[LeonM]

I've always been wondering why there have never been affordable local power storage solutions on the market.

I'd love to have a battery like this to store excess power from solar panels. Returning power to the grid is a waste in both efficiency and money (you just make the power company richer).

Unless you live in Germany (where there are laws forcing power companies to buy excess energy back against peak price), a battery should be the way to go.

[repsilat]

I guess the big questions are,

- How do battery charge/store/discharge efficiencies compare to transmission losses?

- How do capital investments to support returning power to the grid compare to the cost of batteries?

One thing I'm fairly confident of is that just having batteries (without solar panels) to do peak-flattening temporal "arbitrage" can't make economic sense. If it did, power companies would do it themselves and keep the profit.

[pbowyer]

> One thing I'm fairly confident of is that just having batteries (without solar panels) to do peak-flattening temporal "arbitrage" can't make economic sense. If it did, power companies would do it themselves and keep the profit.

They're trialling that right now in the UK: http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2014-12-15/power-boost-as-big... http://www.edie.net/news/6/Smarter-Network-Storage-Energy-ba...

[pjc50]

affordable

Because so far batteries have been improving in cost/Ah only very gradually? And generated grid power from fossil fuels has been historically cheap?

[wil421]

>Unless you live in Germany (where there are laws forcing power companies to buy excess energy back against peak price), a battery should be the way to go.

You can get power companies in the US to buy your excess energy. The co-op that supplies my power will set up a meter if you have your own power source. If your total usage is less than what you created they will buy the power from you (not the best rate).

They will even give you money back for installing solar cells [1].

1. http://energy.gov/savings/cobb-emc-solar-rebate-program

[skrause]

> Unless you live in Germany

Not anymore. The price you get from your power company has been consistently lowered over the last years, now you only get about half of what you pay the power company for the electricity you use.

[edent]

The UK also pays domestic solar producers for feeding in to the grid - it also pays for the generation as well.

[cplease]

> Unless you live in Germany

Many populous U.S. states have net metering, New York and California inclusive.

[Johnythree]

Like many others, I've lived on solar power (no grid, no generator) for two decades now. No problems, no fuss.

In rural areas, wind powered battery storage was commonplace 100 years ago.

Perhaps if you bothered to do a little research....