I am absolutely against the emerging anti-carbon tyranny.
However, I just finished building a mobile solar power module for the construction of my next home. The site is remote and the local power company will only hook me up for free if there is a dwelling. To overcome this catch-22, I decided to go with Lithium batteries and solar because it is quiet like the surroundings and will later serve as fixed backup system.
Battery capacity is 10 kWh with sustained output of 7000 Watt (10,000 W peak) on 220/110 Volt. For you electro-phobes here, that is 1.4 hours of running 7 space heaters at 1000 Watt each, or more realistically, 20 hours of a 500 Watt load. (1 kWh = 1 kilo Watt hours = 1000 Watt hours. You get the runtime by dividing the Watt hour capacity by the power drain in Watt).
I am not going through 10 kWh per work day so the mobile solar array is only rated at 1.2kW (4 panels) which will put ~4kWh in the battery bank over the course of an average day. I expect the solar panels to cover most if not all of the power needed for a work day and the battery is there for the proverbial rainy days. If the solar generation turns out to be insufficient, I can add a few of the other 16 panels that I bought for the finished house.
Here is the cost breakdown:
Brand new 300W solar panels were $90 each from a ReStore, Habitat for Humanities' version of Goodwill. Charge controller was another $280 from egay.
Figure ~$100 for 1 kWh of battery storage if you shop around at places that sell reject modules from the automotive industry. These modules are dimensionally off spec and cannot be used for robotic assembly but they are electrically virgin. To keep the battery pack balanced, I snagged a suitable
BMS for $100.
I spent $800 each on two new 3500 Watt Outback inverters by pouncing on a liquidation sale. These inverters are top of the line quality and synchronized via a TCP/IP network to obtain the 60Hz 220/100 Volt split-phase output. They are so quiet that I thought they were broken when I fired up the system for the first time. Perfect sine wave on the oscilloscope. The remote control panel was another $100 after waiting a few weeks for the right deal.
So, a 7000 W, quiet as a mouse, purest sine wave, 220/110 Volt generator cost me $640 for solar, $1100 for batteries, and $1700 for the inverters at a grand total of ~3500 dollars including miscellaneous bits and bobs. That is not bad at all, especially if you consider that this will be the back bone of my house backup and solar augmentation system after grid hookup. The inverters switch over from grid to battery without interruption like a computer
UPS. Going by my current power consumption it would also be enough for off-grid life but I don't know how much power I currently save by working about half of the week in an R&D lab.
Speaking of work, one of my projects is designing and testing hybrid drive systems for VTOL aircraft. A gas turbine provides the base load and an electric motor the peak demands as well as rapid changes, that the turbine is to slow to respond to. The challenge there is the amount of electrical power to be controlled. We are looking at 300 Amps @ 800 Volt DC input for the smallest configuration. The torque delivery of the electric motor is so brutal that it would destroy gearbox or drive components if fully opened up at low rpm. If you want to judge (hybrid) electric propulsion systems, you should take a ride in a dual motor Tesla switched to "insane" mode and not in a fucking Prius.
What I am trying to say is that there are some very valid applications for "green(er)" technologies. The problem is that this is currently pushed by a toxic political agenda and often against technical merit.