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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: 5, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Friday May 01 2015, @05:45PM
The linked article does not say what you're trying to imply it says.
The woman was still using the city's sewer system. Because intake and outgo are typically in lockstep within reasonable rounding errors, most cities charge a single fee for both water and sewer based only on water usage. She wasn't pay for water and thus wasn't paying for sewer...but she was still using sewer. Is it so unreasonable for the city to want to get paid for the services she was using?
And, you'll note that nothing in there even tangentially mentions electricity.
Lots of people can and do drop off the electric grid or never connect in the first place. Up until recently, it made financial sense to do net metering for solar generation if you already had a grid connection, but many utilities are switching to "fuck you" fees that guarantee they still get almost as much per month from you regardless of how many panels you put on your roof. As such, the grid is rapidly becoming a serious liability, and it already makes financial sense for some people to cut the wire entirely. The more "fuck you" fees from short-sighted desperate utilities and the faster battery prices fall and the more people say "fuck you" to utility "fuck you" fees...and we're at the edge of the grid rapidly becoming a financial liability for basically everybody.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 01 2015, @06:08PM
Switch loads like the washing machine completely from the grid to solar power to eliminate the possibility for the utility company to charge for direct connection to the grid?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday May 01 2015, @06:09PM
Spot on. I looked at the article and it became immediately apparent what the issue was. It specifically said there was no legal issue with her use of solar panels, she was just freeloading on the sewer system and the city eventually told her she had to pay her share for her usage. Her proposed solution of dumping waste in her yard is not well suited to an urban environment either -- I really don't see any egregious conduct by the city nor do I see this as making living off-grid illegal. It looks like rational public sanitation requirements coupled a requirement to shoulder a fair share of the burden.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday May 01 2015, @07:47PM
Not true: The article explicitly says that her using solar power was not a problem.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by microtodd on Friday May 01 2015, @07:51PM
Good call. I'll admit I didn't really read the article. I was working off what other people have told me. Shame on me. :-(