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Did you miss out on your chance to get one of Tesla's Powerwall home batteries? No worries, Mercedes-Benz to the rescue!
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Mercedes-Benz Home Battery Takes On Tesla's Powerwall
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Honestly, if some Chinese company makes a cheap enough knockoff, I could see how one total-home UPS would be nice to replace the four smaller UPS's I have my electronics hooked up to.
Be nice if you could pick your circuits, so it doesn't try to run the air-conditioner, but could for example keep your fridge and home electronics going for brief outages.
Be nice if you could pick your circuits, so it doesn't try to run the air-conditioner, but could for example keep your fridge and home electronics going for brief outages.
TwistedAegis
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Except that the rise in your home insurance rates after the fire won't make up for the cost savings there.
I'm sure the electrician can do that, but I'm not sure how much sense it'd make if you're not running off of Solar or wind. I'm pretty sure the installation alone will cost more than 4 UPSs.
CreepyUncleGoogle
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Power failures really don't happen that often in places like the US to justify the cost of owning one of these in a home just to keep like a fridge working during the once in 20 years, multi-day power outage that ruins like $50 in leftovers or keep your computer working through a 15 minute outage during a storm. All those batteries to periodically replace, systems to maintain, ugh...it just seems sooo gimmicky and intended to appeal to people who don't think through the reliability of the power grid and comparative uselessness of having power, but not enough to sustain utilities for a reasonable period in the rare cases where the grid is messed up.
Each Powerwall for the home is 10kWh, and up to 3 can be linked. 3 x 10kWh > 8 x 2.5kWh. Mercedes isn't giving out the price yet, so that's probably not favorable either.
You actually already can do this using a transfer switch
WRONG!, The US has power outages due to storm damage that can last weeks.
Here's the top 10 from 2012, some lasting 2 weeks+
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/the-10-longest-power-outages-of-2012/92756/
That's not exactly what weekly and daily mean for those batteries, and the 10kWh capacity model is a Powerwall designed for home use. See: http://gizmodo.com/how-teslas-powerwall-stacks-up-to-other-energy-sources-1701483130
I messed up in a different way above. Nine of the Tesla Powerwall batteries can be combined, making the maximum 90kWh for the 10kWh model or 63kWh for the 7kWh model.
BloodDonor
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The more companies that do this the better... a lot of the issue with price is due to scale and cost of setting up
sfsuphysics
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My understanding was that the 10kWh versions were extremely limited on the number of recharge cycles you could put on them, so they're only used as an emergency backup, and if you really lose power that often you're probably smarter to get a generator
One thing that always bugs me about combining multiple ones of these battery backs is that each one has it's controller/charger/etc in it, there really is no need to have that in every single one, a single controller should be able to handle other batteries as well. Otherwise what's the point in bragging that X number of them can be tied together? Shouldn't you be able to theoretically have an infinite number of them? Just hook each one up to the power and when the power goes out they can work their magic.
Agreed. Never understood the need for a UPS.
What do you mean? My understanding is that the batteries are meant to store excess power generated during the day (if solar) for use at night.
And these batteries would do nothing for you in that scenario. They're good for powering your house for a few hours. If you have issues with storms knocking out power you need a generator (likely powered by Natural Gas). On a smaller scale you can get a gas powered generator.
AFAIK, these batteries are for storing excess power generated by Solar or Wind power for use at a time when solar or wind isn't being generated.
You typically use a UPS so your PC doesn't die when the power flickers. And if the power goes out you can manually (or automatically) shut down your PC after saving files and what not.
I've had times in the past few weeks where power has gone out a few times for a second or 2. My PC never stopped. It also powers the PC when the AC voltage drops.
Good for you, but I live in Houston, and power blips are as common as illegals at Home Depot. So for me, all electronics are behind a UPS, no exceptions.
We actually had quite a few power blips and a three hour power outage when we had that week of storms just recently, followed by a 3-hour power outage (in which I didn't lose internet thanks to my UPS, aww yeahhh).
messerchmidt
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If this is like any other Benz product's electrical system, I will pass. I am sure it is very well engineered on paper, but will fail and burn the house down...
I will stick with Tesla and Toyota for these types of products. Only ones I trust, and even then...
I will stick with Tesla and Toyota for these types of products. Only ones I trust, and even then...
These do happen but not that often. Given the cost and capacity of these, IDK why anyone would even bother. You can dig a 20kW+ generator into the ground for well under $10K. Smaller external generators and a transfer switch can be had for just over $1K. These UPS batteries won't be useful at all in these long outages you've described so clearly this isn't there target marker. This is like a while house UPS but at under 10kW capacity it isn't very useful given the power draw of A/C or all electric house needs.
CreepyUncleGoogle
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And how many of this impacted the same person's home multiple times? Also, how many long-duration power outages impacted that same home over multiple years? Yuppers, there are lots of power outages across the entire US, but that's a large geographic area and not a multitude of outages that plague a single location over and over again.
That's correct, but both components are expensive and out of the price ranges of many many people. Their needs to be a way to bring these prices down. But there are also many regulatory hurdles that have to be processed. You can't just put a system in and start using it. In fact, many solar and solar/battery systems sit idle for weeks or months before their respective public utility inspects and approves them for use. And if utilities were mandated to buy back excess power, then you could have a system that could offset costs of putting a system in, but not all utilities buy back and the ones that do, never buy back at retail.
There are LNP, diesel, LNG types of generators. You could use a trifecta of power generation at that point to supplement your solar/battery system.
There has to be a level of assumption on what those power needs are. If the system was drawing under battery power, then it could let the user know how much of an electrical budget it has for a given time and to use accordingly. If worst case scenario was everything in the house turned on, all at once for 8 hours or so, then you would tailor your system for that usage.
Methadras, if you spend 35k (or more) on a solar array, is 5k on a battery really your issue? Solar pays for itself (after about 20 years), but people who buy solar panels aren't sweating 5k.
Grahamkracka
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There is no such thing as a well engineered product "on paper." If it's a poor product in the real world then it's a poorly engineered product "on paper." With that said, it's not the reliability that should worry you, it's the $1000/hour repair fee from Mercedes that'll get ya
