Yes, but what sort of battery could produce 240v at, say, 20 amps for more than a minute? And without getting so hot my house would catch fire. Even without trying to get to the house next door.
I appreciate there's tradeable theories and money to be made/invested etc. But what about the battery?
Genuine question, I'm really interested.
Nick
Don't think of it in terms of single batteries, think of a massive virtualised battery made up of thousands of individual units co-operating together, each one delivering a small current for a short time, but together adding up to a significant amount.
The technology is in early proof of concept stage at domestic levels, and of course depends on some pretty fancy software in the Smart meters, but companies like Flexitricity and Limejump are already offering services like this with business customers, acting as aggregators to put together workable demand response units spread over multiple sites and installations.
For every 'skeptical' commentator out on the internet, there are hundreds of extremely bright young people working within the industry to turn the possibilities into working solutions. They even let old farts like me get involved, which is nice.
There's an awful lot of investment going on here, with big challenges and potential rewards. The goal is to avoid situations like last September, when although National Grid managed to avoid any outages we were seeing System prices hitting £1500/MWh for odd half-hours when the background wholesale price was £55/MWh.
