with just what is in my shed". If you are already resilient with just a house and what it will naturally do without power, hey, great. A battery opens up options, but if it is not worth it, it isn't worth it.
It should be a social expectation that you can survive a reasonable 2-3 days without power and whatever other service outage you have without having to immediately hit the stores or drawing on emergency services. I do not care exactly how you achieve that. I don't care if you're carrying on like nothing happened in a well-lit house with AC on full blast or if you're eating beans out of a can and drinking bottled water. I just care that people should be expected to be at least a little resilient, for all sorts of pro-social reasons, that if you have your additional needs like an oxygen machine or necessary medicine that you have the buffer in place, and so on. (Which does imply certain perscription practices keeping you on a short leash are in violation of this, but that's another discussion.)
munificent 3 hours ago [-]
I mean, it's also a selfish expectation to be able to survive a couple of days without services. As a general rule, people prefer not to die.
My point is just that a cheap battery backup does not have a significant effect in the resiliency strategy for most people.
I am certainly not a prepper, but even viewing that scene from the outside, it is absolutely rife with what I would call "preparedness theater". Things you can buy (it's always about buying stuff) that would save you in some imagined horrific scenario but where the odds of the scenario happening in just the right arrangement where that object helped are infintesimal.
Like, yes, if your car drives into a freezing cold deep lake and you are somehow too incapacitated to open your seatbelt but not too incapacitated to use a knife, then keeping a dive knife in your glove box next to the ceramic "break windshield" thingy might be worth it, but you're more likely to win the lottery than have that happen.
There is a set of people whose brains are wired such that they are easily nerd sniped into obsessing about these sorts of things. When they do, they are also compelled to share it and spread it like some kind of mind virus. It takes a certain amount of mental discipline to not fall down every one of those rabbitholes. I believe the author telling the world to arrange joint battery buying parties for friends is well along that path of crazy.
Don't waste time and money organizing a joint battery purchase for your friends. Keep some non-perishables and a few gallons of water in your house. Fill your gas tank before it gets all the way to empty. Learn how to cook and some basic first aid.
foobarian 6 hours ago [-]
Winter is a better use case, because losing power during deep sub-zero temps can lead to plumbing damage and even be dangerous, but doesn't require too much power if heat uses natural gas as the main power source.
tonymet 7 hours ago [-]
Generators don’t work that well. They need regular use and maintenance. Fuel storage is complicated (you will need 30+ gallons a day, or about 2 sedan tank’s worth. Connecting to your panel is expensive at least $2k+. They are smelly and noisy. And if it’s a real emergency, everyone will know you have one , and eventually come knocking.
For $2k you can buy 3 Ankers and distribute around the house. With a propane camp stove you can cook. So the only utility failing during a power outage is your air conn. If it’s winter you can run a gas fireplace to keep warm.
In my area we have power outages in the fall and winter wind storms due to trees falling. We need electricity for the fridge, fireplace, lighting , internet & devices. Lithium batteries work great. We get a few outages every season, usually for 2-6 hours .
My neighbors have a generator for “emergencies” and don’t end up using it because it’s such a PITA. He has it for SHTF, but then he will have to consume the gas from his cars (and siphon it), which means making the decision between home comfort and evac.
My point is that every solution covers a range of scenarios based on convenience, cost, resilience, versatility and more. There is no one size fits all .
And now these lithium battery backups provide a broad amount of coverage that is safe and convenient for novices to run.
munificent 2 hours ago [-]
> Generators don’t work that well. They need regular use and maintenance.
So do lawnmowers and chainsaws.
>Fuel storage is complicated (you will need 30+ gallons a day, or about 2 sedan tank’s worth.
You put it in containers and put them in your garage.
>Connecting to your panel is expensive at least $2k+.
You don't have to do that. Just run some extension cords through your house.
> They are smelly and noisy.
So is everyone after a couple of days in the South without air conditioning!
> And if it’s a real emergency, everyone will know you have one , and eventually come knocking.
This is a feature, not a bug. It's how communities take care of each other.
runako 7 hours ago [-]
People here buy natural gas generators[1] and just connect them into the existing gas lines. (I realize natural gas is not part of the utility mix everywhere.) Gas still flows when power is out, and common generators are big enough to power even A/C.
You’re right it’s more convenient than gasoline, but most of the other hassles apply (dirty/smelly, maintenance, noisy)
nancyminusone 6 hours ago [-]
What are you running that uses 30+ gallons of gasoline per day? Personal AI datacenter? I barely use that much in my car per month.
You should be able to expect at least 4-6kwh per gallon at the generator output. So $25 worth of gas in a 5 gallon can stores 5x the energy of a $2000 battery. The only maintenance I've done on my generator is to drain the fuel lines after use. Maybe change the engine oil once or twice per decade. Apart from that, it runs just as well as 30 years ago when it was new.
True, the gasoline doesn't last that long in storage, but I just use it to fill my car every now and then, and get new gas.
tonymet 4 hours ago [-]
What’s your point? How long are you getting on 5 gallons? Maybe 10 hours if you’re lucky. And I hope you’re not using your 30 year old generator on anything with an IC – the power is too dirty to use with electronics.
deferring the maintenance is your choice, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
apercu 7 hours ago [-]
Fair, but I live in a wooded, semi-rural area and have had 7 outages this year, with one lasting over 8 hours.
tonymet 8 hours ago [-]
sure we can quibble over convenience, but it's an outage, and you have to make it work. Look at the testing for the Anker Solix S2000 they are getting 2+ days of regular refrigerator use , which is what people care about primarily .
What other option is easier or more affordable? A generator has to remain outside, so it needs panel connection ($$) , lots of extensions ( $, hassle), needs a generous fuel supply, and regular maintenance.
And plug-in solar is becoming legal in the usa. within 3 years everyone will be running these little things, and you'll come around.
nancyminusone 5 hours ago [-]
Exactly zero plug in solutions should be outputing power during an outage, if designed correctly, because they will be backfeed out of the house and into a grid. Most legislation directly addresses this.
So you're back to getting a tranfer switch installed or lots of cords anyways.
tonymet 4 hours ago [-]
The plug in technology available today accounts for that. Soon they will be available in all 50 states.
isoprophlex 7 hours ago [-]
I really get where you're coming from, but I'm approaching this from the ~$1500, 5 kWh battery in TFA, which weights 50-60 kg, should be installed somewhere out of the way in a non-fire-hazardous manner. They're great, they can load-shift a meaningful chunk of daily consumption for most european homes don't just move these around to your freezer. They don't magically make you independent in case of grid failures, it's just not what they're for. And to get the average consumer to adopt these, the messaging about what they can and can't do should be crystal clear.
apercu 7 hours ago [-]
I mean, yes and no. Switching your whole house over automatically? Yeah, ok, that can get invasive and expensive. Running an extension cord from a battery/inverter or generator a multiport plug then to to your fridge, router and a couple of lights? That's about 5-10 minutes of effort.
There's a pretty massive middle ground between "plug in a battery" and "rewire the house.
bluGill 7 hours ago [-]
Switching the whole house is cheap compared to the generator or battery needed to run everything in the house. Of you can't run everything then you may as well have nothing. The important things need a lot of power.
fhdkweig 8 hours ago [-]
If a fridge is your only concern, they make UPSes specifically for fridges.
A home battery you can just plug in. Interesting. Are those legal in the US?
balderdash 7 hours ago [-]
11-13yr payback on something that is going to degrade ~3-4%/yr for 10 years (and limited terminal value) doesn't seem like the greatest investment unless you think the arb is going to widen a ton.
homebessguy 6 hours ago [-]
Alternative systems are closer to 5 years payback if you have access to off peak energy. 3-4%/year degradation is very high, battery packs available in the UK from Fogstar are rated at 8,000 cycles with a 95% depth of discharge.
FWIW my high voltage battery pack has almost 365 cycles and is still at 100% state of health.
balderdash 6 hours ago [-]
FWIW i was just going off that fact that the warranty on the battery mentioned in the article only guaranteed >=60% after 10 years...
lkbm 6 hours ago [-]
Add in that my freezer probably contains over $500 of food (and the fridge has less, but not none.)
Usually you can buy ice, but when I had a ~36 hour outage a couple years ago, I couldn't. Most stuff was fine for that long, but 2-3 days would've meant tossing pretty much the entire contents.
(Plus, I don't have cell service where I live, so being able to power my router is pretty useful.)
This is probably a bad move if you live in a city. It makes more sense in rural areas.
sdthjbvuiiijbb 7 hours ago [-]
And any arbitrage is also trivially exploited by the electricity company, who has a much greater financial incentive and scale, so there's really no reason to think that it's going to widen in the future either.
delecti 7 hours ago [-]
Until grid-scale batteries are more established, you're helping the electric company, and that's why they're exposing the arbitrage. They're providing the incentives to nudge demand, so a home battery is doing exactly what they want (use more at time X, use less at time Y). Otherwise they'd just have the 24/7 price be whatever it currently costs when the supply and demand curves are tightest for them (when demand is highest and/or supply is lowest).
bluGill 7 hours ago [-]
You could exploit it yourself, but only if you have several million to invest, less than that and it isn't worth the bother for the electric company to talk to you. Even at ten million invested you really need to have this is round one in your proposal with the understanding you intend to invest a lot more when it proves in the real world to work like you expect.
mosselman 7 hours ago [-]
Let's assume the calculation is correct and you actually earn back in 11-13 years. You are better off investing the money in something like the S&P 500 where you'd double your investment in about a decade without the hassle.
Things will start to get interesting where €1600 don't buy you 5kWh but double or triple the amount.
I can imagine most people are better off either investing like I said or in insulation.
homebessguy 6 hours ago [-]
€1500 can already get you 16.1kWh.
The investment point still stands, though you could argue both come with risk/reward, energy prices aren't guaranteed to be stable.
poisonborz 6 hours ago [-]
But that makes you more dependent on externalities, a battery makes you more independent instead.
MagicMoonlight 6 hours ago [-]
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scaredreally 7 hours ago [-]
At my mother's workplace, there was a group of coworkers who each donated an amount of money per paycheck. Each paycheck, one coworker would get the lump sum that was collected for that paycheck. Similar concept to the one described here. They called it "susu" or something to that effect. If I remember correctly, it got messy when people would leave the workplace or when, occasionally, someone would get robbed on the way home.
mtlynch 6 hours ago [-]
I read the book Poor Economics[0] around when it came out, and it described something similar.
For people who don't have access to banks, they form "savings clubs" where there will be, say, 12 people who put in $100 per month, and one person takes the pot every month. The idea is that if you keep the money yourself, then you're socially pressured to spend it when there are holidays or guests, but if it's locked up in the savings club, you can't spend it, and then you get a big lump sum to spend on a large purchase that would be otherwise hard to save for.
There are two issues with the articles calculations, that end up making the already bad payback time even worse, before considering opportunity costs. Numbers are for Germany since that's the more favorable case:
1 - degradation: assuming the 15 years battery life / 10.000 cycles number from the datasheet is accurate, and that the manufacturer considers 70% capacity end-of-life, this pushes the payback time from 11.1 to 12.7 years.
but this is wrong because it assumes that grid charges fully cancel out. The article generally does a poor job at explaining this, but essentially it proposes you overbuy electricity when it's cheap and use it when it's expensive. The difference of those two, €0.133/kWh - €0.041/kWh is much smaller then the average electricity price of €0.3869/kWh because the latter also includes taxes and grid charges. So with 90% efficiency they end up with the formula above, but completely ignore the fact that from the grid's point of view, the total electricity consumption increased. On the flipside, it's also taking EPEX prices directly, pre-VAT, so you actually save 19% more then the difference 0.133 - 0.041 = 0.092. So the actual formula should be:
At a average rate of 21 cents/kWh for total grid costs (including VAT) that comes out to a payback time of 13.71 years.
So yeah, buying batteries alone doesn't make sense. You need solar or wind to charge them, so you actually avoid the grid charges. So that instead of saving 10 cents you save 40.
SubiculumCode 7 hours ago [-]
People don't tend to buy people large furniture because it's rude to assume that theyll want to keep something large and relatively permanent, much less something that requires an electrician to install.
jerlam 8 hours ago [-]
> 2. Confirm that their home, meter, and electricity contract are compatible.
This seems like the hardest step. The costs of "just a battery" are much lower by comparison.
jandrese 7 hours ago [-]
You don't necessarily need to export power, especially for a small battery like tihs. Charge it up when power is cheap, and then configure it to discharge when power is expensive but only to match your current usage. You will need a CT on your main feed for it to balance against, but it can be done.
hobo123 7 hours ago [-]
Strange article, even though the idea is nice. $200 birthday presents might be a thing in America in some circles, but for German standards that is ludicrous (even 50 bucks is quite a lot, and then you need 32 people).
I also don't get his example calculation. He mentions that average price in Germany is 38c/kWh, but in the table it's suddenly 4c min vs 13c max (or 40 vs 133?). That doesn't compute.
skitsofrandom 7 hours ago [-]
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or_am_i 8 hours ago [-]
How does 12 years required for this scheme to pay for itself stack up against the typical house battery's lifetime?
Retr0id 8 hours ago [-]
Also, as more batteries get added to the grid, the difference between the "cheap" and "expensive" energy prices ought to reduce.
rsynnott 8 hours ago [-]
Eh, there’s a tension there, becuase on the other hand as more renewable power is added to the grid, you’d expect divergence. Especially in countries which are letting people buy at spot price; that can be horribly expensive, or go _negative_.
strbean 8 hours ago [-]
Sounds like that's roughly the average usable lifetime for the battery, so you will break even on average.
8 hours ago [-]
hobo123 7 hours ago [-]
I think most electric car batteries are still at over 80% capacity after 10 years usage, so hopefully you can use them much longer than that.
If you only cycle then in the 20-80% range, they'll last much longer (at least for NMC cells, not sure how LFP works).
I remember having to replace the lead acid battery in my UPS every 2-3 years, which seemed like a waste of money considering my country's power grid is fairly stable apart from the occasional blackout from lightning strikes.
Tepix 8 hours ago [-]
> €1,600 for 5 kWh
Those prices are high. You can get 2.56kWh for 270€ on Aliexpress, delivered locally from Germany.
microtonal 7 hours ago [-]
2.56kWh for 270€ on Aliexpress
What could possibly go wrong? The things that people do.
Personally, I'd like the company to be in the EU so that I can at least sue them if it burns down the house.
markvdb 7 hours ago [-]
Most of these are illegal to install in Belgium though. Anything connected there needs national grid type approval.
Johnny555 7 hours ago [-]
>thirty-two people contribute €50 each.
I guess Europeans have more friends than Americans -- I can't think of 32 people I'd invite to a birthday party, and certainly not 32 people that I'd expect to give me a €50 gift. I haven't received a real birthday present from friends (beyond a cheap gag-gift) in decades.
_ink_ 7 hours ago [-]
Germany is unfortunately not a good place to do this. The additional fees that you need to pay on top of the actual energy price are simply too high. And currently there is Katharina Reiche in charge which is actively fighting concepts like Energy Sharing.
imbusy111 7 hours ago [-]
The hybrid inverter that allows you to plug the battery into your house circuit (DC -> AC) seamlessly is around $2-3k + installation cost, cause you're touching the main panel. Why isn't that in the calculation?
domenkozar 7 hours ago [-]
You plug it into a socket.
compiler-guy 6 hours ago [-]
Plugging a power-supply into a normal outlet like this is legal in many places, and illegal in many others.
Check local code before proceeding!
sailfast 7 hours ago [-]
The 12 year payoff IF you manage the arbitrage properly really made me wonder why on earth you would buy one of these.
I want one, yes. But it sure as hell wouldn't be to save money. It'd be to have something if and when the grid falls over due to negligence.
ivanjermakov 6 hours ago [-]
> keep essential devices running when the power goes out
I guess it's very location-specific, but I haven't had a power outage longer than 1 minute in the past 5 years.
nancyminusone 5 hours ago [-]
You are correct. My area has had 3 in the past 5 months.
xur17 6 hours ago [-]
Do any US states allow plug in batteries like this (I know some allow plug in solar)? The installation cost of a whole home battery is what has kept me away so far.
daxelrod 5 hours ago [-]
That’s a good point. I had assumed the states allowing plug-in solar also allowed batteries, but according to https://pluginsolarguide.com , it’s only Utah so far.
hypfer 7 hours ago [-]
A Marstek Venus A 2.12kWh expansion module currently costs 180€ with a bunch of special aliexpress discounts.
The whole system is.. not great, but it's even cheaper to have a battery than this post makes it sound.
mistivia 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think installing this kind of system at home is a good idea, especially considering the risk of fire. The amount of energy contained in a 5 kWh lithium battery is terrifing.
compiler-guy 6 hours ago [-]
There are numerous systems available for this type of system that are professionally designed and built, and satisfy all kinds of local codes.
Many are in use all over the world in off-grid cabins and similar.
You do need to take care that they are installed correctly, and maintained properly, but that isn't much different than a natural gas connection, or even normal everyday electricity.
You don't really need this, if you have an EV with V2X technology. There's already charging products that work seamlessly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0WGl_U5azs and you have 100kWh of capacity, so you could sit out an outage for a long time. You can also configure the % cut off for the EV, so you still have enough left to drive if you need to leave.
EV battery degradation from this use case is irrelevant. EVs are consistently hitting 300,000 miles with 90% capacity, so let's not belabor this point.
adolph 6 hours ago [-]
The thing about the EcoFlow Stream is that has things like phase alignment which allows it to be plugged directly into a household outlet without transfer switches to segregate grid phase from the phase of power created by the V2X inverter's phase. It also handles solar input.
I suppose that future V2X systems will incorporate direct plug-in tech, but note the transfer switch used by the system in the video.
hypfer 7 hours ago [-]
> EV battery degradation from this use case is irrelevant.
Nope.
CGMthrowaway 5 hours ago [-]
How do I properly think about the fire hazard posed by a big battery in my house?
rmykhajliw 6 hours ago [-]
Welcome to Ukraine where local people installed around 8GWt of batteries at home mostly because of huge outages after missile and ballistic terroristic attacks.
Batteries installation is not about money , average LiFePo4 battery life is around 10 years, so you will save nothing, unless you have some local generation like solar panels. In this case you could shrink payback time to 5 years instead of 10 and it makes some sense.
But the biggest problems here 2:
1. there a critical point after installing a huge amount of balance batteries the diff between day/night hours would be mitigated. And prices may down 30%.
As result economical factor of installing energy storage systems would be very questionable. However cheap energy will increase energy usage by homes and industry and this may/might/probaly/i_hope. boost economy
2. The second factor riskier because when many people are installing energy storages and become independent of power grid, or even disconnects from the grid, there still exists power grid you have to support. Right now the price of grid support included in energy bill for electric company. The grid usage price is stable , it doesn't matter you support 1 person or a 1mln residents city. So the less people are using THE GRID - the higher prices for the rest people. And those high price forces rest people to disconnect from the grid. In general we may/I_hope_not to have situation with plenty energy islands and no more national grid systems
archydeb 8 hours ago [-]
And if you’re in the UK, wire them up to Axle Energy
(plug-in batteries aren’t actually legal here yet, but likely to become so next year!)
xet7 4 hours ago [-]
It this ad from some battery company?
kortzeus 7 hours ago [-]
The only downside is that the battery won't last 11 years with daily usage
8 hours ago [-]
stogot 5 hours ago [-]
The example prices of kWH in this article are inconsistent
chaostheory 7 hours ago [-]
As the post already mentioned, also great for blackouts, of which more are coming for the developed world given climate change and infrastructure failure
vel0city 7 hours ago [-]
So I could buy a battery for ~$1,850 today that won't even break even in a decade (and hope everything goes well with this plan, not guaranteed in the slightest), or I can buy a 10 year US treasury note that'll give me another $1,000+ in profit at the end of the decade.
Remind me why I should buy the battery? It clearly can't be because it makes financial sense to just have the battery.
tristor 7 hours ago [-]
This is interesting, but is 3kW enough to be useful? What is the latest when it comes to home batteries? Has management gotten better to be smarter?
well_ackshually 8 hours ago [-]
>sixteen people contribute €100 each;
yeah sure everyone has 100€ to spend on friends, at least once a month.
What kind of reality does he live in ?
Terr_ 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah, at the core it suggests each person lends €1600 (~$1850 USD) distributed in an unofficial and impromptu way, hoping to get it all back as a home-improvement good. That has some implications like:
1. You have ~15 friends and you all have houses.
2. All of you can confidently allocate €1600 this year towards one major component of the upgrade, and believe you will benefit from it in the next ~15 years.
3. All the friends make enough money that they're confident anything going wrong with €1600 loans/debts won't cause pain or problems in the friendship.
How rich do you need to be for the mentality of that last one? AFAICT that's ~3% of yearly salary (pre-tax) in Germany.
Personally, I do not want my friend group to be tangled up in a financing scheme, and if I wanted a financing scheme I wouldn't do something half-assed that could explode into acrimony if anyone chooses (or is forced by circumstance) to exit having contributed without receiving or vice-versa.
I could understand friends having good-years helping out ones having bad-years ("banqueting" [0]) but what's being proposed really doesn't map to that.
And everyone lives in a house that they own, apparently.
Terr_ 6 hours ago [-]
And everyone makes enough money that something going wrong with their €1600 payment/expectation isn't going to ruin relationships.
It might not actually be "buy one-another new cars" territory, it's closer to that than paying for your friend's coffee or buying an appetizer for the whole table.
hobo123 7 hours ago [-]
Why can't renters plug a battery into their socket, too? As long as the electric house grid is rated for the specified power (might not be the case on some countries, or in extremely old homes).
atombender 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not an expert. But a Tesla Powerwall type battery is a big thing to install for a renter, is it not? I would argue it's more than installing, say, a washer or window AC; probably more like installing a wall heat pump?
You would certainly need the owner's permission, and investing in the kind of adaptations needed might not be something most renters are interested in when it's not their own place. A battery has to be integrated into the whole electrical feed, and a responsible owner might insist that this is a permanent installation and something you can just take with you when you leave. Or if you do, undoing the install will be similarly costly. And who knows if your next place will allow you to install a battery as well.
I don't think you can realistically install it in an apartment, due to fire regulations, and it needs a lot of space. Personally, I live in a 74 m2 apartment, and there's simply no room anywhere. Wiring is another matter; electricity comes through shared risers I don't control.
delusional 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not an expert here, but I don't think you're supposed to backfeed electricity into your panel while you're connected to the grid. Doing something like this (historically at-home solar) you'd need a way to disconnect from the grid physically, at least if you wanted to reuse your home wiring.
Now, you could use the battery as a pass through power source, but then you'd have to change all the wiring in your home.
Hugsbox 8 hours ago [-]
You're getting downvoted, but for real this is so disconnected from what I'd say is feasible for most people. I and most of the people I know live squarely paycheck to paycheck, I can't afford to buy my friends birthday presents at all, let alone set aside that much per month just to put batteries in other peoples' houses. This feels like one of those things where the author doesn't grasp the privilege he lives with.
Majestic121 7 hours ago [-]
Surely not for _most_ people, but for people on Hacker News, in the correct age range to have a house, putting 100e aside really does not seem out of whack.
Maybe the author is privileged and it's fine, it's not because you personally can't afford any gift that the author is disconnected, he might not just be talking to everyone on earth.
Johnny555 7 hours ago [-]
I think the people that can easily put aside €100 for the birthdays of a dozen or more friends could also just pay the €1600 and buy the battery for themselves outright without having to wait for a birthday "surprise"
Symbiote 7 hours ago [-]
Even where people probably could afford it I think spending €100 on a birthday gift would be excessive. It would be showing off.
Tepix 8 hours ago [-]
Do they even have houses?
ssl-3 7 hours ago [-]
Does having a home inherently change disposable income?
Hugsbox 8 hours ago [-]
In some cases yes, and they're not doing much better than I am.
leemelone 4 hours ago [-]
how often do I have to buy a new one? Batteries are one of the highest cost and most consumable items I can think of.
mindslight 8 hours ago [-]
Call me old fashioned, but I just bring a can of gasoline and a pile of super soakers.
While I do like the idea in theory, I don't love the inherent nudge towards off the shelf productized energy storage that will be placed somewhere without much of a plan, and then basically invites rewiring with extension cords. I get how those things are appealing for camping or determined apartment DIYers at the like, but moving them from a seek-them-out "pull" dynamic to a here-you-go "push" dynamic seems like asking for problems from people not thinking too much about storing 5kWh.
cloudie78 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
wheatone 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
beaviskhan 8 hours ago [-]
Most modern batteries like this are weatherproof and can be mounted outside the home. Most modern batteries use LiFePO4 chemistry, which while not perfect, is much less risky in terms of thermal runaway than older lithium ion batteries.
fhdkweig 8 hours ago [-]
The Tesla Powerwall is only slightly larger than a pizza box and can be mounted directly on the wall. Most of the below images are outside the house, but some are also in the garage.
I have two Powerwalls mounted on my house and while I think they're fantastic and pretty compact for what they are, I would not describe them as anywhere near the size of a pizza box (unless you mean one of these things [1]).
This battery uses a safer type of lithium chemistry that is less prone to overheating, though no large battery is risk-free. Water is used by firefighters to cool battery fires (they can reignite tho).
Install it outdoors or in a detached garage, away from anything flammable. Never in a bedroom, hallway, or escape route.
There are newer batteries tech that can't inflame.
Apreche 8 hours ago [-]
Anyone who can afford to own a home can afford their batteries and doesn’t need gifts. Renters are not allowed to modify their home in such a way.
Tepix 8 hours ago [-]
In Germany you can use a "Balkonkraftwerk" that just plugs into any outlet and contributes up to 800W. You can also hook up solar panels to it up to 2000W (makes most sense with batteries). No need for the landlord to agree.
At that point, wouldn't it be easier if everyone just bought their own? And then whoever has the latest birthday doesn't have to wait a year to get theirs.
I love the spirit behind this but it's strange advice. I consider myself lucky to have a healthy roster of adult friends, and I still think getting 16 of them to spend significant money on each other's birthday would be a big ask to pull off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanda_(informal_loan_club)
Think about it like a secret santa with a $20 limit - wouldn't it be more efficient for everyone to just do what they want with $20? You're "purchasing" time and connection with friends.
You may not have £100,000 but if you get 1000 people with £100 then you can buy a house.
Obviously the birthday system doesnt address the interest, but I'm sure your friends would be ok paying interest right?
Reinventing building societies seems very cool to me -- it's a little more nuanced than the birthday thing, but it's a system that can work with assets that generate value.
https://solarunitedneighbors.org/
https://www.brightsaver.org/
Europe has quote a bit of renewable generation currently that is curtailing or otherwise going unused, and needs all of the battery energy storage it can get (residential, commercial, utility scale) to convert curtailment into realized clean energy offsetting potential fossil energy usage (gas and coal).
Solar Power Is So Big in Europe That Electricity Is Being Wasted - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-13/europe-so... | https://archive.today/nAdiA - May 12th, 2026
> Hundreds of millions of solar panels have been installed in Europe, turning solar into the region's biggest source of power during summer months, but the system around it hasn't kept up. A record amount of electricity is being wasted because grids can't handle the surge in output, with about 40 terawatt-hours of electricity expected to go to waste in the coming months. The glut of solar power is pushing power prices deep below zero during peak solar hours, eroding returns for producers and forcing them to shut down plants, with consumers potentially paying twice for the subsidies and compensation.
Being able to cut over your entire house from grid power to a battery requires an invasive, expensive change to most connections. I wish people would stop breathlessly promoting batteries (which are good! we need decentralized storage!) because "you can use them to run your fridge, router, etc". Yes you can, but for almost all consumers it's an order of magnitude more effort and cash compared to just buying and plugging in a battery.
And, sure: I can get by very well with refrigeration, networking, computing and/or TV, and lights during a power outage. But those loads need to be segregated, or it just doesn't work. That adds more expense.
And since those segregated loads don't even come anywhere near 3kW, it isn't clear to me how I'm to be maximizing my local use of surplus power events.
There are grid-interactive battery solutions from companies like EG4 that can go betwixt the entire house and its grid connection, but this isn't it.
If things aren't segregated and the power goes off while I'm cooking, the aircon is running, the water heater is doing its thing, or whatever, then: I exceed 3kW.
3kW is the maximum that the device can supply. If load exceeds maximum, then something will (must) fail.
Hopefully it fails gracefully, but I mean: I've been married before and I understand how terrific and fantastic it can be when things go slightly wrong at home when I'm not around to address them. The less Rube Goldberg my creations are, the more peaceful my life is.
(None of this modern name-brand grid-tied stuff is any particular danger to linemen. It won't output anything on those terminals if it doesn't have an AC waveform to synchronize with.)
That duration was tough for various reasons, but fridge and freezer were not really an issue.
I was very happy when they changed to 2 hour outages (albeit twice as many), and then even happier with not having load shedding for about 2 years now.
[1] About 96 hours, major storm took down a ton of trees through the whole metro area that took days to clear.
Winter storms tend to come in cold stretch’s that can cause major freeze havoc.
Also, according to the article, it seems to pay itself back in 11-12 years. I'd rather pay the little extra to not have a huge lithium battery in our appartment that cannot be extinguished with a normal fire extinguisher if it decides to ignite itself.
It seems australia has very low friction
and US with our power companies, significantly more
- where you going to find an electrician?
- do you need someone to design your grid-tie plan?
- when will the power company approve your connection?
I've had friends wire their house, have to really work to plan the setup, and be stuck with a working system offline while PG&E approves slowly
Another point: People might be better served NOT buying a battery, instead getting an EV and wiring it into their house.
for example: https://www.tesla.com/powershare/
or just "bidirectional charging" for other brands
The Stream system: Connect the device to the grid to enable it to feed power into the grid or draw power from it when solar energy is insufficient. This can be done via a standard home outlet (if permitted), or through a circuit breaker. [0]
0. https://manuals.ecoflow.com/us/product/stream-ultra?lang=en_...
it's the easiest, safest , most affordable and most reliable emergency solution ever available.
Running HVAC is usually more of a concern, especially in winter or peak of summer, and those aren't device that you can hot-plug, and a small battery wouldn't help there anyway.
I like the idea of whole-house batteries, but to really make it practical you're talking about thousands of dollars to the battery, install, etc. And you still don't have extensive run time, which is why I think you see most people still leaning towards permanent or portable generators way more than batteries.
But I would advocate that "zero resiliency" needs to be seen as being socially irresponsible. It is socially irresponsible that as soon as a service goes out that you are immediately in an emergency. You should not offload basic resiliency on to emergency services. Yes, if you take a direct hit from a tornado you're going to be leaning on emergency services, but the house a quarter mile from touchdown that may be out for three or four days needs to be able to deal with that. If nothing else, emergency supplies are a lot cheaper when it's not an emergency.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and especially so when perfect is so much more expensive and so much less relevant than the good.
Sure, but that's not a remotely accurate description of a house without a backup battery or generator.
I grew up in hurricane country and weathered many bad storms. Losing power does not put you immediately in an emergency. If you don't open the fridge much, your perishables will last a couple of days. Non-perishables will last much longer. Having a battery is the difference between "we can hang out and grill dinner for 5 days before we need to hit the road" and "we can hang out and grill dinner for 6 days before we need to hit the road". That distinction does not significantly change your strategy.
Losing water is a much bigger emergency but is thankfully rarer and a backup battery won't help.
Climate change will change this story somewhat in the South. If you are in a very hot climate, elderly, or have other health issues, then losing electricity and air conditioning in the summer can be an immediate emergency. Again, though, A/Cs consume so much electricity that a backup battery won't help you much.
I think you're significantly overestimating the emergency value of a battery backup. Loss of electricity is rarely a rapid emergency. In cases where it is, a generator will at least give you as much power as you care to store fuel.
> Sure, but that's not a remotely accurate description of a house without a backup battery or generator.
I don't mean it as one. Resiliency is my end goal, and "a reasonable amount" at that, not "I can reboot civilization from the zombie hordes with just what is in my shed". If you are already resilient with just a house and what it will naturally do without power, hey, great. A battery opens up options, but if it is not worth it, it isn't worth it.
It should be a social expectation that you can survive a reasonable 2-3 days without power and whatever other service outage you have without having to immediately hit the stores or drawing on emergency services. I do not care exactly how you achieve that. I don't care if you're carrying on like nothing happened in a well-lit house with AC on full blast or if you're eating beans out of a can and drinking bottled water. I just care that people should be expected to be at least a little resilient, for all sorts of pro-social reasons, that if you have your additional needs like an oxygen machine or necessary medicine that you have the buffer in place, and so on. (Which does imply certain perscription practices keeping you on a short leash are in violation of this, but that's another discussion.)
My point is just that a cheap battery backup does not have a significant effect in the resiliency strategy for most people.
I am certainly not a prepper, but even viewing that scene from the outside, it is absolutely rife with what I would call "preparedness theater". Things you can buy (it's always about buying stuff) that would save you in some imagined horrific scenario but where the odds of the scenario happening in just the right arrangement where that object helped are infintesimal.
Like, yes, if your car drives into a freezing cold deep lake and you are somehow too incapacitated to open your seatbelt but not too incapacitated to use a knife, then keeping a dive knife in your glove box next to the ceramic "break windshield" thingy might be worth it, but you're more likely to win the lottery than have that happen.
There is a set of people whose brains are wired such that they are easily nerd sniped into obsessing about these sorts of things. When they do, they are also compelled to share it and spread it like some kind of mind virus. It takes a certain amount of mental discipline to not fall down every one of those rabbitholes. I believe the author telling the world to arrange joint battery buying parties for friends is well along that path of crazy.
Don't waste time and money organizing a joint battery purchase for your friends. Keep some non-perishables and a few gallons of water in your house. Fill your gas tank before it gets all the way to empty. Learn how to cook and some basic first aid.
For $2k you can buy 3 Ankers and distribute around the house. With a propane camp stove you can cook. So the only utility failing during a power outage is your air conn. If it’s winter you can run a gas fireplace to keep warm.
In my area we have power outages in the fall and winter wind storms due to trees falling. We need electricity for the fridge, fireplace, lighting , internet & devices. Lithium batteries work great. We get a few outages every season, usually for 2-6 hours .
My neighbors have a generator for “emergencies” and don’t end up using it because it’s such a PITA. He has it for SHTF, but then he will have to consume the gas from his cars (and siphon it), which means making the decision between home comfort and evac.
My point is that every solution covers a range of scenarios based on convenience, cost, resilience, versatility and more. There is no one size fits all .
And now these lithium battery backups provide a broad amount of coverage that is safe and convenient for novices to run.
So do lawnmowers and chainsaws.
>Fuel storage is complicated (you will need 30+ gallons a day, or about 2 sedan tank’s worth.
You put it in containers and put them in your garage.
>Connecting to your panel is expensive at least $2k+.
You don't have to do that. Just run some extension cords through your house.
> They are smelly and noisy.
So is everyone after a couple of days in the South without air conditioning!
> And if it’s a real emergency, everyone will know you have one , and eventually come knocking.
This is a feature, not a bug. It's how communities take care of each other.
1 - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Generac-14kW-Air-Cooled-Auto-Sta...
You should be able to expect at least 4-6kwh per gallon at the generator output. So $25 worth of gas in a 5 gallon can stores 5x the energy of a $2000 battery. The only maintenance I've done on my generator is to drain the fuel lines after use. Maybe change the engine oil once or twice per decade. Apart from that, it runs just as well as 30 years ago when it was new.
True, the gasoline doesn't last that long in storage, but I just use it to fill my car every now and then, and get new gas.
deferring the maintenance is your choice, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
What other option is easier or more affordable? A generator has to remain outside, so it needs panel connection ($$) , lots of extensions ( $, hassle), needs a generous fuel supply, and regular maintenance.
And plug-in solar is becoming legal in the usa. within 3 years everyone will be running these little things, and you'll come around.
So you're back to getting a tranfer switch installed or lots of cords anyways.
There's a pretty massive middle ground between "plug in a battery" and "rewire the house.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Uninterruptible+power+supply+refri...
FWIW my high voltage battery pack has almost 365 cycles and is still at 100% state of health.
Usually you can buy ice, but when I had a ~36 hour outage a couple years ago, I couldn't. Most stuff was fine for that long, but 2-3 days would've meant tossing pretty much the entire contents.
(Plus, I don't have cell service where I live, so being able to power my router is pretty useful.)
This is probably a bad move if you live in a city. It makes more sense in rural areas.
Things will start to get interesting where €1600 don't buy you 5kWh but double or triple the amount.
I can imagine most people are better off either investing like I said or in insulation.
The investment point still stands, though you could argue both come with risk/reward, energy prices aren't guaranteed to be stable.
For people who don't have access to banks, they form "savings clubs" where there will be, say, 12 people who put in $100 per month, and one person takes the pot every month. The idea is that if you keep the money yourself, then you're socially pressured to spend it when there are holidays or guests, but if it's locked up in the savings club, you can't spend it, and then you get a big lump sum to spend on a large purchase that would be otherwise hard to save for.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Economics
1 - degradation: assuming the 15 years battery life / 10.000 cycles number from the datasheet is accurate, and that the manufacturer considers 70% capacity end-of-life, this pushes the payback time from 11.1 to 12.7 years.
2 - The article calculates the savings with:
> daily saving = 4.5 × expensive price − 5 × cheap price
but this is wrong because it assumes that grid charges fully cancel out. The article generally does a poor job at explaining this, but essentially it proposes you overbuy electricity when it's cheap and use it when it's expensive. The difference of those two, €0.133/kWh - €0.041/kWh is much smaller then the average electricity price of €0.3869/kWh because the latter also includes taxes and grid charges. So with 90% efficiency they end up with the formula above, but completely ignore the fact that from the grid's point of view, the total electricity consumption increased. On the flipside, it's also taking EPEX prices directly, pre-VAT, so you actually save 19% more then the difference 0.133 - 0.041 = 0.092. So the actual formula should be:
> daily saving = 1.19 × (5×0.9 × expensive price − 5 × cheap price) − 5 × (1−0.9) × grid charges
At a average rate of 21 cents/kWh for total grid costs (including VAT) that comes out to a payback time of 13.71 years.
So yeah, buying batteries alone doesn't make sense. You need solar or wind to charge them, so you actually avoid the grid charges. So that instead of saving 10 cents you save 40.
This seems like the hardest step. The costs of "just a battery" are much lower by comparison.
I also don't get his example calculation. He mentions that average price in Germany is 38c/kWh, but in the table it's suddenly 4c min vs 13c max (or 40 vs 133?). That doesn't compute.
If you only cycle then in the 20-80% range, they'll last much longer (at least for NMC cells, not sure how LFP works).
I remember having to replace the lead acid battery in my UPS every 2-3 years, which seemed like a waste of money considering my country's power grid is fairly stable apart from the occasional blackout from lightning strikes.
Those prices are high. You can get 2.56kWh for 270€ on Aliexpress, delivered locally from Germany.
What could possibly go wrong? The things that people do.
Personally, I'd like the company to be in the EU so that I can at least sue them if it burns down the house.
I guess Europeans have more friends than Americans -- I can't think of 32 people I'd invite to a birthday party, and certainly not 32 people that I'd expect to give me a €50 gift. I haven't received a real birthday present from friends (beyond a cheap gag-gift) in decades.
Check local code before proceeding!
I want one, yes. But it sure as hell wouldn't be to save money. It'd be to have something if and when the grid falls over due to negligence.
I guess it's very location-specific, but I haven't had a power outage longer than 1 minute in the past 5 years.
The whole system is.. not great, but it's even cheaper to have a battery than this post makes it sound.
Many are in use all over the world in off-grid cabins and similar.
You do need to take care that they are installed correctly, and maintained properly, but that isn't much different than a natural gas connection, or even normal everyday electricity.
Gift should be ... gifts
EV battery degradation from this use case is irrelevant. EVs are consistently hitting 300,000 miles with 90% capacity, so let's not belabor this point.
I suppose that future V2X systems will incorporate direct plug-in tech, but note the transfer switch used by the system in the video.
Nope.
Batteries installation is not about money , average LiFePo4 battery life is around 10 years, so you will save nothing, unless you have some local generation like solar panels. In this case you could shrink payback time to 5 years instead of 10 and it makes some sense.
But the biggest problems here 2: 1. there a critical point after installing a huge amount of balance batteries the diff between day/night hours would be mitigated. And prices may down 30%. As result economical factor of installing energy storage systems would be very questionable. However cheap energy will increase energy usage by homes and industry and this may/might/probaly/i_hope. boost economy
2. The second factor riskier because when many people are installing energy storages and become independent of power grid, or even disconnects from the grid, there still exists power grid you have to support. Right now the price of grid support included in energy bill for electric company. The grid usage price is stable , it doesn't matter you support 1 person or a 1mln residents city. So the less people are using THE GRID - the higher prices for the rest people. And those high price forces rest people to disconnect from the grid. In general we may/I_hope_not to have situation with plenty energy islands and no more national grid systems
(plug-in batteries aren’t actually legal here yet, but likely to become so next year!)
Remind me why I should buy the battery? It clearly can't be because it makes financial sense to just have the battery.
yeah sure everyone has 100€ to spend on friends, at least once a month.
What kind of reality does he live in ?
1. You have ~15 friends and you all have houses.
2. All of you can confidently allocate €1600 this year towards one major component of the upgrade, and believe you will benefit from it in the next ~15 years.
3. All the friends make enough money that they're confident anything going wrong with €1600 loans/debts won't cause pain or problems in the friendship.
How rich do you need to be for the mentality of that last one? AFAICT that's ~3% of yearly salary (pre-tax) in Germany.
Personally, I do not want my friend group to be tangled up in a financing scheme, and if I wanted a financing scheme I wouldn't do something half-assed that could explode into acrimony if anyone chooses (or is forced by circumstance) to exit having contributed without receiving or vice-versa.
I could understand friends having good-years helping out ones having bad-years ("banqueting" [0]) but what's being proposed really doesn't map to that.
[0] https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...
It might not actually be "buy one-another new cars" territory, it's closer to that than paying for your friend's coffee or buying an appetizer for the whole table.
You would certainly need the owner's permission, and investing in the kind of adaptations needed might not be something most renters are interested in when it's not their own place. A battery has to be integrated into the whole electrical feed, and a responsible owner might insist that this is a permanent installation and something you can just take with you when you leave. Or if you do, undoing the install will be similarly costly. And who knows if your next place will allow you to install a battery as well.
I don't think you can realistically install it in an apartment, due to fire regulations, and it needs a lot of space. Personally, I live in a 74 m2 apartment, and there's simply no room anywhere. Wiring is another matter; electricity comes through shared risers I don't control.
Now, you could use the battery as a pass through power source, but then you'd have to change all the wiring in your home.
Maybe the author is privileged and it's fine, it's not because you personally can't afford any gift that the author is disconnected, he might not just be talking to everyone on earth.
While I do like the idea in theory, I don't love the inherent nudge towards off the shelf productized energy storage that will be placed somewhere without much of a plan, and then basically invites rewiring with extension cords. I get how those things are appealing for camping or determined apartment DIYers at the like, but moving them from a seek-them-out "pull" dynamic to a here-you-go "push" dynamic seems like asking for problems from people not thinking too much about storing 5kWh.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tesla+powerwall&ia=images&iax=imag...
[1] https://www.scottspizzatours.com/blog/worlds-largest-deliver...
Where are you buying your pizzas?!
Install it outdoors or in a detached garage, away from anything flammable. Never in a bedroom, hallway, or escape route.
There are newer batteries tech that can't inflame.