Gah. No, I misremembered what I had written, and you didn't quote what you were responding to, so I misinterpreted what you wrote.

In context, I assumed my meaning was clear. I was talking about the situation where you already own the inverter, but are forced to replace it anyway because you're replacing the whole unit. But also, if you have multiple Powerwalls, you could use a single inverter that takes power from all three rather than multiple inverters.

Are these Powerwall inverters you're talking about? Because if so, it sounds like it is very, very poorly designed. If an inverter has adequate cooling, and if adjacent electronic components are chosen to have similar rates of thermal expansion or adequate ability to flex, they wouldn't fall apart in two years. That means, among other things, careful choice of solder type, careful choice of component casing material, etc.

Having to replace an electronic component every two or three years is a very clear indication of bad engineering. These things have no moving parts, so without thermal expansion literally ripping them apart, they should last for decades.

The point is that it's sized for a single battery, which means you have more components that can fail. If you have one inverter that fails every two years, you'll have a failure every two years. If you have three inverters and they all fail every two years, you'll have a failure every eight months (on average). At some point, your system ends up in a state of nearly continuous maintenance. That's why you don't build systems that way.

If the quality of installers is terrible, that's likely the fault of your local inspectors not doing their jobs adequately, because if every job had to be redone because of the inspectors finding problems, the companies would fire the installers who do a bad job.

Regardless, the fact that most people's salaries aren't keeping up with inflation means that tech products still take a bigger chunk out of a lot of people's paychecks every year.

Thats absolute bullshit.
Microgrids are the way forwards and the way towards reslient.

Applies because this civilistation will be toast before we come close to this goal.
we have under 2 decades, to correct a course thats 3 decades into its overdraft .

It isnt pointless because somebody somewhere is making money selling old rope.

Would not exist if it wasnt for theft of someone elses intellectual property.
I see no reason to expect the global socio-economic collapse to retard.

Interesting. My understanding was that it did not cover arbitrage. However, you're misreading that warranty policy in a rather critical way:

That means as soon as you enable any use that falls outside the scope, including time shifting for use by the grid operator, your warranty becomes 37.8MWh. It doesn't matter if 99% of your use was covered by the first policy. As soon as you use start using it for VPP, you no longer have 10 years of unlimited wear and tear.

Yes, it makes installation simpler, but if you don't need the inverter, you're still paying for it. So if you're replacing it early, you're likely replacing stuff that you could have kept with the other system. It's not nearly as open-and-shut a case as you're making it out to be. An ideal system would *NOT* have all of that in a single unit. The battery would be one unit, the controller/inverter/brains would be one unit, and would be sized for the number of panels and the number of batteries.

It's like an iMac; it's easier to set up than a computer with s separate monitor, but you end up with a whole lot more e-waste when the CPU gets too slow.

That's rather hard, because technology products tend to be such a big part of what inflation gets based on. But it's also a meaningless metric unless your pay has also kept up with inflation. In reality, this is rarely the case.

That's not really a safe assumption. Yes, it can be cheaper to buy power at night and use it during the day, but it only makes sense to do that if the cost of the power at the peak is higher than the cost of power at the bottom plus the cost of wear on the system. At 28.52 cents per kWh of wear plus 38 cents per kWh, it only makes sense to do that if the cost of power is at least 66.52 cents per kWh. The maximum price for power from PG&E under a residential TOU plan is only 62 cents per kWh. Therefore it is never worthwhile to use it for arbitrage.

No, it indicates that they assumed that it will charge only when you have solar power available, and discharge only up to about the same amount that you put in from solar, except in situations where it takes over during a power blackout, and that this usage pattern typically results in significantly less than one full charge cycle per day. The warranty is designed to allow for very limited arbitrage, not for a full charge-discharge cycle worth of arbitrage per day.

You assume prices and capacity will remain constant ten or more years into the future.

You're assuming the price of the equipment will drop. I'm being generous in assuming that it won't increase as demand for lithium ion batteries increases. There's certainly no reason to assume that the price will decline, at least in the near term; we certainly haven't seen much evidence of huge decreases in the consumer price per kWh of capacity recently. Prices were plummeting up until about 2013, but since then, prices have only dropped by a little more than a factor of 2, and with EVs becoming popular, that decline in prices is getting slower and slower. At some point, it may very well start rising again.

BTW, the PowerWall 3 has the same capacity as the PowerWall 2, but costs about half again more. It is entirely possible that in ten years, the technology will be a lot better/safer, but that the cost per kWh of capacity will be higher still. You'd still be crazy to buy the old version if you could get it, IMO, because LiFePO4 is not just a little bit safer, but the fact remains that the cost went up, not down, and the capacity did not change.

Nope. Not for LiFePO4 batteries (PowerWall 3). They exhibit minimal degradation from long-term storage for an entire decade.

The general consensus is that at the 80% mark, you should not continue using the cell, for several reasons:

• The capacity loss often accelerates beyond that point.
• Capacity loss can be indicative of dendrite growth, which can lead to catastrophic failures (read "fires").

But sure, if you want to take that risk, go for it. Nobody is stopping you.

Nope. The true cost of wear on a PowerWall *must* be calculated based on the replacement cost, not based on how much homeowners spent to buy them the first time. Those solar panels won't need replacing for thirty to forty years. If you're replacing the PowerWall before that time, you aren't installing the new one with solar, and you aren't getting tax credits for doing so. So unless it fails while still under warranty, you're likely to be paying the full price for that replacement, not $7,500, unless the manufacturer gives you a loyalty discount out of the goodness of their hearts.

If that number is correct, then it will more than cover the replacement cost. But don't forget that the $2 per kWh has to be discounted by the replacement cost of that power, which is between 38 and 62 cents. So the worst-case break-even point is somewhere around 91 cents per kWh (29-ish cents for PowerWall wear plus the cost of power for charging), which means if they ever pay you significantly below that, you're probably eating into that flat rate amount per season for signing up for the program.

So I guess right now, it's probably a win. Color me shocked, but the cynic in me still adds the words "so far", because I've seen how much they're screwing solar users who don't have battery storage.

Does it actually cover the wear and tear on the batteries? Have you calculated it? Because I did, and they're paying for only about 64 minutes per day at current battery costs, assuming the actual power distribution and replenishment comes out price-neutral for the homeowner. Meanwhile, their big test of the system ran for two hours. If that becomes normal, then it's anything but a fair payment system, unless they're paying a *huge* premium per kWh on top of that.

It's PG&E, so you can generally assume that nothing they do is done in a way that actually benefits the consumer. :-)

It is reasonable up to a point. PG&E takes it way beyond that point, though, IMO, paying between 2 and 8 cents per kWh, while charging 37 to 63 cents per kWh for power consumed.

It is pretty clear that PG&E only pays you anything for excess solar because they were forced to do so by California Assembly Bill 920, and that if they could get away with it, the compensation would be zero.

With regulated utilities like this, they should be required to pay homeowners a rate that is close to what the average amount of money they would spend to buy the power from other providers, which is quite a lot higher than what they actually pay.

Actually, no, not even that. They should be required to treat it as a negative count towards the number of units of power for that time-of-use tier, e.g. each 1 kWh sent back counts as a credit for 0.95 kWh at the time it was sent to the grid. And if any TOU tier is negative, that entire negative tier cost should be credited towards your account, including the distribution portion, because (realistically speaking) that tiny amount of power that you generate is not being distributed beyond your neighborhood, unlike power generated by separate generating companies far away.

It just isn't reasonable to bill rooftop solar and separate solar farms similarly. Rooftop solar power reduces strain on the grid when it is active, because the generation is distributed. It should therefore count strongly negatively towards the distribution portion of your power costs, not provide zero credit.

When did you become a shill for BBC bullshit?
I come here precisely to avoid that sensationalist crap.

This is simply how the ecosystem works.
A distro going down simply means its not meeting the demands of its users anymore.
But because of open source you can still continue to use the distro and even fork a new
one. Enevitably , forks will happen for the same reasons.

Perhaps over a hundred years all distro's might co-alesce as the perfect blend of all that came before, but theres not much chance of a functional civilisation existing by then so its kind of moot.

The "symptoms" listed wont be "Fixed" by ADHD meds, once again a false narrative from the nations most experience propagandist the BBC ( AKA British Bullshit Corporation )

The symptoms listed are not caused by ADHD and therefore cannot be cured with meds.
These symptoms are caused by the fact that neurodivergent people see and experience the world
in a different way to nuerotypicals. This makes us more suceptable to bullying, abuse, being misunderstood and our peers having misguided expectations.

Sick bastards the BBC.

Those are NOT ADHD symptoms they are symptoms of Neurodivergent people struggling to fit in a world designed for Neurotypicals.
I fucking hate britain and its rancid lies and narratives, I hate the way they think people are so dim that they cant recognise that people
dont get suicidal as a symptom of ADHD,
that substance abuse is more likely because
1) we cant fucking get meds due to shortages
2) because some "substances" actually help us - alcohol helps with social anxiety, weed helps to calm a restless mind or tackle sleep problems common with ADHDers
3) Transport accidents ? What the fuck are they talking about - theres likely zero evidence for this.
4) So criminal behaviour is symptom of ADHD?

Honestly fuck the BBC up itss bigoted little arse.

Not that year, but they caused headaches for a giant group buy from a Chinese audio gear company that I was involved in. After a lot of wrangling and somebody knowing one of PayPal's vice presidents, they eventually got the funds released, but not before it made me decide never to trust PayPal again. I have not used them since then. No company should have that much power to arbitrarily restrict the flow of commerce.

Technology a double edged sword.