Robin

The disconnect is a relay built into the battery and managed by it. Just like solar panels, the inverters for those could also backfeed if they weren’t managed

Indeed, it’s mainly for storing solar electricity. Grid scale power generation and storage are more efficient and effective. Yet the consumer solar and battery market is booming. There’s lots of factors at play. People already own their roofs. They pay a premium on using grid power vs commercial users. It’s an easy and relatively safe way to invest your own money, etc… And then the batteries follow the solar panels. If grid operators would manage their own batteries and pay us properly for the energy we put into the net, then privately owning a battery would not make sense.

Yeah you need to check your house’s wiring diagram to know where a good spot is to plug it in. But in Belgium there’s a legal limit of 2.5kw draw on these things, so you have to fuck up pretty bad to do serious damage

Yeah that’s the downside of plug-in batteries. Most have a few sockets the device itself that work as backup power. But they intentionally don’t provide backup power for the whole house

Mine is configured like that. Technically it could feed back to the grid but it doesn’t

These batteries turn off when they don’t see mains power

I have both already in Belgium, they’re great. The solar production and power usage in my townhouse were too low for a hardwired battery to make economic sense. But with plug in batteries the installation cost is basically 0 so you can get smaller sized batteries. The 5kwh one we got is plenty to cover from sundown to the next day, even if we decide to run a wash or something.

And then we already had regular solar panels. But the price of the plug-in ones was so low that we decide to build a rain shelter for our bikes out of wall-mounted solar panels. Close to the same price and made out of metal and glass instead of wood and plastic.