Solid State batteries to replace Li-Ion storage ?
Discussion
ChrisW. said:
Might it also be the opportunity for a devolved base load with solar panels and localised battery storage in future home builds ?
Economically viable energy storage is certainly the Grail but ultimately, one has to consider the real world realities of the scenario whereby there is money on the table and on one side of the table are random punters such as you and I while on the other side are large corporate utilities. There are lots of opportunities but we will always be in competition with the utility firms for that money on the table and they will pretty much always win.
The utility is keen to have us buy their excess generation at a premium over what they could export for but note how many want you to have an EV? This is so that this cheap night supply gets used by a car and not stored to be used by the house during peak rate the following day. Others limit the time of the discount period and or the amount that can be drawn so that the EV is prioritised. Other firms are more relaxed because the high cost and short lifespan of current house batteries mean that they aren't economically viable things for people to have and for more than a few they're just part of an investment scam they've treated themselves to, on retirement, or a symbol of mild mental illness around that whole 'prepping' and 'my house is my castle' sort of nuttery, or a status symbol to impress guests.
And that's also a bit of a clue. If home batteries made economic sense then the utilities would have be using them to store the excess electricity rather than binning it out on the cheap. It's also worth noting that a corporate wouldn't be paying the insane mark-up on batteries that we domestic buyers are targeted with.
Solar is another issue. It's not really any use because of where the U.K. is geolocated. The reality is that we demand the most energy precisely when solar isn't available. In simplistic terms we don't need solar when solar is generated. We don't need lighting nor heating. It's why the people selling solar systems lie about payback costs as they do when selling batteries. Because they aren't held to the laws for selling financial instruments to retail consumers they can freely fabricate knowingly false investment data and projections in order to illicit a high value sale from a mark.
We can see the trend for solar and storage are excellent. Just imagine the 'investors' who purchased solar and battery ten years ago, the huge cost and short lifespans compared to 2024 but nothing you can stick on or in your house can fix the permanent issue that we can't store for winter the energy we harvest in summer.
What you need to do is focus on generating an excess during daylong summer which is sold and generates a revenue that is sufficient to allow the purchasing of electricity through winter. You don't want to be charging an EV or filling a house batter with solar if you can buy overnight from the grid at say 7p but they'll pay 10p for that solar during the day. If such an arbitrage is possible then it would be a bit silly to use your daytime generation instead of selling it but I read of people doing exactly this on PH.
But this is where Ripple shows that it's not really possible. it's basically an unregulated investment business selling crap to well intentioned mug punters. And why it probably hasn't got long left unless it pulls a rabbit out of the hat.
Anyway, long story short, it's probably better to just set a solar array to do nothing other than sell its output on the best tariff at the time and any car or house batteries to fill from the grid when they sell cheap. But you'll always be trading against the house and the house is running a book against all the customers and any arbitrage opportunities, which is what these are, are short lived and small in nature otherwise institutional money would be playing and taking the arb revenue.
Basically, what's left on the table for retail is always the scraps not wanted by institutional money. It's the basic rule of finance.
Of course twelve years ago there were generous Feed in Tariffs etc to stimulate solar Pv and thermal installations ...
We did this and have just installed a Tesla Powerwall which has almost eradicated the 2400kWh that we used to export and enables us to make better use of our dual tariff on which we charge our electric car.
The payback is probably around ten years ... but we are also protected against power cuts (for a time) and the life of the battery will be far more than ten years ... but I see that the new Tesla 3 Powerwall which includes the inverter with 4kWh of panels can now be installed for around £10,000 ... with a likely life of 25 years ?
We did this and have just installed a Tesla Powerwall which has almost eradicated the 2400kWh that we used to export and enables us to make better use of our dual tariff on which we charge our electric car.
The payback is probably around ten years ... but we are also protected against power cuts (for a time) and the life of the battery will be far more than ten years ... but I see that the new Tesla 3 Powerwall which includes the inverter with 4kWh of panels can now be installed for around £10,000 ... with a likely life of 25 years ?
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