Tesla has announced a consumer-grade home battery named "Powerwall" that will be available in 2 sizes. The battery can recharge at night when electricity rates are low, and then run your house during the day. It is designed for solar charging, and can return power back to the grid or enable autonomous, off-the-grid living.
Some think that this Tesla technology may be the saving grace for the power grid due to home generation and back-flow issues. There have been previous anouncements from other companies of microgrids which seem to aim for close to the same market, and it is not yet clear how the Powerwall might stack up against these competitors.
The first Tesla Energy product is 'Powerwall Home Battery,' a stationary battery that can power a household without requiring the grid. The battery is rechargeable lithium-ion — it uses Tesla's existing battery tech — and can be fixed to a wall, removing much of the existing complexity around using a local power source.
"The issue with existing batteries is that they suck," Musk said in a press conference announcing Tesla Energy. "They are expensive, unreliable and bad in every way."
Tesla's solution, he said, is different.
For one thing, the company's batteries cost $3,500 for 10kWh and $3,000 for 7kWh — add your snarky Apple Watch price comparison here. They are open for pre-orders in the U.S. now; the first orders will be dispatched "in late summer."
Like regular batteries, they can be used together — up to nine can be stacked up together to create a strong and reliable power source. Musk said he believes they can help people in emerging markets or remote locations 'leapfrog' the need for existing power systems, in a similar way that mobile phones have become more important than landlines in remote parts of the world.
microtodd says: Hook it up to some solar panels and you could be 100% off the grid. I know products like this already exist but maybe this is the step from a hobbyist market to a Home Depot consumerist market. I bet some Soylenters out there have already DIYd this themselves at home. Does this look feasible and interesting?
Too bad it's basically illegal to live off the grid.
CoolHand says: Obviously, modern civilization is not yet fully prepared for the post-fossil fuel era, but news like this can at least give some hope that there are people out there working to prepare us, and in that way, we may be just a little bit closer to being ready.
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Friday May 01 2015, @05:26PM
For standby power this doesn't do it. That same 3500USD at your local big box store will get you a Gnerac 10KW natural gas or propane unit. And that is 10KW output and not 10KW/Hr delivered at 2KW max continious load for five hours, no that is 10KW for as long as the natural gas lines keep delivering or your propane tank holds out and unless the world is really ending that is longer than even a hurricane is likely to knock power out for 99.1% of people.
As for part of a green local generation and storage solution, others here point out it doesn't compete with existing products for that market.
So lets recap, we have a few billion in government money flushed down the toilet for a product nobody can imagine a use for other than in insanely great but insanely expensive electric cars built for a very select group of ultra millionaires lucky enough to live near enough charging stations to make owning one practical. And meanwhile, over on the other coast, Baltimore is burning from fifty years of exactly this sort of one party government misrule. Short and pithy enough for the epitaph of American Civilization ain't it? We should carve it on the gravestone.... but then that decision will be for our successors and none of the probable ones have that sort of sense of humor.
I only have one thing to say to the greens responsible for this: FYDITM.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @05:34PM
I admire your agricultural ability. It takes mad cherry-picking skills to pull down those oddball circumstances and make them look anything like the market Tesla is targeting.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday May 01 2015, @05:59PM
I live in hurricane country. That 3,500 figure just happens to be the same number that is in the flyers that appear in the mailbox every spring from the local big box builder for a whole house standby generator + auto cutover breaker panel. You can get it in natural gas, propane/lp or gasoline. Makes a nice contrast doesn't it?
Btw, if nat gas is an option at your address, take it since it -never- fails, even in the worst days of Katrina/Rita the natural gas pressure on the Gulf Coast never once wavered. If it ever drops they must manually go to each and every house and turn the valve off and then do a full reset, thus the industry long ago adopted a 'failure is not an option' attitude.
Others (Zinho) had already pointed out the lack of any 'breakthrough' for the alt energy dreamers so I covered the only other obvious use, standby power. Bottom line: These batteries are expensive and are likely to remain so. Their size and weight permit some impressive electric cars, witness Tesla's main business, but unless size and weight dominate the engineering decision the practicality is dubious. And forget claims of working life, we lack the real world track record to say and anyone who thinks an alt energy install will still be producing twenty years out without a major overhaul or replacement because of tech advance lacks the real world experience to be taken seriously.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 01 2015, @05:39PM
Them batteries ain't gonna reproduce by themselves. The billion dollar in tax incentives will come back quickly in taxes on the people and products the gigafactory will drive in/near.
While I agree with your Baltimore comment, I'll take a Gigafactory in the US (not in my state) rather than Shenzhen...
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Friday May 01 2015, @06:07PM
The tax money only comes in if customers can be found. Who exactly do you see buying them?
If people were really lined up to buy them then Wall Street or the Vulture Capitalists would have been more than happy to finance the whole thing, no need to bilk the taxpayers. Or hell, Mr. Musk would have been willing to just spend his own considerable stash and keep all of the profit. No, people come to the government for a handout^Wpartnership when they doubt it will be profitable but knows it is a project that proggies and greens will get erect over and throw money at it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @07:28PM
> For standby power this doesn't do it. That same 3500USD at your local big box store will get you a Gnerac 10KW natural gas or propane unit.
The generac also requires maintenance every 200 hours of operation. It is a back-up generator not intended for daily use.
It is also noisy as hell.
Furthermore the cost of operation is off the charts, 24 hour usage can easily exceed $50/day in fuel costs. Lets be ultra-generous and say $20/day. That's $600/month. If you live in a place where you have a $600/month electric bill (like SoCal, where I live) then you also have access to time-of-day pricing where off-peak is half to a third of peak pricing which would make Tesla's battery ideal.
You are comparing apples to oranges, or as the other AC alluded to, apples to cherries.
(Score: 1) by gishzida on Friday May 01 2015, @08:04PM
I think you will find that the appropriate epitaph is the same one that all Hegemonic Powers have: Absolute Greed Corrupts, and Destroys Absolutely.
Our problems are not wrought by "greens" or "progressives" or even a liberal like myself... our problems are brought about by corporate greed-- Unnecessary wars and "too big to fail" deregulation of financial institutions are just the tip of the iceberg. Why do we need those wars? Because that's "bread and butter" for the militarists and the weapons makers. Why did we deregulate the financial industry? Not because of consumers... but because the vulture capitalists are always seeking "big profits". Who pays the bill for these things? The middle class.
OTOH, most consumer power is provided by "regulated monopolies" -- Power companies that do not want any form of competition. Considering your apparent alternative energy stance, does that make you a proponent of corporate monopolies and their ability to squelch end user interest in cutting their energy bill? Or are you one of those "free market Darwinists" who believe that big corporations are much more benign that "big government"?
I live in a state that is big friends with "big power" and for the most part its regulations and incentives are not alternative energy friendly... Can you guess who's running the state house? Why of course-- Republicans. "Conservation of capital" is a big thing with corporations... and the best way to conserve capital is to have a monopoly... like the Machines' power monopoly of the "copper tops" in The Matrix, consumers have only one purpose--- to generate corporate profits and support an elite that continues to distance itself from "social responsibility".
The way I see it is: consumer incentives are a way to force the Monopolists to innovate or die. The incentives allow the middle class to participate in both "capital conservation' [i.e. money saving] and encourage innovation. They nurture new, local industries since the vulture capitalist have exported most of our industrial production. If we're going to have a "free market" that market should not be a market that is more free for the entrenched players than those who are trying to innovate. Like Mr. Musk or not, he *is* trying to do things in markets that the entrenched players keep trying to shut him out... And that is the indication that there is something "wrong" with those markets. The worst thing for the consumer would be if Tesla got bought out by one of the corporate dinosaurs.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:57AM
Wait, you can get natural-gas powered consumer-level generators? I've only seen propane (vastly too expensive to run) and diesel (not much cheaper).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by compro01 on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:37AM
A glance at Lowe's site [lowes.ca] shows generators that will run on either natural gas or propane in capacities ranging from 8KW to 22KW.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:10PM
Ouch, way outta my range... No wonder I hadn't noticed 'em; I'd been eyeing the sub-$1000 models at Costco.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.