this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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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.
That's everything I've been talking about, you even go on to exhaustively quote what I've said that answers this question. Did you have a reason for saying this other than being combative? No, seriously, I really care about this subject and it's clear you do too. And the most hardline thing I've said is that home battery walls and solar installs aren't very good right now, and that local-grid installs are superior (I expand on that below). Surely there's more constructive ways this could be approached.
Anyways, a couple points:
BESSFID (the common initialism? Not sure!) does not track interlock failures, which after them falling on you is the most directly dangerous aspect of both battery walls and standby generators. Unexpectedly energized lines are not something an average user understands, which is why it's responsible for so many dead linemen. Generators (and now battery walls) feeding back into the grid during an outage are the #1 cause of unexpectedly energized lines, and this is very basic knowledge. It's why every municipality requires a generator interlock be installed at the box for home-consumption power generation. No grid in the world is yet robust enough to prevent this danger.
Yes and no! While yes batteries will always wear out, municipal facilities are not restricted by things like space constraints or residential safety concerns. This means they can implement battery degradation mitigation techniques that are impractical (or feasibly impossible) to be implemented on a residential scale, like distributed cell charge/discharge limits (which at their most effective handicap residential units by up to 20% of their rated capacity but greatly increase the lifetime) or direct cell cooling (which benefits spectacularly from economies of scale - active cooling on small packs is a huge drain for little return, but large scale battery installs can even use geothermal cooling to additionally increase their efficiency). Neither removes the fact that cells do wear out, but it greatly reduces the rate at which they do, and at a significant energy and space savings over alternative techniques. (You'll note that these are many of the same reasons that municipal standby generators are more efficient than large numbers of residential standby generators!)
(this bit is mostly responding to your personal attacks, I will admit that:)
Yes, but I am talking about current battery technology. You're rebutting comments I made criticizing current technology with projections and speculation about future technology, which just isn't fair. I could (hyperbolically, I admit) do the same thing by speculating that giant lithium eating termites will be developed by some rogue nation state in the near future, and that having a power wall risks them being attracted to your home and consuming your family in a gore splattered orgy of B-movie tropes.
A similar thing here. You're also assuming that the future will improve things, which while it's laudable you're still able to be optimistic (no I mean that, I'm a depressed pos) it's also very biased to assume that things will improve as time goes on.
And again, but with the additional add-in that I repeatedly say that municipal installs are better than home installs, not that batteries as power storage solutions are inherently bad. Just that the technology for home use, right now, is.
I could go on but I think I've addressed the major points of miscommunication, if you're interested I would be genuinely happy to keep talking about this in a slightly less aggressive conversation.
(Edit: sorry, thought I should elaborate on this one tiny point:)
(this is a very self indulgent pun)
Do you track interlock failures? Seems like the issues you describe aren't with the interlocks themselves, but perhaps with installation or the breakers they interlock. Some inspectors don't even pass them on new home construction or renovation because some interlocks are attached to the front panel of a home's main panelboard, which could present a safety hazard to the homeowner.
All this is to say that these issues don't substantiate any failures with backup batteries or generators directly, but instead with interconnection equipment.
To be safe though, people should use interlock kits designed by the same manufacturer as their panel to avoid any compatibility/warranty issues, and maybe install interlock kits directly on the breakers themselves.
An even safer measure would be to install transfer switches between the main panel and the utility/backup battery/generator inlet. You may cite this as needing professional installation, but in reality any electrical work done to a home should be conducted by professional and qualified personnel. There are indeed advantages of transfer switches, whether automatic, non-automatic, or manual, over interlock kits.
Expectedly energized lines are sometimes not something an average user understands either! Point being: have professionals do the work.
If we're talking residential installations of interlocks or transfer switches alongside backup batteries or generators, I believe you should be referring to wiremen (in-building & often premises scope) not linemen (out-building & often utility scope).
Even so, where are you gathering your data about safety incidents that have a root cause with interlocks? Can you show me the OSHA statistics?
Interlocks prevent this, as do transfer switches. The only case this would happen is if a homeowner removed their interlock, never had one installed, or plugged their battery/generator into a different circuit not controlled by the interlock/transfer switch. I would think that my previous comments about having profession, qualified personnel make changes to a home's electrical system, even adding a generator, would solve most if not all of this.
Are you suggesting homeowners do unqualified, potentially life threatening work to their homes?
That's a wide claim. The US Census Bureau identified 38,736 local general governments (county, municipal, township) in their 2022 Census of Governments.
Can you say for sure that every one of those requires interlocks specifically?
May I remind you that AHJs can choose to adopt or amend any part of the NEC for their jurisdiction, and may refuse to accept interlock kits as compliant installation.
Which box? There are many boxes in an electric installation. Can I just choose any box? Can it be my TV set box, or my junction box downstream my sub panel, or my main service disconnect box?
The main failure with interconnecting generators with the grid is desynchronization. This can be fixed with relays, but you won't find these in residential installations. Again, the way to prevent this is with proper use of interlock kits or transfer switches installed and used according to qualified professionals.
Where is this hallucination coming from?
Most people installing home backup batteries either have garages where they can put them, or space around their homes to do the same.
Are you implying that all people stuff and cram their living spaces and properties so that there is no excess room for batteries that maybe take up 4'x10' at most? The same goes for generators.
Residential dwellings are built according to the National Electrical Code, which many municipalities adopt or amend.
What safety concerns are there in residential applications that there aren't in municipal applications that the NEC doesn't address? Should you maybe refer these concerns to the NFPA themselves rather than alluding to them online? Do you not want people to be safe?
What are you talking about?
Here's four examples:
Not if your Battery Management System (BMS) has active balancing instead of passive.
Active air cooling is currently the most economical cooling method for battery storage.
Can you point out one resi, C&I, or utility scale BESS installation that uses geothermal cooling? Most use forced air or liquid cooling thermal management systems.
Like what
Ok, irrelevant given that we're talking about improving home resilience through the use of home microgrids - not municipal or utility backup systems.
And it isn't fair that you aren't recognizing progress, instead fear mongering about how nothing is being done and we're all doomed.
Except I wasn't hyperbolizing. I presented scientific research, not some back hand imagination from someone clearly not part of either the industry or research fields.
No, the future itself won't improve things. Humans in the present, doing research, making policy, sharing their success stories about their own home backup microgrid solutions with their friends, family, and neighbors will do this.
Your pessimistic worldview is the antithesis to progress. You have to have the belief that things will get better, to have hope, if you want to make an inch of progress in that direction, or to push back on proponents that wish to destroy that progress.
Things are improving by the way, but I think the global economic order under capitalism is to blame for why things are still worsening overall. If we want to improve human well-being, rewild the planet, reduce pollution, reverse climate change, and allow increase our population, maybe we should consider other economic organizations.
Why do you say that? Are you implying the same electricians that do residential and municipal installs are lazier with the former? Sounds like this could be grounds for litigation. Do you have any complaints that you could make with your state's or municipality's licensing boards where they could launch investigations and revoke electricians'/contractors' licenses?
Glad that we've settled that.
I've shown above that batteries are fine, and that issues may come down to installer error or faulty interconnection equipment, not the batteries themselves. Although I still recognize that batteries can fail. I don't think we have good enough evidence to say what the primary failures and failure rates are. Maybe you can start tracking that!
If you call fallacies and misconceptions miscommunication, then that's not my problem.
No :)
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.
I'm not arguing that utilities don't suck or aren't a big part of the problem, though. There are issues with Lifepo4 chemistry batteries (though I guess many of the recycling issues are being solved) that preclude them being an ideal choice for home battery use (flammability, supply or waste infrastructure, etc.) but they are one of the more promising options. Sodium Ion still has a long way to come in terms of manufacturability, as far as I understand it? But hopefully in the near future they start demonstrating their suitability via implementation.
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.
"Elon fanboys be like", I guess...?
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.
What? I don't think that. "Which is exactly the same as as solar and that was the whole reason for the question in the first place." this is my entire point, that home battery systems are not matured to where they beat out local municipal facilities and the economies of scale that come with them, as is true with solar and every other form of power generation right now. Power grids are not built to support this kind of use, for a host of reasons.
Yeah, it does. That's why they're dangerous, because unless you have something like an interlock to physically separate it from the grid it will unexpectedly energize the lines even if that leg is isolated at the station. This kills so many electricians every year, and there is not a component that makes this idiot proof. The number of pried off interlocks on standby systems that I have seen is fucking terrifying, and automatic interlock switches simply aren't reliable enough for broad consumer installation.
Dude, nobody cares about minor grammar or spelling errors. I make tons of them myself. That's not what that's there to point out.