| > Couldn't you do other types of storage rather than batteries? Sure. But they all have their own downsides. Pump air into vast underground tunnels. Pump water into towers. Spin up massive drums as flywheels (this one is my favorite. Spinning weights are incredibly power dense). Lift massive weights. It's all been done. There are companies working on making these things more practical. Meanwhile the power companies have instituted new standards in grid-tied inverters for solar panels that have effectively solved the problem for them. It's based on the frequency of the grid. As the grid becomes over powered it's frequency tends to shift a bit higher. As the grid becomes over loaded the frequency tends to shift a bit lower. By responding to these frequency shifts the grid-tied inverters will either allow electricity to be generated when the frequency falls back slightly, throttle electrical generation when the frequency rises slightly, and then shut off completely when the grid goes down. So the effect is that those expensive solar panel arrays in places were they are already popular... are effectively shut off during the peak solar power generation hours. And are turned off completely when the grid itself is shutdown. Lithium batteries represent a unique opportunity for truly distributed power generation. They are just reaching the point, price-wise, were they can be used as a practical way to store energy on a individual small business or household manner. This way individuals themselves can take charge of their own power needs and no longer has to rely on centralized bureaucracies to save the world for them. Unfortunately due to the way grid-tied systems are now required to work it has effectively nullified most of the benefits of having private solar arrays. IF you want to be your own power generator you have to be off-grid to do it. And this the reason this is unfortunate is because almost nobody is building private solar arrays this way. There is a semi-religious belief that grid-tied systems allow a ROI in the form of selling power back to the grid. Also they are built with the assumption that battery backups for the house is too expensive and impractical. All these things are true if you are looking at low-voltage SLA battery arrays and grid-tied standards from 5-10 years ago, but with high voltage lithium power (it's a lot cheaper to convert 300v DC to 240v AC then it is to convert 48v DC to 240v AC), how accounting for energy usage has changed, and how grid-tied systems are being remote controlled by the power company this is not necessarily the truth anymore. |