Coalburn 1 is the first of three UK transmission-connected battery energy storage system (BESS) projects developed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) to enter commercial operations.
Price of inverters have plummeted too, we can get way better inverters now at half the price they cost 3 years ago.
The new ones allow you to continue using your battery when the grid power fails, ours doesn’t.
We would be able to get twice the battery and better inverter, and it would still be cheaper if we bought today instead of 3 years ago.
Not a good idea to go off grid here though, because then you can’t sell your surplus power. And you would have to calculate with a pretty high amount of surplus power to have reliable power without the grid.
The calculation may look different where you live, for instance if you have more reliable sun than we have. But we have 3 months per year where we can go days without getting any sun at all. And when the sun is highest, we can only utilize about a fourth the capacity of our panels. So here that is completely hopeless.
Maybe with a wind turbine it would be possible, but those are next to impossible to get permission to have unless you live I think 3 km from everybody else. And we have 8 neighbors within 100m.
I’m thinking about a common family with a plug-n-play balcony kit, with mediocre solar exposition; I think when you are appealing in this context you win.
AFAIK those systems are pretty cheap already, at least they are in Germany AFAIK, and AFAIK all you need is a modern meter.
But from a balcony you will never be self sustained so you can disconnect from the grid.
Offgrid personal solar systems may improve their appeal? I’m in doubt on inverters costs
Price of inverters have plummeted too, we can get way better inverters now at half the price they cost 3 years ago.
The new ones allow you to continue using your battery when the grid power fails, ours doesn’t.
We would be able to get twice the battery and better inverter, and it would still be cheaper if we bought today instead of 3 years ago.
Not a good idea to go off grid here though, because then you can’t sell your surplus power. And you would have to calculate with a pretty high amount of surplus power to have reliable power without the grid.
The calculation may look different where you live, for instance if you have more reliable sun than we have. But we have 3 months per year where we can go days without getting any sun at all. And when the sun is highest, we can only utilize about a fourth the capacity of our panels. So here that is completely hopeless. Maybe with a wind turbine it would be possible, but those are next to impossible to get permission to have unless you live I think 3 km from everybody else. And we have 8 neighbors within 100m.
I’m thinking about a common family with a plug-n-play balcony kit, with mediocre solar exposition; I think when you are appealing in this context you win.
AFAIK those systems are pretty cheap already, at least they are in Germany AFAIK, and AFAIK all you need is a modern meter.
But from a balcony you will never be self sustained so you can disconnect from the grid.
In Germany you can buy 1kW solar cells, 2.24kWh battery, inverter and cables for 629€.