State of emergency declared after blackout plunges most of Chile into darkness

Re:State of emergency declared after blackout plunges most o... by mindslight on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @12:57PM (#43186192)

Batteries are great if you can use them all of the time - eg V2G, grid load shifting, or if your utility won't buy generated solar power. Otherwise the capital cost is too high to have significant storage batteries sitting around idle waiting for an emergency.

> You can get a nice plug and play setup that will power some essential things for a while for a few thousand dollar/euro

A petrol generator that will do this can be had for like $400.

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Re:State of emergency declared after blackout plunges most o... by bdcravens on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @01:11PM (#43186313)

You can of course use your batteries on a regular basis even without solar, and even offset your expenses by filling them up during lower-cost times if your utility provides that.

Additionally, a good tri-fuel generator is often less than $1000 so you have power even if you can't get petrol.

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Re:State of emergency declared after blackout plunges most o... by mindslight on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @01:23PM (#43186471)

Yes, that exception was the main dynamic I gave. But the cost of setting up a large enough system to have those options is at least one and half orders of magnitude more than the generator.

I stayed away from discussing propane because it's adding another variable. I too thought that was the way to go, until I realized it doesn't work so well in the winter because the self-evaporation rate is too low. It my experience it takes 3x 20lb tanks teed together to run my small 2500 watt inverter generator, and the baseline load isn't even that much.

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