Banked power for those not wanting to upgrade electrical service?

[Khaos]

Hey all, I was wondering if such a product exists, and if it doesn't....why not?

For those who are in older homes where electrical service is 100a, why wouldn't a "Power Bank" that is plugged into a regular 120v outlet be an option? The way I see it, a power bank made especially for EVs can charge up and then when the EV needs to be charged it can draw from the power bank itself rather than the outlet (there the output is slower). The concept would be similar to a Tesla Powerwall without the solar etc.

Does something like this exist?

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[bd5400]

Wouldn’t that be prohibitively expensive? I haven’t had to upgrade from 100amp service but I would imagine that something like a Powerwall would be significantly more expensive than the upgrade, no?

 

[Zoidz]

Yeah, it makes no sense financially to do that. It's $500 - $2000 to do an upgrade to 200A service in most areas, depending on difficulty and labor costs in the area. Any sort of "buffer" battery system will cost MUCH more, short and long term.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

Besides cost charging a large battery from 120V power takes weeks not hours so unless you’re not charging your truck more than once a week max you won’t have time to recharge the battery.

 

[frostbit3]

Isn't a single powerwall something north of like 10K? Upgrading your home is going to be way cheaper. Plus the powerwall is only like 13.5KWh, so you'd numerous of them to actually fully charge the vehicle.

 

[golden_frog]

You'd have to charge that powerwall somehow. Anything that could charge the R1T at a reasonably fast rate would face the same issues charging itself.

 

[moosehead]

Taking this conversation further, when do you guys think home battery power storage will get good enough for solar energy storage? Is it good now but just expensive?

Sorry for noob ignorance, but much appreciate the knowledge here. Thanks.

 

[HyperionMark]

Taking this conversation further, when do you guys think home battery power storage will get good enough for solar energy storage? Is it good now but just expensive?

Sorry for noob ignorance, but much appreciate the knowledge here. Thanks.

It's definitely ready in its current form for some areas. If you have solar and a steep time of use setup, then it can definitely pencil out. Some people just want the assurance of energy security. That is worth many thousands to me and a big part of why I did it.

 

[miasm]

Taking this conversation further, when do you guys think home battery power storage will get good enough for solar energy storage? Is it good now but just expensive?

Sorry for noob ignorance, but much appreciate the knowledge here. Thanks.

It doesn't "pencil out" as saving any money unless you have some steep ToU rated, or worse.

I have two power walls (they didn't make economic sense, but wrapping them into my solar loan was still less than my average utility bill), and basically except for summer (darn ACs), they power the house andi take nothing from the grid (went over 100 days without pulling from the grid at one point; a big snow or 3 consecutive days of heavy clouds during winter/spring/fall depletes then and I have to take from the grid). Oh, and when I plug in the R1T, it usually depleted the batteries fully, unless I charge every night.

 

[SANZC02]

Taking this conversation further, when do you guys think home battery power storage will get good enough for solar energy storage? Is it good now but just expensive?

Sorry for noob ignorance, but much appreciate the knowledge here. Thanks.

It is good enough now but not cheap. I put in a 6.3 kw system last year, based on my usage it is enough to run my house, actually generated more than I used last year. It is not cheap and to have the solar array work during a power outage you need a battery backup or some other home backup system so I had aTesla Power-wall put in this year. I went with one battery as it is more than enough to power my house between peak 4-9pm. It was not cheap though.

6.2 kW solar array 17k
panel upgrade from 100 amp to 200 amp 2.5k
13.5 kWh Tesla Power-wall 15.2k

Granted Solar array I got a 26% tax credit last year, will get a 26% or 30% credit on the Power-wall this year and based on the last 12 months with the solar array here on SoCal with the high cost of power from SCE and the tax credits I have less than 5 year ROI on the Solar array. The battery was more of a piece of mind thing to cover outages, I’ll see after a year with it but my initial guess is another 3 years for that ROI so less than 8 years ROI for the entire setup at current energy prices.

If you live in an area with cheap power, say closer to 10 cents a kWh, then it would easily double the ROI so unless you just want to go green it may be hard to justify.

 

[golden_frog]

For much less money, you can also get a much smaller battery backup and run certain circuits off of that. For example, you could run your electric outlets, lights, and small appliances off of a battery circuit and leave big appliances like HVAC to the grid.

 

[louisdeg]

I’ve heard Tesla power walls are stupid expensive compared to others and service sucks. That from a solar panel field rep. I would research all systems.

 

[lefkonj]

With a Tesla power wall costing at least 10k I would imagine going 100A to 200/300A would be the same or cheaper and have more benefits.

A friend of mine not only upgraded the service, also gained a new panel with plenty of expansion and took the moment to hook up a generator. Think it was like 6k.

 

[dduffey]

My utility doesn't allow solar customers to sign up for their TOU plan. They also don't allow solar customers to use their "community solar" rider where you pay more to get power from solar. I wanted to do that to be 100% solar.

Why don't they allow it? Because they are selling YOUR solar to those that sign up for it.

Where does the battery come in?

They recently stopped doing net metering and started paying a lower rate for power received vs delivered. So even though no TOU is anti solar/battery with the rate changes it starts to make sense to use a battery since it has more value to you than the utility "buying" it.

So now you don't get any $ benefit for sending power to the grid, not participate in helping with demand/supply, and they are nearly stealing your power to sell driving you to find ways to reduce sending excess power to the grid.

All in the name of "being fair to non solar customers" (I kid you not).

It's like they are trying to make the grid worse.

Texas.

 

[NY_Rob]

^ BS like those completely anti-solar rules would likely drive me to go completely off-grid or get the f**k out of Texas.

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