So ecoflow has come out with some crazy product that lets you offset your energy usage by using Solar. The target audience for this specific tech is apartment and rental units. (Anker is also currently working on one, but I think their product is only available in Germany at the moment)
While this can’t/isn’t designed to run your whole home, it can offset some of your energy usage, and since it utilizes a standalone backup battery you do have some small off grid redundancy.
What are the thoughts on this? Is distributing solar and batteries to potentially every appartment and environmental mistake? Or is this potentially a massive step towards a function and sustainable future grid?
These type of systems are incredibly popular right now in Germany. Supermarkets sell them quite cheaply as well.
They are a really good option for places without a good grid. Having some electricty makes your life so much better. You can already find solar panels in slums and nomads use them a lot. That makes sense. Other then that it is a decent way of adding a lot of solar panels to buildings, instead of large solar farms covering up valueable land. Having a decentralized grid has its advantages and being somewhat independend from the national grid also has its merits. However it is more expensive then solar farms and other large installations as economies of scale do not apply. Batteries in case of no or a bad grid are okay, but for a properly working grid they are just too small. However what makes sense is to use batteries you have at home anyway smartly. Charging your electric vehicle at the right time for example makes a lot of sense. In a way heat pumps and freezers heating up or cooling down more, when electricity is cheap is also a good idea. However purpose build electricity storage at home is wastefull, as just by it size a national grid will have much smother consumption and more different electricty source in more place to require significantly less storage. In theory it is always windy or sunny somewhere in the world, so a global grid, might not need much storage at all.
I think it’s an interesting product but not likely to be cost effective in areas that have reliable power. It’s also not likely going to reduce emissions in areas with low to semi-low CO2 electricity production. I imagine their sales with either be to people who want more energy reliability or to people who are misguided in to thinking it will reduce emissions over there local power supply.
Particularly since the lifecycle emissions of distributed systems like this are inevitably higher than those of a centralized system (and more costly!)
I did a simulation to try.
- A person living in Belgium,
- buying the system without batteries,
- using the system for 10 years.
- don’t have a perfect orientation on the balcony.
In this situation the system is producing electricity at a cost of 0.158€/kWh. The average electricity cost in Belgium is 0.45€/kWh.
So according to that it seems to be extremely cost effective. Especially if you use the system for longer since PV panels can last for decades.
To be honest, when I went solar 8-9 years ago, “environmental benefit” did not enter the equation, it was all about the cost I was paying for electricity.
I just recently purchased an ecoflow river, using it as an ups, and the cost to me was minimal, got it at dealers cost, again “environmental benefit” , didn’t factor in.I have been looking into getting one as a ups. It’ll take this as a hint that it is a good idea :)
If you did the math I would strongly suspect this unit could never pay for itself. In that case you’re either using it because having the backup power is worth it, or because you believe there’s some environmental benefit. On the environmental front, again, I can’t imagine it’ll ever “pay” for itself. So… Well, ok, or you get it because solar power and batteries are fun.
They don’t provide any backup, they are purely to make your grid power-meter spinn slower or sometimes even feed back into the grid (when allowed).
The cheaper versions do make economic sense in countries with high electricity costs for home consumers, but its not a “great investment”.
They do provide backup, they have batteries and an hybrid inverter.
It’s optional in this specific version, but most of these kind of systems you can buy do not include a battery.
Yeah. It seems like a cool idea, but I can’t quite understand the ecenomics being it.
I can see it being used as a “trial run” for people considering going solar or off grid in the future, it can be a safe first step, as the parts of these kits would integrate with the whole home systems sold by these same companies.
You just hook it up and your electricity bill will be lower next month. Not sure what is so complicated about that :) I don’t think most people are considering it a trial run or plan to upgrade if they live in a small rented apartment with only a balcony.
Valid points. Plus you can bring it with you if you ever move, definitely a huge bonus.
And if the life cycle is 10 years, it will end up paying for itself terms of energy savings.
But if your expense for the power station is higher than what you will save on the electricity bill you are actually losing money. Especially if you consider batteries lifetime, you can risk throwing the whole thing away before you saved enough bill money to recover the expense. So there are cases in which simply paying the bill is cheaper. I did the math a while back for my house and I would break even in like 7 years, which gives me only 3 years of actual saving before the battery wears out.
This has been my problem, the cost vs savings doesn’t math yet. It gets a little closer every time I check though.
These systems do not have batteries. But yes, you need to carefully calculate your possible power-bill savings against the investment costs of the system. Typically they will only slowly repay their costs over some years and not actually save you much.
