The Home-Based Battery Storage Fantasy

[rangerrebew]

The Home-Based Battery Storage Fantasy
15 hours ago Guest Blogger 
By Jonathan Lesser

According to a recent article published in The Conversation, installing millions of storage batteries distributed through the grid — in homes, businesses, and local communities – coupled with wind and solar generation, can avoid investments in new transmission infrastructure. But unless installing those batteries is accompanied by physically disconnecting from the grid, or consumers are willing to forgo reliable electricity, this claim is yet another example of electricity “magical thinking.”

Electricity customers, both residential and industrial, need to be aware of this home-based battery storage fantasy.

First, batteries store electricity; they don’t generate it. But the move towards electrifying the U.S. motor vehicle fleet, along with electrifying space and water heating, will double electricity consumption. Although some of the additional electricity needed may come from distributed sources such as rooftop solar, green energy advocates claim that most of the needed electricity will be generated at large-scale wind and solar facilities located far from cities and towns.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/23/the-home-based-battery-storage-fantasy/

[catfish1957]

Anyone who has stored their AA, AAA, C's, D's for more than 2 years should easily understand this.

[The_Reader_David]

What would get rid of need for new transmission infrastructure would be lots of small, modular nuclear reactors distributed across the grid so that most places could rely on locally generated power for a sizable portion of their needs, thereby diminishing the need to draw on distant sources via  the grid.

Still, I think the main critique of in-home or community batteries is the problem of the batteries spontaneously combusting, not the argument given.  Batteries topped up with locally generated power when the sun shines and the wind blows would diminish (diminish, not abolish) the need to draw on the grid, improving grid resilience without the addition or updating of transmission infrastructure (or rather, over and above any addition and updating carried out).

[IsailedawayfromFR]

 

Anyone who has stored their AA, AAA, C's, D's for more than 2 years should easily understand this.

Batteries store energy via chemical interaction.  It is the reason EVs have such spectacular fires and explosions.
Think of what one would be putting in one's house - an explosive device which also emits a powerful lethal gas while burning.

[jafo2010]

Batteries in their current form are not a long term solution, or comprehensive solution that should be embraced.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Batteries in their current form are not a long term solution, or comprehensive solution that should be embraced.

neither are EVs, wind energy, solar energy, biomass energy, the list goes on