Octopus Saving Session

Mstty

steviebabes said:

Surely the way forward is for all households and businesses to have their own storage batteries. The charging of these could be controlled by the energy suppliers, much like Octopus Agile. The cost would be enormous of course but so is the cost of a nuclear power station. 

Let's say a nuclear power station is £30billion and there are 30 million residential homes for simplicity that's £1000 per home.

How much does a reasonably sized battery and converter and connection cost?

Officer_Dibble

Mstty said:

steviebabes said:

Surely the way forward is for all households and businesses to have their own storage batteries. The charging of these could be controlled by the energy suppliers, much like Octopus Agile. The cost would be enormous of course but so is the cost of a nuclear power station. 

Let's say a nuclear power station is £30billion and there are 30 million residential homes for simplicity that's £1000 per home.

How much does a reasonably sized batter and converter and connection cost?

Absolutely. Our £2.5k battery (would be more now) will see us through much of the day if there's not much sun. To cover for a prolonged dull period with no wind would need at least 30 or 40kWh, nearer £15k (and the washing would be piling up!). Then imagine if the dull spell went on for a day longer and everyones' batteries started to run out at the same time. Renewables plus storage is better than renewables without storage, but it isn't the answer.

steviebabes

A 6.5kW battery and 5kW inverter is about £5.000 including installation, so about the cost of 5 nuclear stations using the above 30 million homes estimate. If the government offered these on interest free credit over say 5 years I would certainly go for it. The cost to the government would be the interest over the 5 years, probably less than £1000 when interest rates come down to recent historical levels. When all EV's have vehicle to grid capability this would also help.  

Raxiel

Domestic energy use only accounts for a fraction of the national demand though.

You'd need a solution that covered commercial, office, and industrial demands too.

It was really noticeable how much lower the overall demand was on Christmas (and the period up to new year when most people are off work). Homes may have had the oven on for hours cooking their Christmas dinners, but with most workplaces closed we didn't exceed a collective 30GW.

steviebabes

Raxiel said:

Domestic energy use only accounts for a fraction of the national demand though.

You'd need a solution that covered commercial, office, and industrial demands too.

It was really noticeable how much lower the overall demand was on Christmas (and the period up to new year when most people are off work). Homes may have had the oven on for hours cooking their Christmas dinners, but with most workplaces closed we didn't exceed a collective 30GW.

This is true but domestic use is so much more concentrated in the morning and evening peak use hours. Industry consumption tends to be more even throughout the working week.

apcd2

Mstty said:

steviebabes said:

Surely the way forward is for all households and businesses to have their own storage batteries. The charging of these could be controlled by the energy suppliers, much like Octopus Agile. The cost would be enormous of course but so is the cost of a nuclear power station. 

Let's say a nuclear power station is £30billion and there are 30 million residential homes for simplicity that's £1000 per home.

How much does a reasonably sized battery and converter and connection cost?

It's not so much the cost but the availability. There's already talk of lithium supplies becoming constrained and potentially slowing down the rollout of electric vehicles. Now add 30 million household batteries on top (for the UK alone!) and see what that does to supply and cost. For comparison over their whole lifetime Tesla have only sold about 3.5M cars worldwide.

steviebabes

The roll-out for such a scheme would take years so I'm not sure availability would be a huge issue. I believe a lot of home battery systems use recycled batteries from EV's.

badger09

@Lorian has posted on the Loop Turn Down thread that another test session tomorrow is likely. 

paulypops

I don't think this will be Octopus, as it is for "This is for an onboarding test for a subset of providers."

Lorian

Yes just an onboarding test for a very few companies