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Next step in home solar electricity storage batteries?

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  • #16
    Not that proprietary! Tesla and I get our cells from the same place, Panasonic, about a year ago I had to wait for my higher capacity cells because Tesla had bought all the stock. The chemistry can vary quite a lot in the size of cell, also a new breed of 18650 has much higher discharge, more like 8C rather than the 2C of the old. Not singling Tesla out, they are just the most prolific maker of 18650 cars. Sony for example had a lot of laptops catch fire, probably poor battery management programming. I would take your word that Tesla is statistically less likely to catch fire than a normal car, though surprised about diesel cars (actually met a guy 20 years ago who made a third of his income repairing Jag V12 fires). I do believe Tesla owes their customers a greater duty of care to have a better battery management system in their vehicle when it is carrying 7,000 batteries which could go into thermal runaway. There aren't many car fires which need to go into a 24 hour water bath to put them out, but they did need to do that to the Tesla which caught fire earlier this month in Antwerp. Can get an Elise shell into space, but can't produce a safe charging and discharging algorithm? Reminds of the book 'Unsafe at any speed', when people realised it was cheaper to lose a few and make the payouts, than change to more expensive components. I also can imagine it must produce some interesting discussions on charging at Tesla, battery engineers wanting to stick within accepted safety limits, customers wanting as fast as possible. Quite the charging dichotomy. I am probably also old school enough if Tesla believes they can make their car autonomous with half the sensors everyone else believes is needed - they shouldn't really be running into things.

    You are right, they always run stories about Tesla catching fire, have never read one about a Prius catching fire.

    Above said, the Powerwall was tested by whatever the US fire board is called and found fires won't leave the cabinet. Great news, but again smaller scale than the cars.


    Ps I don't blame Tesla for pushing the envelope to get a jump on the competition, I just think now is the time to cross the t and dot the i so their customers are looked after. The test will be when the VW groups arms all release their full electric cars to see if they have issues. Even with their dieselgate record (a tech at end of car life) I would like to think they could and show a safe clean future.

    The autocorrect changes 2-C to 'second crack'.
    Last edited by 338; 30 June 2019, 11:39 PM.

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    • #17
      Window Solar article.

      https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...edium=Facebook

      Just sharing.

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      • #18
        Isn’t IKEA bringing out a battery for home solar? I read in the news last year time that IKEA is going to sell a battery for about cost price. I can remember in which country though.

        Aside from this, my take on this whole home solar thing is, even with rebates, governments are pushing the cost of installation directly onto consumers. This way, governments don’t spend nearly as much money on building renewable energy power plants.
        Last edited by pamount; 6 July 2019, 09:04 PM.

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        • #19
          Originally posted by pamount View Post
          Isn’t IKEA bringing out a battery for home solar? I read in the news last year time that IKEA is going to sell a battery for about cost price. I can remember in which country though.

          Aside from this, my take on this whole home solar thing is, even with rebates, governments are pushing the cost of installation directly onto consumers. This way, governments don’t spend nearly as much money on building renewable energy power plants.
          G'day pamount

          Reducing the need for new power plants is simply prudent when official overall electricity use is flatlining as more solar and wind is installed by small business and residential. That trend is showing all the indications of reaching a tipping point in the next ten years or so, and power plants often take that long to install. Another often not mentioned factor - the solar generated by private roofs (i.e. like mine) and then used "in house" does not even figure in the overall power statistical measurements - so they are currently understated by about 2 million homes worth of "unexported solar".

          Another factor - apart from the "gold plating" of transmission lines in rural NSW, most Oz lines are in dire need of upgrades. Reducing the electrical traffic is often cost effective.

          For example, Kalbarri had no local power generation and only had a single set of poles leading the 65Km or so from the main highway / transmission towers into town (... and the wires into Kalbarri were often close to critical temperature in the daytime). Adding more lines from the highway would have cost far more than the locals could pay via their bills. Even in the '90's it was cheaper to build a small solar farm to reduce the daytime load and let the lower night temperatures take care of the extra heat generated by heavier loads when the solar was low. I know they expanded the system after a couple of years, but haven't looked for any updates since then. Even a moderate amount of storage would have been a done deal as it would have kept the overworked main line into town even cooler.

          FWIW, my little 3Kw system sent 17MWH of power into the local grid over the last 5 1/2 years - which means my near neighborhood has less reliance on Perth's power station at Muja and the connected transmission lines (say 100Kms of cable away). Every roof helps.

          TampIt

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          • #20
            My average daily use of electricity (or “elec-trickery”, according to Catweazle) is 6.55 kilowatts according to my recent bill. I’m with AGL here in Melbourne.

            I rang AGL maybe over a year ago and I was told I’m not using enough electricity to justify paying to have solar installed. I haven’t checked the current solar rebate though. I’m in suburban Melbourne.

            The Victorian Government (“Guv-ah-mentt”) brought in a new law saying the power companies have to make it easier to see what the cheapest elec-trickery plans are. I’m still waiting to hear about that.

            What would you suggest I do, TampIT?

            EDIT: I own a small house.
            Last edited by pamount; 7 July 2019, 01:31 PM.

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            • #21
              Pamount, probably worth giving TampIt a clue about your circumstances. Do you live in a house, unit, rent or own? Interesting in Sydney there was a company supllying solar to rental accommodation (like student blocks), then supplying the electricity at a much lower rate to residents. Win for all three parties.




              Ps this is the Vic government comparison site - https://compare.energy.vic.gov.au/

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              • #22
                50% of my bill is the line rental (whatever they call it). Of the 50% usage I have, 50% of that is the fridge keeping the ice machine cold. The fridge is 50¢ per day in usage...
                I wonder if I could disco the power and run the genset on natural gas...

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                • #23
                  Looks like good stuff;

                  Think there might be a limited industrial uses for this though, flow batteries don't do too well on high discharge rates. Unless of course they solved that using gel... which then might make things interesting...
                  Did anyone find any mention of it's cycle life?

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                  • #24
                    Originally posted by 392392 View Post
                    Looks like good stuff;

                    Think there might be a limited industrial uses for this though, flow batteries don't do too well on high discharge rates. Unless of course they solved that using gel... which then might make things interesting...
                    Did anyone find any mention of it's cycle life?
                    Looks like it's still in development phase?

                    The Solar Quotes website has an interesting home battery comparison webpage, which appears to be updated regularly: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/batte...parison-table/

                    The Redflow ZCell is still the only flow battery listed. It's hard not to imagine that the home battery market will advance a fair way over the next few years!

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                    • #25
                      The technon both panels and batteries is soon to jump forward. They are saying light wave rectifiers are on the horizon

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                      • #26
                        I read an article today regarding the worlds electricity use through internal news a work today.
                        An interesting thing is the world will consume double the amount of electricity in 2050 than it does now.
                        The worlds electricity production doubled between 1990 and 2015.

                        It is estimated that two billion more people will have access to electricity by 2050.

                        Can the world generate this much more sustainably?

                        Something to think about.

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                        • #27
                          Thorium reactors are a candidate to cover a chunk of that.

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                          • #28
                            Originally posted by pamount View Post
                            My average daily use of electricity (or “elec-trickery”, according to Catweazle) is 6.55 kilowatts according to my recent bill. I’m with AGL here in Melbourne.

                            I rang AGL maybe over a year ago and I was told I’m not using enough electricity to justify paying to have solar installed. I haven’t checked the current solar rebate though. I’m in suburban Melbourne.

                            The Victorian Government (“Guv-ah-mentt”) brought in a new law saying the power companies have to make it easier to see what the cheapest elec-trickery plans are. I’m still waiting to hear about that.

                            What would you suggest I do, TampIT?

                            EDIT: I own a small house.
                            G'day pamount

                            I only just saw this question. FYI, I do not keep track of posts - too many alligators in my current swamp for that.

                            We are using about 15 to 20KWH per day here across the whole year - including air con in summer / reverse cycle in winter. You are using below 1/2 of that so I presume you also have gas? Or you are a very low power user? If the answer is gas, you may consider a plan to move away from that as well (why pay even more "daily service charges" for redundant technology?). That may increase the size of "solar need" in your case.

                            Semi related hint: if you are going to install a rooftop solar hot water system, please get a tank of marine grade stainless - all other alternatives should not even be on the market in my view, especially sacrificial anodes. The number of friends with leaky tanks is nothing short of insane - and they get told they should have got it serviced, which just means adding another sacrificial anode (at another $300ish) to last for another 3 years before another service is needed. Sheesh. Payback would be approaching infinity or longer. My 1983 system is still going strong with no servicing needed (yet).

                            Back to solar PV. Ironically, the solar panel system here would be plenty for your needs. We "only" have 3KW of panels, most new installs are 5 to 6.5KW these days. That is a fancy way of saying you can go for a pretty small, cheap install compared to most.

                            BTW, one of the installers here is scrapping 2 or 3 working systems a week (complete with all mounting hardware) as the old 48 cents per KWH runs out and early installers are forced onto the 6.9 cents per KWH rate for their exported power. They are upgrading in droves, and it is cheaper to scrap their old system and replace the whole shooting match with a higher capacity one. Those systems are usually from 1 to 3KW, even a 1KW would be worth it in your case at a cost of near zero... plus a little of your time and labor. One friend even arranged to do the removal and the installer thanked him profusely. Needless to say, said friend knew exactly how everything fitted together at his house by taking a few photos during the teardown. Win win.

                            If you happen to be pretty handy in a DIY sense, I would find someone (via your local installers) with a working 2+KW system that is doing an upgrade and basically reinstall their whole "old system" at your abode. Be aware, you will need a sparky to do the final hookup - unless you enjoy being a homeless arsonist...

                            Hope this helps.


                            TampIt

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                            • #29
                              Something else to add in to the mix, and quite interesting in its own right...
                              https://www.techspot.com/news/81029-...-evs-grid.html

                              Mal.

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                              • #30
                                That nail safety test was pretty impressive Mal, not something you would want to do with lithium ion.

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