"Home Batteries" Power Houses For a Week

tjansen writes "Panasonic has announced plans to create 'home batteries.' They are lithium-ion batteries large enough to power a house for a week, making energy sources such as solar and wind power more feasible. Also, you can buy energy when it is cheapest, and don't need to worry about power outages anymore."

Comments

Boom.

[ScrewMaster]

I don't trust lithium-ion technology enough to want something with that much capacity in my basement. Wouldn't want my house to look like this

I have a thousand watt-hour battery that runs my sump pum during a power failure, but it's lead-acid. They've been around for a loooong time and are pretty damn stable (even so, this one is in a concrete-walled sump room.) Lithium-ions have a ways to go before they can be considered as trustworthy, and their higher energy density just makes them that much more dangerous during a catastrophic failure. Yet another reason why I'd never buy a hybrid vehicle. The idea of sitting atop a massive lithium-ion battery pack makes me far more nervous than I've ever been about a tank of gasoline.

Re:Boom.

[ScrewMaster]

Not to mention the size and cost of such a setup

Well, it seems the only real benefit would be the ability to buy power when it's cheaper, but you know that if this kind of residential load-leveling becomes popular the power companies will adjust pricing to suit. Now, if battery-powered homes did reach significant numbers, it could really help the power companies keep consumption closer to base-load (and avoid lighting up expensive natural gas power plants) during periods of heavy demand. You know, like a hot summer day when everyone has their air-conditioning on. But for the individual homeowner, it really does seem like overkill. If our power becomes so erratic that these things actually start to make sense, I'm going to say we've a lot more serious issues to deal with.

So far as flashing clocks go ... all of mine take a 9V battery (or a couple of AAs) that will keep the clock chips alive for a day or two if the power goes off. No need for a basement full of lithium batteries! Besides, at least where I live I, I think the last power outage I had was about four years ago. Happened when the temperature was -15 outside and it got pretty damn cold in here before the power came back on, I will say that. Lucky I didn't freeze my pipes.

Re:Boom.

[Mortaegus]

The idea really isn't to backup your power during an outage. The idea is to store power collected with on-site measures such as solar/wind and use the battery during times when these local power measure's aren't supplying enough. Another point would be to purchase power from the electric company when demand is low, and store for use when demand is high. Power companies could signal that demand is too high and the load is about cause problems, and people could switch to their reserves, in order to prevent damage to the grid. (Such as happens frequently when everybody runs their air coolers in the summer). I think that this would be a good measure to prevent the problems that cause blackouts, but I don't think it should, in all cases, be the consumer putting forth the effort to fix things. (At least in the US they need fixing). The power companies should put a few of these in the ground, and THEY can activate them when the need is there, rather than asking customers to handle it for them. Else they can damn well charge us a lot less than 60 cents per kilowatt hour. (Newark).

Re:Boom.

[JWSmythe]

    I've looked at doing this in a home, with group 8D batteries. The price starts going up, when you start looking at inverters/charge controllers that can be grid tied.

    I laid out plans for using cheaper inverters (one per 15A circuit), and an independent charging system, but even still, the price is pretty high. That idea was to convert homes one circuit at a time, until they were fully "green".

    The idea of charging the batteries when the rate is cheaper will unfortunately go away as these are adopted. Right now, it's an insanely small amount of homes have their own battery room, and run off their own power during peak prices. If it even approached say 10%, the utilities would start charging accordingly.

    It's something I'd love to see. If they made these affordable for most homes, you'd see alternative energy sources take off. Ok, so I have batteries. Now I can put on a solar array, and a wind generator. I can supplement that with a generator (which most homes have, depending on your area). You'd see priority go to solar, wind, grid, and generator. The automatic inverter/charger/switches aren't exactly cheap though. And, they're frequently difficult to source locally. You can't exactly run down to Home Depot or Lowes and pick one up. The day will come though. They're already offering a small election of solar appliances (like solar attic fans).

Re:Boom.

[dunkelfalke]

I used to work in the automotive industry and I can answer you that. Car manufacturers and their suppliers never use the newest technologies. It takes years to switch technologies, both because older technologies are tested and approved and because of financial reasons (tools for older tech have to be paid off).

Re:Boom.

[TheCarp]

Is the separate float switch for a second pump? I seem to remember the pumps themselves are not so expensive (compared to the batteries and rest of the setup). If the second float for the battery activation is on a second pump then it also helps if A) water is comming in fast enough to overwhelm the first pump (shouldn't happen generally anyway) and B) if the first pump fails

Of course, if you lose a pump AND have more water comming in than one can handle, then, your pretty screwed anyway.

Re:Boom.

[DemoLiter3]

So, this battery is supposed to be able to power an entire one-family home for a week. By a conservative estimate that would be around 100 kWh of capacity.
Modern Lithium-Ion batteries have specific capacity of 100-160 Wh/kg, but let's say Panasonic manages to extend this and will deliver 200 Wh/kg. Let's assume the half of this weight is Lithium, which puts the total Lithium weight for such battery at ~1000kg.
With a total world's estimated Lithium reserves of ~11000000 tonnes we can outfit around 11 million homes with such batteries before we run out of Lithium. Sounds like a solid plan.

Re:Boom.

[Anonymous Coward]

In any event, if you crush a large battery (say, in an accident) what do you think is going to happen, regardless of the chemical system?

why, according to your logic, i imagine they would all convert to pure energy according to E=MC^2, since all that energy is bound up in it. I mean, obviously a shock will cause any arbitrary chemical system to release all its energy at once, right?

Re:Boom.

[Sir_Lewk]

On the other hand, very many households have massive oil or propane tanks in their basements. Gasoline just doesn't happen to be all that great for heating your house.

Re:Boom.

[Ironsides]

The same has been said of computers, Televisions, Radios, telephones, electricity and a whole host of other items. Wait 20 years.

Tense

[Dunbal]

We go from the future:

"Panasonic has announced plans to create 'home batteries."

      That is, the batteries don't exist yet.

      BUT:

      Also, you can buy energy when it is cheapest [only there's nowhere to store it at the moment], and don't need to worry about power outages anymore [well actually you still have to worry, because they haven't actually invented the battery yet].

      Who wrote this? I see a brilliant future for you writing prospectuses for investment bank companies. This is just hype. I for one will not be buying the $150k batteries that need special zoning permissions and need to be replaced every 3 years.

Re:Tense

[ScrewMaster]

This is just hype. I for one will not be buying the $150k batteries that need special zoning permissions and need to be replaced every 3 years.

Cost is around $50K a year? That wouldn't make economical sense for anyone. Is there anyone here who shells out $50k a year to their electric company? Didn't think so.

Well, if the things had a decent service life (15-20 years, say) and could be installed as part of the purchase price of a new home, and provided sufficient economic benefits to be worth the investment, I could see it happening. Maybe. But a pack with a 3-5 year lifetime is not going to cut the mustard. As I mentioned above, I have a 105AH Hawker AGM lead-acid gas-recombinant battery that runs my sump pump. Supposedly rated for 15 years service life, and banks of these things are used in load-leveling applications in large buildings. I once figured out how many of them it would take to run my house for a week, and frankly it was too many. So you'd need something more energy-dense for a whole-house application, but that's still a lot of energy to be packing away in an uncontrolled environment like a home.

source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get an actual source, not one that injects pointless banal commentary, and actual shows where they got their information? kthxbai

Saving money

[DreamsAreOkToo]

Wow, I can save pennies off my electricity! Now, how many centuries does it take for the battery to pay itself off?

Re:Uhh....lithium ion?

[iluvcapra]

who would want a partially charged battery when the power goes out for 3 days in the dead of winter?

I would, since the status quo is no battery at all.

Battery maintenance

[x_hexdump_x]

Large UPS are common for data centers. But they are expensive and time consuming to maintain. In a data center the cost and time are justified. But for a home I would question the value.

Wrong technology

[Mprx]

The only advantage of lithium batteries is high energy density, which is irrelevant for a static installation. For powering something as long lasting as a house it would be better to use something more robust. Nickel-iron batteries have low energy density but are very robust. I wouldn't want a house battery I'd have to replace every few years.

Makes more sense for utility to use these

[presidenteloco]

For the purpose of storing intermittent wind and solar power,
the electric utility companies could use mass installations of
these batteries. Assuming they don't have hydro dams to
run in reverse using the wind and solar, that is.

Just like it doesn't actually make sense for everyone on your block
to own a lawnmower or circular saw or carpet steam cleaning machine,
it doesn't really make economic sense for everyone to have their own
batteries either. A central utility could buy and maintain batteries
with economies of scale.

Doesn't help you buy cheap power

[fluffy99]

Also, you can buy energy when it is cheapest

You can charge them at night if your power company has lower rates at night. It's pointless though as any savings in the cost disappear in the inefficiencies of the ac->dc for charging, the heat losses during charging, and the dc->ac conversion to use that power again. A 10% savings in the power cost is stupid when you give up %15 of the energy trying to save it.

Re:Uhh....lithium ion?

[ScrewMaster]

Power companies are like record companies: they don't want anything to interfere with the way they distribute their wares, even if those changes might prove highly beneficial and profitable.

Really? All power companies?

http://www.aps.com/main/green/choice/solar/default.html?source=hme

All? No ... I suppose not. But then again not all record companies are dicks.

Just most of them.