Battery storage for the home

Someone is finally starting to do something with an idea I thought of a while back. House sized electrical storage using used EV/Hybrid batteries.

We'll have to see how much used EV batteries run for and if they are even purchasable. And how difficult it'll be to build a controlling system to power the house overnight/during blackouts. Solar panels, at least here in Colorado, aren't allowed to power your house while it's attached to the grid if the grid is down. This is blatantly stupid and their excuse for it when questioned is also transparently bullshit. Gotta find some way to use the power I generate only here in my house.

I'm participating in Movember.

Donate some money to help Men's Health issues and research. Check it out here.

And if you want to donate some money toward my mustache you can do that here.

3 year mark for solar generation

In the three years I've had solar panels I've generated 32.6mWhs of electricity. In addition, this year I installed a 12kWh equivalent solar thermal panel installation. I'm generating a bunch of power, I just need some way to store it.

I also purchased a 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid. Wow that is one hell of a good car. Really enjoying it so far. Averaging 40-44 mpg without changing anything about the way I drive.

Solar power.

I appear to have forgotten to post several important things.

The first is that I've now generated 38.1MWhs of electricity.

The second is that after just about exactly 4 years my electric meter rolled backwards.

And third and largest, I had a solar thermal system installed on the house also. Here's a link to the pictures.

Construction 2012

Solar generation

I forgot to post that I am up to 28.9kwhs of electricity generated. My meter is down to about 200, so I expect it to roll backwards this year before winter hits. So next summer it should be significantly negative and possible never go positive again. Of course, if I convert my Camry to a plug-in then that's going to changed things pretty drastically but we'll see what happens.

2012 Camry Hybrid

Saturday 8/18/12 I bought a 2012 Camry Hybrid. Simple statement, but it was a long complex decision process in which I looked at every hybrid and EV that is readily available (and a couple that won't be available until later this year, or only in some states) and compared a huge amount of data on the vehicles. I read reviews, I looked at reliability data that was available. What I really wanted to buy is the new Toyota Rav4 EV, but unfortunately Toyota has chosen to make what in my opinion is a monumental mistake and price this vehicle at $10K more than it's nearest competitor putting it between the other EVs on the market and the Tesla market space. This is a terrible mistake, I think a lot of people were looking forward to a Rav4 EV with a base price around $30K, possibly as high as $40K but in fact the base model is going to be about $50K. Far too much money for something with a 100 mile range. For the same price you can get a Tesla Model S with a 160 mile range and half the 0-60 speed.

So after a bunch of comparisons of various kinds, it came down to 6 vehicles in the last set of comparisons. 3 of those don't have conversions available to be plug-ins. The last 3 on the list were all Toyotas. Prius V/Prius plug-in Camry Highlander

The Prius plug-in is smaller on the inside in pretty much all ways than the Prius V. This is really unfortunate because I'm a big guy, and the Prius V ends up being too small for me. I was really intending to buy a Prius Plug-in since I couldn't get a Rav4 EV.

I spent several days debating between the Highlander and the Camry. The Highlander had everything I wanted and more, but it was $12,500 more than the Camry and only got 28mpg (combined) whereas the Camry doesn't have 4wd, doesn't have much cargo capacity especially for long objects, and is only as easy to get into as my Saturn SL1 but it gets 44mpg combined and is radically cheaper. So...I spent several days debating, asking friends for alternative view points, etc.

Then I went back over with some specific things to check out in detail. After driving the Camry and trying some things out it basically came down to the advantages the Highlander has don't make up for the initial cost, let alone the over the lifetime of the car cost.

So now I have a fantastic new car that gets great gas mileage and if the cargo capacity gets to be too much of a problem that I can't just rent a solution for, I'll put a roof rack and carrier of some sort on it.

And as I jokingly suggested, the company I started with a friend and that my good friend Bryon still runs sells body lift kits for a 1"-3" additional lift, and a bunch of aftermarket things I could add to the car.

Speaking of adding on to the car. It looks like I could get a 4kwh plug-in conversion kit for the car for about $4000. I think I'll start saving up for that.

solar and a drive problem.

27.6 MWh generated so far as of this evening. My main drive failed it's backups and I didn't notice. The drive failed before I got the new mirror set up. So...the drive that held a significant portion of my accumulated data since 1992 crashed to the point where it is not recoverable by me. The data recovery place teased me with a $400 bottom price (which would have been expensive, but I lost some important shit) and then told me it was going to be $1900 and no guarantee. Oh, but if it failed, I could send it in for the really expensive treatment. Sigh. So...I'm trying to recover my drive. I've lost all my solar data that I didn't put in this blog.