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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.
Even a lithium-ion battery has only 99% charge efficiency, so it makes sense that adding a battery to your photovoltaic (PV) system can increase emissions compared to a PV system with no battery.
Note the following:
This is why it needs to be a revenue-neutral carbon tax. If the tax is 10 cents per kWh and the average person uses 4,000 kWh per year, then everyone would receive a $400 check every year whether they used any electricity that year or not.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
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.
Capitalism is not going green until it is profitable.
Then we need to make it profitable.
Two of the biggest reductions in CO2 emissions have come from LED lights and shale gas. Both of these industries were developed by profit seeking capitalists, and have been widely adopted because they actually make economic sense.
Residential batteries don't make sense, are not cost effective, and may not even be helping the environment. Maybe some new battery design may make sense, but then money should be going into battery bR&D, not battery installations.
home batteries are about cutting the COST (i.e. saving money off the home's electric bill)... by storing low off-peak energy (from whatever the fuck the energy generation source is) for use during high-cost peak times.. it has abso-fucking-lutly nothing to do with emissions for most people and most installs (an exception would be an off-the-grid home with solar or solar/wind + battery)
I don't really get solar WITHOUT the batteries.
The people I know in Minnesota with panels literally don't see much payoff for 10-ish years. The utilities are eventually going to get their way and greatly cut their payback rate for grid buyback.
Generating and storing energy for your own use is the only thing that makes sense, but right now the economics of it for the average homeowner don't work well.
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.