Grid-Tie Inverters with Batteries [RE-wrenches]

[Joel Davidson]

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Wrenches,

The Home Power folks have been looking at this dialogue and think that there
may be a good article about grid-tie battery and batteryless PV systems. The
questions about payback resulted in a pretty interesting article so I trust
their judgment. Truth is customers ask almost daily about battery versus
batteryless. So here's a few more questions. Thanks in advance for your
answers.

What percentage of the time is the grid down in a typical U.S. city, suburb,
and country location? What about grid down time in your locale?

What percentage of your grid-tied PV installations are battery? batteryless?

How important is backup to your urban, suburban, rural users?

What is the financial and efficiency cost of adding backup? Are your
customers aware of these costs?

How often do your batteryless PV system customers regret not having battery
backup?

How often do your grid-tie battery PV system customers regret not going
batteryless?

What other important things come to mind when you and your customers talk
about battery versus batteryless PV?

Thanks for your feedback. Hopefully, your answers will help get more PV
installed.

Joel Davidson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel Davidson" <joeldavidson at earthlink.net>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 15, 2004 9:22 AM
Subject: Grid-Tie Inverters with Batteries [RE-wrenches]

Wrenches,

I've often said that if we did our grid-tied PV system now, we would use a
batteryless inverter instead of our SW4048 with batteries because today's
batteryless systems cost less and produce more energy. However, the new
grid/battery inverters have me thinking about the value of grid-tie PV with
battery backup.

One of PV’s big selling points is personal and national energy security, but
if you have batteryless PV system and the grid goes down, so does your PV.
According to “The Unruly Power Grid,” the cover story in the August 2004
issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine, the grid goes down a lot and really big
power outages will continue to happen.

Just how often do power outages really happen? We have had only 3 grid
outages since June 1998 totaling 45 hours. Two outages were energy crisis
rolling blackouts and one was a neighborhood pole-mounted transformer that
burned out.

Those of you with batteryless PV, how many grid/PV outages have you had in
how many years? What about your customers? Do you think the new grid-tie
inverters with batteries are worth the extra system cost?

Joel Davidson

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