Page 16 - Advanced Technology for Energy and Water Saving

Battery Benefits. Large storage batteries can also be used to charge electric vehicles quickly and efficiently.

many companies are getting into the energy storage arena. these stackable battery units to give you a little wiggle room.
PV’s path to heating and cooling—the biggest energy On a sunny day, a battery storage system is recharging
users in the home—is limited to two indirect routes: net even as you run the splits, and might su‘ce to get you
metering or batteries. through the night. But a couple of cloudy days could leave
the batteries empty. The second battery buys you some
BATTERIES: (ALMOST) READY FOR PRIME TIME time. At a cost of about $5,500 for some brands, plus $5,000
The solution, of course is batteries. The storage industry is or so for installation, that’s about a $15,000 investment
finally catching up to the fast-growing solar PV universe. on top of solar and mechanicals. Can this extra cost be
But this is a bleeding-edge industry. Any system you adopt rationalized?
will involve a substantial leap of faith. Maybe. The answer depends on some highly complex
For example, w with one of the many battery systems variables that again have no definitive answers. Will the
available today, you might get a power output of about 5 batteries last without significant degrading of power
kW continuous, 7 kW intermittent power with about 14 output? At present, the answer is probably no. Makers
kilowatt hours of energy storage. of high-output electric outboard motors, for example,
A system like this could theoretically run a moderately suggest that you never allow batteries to drain below
sized heat pump system for a few hours. If you consider 50 percent of their full capacity. That’s a high bar. But
that the average American household uses about 30 battery technology is evolving quickly. We expect a major
kilowatt-hours per day, you would probably need two of breakthrough within a few short years.

16ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY FOR ENERGY AND WATER CONSERVATION