this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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I don't see why home batteries are propaganda. Those prices are plummeting and they have decent payback times in some markets.
The reasons for getting solar is the same reasons for getting batteries.
Because home batteries, while provisionally useful in the same way as a standby generator (though the generator is going to be far more eco friendly than the batteries over their respective lifetimes), is a vastly inferior solution to the implementation of even local grid scale solutions. Also because there is essentially 0 infrastructure designed to handle said batteries, they wear out quite quickly at home scales (unless you're using uncommon chemistries, but if you're using iron-nickle batteries you're not the target audience here) and because Elon popularized them with his "powerwall" bullshit entirely to pump the stock value of Tesla's battery plant (which is it's own spectacular saga I encourage you to look up, it's a real trip).
Batteries in the walls are useful in niches, but the current technology which uses lipo/lion/lifepo4 chemistries is inherently flawed and a route to both dead linemen and massive amounts of E-waste. They could be useful potentially, but as it stands, it's really bad right now.
How so?
Which ones?
If we're talking residential scale, people already have the infrastructure: it's the existing wiring inside their household. If we're talking Commercial & Industrial (C&I) scale, it's often the same answer. If we're talking utility scale, oftentimes battery developers get quoted grid improvement costs from the utility and the developer has to pay those costs in order to connect to the grid. You act like the grid can't change, and there isn't any money lying around to make improvements, when in reality there are a lot of investors in BESS because of the high ROI.
This is true at any scale, resi, C&I, or utility, but batteries are modular and you can augment your capacity over time to make up for degradation.
There are more manufacturers than just Tesla in the battery space, many of which who would benefit if the Powerwall failed or lost market share. Even if Tesla popularized them, their decline due to their idiotic, fascist CEO will mean that the existing demand will just look elsewhere for the same product, not exit the market entirely.
In my opinion, every household could benefit from home battery storage just as much as people benefit from gas generators. They have widespread, not niche, appeal. The issue with low penetration in my opinion is lack of knowledge in both policymakers and customers.
While batteries do start to degrade the moment they leave the factory, the fact they have flaws doesn't mean they aren't still useful. You're using the argument that the perfect is the only solution to the imperfect, when that shortsightedness gets in the way of progress.
BESS failures have been falling and bottoming out over the last few years while deployment has skyrocketed. Seems like you're telling a fiction.
Recycling is projected to increase, especially as more and more battery installations reach End of Life (EOL), where as much as 60-80% of cobalt and lithium could be sourced from urban as opposed to virgin mines in the next 5-15 years. There is a sizable market opportunity for recycling to take off so long as good policy paves the way.
Sure, let's throw away one of humanity's better solutions to the climate crisis since it's bad now. It's not like it could get better in the future. Again, such a show of shortsightedness.
A generator can provide backup power for unlimited time if fuel is available, but it is highest cost power in the world. Batteries can be charged/discharged every day, displacing dirty energy. A generator is either rarely used or eco destructive.
If you assume what's being compared is the platonic ideal of both technologies then you're largely correct, but removing them from the context of the real world (where: high density battery chemistries still wear out quickly, biodiesel is common, the supply chain is a major contributor of greenhouse emissions, the need for power backups is infrequent, and where grid power is still in large part supplied by fossil fuels) isn't very useful. Local-grid scale battery storage is the best solution we have for direct energy storage, and it's very much maturing rapidly, but home units are still restricted in the above and countless ~~(because I am too lazy to count them)~~ additional ways. Ignoring those issues doesn't work; implementation doesn't particularly care about theory.
LFP batteries are the right home solution (Sodium Ion soon enough). US is tariff/capacity/policy restricted. Utility monopoly restricted if you want to export to grid, or use your EV as V2G. Utilities are also protected from off grid choices, and are changing their pricing with extortive fixed portions of utility bills. Biodiesel is not a sustainable (worse than ethanol if produced intentionally) solution.
You need to look up how much grid storage lithium batteries are being built. It's exponential growth. Faster than solar.
The reason it's worthwhile is because solar makes energy with 0 or near 0 price to the owner in certain places, if they store that and use it for later they save money. There are cost calculators out there and for certain markets they make sense.
Of course Tesla pushes it they got a product people want and it makes the consumer and Tesla money. Win win. That's business, nothing shady about that.
Yes batteries are better on the grid but that's for exactly the same reasons why solar is better on the grid.
O...kay but that doesn't address anything I actually said.
That's just not true.
Same as solar. But you seem to be pro rooftop solar but not home grids and no explanation why.
Makes no sense because the struggles the grid currently has with solar will be offset. Home batteries reduces demand on the grid and internalise production and demand more into the house.
In a cost exercise if the batteries last longer than the payback period they are worth it. Which is the case so that point is meaningless.
I don't under a CEO pushes a good product that helps the grid and helps consumers make money. Your bias against Elon is just limiting your world view.
Chemistry has nothing to do with electrons on the wires so that doesn't make sense. Lithium ion batteries are recyclable. Yes batteries are Bette Ron the grid but getting them connected is hard. Same solar, waste on roofs but thats how it goes. The arguments are the same.
They are useful. They aren't bad.
I'm glad you responded to them point by point. So many myths, fictions, and bigoted beliefs wrapped up as valid opinion.
Solar/wind + storage is the way forward, as the latest IPCC report showed.
Neat, a point by point breakdown. Love those. In no way are they fingernails to the blackboard of internet discussion.
Lets just get this over with:
Okay it's pretty clear you're very unfamiliar with this subject.
The entire rest of my comment explains why. That's what the whole comment is about. "Why" is the entire thesis of the comment. It is the comments entire raison d'être. In summary: the inefficiencies inherent to distributed implementation, the lack of service infrastructure, the short lifespans of the high-density battery chemistries needed in residential installs, etc.
I don't really care, though. It's got nothing to do with the points I was making, which is why I didn't address it. It's largely irrelevant.
Okay, no. This is not how residential demand or load balancing or power infrastructure works. There's components you're assuming exist that would have to run on magic to be safe (some kind of automatic interlock cut-in), and even those would absolutely devastate the grid by constantly adding and removing whole residential loads at random.
Oh buddy... buddy no. Come on.
My gaster is well and truly flabbered. I honestly don't know what to say in response to this.
Phew, that sure was a lot wasn't it? Please please please take the time you'd use to write a response to this comment and go watch some electroboom videos instead, he's very entertaining and a great educator of the concepts at play here.
Well unfortunately your mental capacity seems to make it a necessity.
The question is about why you think solar is good for home but not batteries. That hasn't been explained. You used grid issues as a reasoning and inefficiencies. Which is exactly the same as as solar and that was the whole reason for the question in the first place. I'm sorry you're not getting that, I made the fatal assumption you had some intelligence behind you but I'm being proved wrong. You can't even understand simple conversations. The only actual point you made is wear on batteries but that only matters for a financial and environmental factors but your point falls flat on it's face with both. I guess you did also say batteries are better on the grid than at home but that was accepted before the conversation started and the same with solar (at least for me and hence the conversation). The financial business reasonings is just mind blowing, businesses and consumers like to make money and they both do. Financially, batteries aren't some Elon conspiracy theory, that's just business. That seems too much for you. But solar has the same ideas about paybacks so I do struggle to see how you think one works and the other doesn't. Ah well I guess an answer to that isn't coming.
Its not though because you think a businessman isn't doing businessman things. That's how its directly relevant to what you said.
Hahahaha this is the icing on the cake. Your arrogance matches your stupidity. Look if you're going to try correct someone at least spend 10 seconds on google, but obviously that's too much for you. That's how that's words spelt. Hahaha that says it all about your conversation doesn't it? That should be the end of it, but at least I'll finish this comment off.
I don't know what to say. When solar is used in the house it doesn't go down the lines. There is less demand on the wires that's just fact.
I'm sorry. I known you want to come across like you know stuff but I just started by asking you about a simple point and you've come across really badly both in terms of intelligence and in delivery. Good luck with both in the future.