this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2026
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This comic is kinda old already, but still stays relevant.

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[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Some companies offer modular batteries, so instead of buying like one big 15kWh battery, you can get 3 5kWh batteries. And there's usually a cabinet or server rack where you can put them together.

That way it's more scalable and easier to add capacity. And when it's time to upgrade or replace them, you can do that in smaller steps instead of all at once.

[–] HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Have wondered about those, not sure how hard it would be to connect to the whole house. A single ring I could probably do quite easily. Think you need proper sockets/plugs to do it safely rather than the technically works but you may die if you touch the pin kinda cable. Then just flip the circuit breaker to remove that ring from the grid.

But that wouldn't cover cooking or my heat pump. Not sure if that could properly be done as a DIY job.

Though doing 1 ring from the battery would make it pretty easy to measure my non cooking/heating energy usage. Suppose lighting is separate but that should be all LEDs anyway.

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 hours ago

Yeah I'm not an electrician, and unless you are one I'd say you should probably have one install it for you if you want it to feed directly into your home circuit.

There's a few other components to it though, like an inverter basically takes the DC output from the batteries and converts it to AC at the right specs for your home circuit. So really you just need that to be installed properly, and then I'm pretty sure the batteries are plug-and-play.

Also an MPPT is important for solar batteries because it controls the flow from the panel to the batteries, which improves efficiency as well as battery health and safety.

The smaller modular batteries though, they can be rated for over 3500W continuous output. That should be enough for a heat pump, especially because I'm pretty sure that's for each battery.

But if you're running stuff from outlets, you can also look into portable batteries, sometimes called power stations. Some of them come with built-in inverters and MPPT controllers so you can charge them with solar panels and run AC devices on them without any additional peripherals.