This article is all over the place, but the principle is pretty simple - rather than adding more generation for peak usage times, batteries store energy generated off peak and smooth out the macro usage trends.
Our local utility in NC has a program where they'll pay you ~$50/battery/month to enroll in their virtual power plant program. In exchange, they can take control of your battery up to 36 times per year for a period of a couple hours. Summer events are typically early evening during peak air conditioning times. Winter events are typically early morning during peak heating times.
In practice this means one of two things:
* They make your battery charge to full capacity in advance of the event, and then you run your home off the battery and don't take any power from the grid during that time
* Sometimes you'll also return power to the grid beyond that used by your house - they pay you the contracted rate for the power you deliver
We've paired our batteries with solar panels, so generally we have a full charge going into the summer VPP events. We have gas heat, but I expect we'll pay for at least some grid energy to charge batteries during the winter events. Regardless, it's been a good program for us - even without solar, we would not pay for any more power than we used, and the monthly rebate from the utility makes the economics of the system a lot more favorable, especially here in the land of relatively cheap coal power.
They can, depending on storage and outage duration you plan on mitigating. For example, a friend in ComEd's Northern Illinois service territory has quite a bit of rooftop solar. They subscribed to Base Power [1], who came and installed battery storage on site. Base Power became their power provider, which is a few cents/kwh cheaper than ComEd, because they charge the batteries at night when demand is low and Constellation Energy's nuclear fleet is still pumping out power (Illinois has the largest merchant nuclear fleet in the US [2]). Their daily solar generation is sufficient that if utility power fails, daily solar generation is sufficient (with batteries for coupling to enable continued solar production when utility sync is lost) to not need a fossil generator; the battery will carry them from sunset to sunrise until the solar panels are producing again during daylight hours. "What is your risk model?"
If you cannot install residential solar, don't have enough solar, or have to defend against outages lasting for days or weeks, having the infra available to support an exterior fossil generator is certainly something to consider (main load center transfer switch, receptacle on structure exterior for genset supply to the load center or a subpanel of critical loads).
[1] <a href="https://www.basepowercompany.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.basepowercompany.com/ (no affiliation, I just like batteries!)
beaviskhan · · focus · HN ↗
Our local utility in NC has a program where they'll pay you ~$50/battery/month to enroll in their virtual power plant program. In exchange, they can take control of your battery up to 36 times per year for a period of a couple hours. Summer events are typically early evening during peak air conditioning times. Winter events are typically early morning during peak heating times.
In practice this means one of two things:
* They make your battery charge to full capacity in advance of the event, and then you run your home off the battery and don't take any power from the grid during that time * Sometimes you'll also return power to the grid beyond that used by your house - they pay you the contracted rate for the power you deliver
We've paired our batteries with solar panels, so generally we have a full charge going into the summer VPP events. We have gas heat, but I expect we'll pay for at least some grid energy to charge batteries during the winter events. Regardless, it's been a good program for us - even without solar, we would not pay for any more power than we used, and the monthly rebate from the utility makes the economics of the system a lot more favorable, especially here in the land of relatively cheap coal power.
izend · · focus · HN ↗
voakbasda · · focus · HN ↗
toomuchtodo · · focus · HN ↗
If you cannot install residential solar, don't have enough solar, or have to defend against outages lasting for days or weeks, having the infra available to support an exterior fossil generator is certainly something to consider (main load center transfer switch, receptacle on structure exterior for genset supply to the load center or a subpanel of critical loads).
[1] <a href="https://www.basepowercompany.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.basepowercompany.com/ (no affiliation, I just like batteries!)
[2] <a href="https://nuclearbarbarian.github.io/IL-NLIC/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://nuclearbarbarian.github.io/IL-NLIC/index.html