this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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It's a very capitalist way of thinking about the problem, but what "negative prices" actually means in this case is that the grid is over-energised. That's a genuine engineering issue which would take considerable effort to deal with without exploding transformers or setting fire to power stations
Home owned windmills, solar panels and battery storage solves that.
Edit: Look at this awesome diagram of how it's done for a hybrid setup that's about $400 on Amazon.
PIKASOLA Wind Turbine Generator 12V 400W with a 30A Hybrid Charge Controller. As Solar and Wind Charge Controller which can Add Max 500W Solar Panel for 12V Battery.
Home owned windmills are almost a total waste. Its surprising how little electricity they generate especially given how much the cost to buy and install. Some real numbers. A 400w can cost almost $18k to buy and install. A 410w solar solar panel is about $250 + $3k of supporting electronics and parts. And that same $3k can support 10+ more panels. I looked into it myself really wanted it to be worth it for home, but it just isn't. Now utility grade wind? Absolutely worth it. You need absolutely giant windmills with massive towers, but once you have those, you can make a LOT of electricity very cost effectively.
Solar panels worth it? Yes. Absolutely.
Batteries, not quite there yet for most folks. Batteries are really expensive, and don't hold very much electricity $10k-$15k can get you a few hours of light or moderate home use capacity. For folks with really expensive electricity rates or very unreliable power this can be worth it financially, but for most every else. Cheaper chemistry batteries are finally starting to be produced (Sodium Ion), but we're right at the beginning of these and there not really any consumer products for home made from these yet.
Yeah, right now end of life EV batteries are great for making your own power storage but that's a level of diy beyond what 95% of people are willing or able to do
What's infuriating is that we had electric cars before ICE powered cars. 1899. If we would've been investing money and effort into research for battery technology since then, we wouldn't have this problem. Salt batteries, solid state batteries, and other promising tech is in it's infancy because we just started to take this seriously as a society like 10 years ago.
Better late than never but it grinds my gears that the best argument against solar and wind is power storage requirements due to unpredictable power generation. Like this is an extremely solvable problem.
End of life EV batteries are great for grid-scale operators doing power storage, but I highly recommend against homeowners use them this way. Not just because they are complex DIY projects as you point out, but because the EV batteries that are aging out of car use are NMC chemistry. These are great for high density power storage, which you want in a car, but they are susceptible to thermal runaway if they get too hot. The original Tesla Powerwall and Powerwall 2 also used these same chemistry batteries. I wouldn't want these in my house. However, in a utility grid scale? Sure, they won't be anywhere near people so in the unlikely event they do catch fire its a property problem, not a lost human life problem.
I understand your concern, I totally agree that the volatility isn't ideal, but putting it in a steel box outside your house isn't that beyond the scope for a diy-er. Envision it the same way a generac sits outside and ties in to your house but with a safe enough enclosure.
As long as you check the cells you use when you deconstruct the car battery it should be fine. All the projects I watch online they don't even need the liquid cooling system that it utilized when it was in the car because the discharge rate is so far below the C rating the battery that they don't generate great like when they are in cars
I understand that cell could go bad though at any time, so the box is necessary imo
Sodium ion batteries are going to be the solution. 18650 packs are already out and perform economically. Since the molecules are so much bigger, energy density is only like 60% of lithium based solutions, but they have a very wide temperature range and are incredibly more inert and safe and density isn't a problem for bulk energy storage.
The hurdle to overcome in inverters dealing with the very wide voltage span and bespoke charging ICs, but definitely possible and within 5 years will probably become a lithium iron phosphate competitor.
"put the excess energy into batteries" is an idea, and is already pretty much what is done, but the large scale implementation still requires a lot of time, effort, and expense.
How, exactly, does that solve anything? It's not like we can add some kind of magic automatic residential cutoff system (that would just make it worse) and residential distribution is already the problem! Residential solar is awesome (tho home batteries are largely elon propaganda...) but they only contribute to the above issue, not solve it. There are ways of addressing it, but they're complicated and unglamorous.
I don't see why home batteries are propaganda. Those prices are plummeting and they have decent payback times in some markets.
The reasons for getting solar is the same reasons for getting batteries.
Because home batteries, while provisionally useful in the same way as a standby generator (though the generator is going to be far more eco friendly than the batteries over their respective lifetimes), is a vastly inferior solution to the implementation of even local grid scale solutions. Also because there is essentially 0 infrastructure designed to handle said batteries, they wear out quite quickly at home scales (unless you're using uncommon chemistries, but if you're using iron-nickle batteries you're not the target audience here) and because Elon popularized them with his "powerwall" bullshit entirely to pump the stock value of Tesla's battery plant (which is it's own spectacular saga I encourage you to look up, it's a real trip).
Batteries in the walls are useful in niches, but the current technology which uses lipo/lion/lifepo4 chemistries is inherently flawed and a route to both dead linemen and massive amounts of E-waste. They could be useful potentially, but as it stands, it's really bad right now.
A generator can provide backup power for unlimited time if fuel is available, but it is highest cost power in the world. Batteries can be charged/discharged every day, displacing dirty energy. A generator is either rarely used or eco destructive.
How so?
Which ones?
If we're talking residential scale, people already have the infrastructure: it's the existing wiring inside their household. If we're talking Commercial & Industrial (C&I) scale, it's often the same answer. If we're talking utility scale, oftentimes battery developers get quoted grid improvement costs from the utility and the developer has to pay those costs in order to connect to the grid. You act like the grid can't change, and there isn't any money lying around to make improvements, when in reality there are a lot of investors in BESS because of the high ROI.
This is true at any scale, resi, C&I, or utility, but batteries are modular and you can augment your capacity over time to make up for degradation.
There are more manufacturers than just Tesla in the battery space, many of which who would benefit if the Powerwall failed or lost market share. Even if Tesla popularized them, their decline due to their idiotic, fascist CEO will mean that the existing demand will just look elsewhere for the same product, not exit the market entirely.
In my opinion, every household could benefit from home battery storage just as much as people benefit from gas generators. They have widespread, not niche, appeal. The issue with low penetration in my opinion is lack of knowledge in both policymakers and customers.
While batteries do start to degrade the moment they leave the factory, the fact they have flaws doesn't mean they aren't still useful. You're using the argument that the perfect is the only solution to the imperfect, when that shortsightedness gets in the way of progress.
BESS failures have been falling and bottoming out over the last few years while deployment has skyrocketed. Seems like you're telling a fiction.
Recycling is projected to increase, especially as more and more battery installations reach End of Life (EOL), where as much as 60-80% of cobalt and lithium could be sourced from urban as opposed to virgin mines in the next 5-15 years. There is a sizable market opportunity for recycling to take off so long as good policy paves the way.
Sure, let's throw away one of humanity's better solutions to the climate crisis since it's bad now. It's not like it could get better in the future. Again, such a show of shortsightedness.
That's everything I've been talking about, you even go on to exhaustively quote what I've said that answers this question. Did you have a reason for saying this other than being combative? No, seriously, I really care about this subject and it's clear you do too. And the most hardline thing I've said is that home battery walls and solar installs aren't very good right now, and that local-grid installs are superior (I expand on that below). Surely there's more constructive ways this could be approached.
Anyways, a couple points:
BESSFID (the common initialism? Not sure!) does not track interlock failures, which after them falling on you is the most directly dangerous aspect of both battery walls and standby generators. Unexpectedly energized lines are not something an average user understands, which is why it's responsible for so many dead linemen. Generators (and now battery walls) feeding back into the grid during an outage are the #1 cause of unexpectedly energized lines, and this is very basic knowledge. It's why every municipality requires a generator interlock be installed at the box for home-consumption power generation. No grid in the world is yet robust enough to prevent this danger.
Yes and no! While yes batteries will always wear out, municipal facilities are not restricted by things like space constraints or residential safety concerns. This means they can implement battery degradation mitigation techniques that are impractical (or feasibly impossible) to be implemented on a residential scale, like distributed cell charge/discharge limits (which at their most effective handicap residential units by up to 20% of their rated capacity but greatly increase the lifetime) or direct cell cooling (which benefits spectacularly from economies of scale - active cooling on small packs is a huge drain for little return, but large scale battery installs can even use geothermal cooling to additionally increase their efficiency). Neither removes the fact that cells do wear out, but it greatly reduces the rate at which they do, and at a significant energy and space savings over alternative techniques. (You'll note that these are many of the same reasons that municipal standby generators are more efficient than large numbers of residential standby generators!)
(this bit is mostly responding to your personal attacks, I will admit that:)
Yes, but I am talking about current battery technology. You're rebutting comments I made criticizing current technology with projections and speculation about future technology, which just isn't fair. I could (hyperbolically, I admit) do the same thing by speculating that giant lithium eating termites will be developed by some rogue nation state in the near future, and that having a power wall risks them being attracted to your home and consuming your family in a gore splattered orgy of B-movie tropes.
A similar thing here. You're also assuming that the future will improve things, which while it's laudable you're still able to be optimistic (no I mean that, I'm a depressed pos) it's also very biased to assume that things will improve as time goes on.
And again, but with the additional add-in that I repeatedly say that municipal installs are better than home installs, not that batteries as power storage solutions are inherently bad. Just that the technology for home use, right now, is.
I could go on but I think I've addressed the major points of miscommunication, if you're interested I would be genuinely happy to keep talking about this in a slightly less aggressive conversation.
(Edit: sorry, thought I should elaborate on this one tiny point:)
(this is a very self indulgent pun)
Do you track interlock failures? Seems like the issues you describe aren't with the interlocks themselves, but perhaps with installation or the breakers they interlock. Some inspectors don't even pass them on new home construction or renovation because some interlocks are attached to the front panel of a home's main panelboard, which could present a safety hazard to the homeowner.
All this is to say that these issues don't substantiate any failures with backup batteries or generators directly, but instead with interconnection equipment.
To be safe though, people should use interlock kits designed by the same manufacturer as their panel to avoid any compatibility/warranty issues, and maybe install interlock kits directly on the breakers themselves.
An even safer measure would be to install transfer switches between the main panel and the utility/backup battery/generator inlet. You may cite this as needing professional installation, but in reality any electrical work done to a home should be conducted by professional and qualified personnel. There are indeed advantages of transfer switches, whether automatic, non-automatic, or manual, over interlock kits.
Expectedly energized lines are sometimes not something an average user understands either! Point being: have professionals do the work.
If we're talking residential installations of interlocks or transfer switches alongside backup batteries or generators, I believe you should be referring to wiremen (in-building & often premises scope) not linemen (out-building & often utility scope).
Even so, where are you gathering your data about safety incidents that have a root cause with interlocks? Can you show me the OSHA statistics?
Interlocks prevent this, as do transfer switches. The only case this would happen is if a homeowner removed their interlock, never had one installed, or plugged their battery/generator into a different circuit not controlled by the interlock/transfer switch. I would think that my previous comments about having profession, qualified personnel make changes to a home's electrical system, even adding a generator, would solve most if not all of this.
Are you suggesting homeowners do unqualified, potentially life threatening work to their homes?
That's a wide claim. The US Census Bureau identified 38,736 local general governments (county, municipal, township) in their 2022 Census of Governments.
Can you say for sure that every one of those requires interlocks specifically?
May I remind you that AHJs can choose to adopt or amend any part of the NEC for their jurisdiction, and may refuse to accept interlock kits as compliant installation.
Which box? There are many boxes in an electric installation. Can I just choose any box? Can it be my TV set box, or my junction box downstream my sub panel, or my main service disconnect box?
The main failure with interconnecting generators with the grid is desynchronization. This can be fixed with relays, but you won't find these in residential installations. Again, the way to prevent this is with proper use of interlock kits or transfer switches installed and used according to qualified professionals.
Where is this hallucination coming from?
Most people installing home backup batteries either have garages where they can put them, or space around their homes to do the same.
Are you implying that all people stuff and cram their living spaces and properties so that there is no excess room for batteries that maybe take up 4'x10' at most? The same goes for generators.
Residential dwellings are built according to the National Electrical Code, which many municipalities adopt or amend.
What safety concerns are there in residential applications that there aren't in municipal applications that the NEC doesn't address? Should you maybe refer these concerns to the NFPA themselves rather than alluding to them online? Do you not want people to be safe?
What are you talking about?
Here's four examples:
Not if your Battery Management System (BMS) has active balancing instead of passive.
Active air cooling is currently the most economical cooling method for battery storage.
Can you point out one resi, C&I, or utility scale BESS installation that uses geothermal cooling? Most use forced air or liquid cooling thermal management systems.
Like what
Ok, irrelevant given that we're talking about improving home resilience through the use of home microgrids - not municipal or utility backup systems.
And it isn't fair that you aren't recognizing progress, instead fear mongering about how nothing is being done and we're all doomed.
Except I wasn't hyperbolizing. I presented scientific research, not some back hand imagination from someone clearly not part of either the industry or research fields.
No, the future itself won't improve things. Humans in the present, doing research, making policy, sharing their success stories about their own home backup microgrid solutions with their friends, family, and neighbors will do this.
Your pessimistic worldview is the antithesis to progress. You have to have the belief that things will get better, to have hope, if you want to make an inch of progress in that direction, or to push back on proponents that wish to destroy that progress.
Things are improving by the way, but I think the global economic order under capitalism is to blame for why things are still worsening overall. If we want to improve human well-being, rewild the planet, reduce pollution, reverse climate change, and allow increase our population, maybe we should consider other economic organizations.
Why do you say that? Are you implying the same electricians that do residential and municipal installs are lazier with the former? Sounds like this could be grounds for litigation. Do you have any complaints that you could make with your state's or municipality's licensing boards where they could launch investigations and revoke electricians'/contractors' licenses?
Glad that we've settled that.
I've shown above that batteries are fine, and that issues may come down to installer error or faulty interconnection equipment, not the batteries themselves. Although I still recognize that batteries can fail. I don't think we have good enough evidence to say what the primary failures and failure rates are. Maybe you can start tracking that!
If you call fallacies and misconceptions miscommunication, then that's not my problem.
No :)
Oh, look, more of this.
Well, I guess that settles that then!
Of course we can. They're called Microgrid Interconnection Devices (MIDs).
Microgrids that can disconnect from the utility at appropriate times may in fact make it better. If homeowners responded to utility alerts of high demand and opted to disconnect from the grid during those times while still having power, that would just make grid operators and home owners happier.
Microgrids are the solution!
While residential BESSs are largely Tesla based, they are absolutely key in the energy transition from fossil- to renewables-based power sources.
How?
Which ways?
MIDs are in fact one of the bigger ones! That said, all the ones I have worked with are promising but are as-yet still unreliable enough that municipal adoption has been mired in safety concerns and the usual nonsense. To be honest that's been ever since they were first added to the NEC (admittedly most of this initially was based on speculative concerns), because of course. There are still warranted concerns with the implementation of microgrids, including things that are obviously bullshit like a lack of confidence in the reactivity of stations to the potential for the excessive peaking large residential adoption of home batteries might cause, but also much less bullshit things like the complicating risks of having very large lithium-based batteries present in a residential fire.
They are not insurmountable concerns, but they are ones that need answering and are not a small part of why I say that currently, home battery storage solutions just aren't there yet. Local-grid facilities (what one of your sources calls a Mini-grid) are currently the best solution, which is why so many utilities are installing them. I've no doubt that the issues will be worked out, and although it will be some time before the technology matures to where the economies of scale present at the municipal level are no longer a driving consideration, it'll probably get there.
very minor stuff
Is this what you'd intended to link here, because while you're factually accurate in their necessity and I'm not disputing your claims, as far as I can tell the source here is only discussing local-municipal ('mini grid') installs, not microgrid installs, nor does it touch on the value of home-scale BESS
(edit: fixed some typos)
In no home outside of fringe uses are any lights 12vdc, with the exception of maybe led strip lights for undercabs. They're all designed for 120vac. That lightbulb in the diagram is an e37/medium base for 120vac.
Couldn't solar farms just strategically disconnect some of their panels from the grid to avoid that? Solar panels are always collecting energy, but if you disconnect them that energy just goes into making them a bit warmer rather than overloading the grid.
You can have your own batteries as well. If those then get overloaded, disconnect.
Nothing an open/close gate couldn’t fix. The real problem is how overly complicated we feel we need to make things.
This is some real "basic biology" level thinking here. Even if it were as simple as "Pull the lever Krunk!" then you've just turned all that solar infrastructure into junk for the majority of the time that we need power.
People use the vast majority of electricity in a day in the afternoon and at night - times that are noticeably after the peak solar production time. So you have all that energy going into the system with nowhere to go because battery technology and infrastructure isn't there, and then no energy to fulfill the peak demand. This is an issue nuclear runs into as well because a nuclear plant is either on or off and isn't capable of scaling its power to the current demand.
There are times where power companies have to pay industrial manufacturing facilities to run their most energy consuming machines just to bleed extra energy out of the grid to keep it from overloading and turning into a multi-million dollar disaster that could take years to get people back on the grid.
Sorry for the naive question, but is it not possible to send the excess electricity to the ground (in the electrical sense)?
To effectively waste electric power like that would take quite a bit of effort. It would be easier to make a giant heater that heats up air. But that would of course also be absurd. Just turn off the wind turbines etc. to reduce power generation.
It would definitely need to be ground in a literal sense.
And even the earth has its limits. Soil is only so conductive, pump enough energy into it and you'll turn it to glass (which won't conduct anymore).
Oh, look! A challenge. And a business opportunity! Just get a mortgage, buy some land in the middle of nowhere and make a reverse hydro plant.
Oh, I forgot. Banks don't loan money for stuff not already existing or net-harmful hyped-up bullshit like AI and crypto.