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autoexec 42 minutes ago [-]
I'd feel better about this if they weren't charging people thousands for the batteries. As it is, this looks like a scam by utility companies to force their costs onto consumers and charge them for it on top of that. People should be being paid by the utility for storing, hosting, and allowing access to the power company's distributed infrastructure.
It's not as if the batteries people are paying for become their property, or are only for the homeowner's benefit. The utility company has the right to use that power however they want at any time including the "right to use all the energy in the battery". The homeowner also has to allow contractors, subcontractors, or third-parties onto their property. Physical access aside, they also have to allow the utility free access to their network and free use of their internet connection/bandwidth. The utility will not compensate homeowners for any of that.
Homeowners must also agree to install the utility company's cell phone apps/software. I'd bet those apps are collecting data and probably pushing ads too. They have to agree to the “Customer Privacy” terms, which will only be shown to them "upon installation of the Equipment".
The utility company advertises this as a means to prevent power outages (which if they were doing their job in the first place should be extremely rare occurrences), but the fine print makes it clear that homeowners should not assume that they will have any access to the power that battery holds in the event of a power outage or at any other time.
The utility also requires homeowners to agree to terms that state the utility will not be liable for any damage to persons or property caused by use of/replacement of/repair of/or failure to repair the utility's equipment and software. The homeowner also "bears the entire risk of loss, theft or damage" to the utility's equipment.
This would be a bad deal even if the utility were paying a monthly fee to homeowners. The fact that they've conned customers into paying the utility for using them, their internet, and assuming all liability/responsibility for the utility company's hardware is insane.
MithrilTuxedo 22 minutes ago [-]
>It's not as if the batteries people are paying for become their property
It is as if. The article says it's a lease agreement, and provides this link.
>the homeowner "bears the entire risk of loss, theft or damage" to the utility's equipment.
What are you quoting?
wlesieutre 15 minutes ago [-]
It's a 10 year lease agreement. You pay them, and when the 10 years is up you have to return the batteries. At no point does the customer own the batteries.
It's like leasing a car, except with a car lease you have the option to pay extra to buy it out at the end and take ownership; with this lease agreement you don't.
autoexec 11 minutes ago [-]
This is like leasing a car except that the dealership can show up with other customers to take "your" car for test drives or just to drive it around for any other reason whenever they want to, for however long they want to, and they won't pay you back for any of the gas they use. Basically turning your personal garage into their distributed showroom.
We have this in CA. I have Tesla batteries and they promote wanting me to enroll my batteries into a larger grid so their capacity can be used during higher load events.
I thought it was a novel idea when I heard about it.
> Tesla Electric customers report making as much as $150 a day
Only on peak demand days, of which there are only a handful every year.
I have Enphase batteries enrolled in an equivalent program, so I've tracked how much I make. Definitely not enough to make much of a dent in the payoff time for the batteries. But a nice perk nonetheless.
senectus1 56 minutes ago [-]
there is something really wrong with the economics of this.
it shouldnt be celebrated.
thelastgallon 3 minutes ago [-]
Yes, only the billionaires have the right to make money. Think of the horror of any person making money by producing/storing energy!
medler 41 minutes ago [-]
It seems like an unreservedly good thing if people with home batteries can help prevent brownouts and reduce prices for everyone else. Also, I believe the $150/day figure was during a rare heatwave event when prices had surged to 100x their typical value ($5/kWh). It’s like any other investment where you outlay cash upfront and hope to make it back over time, whether via reduced costs for your own electricity usage or selling it back to the grid when doing so is profitable.
imglorp 37 minutes ago [-]
Makes sense to me. Peaker plants are typically expensive (even at idle) and polluting.
During peak need, renting some capacity from subscribers already on your grid means you don't need to build another peaker plant.
beering 42 minutes ago [-]
What is wrong with this?
AuthAuth 14 minutes ago [-]
Its an inefficient use of capital.
thelastgallon 2 minutes ago [-]
Whose capital?
senectus1 34 minutes ago [-]
for single individuals to earn as much as (i assume US$) 150 a day means that the grid is horrendously unbalanced.
hell if I emptied my 30kw into the grid in my state/country at the most expensive time I'd earn AU$21.00
to earn US$150 means either HUGE battery capacity (and transmission capacity) or utterly rediculous power pricing... both mean really lousy power supply and grid design.
I'm all for indipendance but the reality is we live in communities and count on the collective to rise us all up together.
that sort of profit is a clear warning sign of a broken community.
senectus1 25 minutes ago [-]
holy shit, yeah. you dont see a problem with earning "over $5 per kWh" ?!?!
What is average length of outage? If it is a few hours then the battery seems like a good idea. If it is days then the battery will probably run out.
> around 50% of the houses in its programme with home batteries also have solar panels
I'm assuming most of these outages are from snow storms. Do these people have to go up on the roof and clear the solar panels?
jmbwell 8 minutes ago [-]
Base power is doing something similar in Texas. AFAICT, they take a loss on the equipment, charge the batteries when electricity prices are cheap, then sell power out of the batteries when prices are high and keep the difference. The homeowner enjoys only most likely having backup power.
I mean, the electricity still has to be generated. That still costs money. This whole thing only works as long as there is someone willing to buy at the high prices and off peak demand stays low enough to keep prices cheap. Eventually there’s no more road to kick this can down.
I love this. It’s basically an edge cache for power, with an enormous amount of side benefits - smooths out solar power, smooths out the duck curve, and allows the grid to size closer to the average load and absorb the spikes at the edge, instead of cascading into the core.
There was an article earlier about the distribution challenges that come from large workload fluxes, too - tl;dr is the transmission lines get less efficient under higher load, so smoothing out the demand curve to the end user also raises the efficiency of the entire grid.
And as someone points out below - the proliferation of EVs also helps this, because they can act as a “deep” reservoir so the local residential batteries can be much smaller - more buffers than something expected to run the house for more than a couple hours, so that makes the whole setup even cheaper, depending on when and where the EVs are getting charged.
patmorgan23 2 hours ago [-]
Yep, flatten the peak means you can spread the cost of the transmission grid over more electrons, lower the cost per unit of energy.
bentt 7 hours ago [-]
I live in Vermont. This is the first I've heard of this. But I like it!
raddan 2 hours ago [-]
I live just over the border in Massachusetts and we have something similar, called ConnectedSolutions. It is essentially the same kind of program except that the benefit is a 0% loan on the battery purchase. I have a 15kW battery that allows me to power the entire house overnight without drawing from the grid. When the power company wants to draw from my battery, they send me a notification through my battery’s app. I can opt out some fixed number of times, too. And, just as when my solar runs net negative, the power company pays me (in bill credits) whenever the virtual power plant draws power.
sowbug 5 hours ago [-]
It would be nice to change the headline to "Vermont is replacing power plants with home batteries." Shorter and potentially saves a click.
jmyeet 49 minutes ago [-]
This is something I've been thinking about a lot.
The way an electricity utility works, you need power plants (or to buy power from someone with power plants), transmission lines and some form of last mile delivery. You have substations and other infrastructure too. That infrastructure has ongoing maintenance costs but also capex to build it in the first place.
So your per kWh price is the sum of the electricity cost, the maintenance cost and the amortized capex plus some profit.
Utilities are heavy regulated but only the electricity cost tends to be highly regulated. Any maintenance or capex costs can be passed on directly to the consumer. Private equity has realized this. Data centers have realized this where they can negotiate a lower electricity rate and the build out for multi-gigawatt transmission and power generation can be passed on to consumers. This has gotten creative enough that people in unrelated states end up paying more because of upgrades required for shared infrastructure for interstate utility compacts.
The obvious endpoint for all this is for users to eventually opt out. Disconnect from the grid and use totally renewable energy plus batteries. Generally in any urban environment you can't avoid the monthly connection cost even if you use no power. The city will declare your house unlivable. I can see this changing in the coming years with soaring prices that basically go to share buybacks and bonuses for private utilities.
But what if the connection to the grid drops significantly shifting maintenance costs to the rest?
I think the future is going to move away from large connected grids towards self-sufficiency and smaller localized grids, ideally municipally owned. But you can't gradually move from a large grid to smaller grids like this because of the problems of who pays for the grid in between.
AndrewKemendo 2 hours ago [-]
Vermont continues to be a leader in anarchism and distribution of power (pun intended).
Distributed power storage/generation has been a thing for a century and it’s finally economical enough to be mainstream.
This was the whole pitch of the solarcity/tesla solar tiles + power wall a decade or more ago.
thelastgallon 7 hours ago [-]
Or they could use EVs. Require cars to have V2X (Vehicle to Grid, Vehicle to Load) feature. EV batteries are humongous.
0cf8612b2e1e 5 hours ago [-]
As a consumer, would you want the extra usage on your battery? Those extra cycles have to cause some additional degradation to the system, but I do not know how much.
nicoburns 1 hours ago [-]
> As a consumer, would you want the extra usage on your battery?
I feel like this is likely going to be a non-issue in practice. Because these batteries are rated to last at least 10 years either way. And by that time, the cost of replacement will be dramatically cheaper.
_aavaa_ 4 hours ago [-]
How much would I get paid?
0cf8612b2e1e 3 hours ago [-]
Net metering rates are pretty poor, so I would guess not much outside of extreme grid instability. Although, you then might want to selfishly hoard the juice for yourself.
eunoia 2 hours ago [-]
It would not be selfish to run your home off the car battery during peak rates and therefore cutting peak demand on the grid. Everyone wins.
jethronethro 6 hours ago [-]
Do any of the EVs sold in the US support Vehicle to Grid?
happyopossum 1 hours ago [-]
Many do - teslas, ford lightnings, Kia ev9, all the GM Ultium stuff (Silverado etc, hummer ev, Cadillacs), and a bunch of others.
tzs 23 minutes ago [-]
Isn’t Tesla V2G just for Cybertruck?
danans 34 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but last I checked the bidi chargers were proprietary - tied to vehicle manufacturer - which is a huge disincentive. I don't want my home's battery connector locked into a vehicle brand/manufacturer.
oori 1 hours ago [-]
Many do (assuming bidirectional charger), but it’s only 3.6kW max, in most cases
WarmWash 2 hours ago [-]
Lightnings do (well before they were discontinued)
But given they are NMC chemistry, you probably wouldn't want to cycle them a lot for the grid (or just your home).
everybodyknows 39 minutes ago [-]
You wouldn't have to, to nevertheless provide great benefit to the grid. Look up "TOU billing".
bethekidyouwant 2 hours ago [-]
The down votes are because you use the word require. They’re never going to require it it would be opt in.
medler 38 minutes ago [-]
I think they mean to use EV batteries would require the EV to be designed for V2G capability, which is currently rare
alexnewman 2 hours ago [-]
Note I have a Tesla powerwall at home. They installed it inside before I bought the house. I always wonder what happens when these things catch fire
margalabargala 2 hours ago [-]
> I always wonder what happens when these things catch fire
If you're hoping someone will chime in to tell you they have magic firefighting foam inside them or something, I regret to inform you that what happens if it catches fire is exactly what one might naively expect from large lithium batteries.
SoftTalker 1 hours ago [-]
Yep. I'd never have a large battery like that in my house. Outside, a safe distance away, maybe.
fhdkweig 35 minutes ago [-]
Newer LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries don't have the fire issues that the previous Lithium Ion generation did. They are a bit more expensive and heavier, but they are superior in every other way (safety, lifespan, max charge cycles).
bradfa 1 hours ago [-]
Unless you plan to physically assault it with weapons, it’s extremely unlikely to catch fire.
medler 26 minutes ago [-]
Which version do you have? I believe they switched to LFP for V3, which should pose significantly less fire risk than the NMC chemistry they were using for V2 and before
UltraSane 2 hours ago [-]
I've seen a program funded by a utility that integrated batteries with air conditioners.
It's not as if the batteries people are paying for become their property, or are only for the homeowner's benefit. The utility company has the right to use that power however they want at any time including the "right to use all the energy in the battery". The homeowner also has to allow contractors, subcontractors, or third-parties onto their property. Physical access aside, they also have to allow the utility free access to their network and free use of their internet connection/bandwidth. The utility will not compensate homeowners for any of that.
Homeowners must also agree to install the utility company's cell phone apps/software. I'd bet those apps are collecting data and probably pushing ads too. They have to agree to the “Customer Privacy” terms, which will only be shown to them "upon installation of the Equipment".
The utility company advertises this as a means to prevent power outages (which if they were doing their job in the first place should be extremely rare occurrences), but the fine print makes it clear that homeowners should not assume that they will have any access to the power that battery holds in the event of a power outage or at any other time.
The utility also requires homeowners to agree to terms that state the utility will not be liable for any damage to persons or property caused by use of/replacement of/repair of/or failure to repair the utility's equipment and software. The homeowner also "bears the entire risk of loss, theft or damage" to the utility's equipment.
This would be a bad deal even if the utility were paying a monthly fee to homeowners. The fact that they've conned customers into paying the utility for using them, their internet, and assuming all liability/responsibility for the utility company's hardware is insane.
It is as if. The article says it's a lease agreement, and provides this link.
https://greenmountainpower.com/rebates-programs/home-energy-...
>the homeowner "bears the entire risk of loss, theft or damage" to the utility's equipment.
What are you quoting?
It's like leasing a car, except with a car lease you have the option to pay extra to buy it out at the end and take ownership; with this lease agreement you don't.
I thought it was a novel idea when I heard about it.
Only on peak demand days, of which there are only a handful every year.
I have Enphase batteries enrolled in an equivalent program, so I've tracked how much I make. Definitely not enough to make much of a dent in the payoff time for the batteries. But a nice perk nonetheless.
it shouldnt be celebrated.
During peak need, renting some capacity from subscribers already on your grid means you don't need to build another peaker plant.
hell if I emptied my 30kw into the grid in my state/country at the most expensive time I'd earn AU$21.00
to earn US$150 means either HUGE battery capacity (and transmission capacity) or utterly rediculous power pricing... both mean really lousy power supply and grid design. I'm all for indipendance but the reality is we live in communities and count on the collective to rise us all up together.
that sort of profit is a clear warning sign of a broken community.
> around 50% of the houses in its programme with home batteries also have solar panels
I'm assuming most of these outages are from snow storms. Do these people have to go up on the roof and clear the solar panels?
I mean, the electricity still has to be generated. That still costs money. This whole thing only works as long as there is someone willing to buy at the high prices and off peak demand stays low enough to keep prices cheap. Eventually there’s no more road to kick this can down.
There was an article earlier about the distribution challenges that come from large workload fluxes, too - tl;dr is the transmission lines get less efficient under higher load, so smoothing out the demand curve to the end user also raises the efficiency of the entire grid.
And as someone points out below - the proliferation of EVs also helps this, because they can act as a “deep” reservoir so the local residential batteries can be much smaller - more buffers than something expected to run the house for more than a couple hours, so that makes the whole setup even cheaper, depending on when and where the EVs are getting charged.
The way an electricity utility works, you need power plants (or to buy power from someone with power plants), transmission lines and some form of last mile delivery. You have substations and other infrastructure too. That infrastructure has ongoing maintenance costs but also capex to build it in the first place.
So your per kWh price is the sum of the electricity cost, the maintenance cost and the amortized capex plus some profit.
Utilities are heavy regulated but only the electricity cost tends to be highly regulated. Any maintenance or capex costs can be passed on directly to the consumer. Private equity has realized this. Data centers have realized this where they can negotiate a lower electricity rate and the build out for multi-gigawatt transmission and power generation can be passed on to consumers. This has gotten creative enough that people in unrelated states end up paying more because of upgrades required for shared infrastructure for interstate utility compacts.
The obvious endpoint for all this is for users to eventually opt out. Disconnect from the grid and use totally renewable energy plus batteries. Generally in any urban environment you can't avoid the monthly connection cost even if you use no power. The city will declare your house unlivable. I can see this changing in the coming years with soaring prices that basically go to share buybacks and bonuses for private utilities.
But what if the connection to the grid drops significantly shifting maintenance costs to the rest?
I think the future is going to move away from large connected grids towards self-sufficiency and smaller localized grids, ideally municipally owned. But you can't gradually move from a large grid to smaller grids like this because of the problems of who pays for the grid in between.
Distributed power storage/generation has been a thing for a century and it’s finally economical enough to be mainstream.
This was the whole pitch of the solarcity/tesla solar tiles + power wall a decade or more ago.
I feel like this is likely going to be a non-issue in practice. Because these batteries are rated to last at least 10 years either way. And by that time, the cost of replacement will be dramatically cheaper.
But given they are NMC chemistry, you probably wouldn't want to cycle them a lot for the grid (or just your home).
If you're hoping someone will chime in to tell you they have magic firefighting foam inside them or something, I regret to inform you that what happens if it catches fire is exactly what one might naively expect from large lithium batteries.