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Comments (104)

• apexalpha
  We've had these for years? My brother has two solar panels on his balcony and plugged into a normal socket.
• chris222
  Bluetti already has a product for this available in the EU. I have been posting eveywhere that they need to bring it to the US.https://www.bluettipower.eu/products/balco-transfer-hubBalcony solar without storage is actually pretty dumb when we already have integrated battery/inverter/solar mppt units available for a few hundred dollars.All we need to do is have something like this hub inbetween to ensure grid isolation when an outage occurs.For crticial loads you would just plug those directly into the all in one battery unit. Almost all of them these day also have a <20ms UPS pass through function as well. When the grid goes down it can isolate the battery from backfeeding the house but the solar will still function and the critical loads will still function.With a solution like Pila is developing you could even use your homes wiring to transfer power (~1kW) around multiple small battery units (attached to independent circuits) each with some different critical loads and solar attached to them.
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  reenorap
  Why bother? Power companies will complain they are losing money and regulators will allow them to buy energy from residential solar panels basically for free (NEM 3.0). This is California.California has spent decades convincing people to convert to solar panels and EVs and now that many have switched, they doubled electricity prices and told us not to charge when it’s too hot. Now they want solar panel owners to pay a surcharge for “connecting to the grid”, upwards of $100/month or more than my actual solar bill. It’s all a scam.
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  Animats
  There are several variations on this idea, and the web sites are confusing.First, there are ones that are just a big UPS. You plug them into the wall, and plug loads into them. They may try to level your power usage. No problem with that. Good for refrigerators. That seems to be what "Pila" is selling. This class of device seems to come with deceptive ads which do not show cords from loads plugged into the box.Then there are ones that purport to pump power back into their wall outlet. That has safety issues, starting with its male power plug being an output. It can't provide power when there's no input power, because it would try to drive the the whole grid during an outage. It's mostly for taking advantage of variable power pricing. This seems to be what "Regen" is selling.These are apparently available in Germany, but must be installed on their own dedicated circuit, so you don't have a load and a source on the same side of the breaker. Otherwise, you could potentially have an overload without a breaker trip. Regen is trying to get them into the UK, but old UK ring main wiring is a bad match to this. Gotta have a breaker between load and source.The trouble with these things is that, plugged into the wrong outlet, they create a gap in overload protection that won't show up until something goes wrong.
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  satiric
  Plugs and sockets have the wrong gender for this. On the battery, you'd have a male plug with live 240v contacts, ready to short against anything, or anyone, that's conductive. This is the same reason why male-to-male extension cords are labeled "suicide cords".
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  tempestn
  I assume plug-in batteries are considerably more workable in the UK on 240V, since they could charge and deploy at double the rate of a plug-in system here. Of course 240V plugs exist in North America, but they're generally only installed for dryers, ranges, and EV chargers, so people don't tend to have one just free.
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  jonatron
  I don't see the point in panels without a battery, so I'm looking at a DIY system. RCBO for new circuit = £20, 5.12kWh battery = £700, ~3kW hybrid inverter from eBay ~=£400, Panels ~= £100 each. I'm not the including cost of a registered electrician for a new circuit in my case.
• kazinator
  If "everyone" uses plug-in batteries, the peak demand curve will be flattened and the utility companies will likewise flatten the rate. Then there goes the arbitrage; everyone is left with just an expensive piece of emergency equipment for blackouts.
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  vvbull
  What happens when a consumer buys three and sticks them on the same 20 amp circuit?Cause people will definitely do that. Going to be some warm walls.
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  yhcehb38r
  UK-based reader here. Homeowner, with no solar or battery, but interested in getting some decent, independent advice, how would I go about it?We are a two EV household, with oil central heating. Don’t mind paying for solid unbiased advice.
• shusaku
  As someone with a poor background in electrical engineering, this is really cool. It’s amazing that you guys can make something like this work.
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  guidedlight
  I thought plug-in solar was coming 10+ years ago.
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  luxuryballs
  Wild that we have to ask permission to be able to make this stuff.
• hkt
  I've been following this for a while: Regen have a beautifully designed product. The idea that people need to be able to access time of use tariffs in a way that yields lower energy costs makes a lot of sense. But this is about energy costs rather than infrastructure, and the actual problem is that products like this are a) a bit scary to have indoors and b) a hack to compensate for deficiencies in the UK energy market.I'm also a member of the lovely https://kirkhillcoop.org/ - an energy coop. I own around 1kW of potential overall production from a number of pretty big turbines in southern Scotland, for which I paid around £1k. The benefit to me is I pay opex cost for energy according to the performance of that farm. I believe this is projected at around 5p per kWh - we're getting our first payouts this year.The coop model means I don't need anything in my house. It is also, sadly, not accessible because of companies like Ripple Energy collapsing. They facilitated the coop being started in the first place. No more of them can be founded. Starting these things in the first place was just too hard and too slow.Whereas batteries.. are an incentive to use domestic headroom to balance the grid at considerably lower costs than if a commercial operator did it. High costs generally mean time of use tariffs give an incentive to people to do what ought to be grid scale investments, but there's the problem: the only way individuals can capture the benefits of grid scale investment is via specially designed shareholdings in those investments.Nobody is offering that chance now that ripple is gone. Buy shares in companies operating wind turbines, or retail energy suppliers, and your gains are so much worse than with a Ripple co-op like Kirk Hill. They're worse than a battery, too.I'll be getting a plug in battery when the time comes, but it is truly insane that I have to personally take on that responsibility to feel the benefit, and that there is no easy route to buying at grid scale. Ripple were a very brief oddity I'll derive a small benefit from for a long time, but now they're gone, and all we have instead is the prospect of storing pretty scary substances in our homes instead, on time of use tariffs which also don't let us reap the full benefit from our investment. It sucks. Cooperativism and mutualism would be a nicer alternative.
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  wang_li
  If one is not modifying the house wiring how does this prevent backflow into the grid? Does it shutdown completely on power loss from the mains?
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  slackfan
  This will lead to some new and exciting ways of starting a housefire.
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  cyberax
  Why? Just make it possible to buy "shares" in a larger battery bank, if you must.Home batteries make total sense for off-grid systems or as a backup power source. But plug-in batteries are not designed to do either.
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  lukeify
  I can’t help feel without ampacity and voltage upgrades to most domestic home circuits this is like a fart in the wind.
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  My_Name
  "the battery pays back from around 2.5 years onwards"So around 1000 charge/discharge cycles?That is roughly the ability of a battery. By the time you break even, it's time to spend again.
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  pudgywalsh
  What was the breaking point for modern British society where housing unwieldy and potentially hazardous electrical equipment in your living room seems like a completely normal and just thing to do?