My Energy Storage System - DIY ESS - has been running with Solar for 3 Years now and saved me 800 EUR

On July 7, 2016, my home made Energy Storage System, named DIY ESS, has been running fine for 3 full years :)



Link from July 7, 2013 : http://www.myelifenow.com/2013/07/uni-solar-pvl-sma-inverter-finished.html



After several months of building and testing it back in 2012 & 2013, I finally had my Solar panels connected to a working SMA inverter and I have been storing my Surplus Solar Enegry ever since ...
(Solar panels install had been done several before that http://www.myelifenow.com/2012/10/solar-panels-installation-13-uni-solar.html)

During these last 3 years I had no breakdown what so ever, and absolutely no LiFePO4 Battery pack problem using it 24/7 (8 CALB CA180FI prismatic cells)



Today, few days after, it shows that I saved 577 EUR but you have to add 220 EUR approx. that were not taken into account during the first months (Wattson Anywhere portal data gathering came later)
For more details on my last 500 EUR update in April : http://www.myelifenow.com/2016/04/diy-ess-update-500-eur-of-savings.html
So the total savings as of today is 577 + 220 = 797 EUR, almost 800 EUR :)



I also sold few kits online to people around the world during the same period and it is still available here : http://www.diyesskit.com

I will continue using it until I have a Tesla Energy Powerwall installed later .... and the beauty of it is that all the of the shelf components used in it will be sold and bring me a good part of my money back ;)


Links:
http://wattson.energyhive.com/dashboard/diyesskit
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chris75sf

DIY ESS Update : 500 EUR of SAVINGS logged but 720 EUR since the beginning

Goods News for my DIY ESS - Energy Storage Sytem : Another step reached with 500 EUR of Savings logged by the online portal as of this weekend :)

Since I started logging usage + generation data with the EnergyHive hub in June 2014, it says 502 EUR has been saved on Imported Electricity

But my DIY ESS has been running with Solar Panels since July 9, 2013, and the additional savings figure for the first period should be close to 11 x 20 EUR/month = 220 EUR

So the total amount of Energy Saved on my Utility bill is today around 720 EUR ! after 2 years and 9 mobths of service
And since the price per kWh of Electricity is always going up, the savings will continue to increase faster with time !

Even if I do not care about ROI really, I can now say that 1/4 of the money spent to build my DIY ESS (3,000 EUR) has been payed back in Energy Bill Savings (720 EUR) over the 2 years and 9 months : 720 / 3,000 = 24%


Using cheaper Electricity rates to Charge at night (TOU) during winter, and Solar Surplus during the day, my Energy Storage System automatically tries to match the Power Consumption at home, in conjonction with Solar Generation when available, to have a Net Usage (Home Usage - Generated Power) close to 0W : No Import & No Export = Self Consumption of Solar Production

EnergyHive Free Online Portal enables instructive and user friendly graphs for real time and historical data display

I often checks that my ESS is working fine during the day, using my iPhone, Mac, PC on http://wattson.energyhive.com/dashboard/diyesskit

Power Graph


Energy Graph


Energy Generation Chart : Imported vs Generated Energy


Another real time way of checking what's going on is through a Logitech Broadcaster Webcam displaying Live on Ustream 2 Wattson units : one with Generation (Solar + ESS), the other with Net Usage (Usage - Generation) : http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chris75sf

More info on my DIY Energy Storage System here : http://www.diyesskit.com or http://www.storeyourenergy.com

DIY ESS Switched Off during my summer vacation for 15 days

For the 3rd summer in a row, during my vacation, I switched Off my home Energy Storage System, this year for 2 weeks only

Since it is On all the time, day and night, with people at home or not, this year I wondered if I should have left in On for once, but since everything at home is Off, including the high energy consuming water heater, I figured for safety reasons I should turn it off as ususal

Here is the Energy graph the month of August showing this 15 days period where I dumped some surplus solar energy ...



Still over this month half of the Energy used at home comes from Solar & Storage ...

Back last saturday night, I immediatly switched it back On, and it has been performing as usual since

All these graphs are from here: http://wattson.energyhive.com/dashboard/diyesskit

DIY ESS - Savings = 320 EUR / 80+% of Usage covered by Solar + both Energy Storage Systems

DIY ESS Update:

- Savings went past 320 EUR (over a year and 2 months)

- 80+% of my Home Usage is covered by Solar  + both Energy Storage Systems these days :)

Screenshots from http://wattson.energyhive.com/dashboard/diyesskit :

More on my DIY ESS Kit here: http://www.diyesskit.com

The $100,000 Battery That Could Help Hotels Save Bundles of Money

Two 54-kilowatt energy storage systems at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco's Nob Hill will be able to supply 20 percent of the building's electricity demand.

When the big utilities lose a guy like Harry Hobbs, trouble lies ahead. Hobbs is the area director of engineering for Intercontinental Hotels in San Francisco, a man who has spent more than 30 years managing the energy demands of some demanding clients.

“The utilities have a 20th-century mentality,” says Hobbs. “If we’re going to address climate change we need 21st-century solutions.

What riles Hobbs is utilities’ approach to managing electricity supply and demand for big commercial customers like hotels. If a hotel’s energy consumption spikes—say on a hot day when guests all turn on their room air conditioners at once—the utility ratchets up the electricity rate they pay. To avoid these so-called demand charges—which can account for half of a monthly power bill—businesses can participate in programs that cut their bills if they allow their local utility take control of their air conditioners or lighting to reduce electricity use when the grid is overloaded.

Letting hotel guests who pay $300 a night sweat, however, is not an option. So Hobbs has pulled the plug on his utility by storing electricity in lithium-ion battery packs when rates are low for use when demand and prices rise. The battery and sophisticated software was built by a Silicon Valley startup called Stem and is another example of how technological innovation is upending utilities’ century-old stranglehold on power.

“We measure a business’ electricity usage and predict when there will be spikes in usage and make decisions on whether to charge or discharge batteries,” says Prakesh Patel, Stem’s vice president of capital markets and strategy, who notes that demand charges have risen 30 percent in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past three years.



That means Stem’s algorithms are constantly analyzing a customer’s power demand as well as other factors, such as weather patterns and past energy use, and then charging and discharging the batteries in tiny increments. Such fine-tuning keeps a customer’s utility bills down while minimizing wear and tear on the expensive lithium ion battery packs, which are similar to those found in electric cars.

“In the 21st century things should be down in real time,” says Hobbs. “I think this is a transformational technology that will be the key for many businesses to assist the utilities in a transition to stored energy system.”

Energy storage is particularly important if renewable energy is to become a mainstream source of electricity. As more wind and solar energy comes online, utilities will need to store that power to balance supply and demand on the grid when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. (California regulators, for instance, approved a mandate last month that requires the state’s big utilities to install 1,325 megawatts of energy storage by 2020.)

For businesses like big box retail stores that increasingly are installing massive rooftop solar arrays, systems like Stem’s can maximize that investment by allowing them to store free electricity from the sun for use when demand—and rates—jump.

That’s a double-edged sword for utilities, depriving them of demand charges that help finance improvements to the transmission system but also helping them keep balance the grid and avoid blackouts or having to fire up a carbon-spewing fossil fuel power plant when demand suddenly spikes.

Intercontinental Hotels has run a trial with a 15-kilowatt Stem storage system for the past year, and though Hobbs would not discuss dollar savings he says he’s seen between a 17 percent and 30 percent improvement in his ability to manage demand. The hotel has 17 Stem systems on order and plans to install two 54-kilowatt battery packs at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco, which would supply 20 percent of the hotel’s demand.

Patel says a 54-kilowatt system costs about $100,000, though California state incentives cover about 60 percent of that price. But thanks to a $5 million fund financed by Clean Feet Investors, Stem will offer customers no-money-down installation of battery storage in exchange for monthly fee paid out of the savings on utility bills. Such lease deals unleashed an explosion in residential solar systems and Patel expects to see a similar result in battery storage. Stem has orders for 6 megawatts’ worth of systems and Patel expects that to jump to 15 megawatts over the next year.

“We’ve known for some time that the traditional utility business model, which for over 100 years ago has served its purpose well, has come to an end,” says Jigar Shah, a Clean Feet founder.



Source: The Atlantic

More about the Hotel and Stem install on the DOE International Energy Storage Database: http://www.energystorageexchange.org/projects/356

DIY ESS - Solar & Energy Storage under Grey Sky ...

We always see pictures and videos of Solar panels under a great sunshine, but to tell the truth, it is not always like this ...

Here are Energy Monitors, Graphs, Pictures and Video of the bare reality of what happens when the sun is hiding

Sometimes the solar generation is rather low - with my 1000W solar install - but still something is coming out of it steadily during the day; Now fall is here, sun starts producing around 9AM instead of 7AM, but around 200-250W all day long when the sky is grey

Fo rnow, no heating is required yet, and the ESS I built is doing the job: Capturing any excess/surplus of power into the Battery pack for later use and always keep the Net Usage (= Usage - Generation) as close to 0W as possible

Whenever a washing machine water heating cycle comes on, the ESS stops charging the Battery pack and uses the Energy saved in it to push it back into our home grid, reducing the usage from the utility company. It is really a Peak Shaving device  

As you can see, the ESS keeps the Net Usage around 0W; That's the yellow line on these graphs

Here we can see that the early morning consumption is not covered by the ESS anymore like it used to be during summer : The Battery pack voltage is too low and no Power will be drawn from it until it reaches a certain level with Solar; Also, at night, the sun setting earlier, I often see the SMA inverter quit around 6PM now especially when grey, and the ESS quicks in right away to supply all the household Power for lights, TV, computer, etc ... until the Battery is back to low and the ESS then quits too - If sunny the whole evening usage can usually be covered - 

When Power is required, the ESS switches from Charge Mode to Grid Tie Inverter Mode to help supply this additional Watts to our home

This video shows an example of power pushed by the ESS into our home while cooking lunch

As we go deeper into fall and heating will soon be on during the day, I think I will use the Forced Charge Mode on the ESS to start charging during off peak hours (TOU), at night, and start the day with a Fully charged Battery pack, ready to crush it !  :-)

2nd Full Day of Solar Generation & Self Consumption

July 10th, 2013 : 2nd Full Day of Solar Generation & Self Consumption

In the morning, as soon as the SMA Sunny Boy inverter starts producing solar juice (Left Silver Wattson), my ESS starts switching on chargers to make the Net Usage stay close to 0W (Right White Wattson)

and the production rises, so does the number of chargers involved in storing all the excess solar power into the ESS battery bank made of - the best - CALB CA180FI LiFePO4 cells

Still close to 0W during my coffee break at the office

Wattson on my iPhone shows me the rise in Production ... and in Storage

Now Production is at 850W, and still only 35W of Net Usage, meaning all the rest is stored

...

By the end of the day, the battery is almost full, and because it is summer and we are not using so much electricity this time of the year besides cooking, a big part of the ESS energy is dumped in heating the water heater, until it stops, but sometimes it contributed for half or more ...