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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Will "everyone" have a grid battery someday?

Grid batteries in the home aren't a big thing yet. But will they ever be? Will it seem like everyone has a battery in their house?

It's hard to say. If batteries get so powerful and so inexpensive that used, but still useful ones, are put on the side of the road with a "free" sign on them... I tend to think just about everyone would get one just on principle.

But short of that kind of price point, I tend to think only a minority of households will sport a backup battery even at the lower prices we expect batteries to be at in the coming years. The reason for this is that most people would prefer the kind of peace of mind that comes with a battery back-up as a service rather than handle it themselves. It all comes down to cost.

No matter how inexpensive batteries get, the utilities will always have the advantage in scale and transfer equipment. By transfer equipment, I'm talking about the chargers, inverters, and switches. Since their cost-per-house will be less expensive for these parts, they will be able to sell the battery backup service at such a reasonable rate that a majority won't go to the trouble of buying a battery and wiring their house for battery backup.

Let's say we achieve batteries that get 5 times more capacity and 5 times less cost than our current cells. Compared to the number of people that have a generator now, how many would get a home-battery? At those prices, I imagine a lot more. But relative to all households, not many have a generator now.

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