alt Hacker Newsbut, 70% of MY! yearly households electricity consumption is literally into [PV!] hot water. Hot water tank is cheapest energy storage device on planet. and i do not have to worry to shower in noon, i can just charge my water tank during day, even when im not home. and use hot water in evening. for very little price - no need to use heat pump, resistive heater is super cheap. hot water tank can be made even DIY to lower price even more.
utility charges me so much for electricity that even tho i payed for 15 kWp roof mounted east west system literally literally ORDER OF MAGNITUDE more than prices showed in that article, AND i still save money by not buying electricity from grid !
that how much utilities are charging us, yes they need to manage all those wires, manage power plants, etc. i do understand where that cost comes from, but still, solar in residential is so cheap that installing PV on roof and directly consuming it will save you money.
So for industry/ manufacturing there will be extremely high incentive to add PV + battery even when it wont cover 100% of their loads. utility+ onsite PV+battery.
Again, back to my hot water system, 80% of year i am 100% "off-grid" for hot water [PV!]. even on days it is cloudy ! And 99%-0% of PV rest of year... And from april to October my electricity draw from grid is almost zero.
so whole residential USA can be essentially "off-grid" huge part of year with just small battery, your tv, notebooks draw almost nothing over the course of the day compared to your energy need for hot water. and less residential is on grid, easier it is to manage electricity for other sectors of economy.
this contraption from ETH Zurich can store iron/iron oxide to generate hydrogen, without storage loss! for years, without compressing hydrogen and without other cons of "standard hydrogen storage. essentially it can be thought about as hydrogen storage - it can "store" 10s of megawatts inside of a standard basement. - [https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2024/08/iro...]
and you do not need to make electricity from that hydrogen, you can heat your house directly with hydrogen, just by replacing 30$ burner in your existing furnace!
so you complain about "peak" power excess, and i say and i show it to you that this "peak" solar power can be used to charge that extremely cheap storage device in summer and expend that storage over winter for heating house and making hot water. when sun is not shining.
and again, calculate how much kWh is your need for heating and how much is for hot water and you can clearly see that extremely huge part of current residential energy need can be either "onsite off-grid" with this contraption + small LiFePO battery or to be on-grid and take only small loads like tv, notebooks from grid and having heating + hot water "onsite off-grid". and most importantly cheap.
ratio of kWh for your heat and for your other appliances ! ! ! !
So essentially we can charge our heating system in summer, store energy WITHOUT LOSS until winter and heat with that energy in winter. right now!
just sketch/draw for yourself timeline containing - PV + storage contraption in that link + small LiFePO battery. and you can see how huge part of energy we do not really need to draw from "grid".
small towns can even make their own shared storage, prices for SEASONAL energy storage are even lower then current prices for electricity drawn from grid....
So this physical, economical actual contemporary possibility makes me mad every time i see just another youtuber or other kind of influencer, post about just another battery technology promising who knows what, in who knows what timeframe.
we do have energy storage technologies capable of providing citizens of USA with clean energy RIGHT now, RIGHT here. for whole year, day and night. without buying one drop of oil from tyrants, dictators who literally literally kill people right at this moment.
[https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-drones-kharkiv...]
this world is so frustrating ! XD
Replies
I read, and appreciated, your entire comment - thank you.
You describe a simple and elegant solution to some portions of these problems and what you are doing with your hot water "battery" is smart.
I am forced, however, to ask:
Where do you live and how large is your family ?
My suspicion is that you do not live in the United States and your family is relatively small ... ?
Modern, "first world" ("global north" ?) 21st century homes do not match your model in a number of different ways:
- Unlimited, temp stable hot water comes from a tankless water heater. People don't "run out" of hot water anymore.
- A family - even a relatively small family - runs a 30A dryer daily. Our family of five runs it 1-2x daily.
- Many, many people now have electric cars and some households have two of them.
- I agree that laptops and phones and personal electronics are a rounding error here but microwave ovens, toasters, coffee percolators, etc., are not - and people use them. I will note in passing that both our dishwasher and our microwave oven require 20A circuits.
I am optimistic that we (as a society) can satisfy these demands with solar power - I just want to make sure you appreciate just how much demand for electricity a modern US household has.
FWIW, we are planning on going entirely off-grid, purely solar with lifepo batteries, in the next 18-24 months.
I didn't read your entire comment (sorry), but wanted to support your water tank statement.
I live in an area with frequent, often day long power failures during winter storms. So my house is designed around that.
When I bought a new hot water tank, I spent a little extra for the super insulated one. The result?
I can take a shower during a power failure, and still another not as hot 24 hrs later! When you consider that the first shower injected cold water into the tank, that's fairly impressive.
On long power failures, on the third morning I can even take a lukewarm shower, with no cold water at the shower (I have individual hot/cold controls). This is far preferable to a shower at 5C water temp (from my well in winter)
And where did any eacaped heat go? Why... into my house! Surely not a loss.
So yes, water tanks rock.