Personal Power Plants

Description

By Leia Guccione:

"When many people think of power plants they think of large industrial facilities with heavy machinery—hot, loud, and dirty. While this is an accurate description of many existing power plants, including those that I once operated, the personal power plants of the future will be much different.

Quiet, clean, and contained, your solar-plus-battery home energy system will be nearly indistinguishable from the refrigerator, chest freezer, or furnace in your basement—an essentially silent “box” that does something for you and your home, except this one will be connected to solar panels on your roof. In fact, as property developers and energy service companies become more familiar with these systems, they will most likely become integrated with the other systems in your home, leveraging the waste heat produced by your battery to help heat your home and provide other services.

Still, many will argue that personal power plants won’t offer the same game-changing value that personal computers or other appliances have brought us; that the cost savings, reliability, and environmental benefits of a zero-carbon personal power plant just won’t be that attractive to many homeowners.

Sandy, Irene, and Katrina suggest otherwise. If you don’t think many people value reliability, just look at the recent financials for Generac, the leading American manufacturer of residential back up generators. The company has seen year-over-year net residential sales increases of 31.7% in 2011, 43.7% in 2012, and 19.6% in 2013.

...

When put in perspective, a silent solar-plus-battery system—a personal power plant—that ensures our home has power, saves us money relative to buying electricity from a central utility, and lowers our carbon footprint, doesn’t seem all that bad, in fact, it seems pretty good. Or at least it will seem pretty good sometime soon. Such systems aren’t economic for most customers—yet. But that day will emerge over the coming decades." (http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/29/owning-power-plant-might-crazy/)