Jesus Fucking Christ CALIFORNIA

[blakes]

How long do the batteries last until they start having issues storing electricity?

Depends

I have several arrays for various purposes.

6 optima blue tops powering my shop are 7 years old. Mostly just power lights and wifi router/cameras

8 renogy 12v 200ah are 3 years old as a standby for my cabin. They only get used to charge the main cabin array during winter.

4 LFP 12v 200ah power my cabin. They are only a year old but should last at least 5 years.

 

[Treefrog]

I ran some numbers one time on home scale water-gravity "battery". Either needed more water than practical or more height than was practical. 1 gallon of water needs about 300,000 feet of elevation change or 300,000 gallons 1 foot to store 1 kWh without efficiency losses. For large power storage, vacuum flywheels are one of the only good options at smaller scales.

 

[arse_sidewards]

Plus I'm probably getting rid of that rusty GMT4 flatbed, so I'll only have yotas for hauling

You better use them the way Yota owners usually do or you're gonna learn some hard and expensive lessons that the GMT400 already taught you.

The companies that sold all those solar contracts to homeowners and the power companies making electricity are the only ones that were ever meant to profit from this. Anyone that thought they were going to get free or nearly free power from a company that makes money off selling you electricity is a fucking fool of epic proportions. The power companies would go out of business if it worked the way they told you it was going to. Think about it......

Around here the rates are high enough and the installs are cheap enough that there's a lot of people with their own panels and it pays for itself in a few years simply from reduced energy bill. They pay you jack shit to sell back to the grid but I know people who went from $40-120/mo to $0 from spring through fall. Doesn't take long to pay for itself at $500+/yr.

yeah which is why you should pump it to your house instead of hauling it
just need a lotta garden hoses and extension cords

Charge EV with electricity. Use EV to haul water.

It's basically a Rube Goldberg piston pump at that point.

 

[Texas97]

They are cutting back on the incentives to install, they are trying to build battery storage plants so the excess can be stored with marginal success from what I've heard.

My brother is in Salem Ut, same thing there.

Instead of putting up thousands upon thousands of windmills and a cabillion solar panels they probably should have spent that money on inventing the technology to store the electricity all this stuff produces first. Talk about putting the cart before the horse......

ill share this: there is a very small town far out in west texas. not many people live there, say maybe a couple hundred. they have a smallish hotel, probably 75 rooms, a few bars, about 100 RV hookup spots. They cannot get reliable electricity because they are so remote, which has been hell on their water and wastewater treatment plants.

so, lets say they were wanting to do their own energy generation standalone and they want Battery backup. if i remember correctly, their energy demand was like 2Mw per month. pretty easy to get that generation from solar out there. nothing but desert and sun. but it wouldnt be all the time so they want the batteries. the ridiculously large and expensive batteries, something on the order or magnitude of $5-10million would only store enough energy to run the towns energy demand for 2 hours.

2 hours of backup storage.


thats why all this BESS stuff can and will never pencil out. it just cant for a grid reliability standpoint.

what is ACTUALLY happening now is companies are installing BESS sites and basically day trading power. charging the batteries at night, when electricity is "cheap" selling the energy back in the peak hours when the energy prices spike.




Here's something else thats going to hit people like a ton of bricks..... city fire marshalls are getting pretty worried about battery storage sites because of the very high likelyhood of fires and explosions that will spread to surrounding homes or businesses. i just am doing an "energy" site in a city in south Texas, i met with the city and they were very curious if there was any battery storage. i said no, and they were happy to hear it since it meant they would have required access for foam trucks, possibly installing a foam system onsite, ballistic walls, etc.

 

[blakes]

You better use them the way Yota owners usually do or you're gonna learn some hard and expensive lessons that the GMT400 already taught you.

my 2000 taco has hauled water for 3 years now. I am keeping an eye on the frame.

my previous 1991 yota was bought new by a guy who died 6 months later. His drunk/idiot brother got it and started hauling water for like 20 something years til the knock sensor went bad and wouldn't pass emmissions. I got it and fixed the KS then hauled for 2 years before the 3 slo HG went out by the exhaust. Still ran good til I sold it to messicans.

so I think a lil yota can haul ~200 gallons of water just fine

 

[[486]]

ill share this: there is a very small town far out in west texas. not many people live there, say maybe a couple hundred. they have a smallish hotel, probably 75 rooms, a few bars, about 100 RV hookup spots. They cannot get reliable electricity because they are so remote, which has been hell on their water and wastewater treatment plants.

so, lets say they were wanting to do their own energy generation standalone and they want Battery backup. if i remember correctly, their energy demand was like 2Mw per month. pretty easy to get that generation from solar out there. nothing but desert and sun. but it wouldnt be all the time so they want the batteries. the ridiculously large and expensive batteries, something on the order or magnitude of $5-10million would only store enough energy to run the towns energy demand for 2 hours.

2 hours of backup storage.

plop down a li'l NG plant

 

[arse_sidewards]

so I think a lik yota can haul ~200 gallons of water just fine

Exactly what I mean by "use them the way Yota owners usually do".

If you stick an equivalent amount of water proportional to its weight that you did to the GMT400 it's probably gonna treat you about the same way the GMT400 did.

 

[arse_sidewards]

what is ACTUALLY happening now is companies are installing BESS sites and basically day trading power. charging the batteries at night, when electricity is "cheap" selling the energy back in the peak hours when the energy prices spike.

I assume the subsidies are the only reason they're using BESS for that instead of the nat-gas and oil plants they used to do that with.

 

[Texas97]

I assume the subsidies are the only reason they're using BESS for that instead of the nat-gas and oil plants they used to do that with.

you're missing the point entirely. you cant just have a nat gas plant on an acre in the middle of a city.

 

[Texas97]

plop down a li'l NG plant

100s of millions of dollars, if not billions, plus the pipelines and easements running across the desert. its not cost effective or feasible

 

[arse_sidewards]

you're missing the point entirely. you cant just have a nat gas plant on an acre in the middle of a city.

Oh, I thought we were talking about releasing power to meet demand at peak times same as starting up a nat gas plant.

I guess not having to have transmission infrastructure plumb all that power from BFE to the city does make the battery more competitive.

 

[[486]]

100s of millions of dollars, if not billions, plus the pipelines and easements running across the desert. its not cost effective or feasible

forty or fifty craigslist onans
drill your own oil well to get gas
procure magnets
ez everytime

 

[Ghetto Fab.]

First shitty article I found on the situation:
Solar Project Planned for Mojave Desert Will Destroy Thousands of Joshua Trees and Endangered Tortoise Habitat

Just came back from St George on vacation this past june and was pretty disgusted to see them plowing down 100s of acres of desert out in mojave for solar projects. I get it, its the desert, who would ever want to do anything with the land out there? But they gripe about us wheeling in it and destroying it, and yet its ok to completely obliterate it for solar panels when we have an excess of production anyways. Pretty sure the project I was seeing was a different one from the one linked in the article as the one I saw was closer to mojave.

 

[[486]]

Just came back from St George on vacation this past june and was pretty disgusted to see them plowing down 100s of acres of desert out in mojave for solar projects.

are they really plowing up the shit to level it all out?
hello fucking dust storms

they spend their lives being told they're the solution, when they're the problem

 

[Texas97]

Oh, I thought we were talking about releasing power to meet demand at peak times same as starting up a nat gas plant.

I guess not having to have transmission infrastructure plumb all that power from BFE to the city does make the battery more competitive.

thats how they are making money. its a scam/day trading deal. it has nothing to do with the reliability of the network, and everything to do with fractions of a cent of each watt they sell back. those batteries BESS sites, only have a very limited amount of power to sustain anything . we're talking minutes depending on the size of the city blocks around it.

 

[Stingray]

ill share this: there is a very small town far out in west texas. not many people live there, say maybe a couple hundred. they have a smallish hotel, probably 75 rooms, a few bars, about 100 RV hookup spots. They cannot get reliable electricity because they are so remote, which has been hell on their water and wastewater treatment plants.

so, lets say they were wanting to do their own energy generation standalone and they want Battery backup. if i remember correctly, their energy demand was like 2Mw per month. pretty easy to get that generation from solar out there. nothing but desert and sun. but it wouldnt be all the time so they want the batteries. the ridiculously large and expensive batteries, something on the order or magnitude of $5-10million would only store enough energy to run the towns energy demand for 2 hours.

2 hours of backup storage.


thats why all this BESS stuff can and will never pencil out. it just cant for a grid reliability standpoint.

what is ACTUALLY happening now is companies are installing BESS sites and basically day trading power. charging the batteries at night, when electricity is "cheap" selling the energy back in the peak hours when the energy prices spike.




Here's something else thats going to hit people like a ton of bricks..... city fire marshalls are getting pretty worried about battery storage sites because of the very high likelyhood of fires and explosions that will spread to surrounding homes or businesses. i just am doing an "energy" site in a city in south Texas, i met with the city and they were very curious if there was any battery storage. i said no, and they were happy to hear it since it meant they would have required access for foam trucks, possibly installing a foam system onsite, ballistic walls, etc.

We have two of them in Santa Ana tied to our sub station, we did an intense walkthrough prior to the contractors bringing them online Trying to teach us everything about it. Mainly quelling concerns of fire.

My main concern was how do I clear it from our system? It's not ours I have no control over it, I don't operate it. I'm not about to be a hero.

All I needed to know was how to protect the grid. And your 100% right this was a joint meet with the fire dept that has a station within eyesight of this, and his concern is if this thing catches fire are we going to be in the blast zone. I can't find it now but the had a plant in Az. go catastrophic.

 

[Grnjp92]

thats how they are making money. its a scam/day trading deal. it has nothing to do with the reliability of the network, and everything to do with fractions of a cent of each watt they sell back. those batteries BESS sites, only have a very limited amount of power to sustain anything . we're talking minutes depending on the size of the city blocks around it.

Isn't there also carbon credits to be sold?

 

[Ghetto Fab.]

are they really plowing up the shit to level it all out?
hello fucking dust storms

I don't think its done with a plow, but yes, litterally overturning everything on the ground and whatever yucca trees or bushes there are, are removed.

 

[[486]]

I don't think its done with a plow, but yes, litterally overturning everything on the ground

sounds like plowing to me

how much you wanna bet all the water they're going to use to keep the dust down and rinsed off the panels is perfectly okay, too
ooh they might dump a bunch of oil all over to keep the dust down, and it's gonna be a-ok because it's 'green' people doing it

 

[Texas97]

Isn't there also carbon credits to be sold?

thats beyond me but i dont think so. who is requiring they be bought and sold?

 

[arse_sidewards]

they might dump a bunch of oil all over to keep the dust down, and it's gonna be a-ok because it's 'green people' doing it

Subtle but important typo fix.

 

[Texas97]

We have two of them in Santa Ana tied to our sub station, we did an intense walkthrough prior to the contractors bringing them online Trying to teach us everything about it. Mainly quelling concerns of fire.

My main concern was how do I clear it from our system? It's not ours I have no control over it, I don't operate it. I'm not about to be a hero.

All I needed to know was how to protect the grid. And your 100% right this was a joint meet with the fire dept that has a station within eyesight of this, and his concern is if this thing catches fire are we going to be in the blast zone. I can't find it now but the had a plant in Az. go catastrophic.

can you cut off the breakers at Point of interconnection?

 

[Stingray]

can you cut off the breakers at Point of interconnection?

Yup, there is a whole bunch of fancy electronics monitoring it, with redundancy built in. And if any of if fails we have a good old fashioned load dropping switch to clear it.
When we did the walk through I kept asking if any of this is my responsibility, and where is my clearing switch?

 

[Texas97]

Yup, there is a whole bunch of fancy electronics monitoring it, with redundancy built in. And if any of if fails we have a good old fashioned load dropping switch to clear it.
When we did the walk through I kept asking if any of this is my responsibility, and where is my clearing switch?

don't worry, when it blows, your switch melts with it so good luck everyone. hopefully y'all have everything grounded within a large radius

 

[OutlawRider]

Ok, question of ignorance. I am in AR and the end of REM 1 (1:1) net metering grandfathered in until 2040 ends this September. Sunrun came by and dropped their pitch. Obviously they make is sound really enticing and of urgency. I told them no to my house and putting holes in a literally brand new 20-30k dollar roof (no idea how much the final bill was). But what did interest me was I got to thinking I have some metal buildings out on a farm that is on the same power supply company. They are older and metal so a new roof is easy and cheap for those and leaks aren't as detrimental (although I would want to fix them). Tell me the ins and outs. I'm sure I'm completely wrong here in my thought process but I would like to be brought back to reality.

Here is what I see:
1) I have great sun exposure and south facing rooflines with zero obstruction including roughly 1800 sq/ft of south facing roof.
2) I have no electric to one building so it would include them running the power across (underground) for that building which would be helpful for me. (otherwise I will just do it some day)
3) My bill runs ~250 a month at peak season (summer) for electric at both and if they can't come in cheaper than that, I am out. I would also want a guaranteed rate for the 20 years in the contract
4) I would want it able to be hooked up to battery storage in future although I don't want batteries right now.
5) I could even throw up another quick hay barn if additional sq/ft would help.
6) Are there any tax incentives known for this stuff? I will ask my CPA on this as well.

I know there are drawbacks to this and I see what is going on in Cali. I expect to scrap it after the 20 years and redo roofs they will most likely need it by that time anyway.

 

[CarterKraft]