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Under Current Policies, Residential Batteries Increase Emissions In Most Cases (arstechnica.com)
schwit1 shares a report: Another year, another reason to take the promises of residential home batteries with a grain of salt. This month, a group of researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) published a paper in Environmental Science and Technology reporting that there are very few cases in which operating a residential home battery reduces overall emissions -- assuming that households are economically rational and trying to minimize costs.
Of course, if the battery is only discharged during periods of peak emissions and only charged when fossil fuel use is low, then a household might reduce emissions. But across 16 representative regions, operating a battery this way ended up being costly. "There may be good reasons to decentralize the grid through ubiquitous installation of small RES [Residential Energy Storage], but cost-effective emissions control is not one of them at the moment," the researchers write.
Of course, if the battery is only discharged during periods of peak emissions and only charged when fossil fuel use is low, then a household might reduce emissions. But across 16 representative regions, operating a battery this way ended up being costly. "There may be good reasons to decentralize the grid through ubiquitous installation of small RES [Residential Energy Storage], but cost-effective emissions control is not one of them at the moment," the researchers write.
in locality of where batteries replace toxic carcinogenic exhaust fumes.
Science funded by oil is fascist.
You have a battery and most days you have a trickling, free energy source just bouncing off the top of your head being wasted. A high % of people who would add the greater expense of batteries would no doubt add solar.
It's a no brainer yet they don't consider it somehow?
The PowerWALL is also terrible at towing my boat, walking my dog and satering my plants.
Other shocking news:
I heard that wood burning fireplaces don't actually improve the air quality in homes. Just makes them warmer.
Fire insurance doesn't stop fires - just gives you a chance to get some money back after a fire, so you can buy replacement stuff.
Life insurance - doesn't make you immortal. My friend had insurance and he DIED!
Salt is a terrible beverage!
Liquid Nitrogen is useless at removing terrible, scary, urban blighting BLACK ice.
Truly, all of these things are useless at accomplishing goals they are not intended to accomplish.
I do hear that the PowerWALL is pretty good at storing power for use during blackouts, or smoothing your own power peak demands though. Maybe they could market it for that instead of whatever ad the high on crack writer came up with.
I have to go post a bad review of my new truck - it is useless as a dirigible, no matter how much helium I pump into the cab.
In what way are residential batteries and PV not saving money ?
Electricity demand is highest during the day, and lowest at night.
If Electricity is priced based on demand, the batteries are buying high and selling low, exactly the opposite of what makes sense.
Residential batteries are stupid. It makes far more sense to feed the power back into the grid.
Batteries only make sense where utilities misprice power, through either corruption or incompetence.
Electricity demand is highest during the day, and lowest at night.
That is 100% false. Here is a graph of power usage over the course of the day. The peek is at 8pm to 9pm. It tends to rise slowly over the day but about the time that solar drops out is when you need to be ramping up power production.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Umm what? It'd make far more sense to charge up the batteries at night (from the grid) when the price of electricity is lowest and your house needs the lowest amount of energy; and to discharge the batteries during the day when electricity is most expensive and you use the most, and you possibly have solar panels providing most of your energy needs.
Feeding electricity into the grid requires utility infrastructure upgrades (in many cases) in order to handle that; residential batteries may be cheaper in those cases.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.