World-first home hydrogen battery stores 3x the energy of a Powerwall 2

The unit stores 40 kWh and can generate 5 kW from the fuel cell at an efficient of 62.5% and an additional 5 kW boost from a battery for short intermittent peaks. So it will basically take 5 days to use all of the stored energy with no charging if you are running 40 amps of continuous loads at 120V. That’s pretty good. Not enough for a stove or electric heat but definitely enough for all your lights and appliances and a small air conditioner.<p>What is great is the 30 year Lifespan vs. 5 years expected from batteries in grid scale storage applications.<p>80% charging efficiency and 50% round trip efficiency yields 62.5% generating efficiency. To charge 40 kWh at 80% efficiency would take two 10 hour days with 9 three hundred watt panels. But you’d want to power your loads those days too, so probably a 20-25 panel array would be an appropriate size. 25 three hundred watt panels is $8k CAD. On top of the $22k USD for the hydrogen storage. Pretty decent setup for $30k!!

There have been previous articles claiming that the expected cycle in most communities is that users will install panels + batteries first, for savings (of cash or of the environment ;).<p>At some point, as enough leave the grid, the utility company will install massive environmentally friendly power sources (panels&#x2F;wind&#x2F;etc). At that point, it is not only cheaper to get green electric from the utility, it is more green (due to scale).<p>Battery packs like these have interest for a house, but they are also interesting for a city - like the Tesla packs in Australia et al.<p>If on the large scale they make sense, they should eventually leapfrog home usage, at which point there will be much less need for home packs and lithium.

One thing to point out is that this kind of system might not be a best choice for a single house with limited solar panel area. At grid scale that is a whole different story. In order to cover our energy needs we will need to build many times more solar than our peek load on the grid. That means lots of times there will be power which nobody wants. Here you don’t care about efficiency (with negative prices you might even favor lower efficiencies). Only thing you care about is how you cover your electric needs then there is cloud cover for a few days and not much wind. Hydrogen seems like a great option at the moment.

nice concept but efficiency is the deal breaker here. One to keep an eye out for improvements.

Doesn&#x27;t explain how energy will be generated out of hydrogen from its statement of energy restoration<p>Presuming we&#x27;re all smart genius ?

&gt; You&#x27;ll want to skip to the minute mark if you don&#x27;t have a marketing-grade chuck-bucket handy.

Is it a sealed system or do you need to top up water? Routing plumbing to the unit might be challenging in home environment, and I presume it might need treated water to keep its electrodes healthy