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.

Using batteries to offset peak rates

All the consumer grid batteries and many of the commercial versions tout their ability to save money by charging at night when electricity rates are low and discharge during the day to avoid using grid electricity when the rates are high. And this makes sense.

But we need to be careful. If the grid is ever maintained in such a way to make it more robust, or if there become enough grid battery installations, then this price disparity between night and day will be lessened. And consequently, using this disparity in price between night and day to pay off the battery installation would take longer.

There is no doubt that grid batteries are a good idea. If nothing else, when solar and wind power become cheap enough to compete with coal and nuclear we'll need a battery to make them useful. And even if the disparity between night and day is lessened, with an inexpensive enough battery even a longer pay-off time will still make financial sense.

There are also people that say rate-shifting is a regulation problem and not an engineering problem. And if that's true it means that rate shifting could become fiscally unviable at the stroke of a pen. And this is true to some extent. But even if the regulations could change overnight, a lot more would have to change before it was politically possible. And it would not make grid batteries a bad idea in the context of renewable energy or simply as peace of mind that comes with a battery backup.

It's all about energy

Perhaps you remember, or perhaps this will be a bit of a history lesson; an icebox used to literally be ice in a box. Before there were refrigerators powered by electricity to compress freon, there were iceboxes that would fit a huge chunk of ice and that would keep the refrigerator cool.

But where did the ice come from? Initially, it came from places that would freeze in the winter. There was a huge industry to cut ice off of lakes and move it around by horse and steam-powered ships to keep refrigerators cool.

If you didn't live at a time where it was happening, or if you aren't old enough to hear about it from those who lived during that time, it might sound a little crazy. We've come a long way since then.

And nowadays we can take advantage of the idea efficiently. There are grocery stores that get a salt solution down to very cold temperatures during the night when electric rates are low. Then they use the cold solution directly to keep their refrigerators cold during the day.

It's similar to the way battery banks have been set up in both commercial and consumer locations to charge at night and use battery power during the day when rates are high. And in a general way, this is used for refrigeration, too. The difference is that pumping a salt solution seems to be more efficient. Although there are some questions about how much the salt solution system requires to maintain.

The Samsung Note 7 Battery... what we know

The story that's all the rage today is the continuing saga of the burning Samsung Note 7 batteries. Here's what we know so far.

Samsung is recalling all 2.5 million Note 7's that have been shipped. Each phone will be replaced and then each returned phone will be checked for a defective battery and refurbished. The problem is in the battery itself, not in the phone design and not all of the phones have a defective battery. However, Samsung is replacing all the phones to be sure they get any possible defective one. The new phones will begin being replaced on the 19th of September in certain markets, and the replacement roll-out will continue until all markets are covered.

One might ask why Samsung doesn't just replace the defective battery with a good one. And Samsung considered that, but they say they decided a recall would take care of their customers better. The battery is not a simple pop-off-the-cover-and-the-battery-falls-out kind of construction so that probably has a lot to do with that decision.

We are working at the bleeding edge of consumer technology. And as much as people want to have a safe battery, they also want to know that a company will care about their customer if a problem arises and do everything they can to fix the problem promptly and as smoothly as possible.

The great battery drive

Despite the low oil prices, electric cars are still a hot topic. Low oil prices mean that electric cars are not selling so well. Hybrids aren't selling very well either. But the global push toward electromagnetic drive is still getting huge investments.

Samsung SDI is investing in a large battery manufacturing plant in Hungary. LG Chem is building a plant in Poland. The Gigafactory can't make enough batteries now for Tesla, and the building isn't finished yet, so they are building as fast as they can to increase the Gigafactory output as quickly as possible.

Imagine when oil prices rise and BEVs get more popular again. The rush will be on to get current production up, and new more efficient batteries into production.

Why do we keep using batteries that burn

There have been a number of incidents with Li-Ion batteries. Boeing's Dreamliners had been grounded, there are numerous reports of the batteries in vape units or their spare batteries combusting on persons, we've heard of cells phone bursting into flames while on night stands and pillows, Tesla cars run into things and damage to the battery means the end of the car after it burns to the ground, etc.

So why do we keep doing this to ourselves? The answer is because it's what you want.  The market has spoken, and it wants a battery that has the highest amount of energy for a certain threshold of price. And we are willing to risk a certain amount of safety to get it. It's nothing more than human nature.

Rest assured, device manufacturers, aerospace engineers, car manufacturers, and any other industry that uses Li-Ion batteries are working hard to find a way to reduce this risk. And the market appreciates that to a point where it will be a run-away success if a solution is found.

Solutions are on the horizon. There are electrolytes that don't burn, and there are experimental constructions that don't get thermal runaway. And of course, there are a number of different chemistries that just don't burn as readily in the labs.

Comments on 9/11

Yesterday we remembered the attacks on the Twin Towers. And on this 15th anniversary, there is still heated discussion over possible government involvement, or possible government negligence, or possible unintended consequences from other indirect actions, or possible solutions to bringing the masterminds of the attackers to justice.

This is a blog about batteries, portable power, flashlights, and energy in general, so we don't normally talk about the political implications that are so thick that they cannot be avoided when one brings up 9/11. But we are an American company and everyone wants to talk about 9/11 when the date comes up.

So, I'm sorry to those who'd like us to have an opinion on the political possibilities. It's not that we don't care, it's just that we are here to serve you with great products and opinions on the power industry, not political opinions on international intrigue; Even though great political opinions do exist in the context of 9/11.

So let's remember the citizens and first responders at 9/11 15 years ago. Every one of them carried a flashlight powered by a battery. As mentioned in our FaceBook post yesterday, there were many of them that knew they were going in to help people and they might not come back out. But they were willing to take the risk for strangers who they considered neighbors and treated them like friends.

We salute those who continue to serve our citizens as first responders. And in our way, perhaps we can serve you with the best batteries and flashlights.