I've got two 250 gallon propane tanks in my yard. One goes to my whole house generator which can go several days if needed; the other goes to the stove, water heater, and fireplace; this lasts several months, but not a whole year. After a few years experience, the best plan seems to be fill in september/october and again when prices come down in the spring. I'd probably try to get a bigger tank or a second tank for the house if we ever need to do meaningful work on the system, so we can fill once a year in the summer. Combining the two tanks I have now would probably be too expensive, and a dedicated supply for the generator seems good operationaly. The previous owner leased the tanks, and we kept going with that; it's probably better to own them as then you can get better fuel pricing.
If you’re off the grid, forget that :)
I do have and use heat pumps for heating the house; the fireplace is mostly decorative (it is properly setup to be effective at heating the room it's in, but it needs electricity to function and my generator can run the heat pumps, but maybe if the generator fuel got low). That's not going to replace my stove though. Maybe the water heater. (Oh and the clothes dryer, forgot about that one... but I've not seen good things about heat pump clothes dryers)
Steel and Concrete are two of the cheapest materials we have. Anything that uses it (rather than more expensive stuff) is strictly an advantage.
So to compare steel+concrete to batteries feels like a non sequitur to me.
https://www.aboutdme.org/aboutdme/files/cclibraryfiles/filen...
I could imagine a future where we use heat pumps with propane/rDME backup for power outages or extreme cold weather events, assuming that it won't be profitable to maintain residential natural gas for infrequent use.
If we are to be discussing bio-propane vs batteries, the storage benefits are key.
I'd like to see the switchgrass biofuel take off. A surprising amount of emissions in the USA (and Brazil) are due to deforestation associated with turning forests into farmland. That's largely mitigated by using "natural plants", like switchgrass instead of farm crops.
I mean, its all "solar power into fuel", which is great. But its also important to recognize that some (ie: switchgrass based biofuel) are better than others (ex: grain or corn based biofuel).
The battery is quoted at 400kwh, which is 1,440 MJ of energy. That is equivalent to 30KG of propane. Three little tanks like this[1] has the same energy as your massive battery.
So yeah, propane is easier to store.
[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Bernzomatic-20-Pound-Refillable-P...
[1] https://www.electriccarpartscompany.com/1mwh-energy-storage-...
> Electricity will be like propane, soon.
Is not true for any reasonable definition of "soon". Our efforts would be better spent optimizing the grid for variable load rather than trying to solve storage. Actual grid scale storage will be unsolvable for decades.