On Mar 31, 2015, at 12:41 PM, Peri Hartman via EV <[email protected]> wrote:
> Ben, if you can install enough batteries, as I believe you have, to go > completely off the grid, then of course there's no advantage to the power > company. I don't have batteries yet and no plans to install them until the finances tip sufficiently...considering I'm grandfathered with respect to SRP's new exorbitant solar-killing rate plan, that'll be some years. > But, for most people, batteries in general can provide leveling to the power > company but not sustained power. This is indeed the use case I believe Tesla has in mind for their initial markets. Buy their batteries even if you don't have onsite generation; fill the batteries off peak when electricity is cheap and drain them on peak when electricity is expensive. Depending on how the math works out, you could see the capital expense repaid in short order with pure profits afterwards. And it'll dramatically increase the market for such batteries, driving down prices and all the rest. > Where you live, Ben, you don't need to worry about a string of 10 cloudy dark > days where solar PVs will be next to worthless. Many places as dire as you describe also have provisions for home heating oil or natural gas other energy inputs that could trivially be adapted to power a generator for a while. And, until batteries get big and cheap enough, it'll likely make sense even here in Arizona to have a small generator to tide over a couple days of winter weather now and again. As a bonus...such a generator really can be minimal. It doesn't need to meet peak demands, but only average demands and let the batteries handle the peaks. > My claim is the power companies stand to make more profit if they build > pumped storage instead of coal or nukes. I strongly suspect you're right. But *my* claim is that at least some individuals (and companies like SolarCity) already today stand to make more profit with rooftop solar and batteries than with anything the utilities can offer, and that the number of such individuals will climb rapidly as battery prices fall until, eventually, nobody's left who wants to by _any_ power the utility might want to sell -- pumped storage or no. b& _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
