In case anyone else has the same confusion as @Medievalist
You absolutely can power a house or anything else without grid power. I said as much:
You can install them without a battery! But installing them without a battery is kind of a weird idea. You can power your entire house! for 5 hours a day?
The battery isn’t to store power from when the grid was operating, the battery is to store power from when the sun is shining.
There are a number of different ways to handle this entire hookup. At the end of the day, your entire system has to be certified by UL. That means that you can’t simply install a “switch”. The switching has to be internal to the system. This has to be a UL certified box.
Since this has caused A LOT of confusion, I invite anyone interested to watch a training video from Schneider Electric.
Hydrogen may or may not be those things.
At the end of the day, I can convert electricity potential energy for storage. My option are wide open, but the most common suggestions are as follows:
- Potential mechanical energy(compressed air, PHS, flywheel, etc)
- chemical energy(battery, hydrogen, etc)
- thermal energy
A battery is, theoretically, the most efficient. In the short-term and under ideal conditions, it has the highest theoretical charge/discharge efficiency. (You can bloviate about the need for a BMS and other stuff, but we should keep it simple. I am not an Alber salesperson.) It is also the most expensive to manufacture and high maintenance costs associated with many of the technologies. In no way am I saying it is the best technology. Portability sucks.
You really hate hydrogen! The good thing about hydrogen is hydrogen doesn’t “appear in nature” because it so readily oxidizes. It has to be liberated from “water”, but at a highly inefficient rate. Hydrogen is very inefficient. However, it combusts readily. Hydrogen is fantastic for certain applications, such as remote backup generators and other applications. However, the low efficiency makes it useless as grid backup. Portability and storage is good though.
It may have “pathetic energy density” by volume, but compared to what? Compared to a bucket of water it is fantastic. I would much rather power my remote gensets with hydrogen/batteries than PHS.
PHS is great, but it requires a reservoir
-https://energy.gov/eere/water/articles/hydropower-vision-new-chapter-america-s-1st-renewable-electricity-source
Something that even the DoE admits we aren’t going to find a lot more of in the US.
Plus, every one you build is going to be an ecological disaster. Good luck!!!
Also: The energy density is atrocious. Way worse than hydrogen
Thermal isn’t a great way to store energy. We don’t have a good technology to store and then recover thermal energy.
