Direct Solar Power: Off-Grid Without Batteries
Using solar panels without backup infrastructure makes renewable energy production much more affordable, efficient and sustainable.
Oh no. I forgot to save my document before the cloud passed
The cloud givith and the cloud taketh
They don't literally mean no batteries. They just mean small batteries. The 50Wh battery in my (modern, efficient) laptop lasts about 18 hours for example.
You'd also have battery powered lighting.
The real challenge is heating and cooling. If you want to be able to keep your house a comfortable temperature, your food cool in the fridge, your food hot when you eat it... that's not easy to do with small batteries. But it can be done, e.g. with good insulation and by changing your habits a little (cook during the day, etc).
You can also, as it says in the article, use "non battery" storage. We already do that. For example lots of people keep hundreds of litres of hot water next to their house. That hot water can be used, for example, to keep warm overnight. You can also fill empty air space in your fridge with water - unlike air, which is instantly replaced with warm air every time you open the door, the cold water will stay in the fridge and help the fridge stay cold much much longer. Easily overnight.
Of course, you could also just use gas for all of that... but if one of your motivations is to avoid carbon emissions then that's off the table.
This is really cool!
Um, I’m pretty sure that laptop has at least two batteries….
I feel like a better solution is a better “battery”: have the solar cells put any excess energy generated into running a water pump that pumps water into a large reservoir. That water can then turn a turbine on its way back down before being used for other purposes. It’s going to have efficiency losses, but that energy would have been fully lost with the direct solar solution.
A lot of great ideas in here for sure! Better insulation is a great way to store energy without the need for large battery systems. This kind of thinking can also translate really well to more traditional housing.
We already do this kind of thing with standard water heaters in the US, and creating better insulated chest freezers and refrigerators should be straightforward. The cooker seems fairly novel, though.
On a larger scale, Passive Haus construction techniques can go a long way to reducing energy needs for climate control, and would make it easier to turn off climate systems when the sun goes down.
what a cool article and website
