alt Hacker News> You are also safer during a power outage. The STREAM 5000 provides up to 3 kW of off-grid output. Keep essential devices on its backup output and reserve some battery capacity, and your refrigerator, lights, router, and laptop can keep running when the grid goes down. An ordinary grid connection does not back up the whole house automatically; the backup output must be configured correctly.
Being able to cut over your entire house from grid power to a battery requires an invasive, expensive change to most connections. I wish people would stop breathlessly promoting batteries (which are good! we need decentralized storage!) because "you can use them to run your fridge, router, etc". Yes you can, but for almost all consumers it's an order of magnitude more effort and cash compared to just buying and plugging in a battery.
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I think you're right -- depending on the country.
It seems australia has very low friction
and US with our power companies, significantly more
- where you going to find an electrician?
- do you need someone to design your grid-tie plan?
- when will the power company approve your connection?
I've had friends wire their house, have to really work to plan the setup, and be stuck with a working system offline while PG&E approves slowly
Another point: People might be better served NOT buying a battery, instead getting an EV and wiring it into their house.
for example: https://www.tesla.com/powershare/
or just "bidirectional charging" for other brands
Not necessarily the point. If it provides a normal wall outlet I'm happy to plug essentials around for the one time per 1-2 decades this happens for longer than 4 hours and the fridge/freezer/laptop needs a boost
The cost/invasiveness of cutover is dropping. There is a relatively new category called "plug in solar" where the inverter/battery is smart enought to detect, sync and use grid power.
The Stream system: Connect the device to the grid to enable it to feed power into the grid or draw power from it when solar energy is insufficient. This can be done via a standard home outlet (if permitted), or through a circuit breaker. [0]
0. https://manuals.ecoflow.com/us/product/stream-ultra?lang=en_...
I disagree. During an outage, you need your fridge and a few other essential items. A novice can plug into the back. The device tells you the load and whether you are exceeding. And you can test it at any time. For $600 you can get started without an electrician.
it's the easiest, safest , most affordable and most reliable emergency solution ever available.
I mean, yes and no. Switching your whole house over automatically? Yeah, ok, that can get invasive and expensive. Running an extension cord from a battery/inverter or generator a multiport plug then to to your fridge, router and a couple of lights? That's about 5-10 minutes of effort.
There's a pretty massive middle ground between "plug in a battery" and "rewire the house.
If a fridge is your only concern, they make UPSes specifically for fridges.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Uninterruptible+power+supply+refri...
And the proposed battery solution only works at up to 3kW. My electric range uses more than that, and my water heater, clothes dryer, and aircon each come close.
And, sure: I can get by very well with refrigeration, networking, computing and/or TV, and lights during a power outage. But those loads need to be segregated, or it just doesn't work. That adds more expense.
And since those segregated loads don't even come anywhere near 3kW, it isn't clear to me how I'm to be maximizing my local use of surplus power events.
There are grid-interactive battery solutions from companies like EG4 that can go betwixt the entire house and its grid connection, but this isn't it.