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Tesla To Announce Battery-Based Energy Storage For Homes
Okian Warrior writes: Billionaire Elon Musk will announce next week that Tesla will begin offering battery-based energy storage for residential and commercial customers. The batteries power up overnight when energy companies typically charge less for electricity, then are used during the day to power a home. In a pilot project, Tesla has already begun offering home batteries to SolarCity (SCTY) customers, a solar power company for which Musk serves as chairman. Currently 330 U.S. households are running on Tesla's batteries in California. The batteries start at about $13,000, though California's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PCG) offers customers a 50% rebate. The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide, and need to be installed at least a foot and a half off the ground. They can be controlled with a Web app and a smartphone app.
Would make sense to have pv panels charge them up during the day and release energy at night.
This is one step closer to getting houses off the grid. And it's a pretty big step at that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Cue Slashdotters claiming it is either impossible or a really bad thing in 3..2..1..
Impossible? No. Economical? I don't see how, if it were why isn't the power company doing this centrally? Then they could average it out across everyone on the grid, instead of just you as the problem is usually production not transmission capacity. I guess it might make sense if you're producing your own power with solar panels and don't have to transfer power into the grid when it's sunny and out of the grid when it's dark, but the price seems steep for what you're getting. I mean this tech already exists but only for solar powered cabins off the grid, it's really expensive per kWh and usually just to power light bulbs and such.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Distributed storage capacity has the potential to even out the prices over the day and match consumption and production. It also solves a major issue with most renewables. It would be even more interesting if people were allowed to store cheap electricity and sell it back during expensive hours for profit.
I wonder if they'll last any better as a fixed battery vs a car mounted battery, I think the car mounted ones loose 20-30% of their capacity after 10 years. For example I've heard that a lead acid battery that will typically only last 5 years in a car will last 20 years in a backup battery bank for a home/business. If the pack only lasts 10 years then I highly doubt this will be economical ($108 a month? that's more than my entire electric bill) except in very specialized applications. If it lasts 20 or 30 years ($54-$36 a month) then we're starting to get into the realms of sanity especially in areas with high peak usage costs.
Are you really this stupid?
This isn't stupidity, exactly, it's obstinacy. And actually, it's cognitive dissonance. Typically, when you see someone passionately arguing against their own best interests, that is what at fault. In this case, one of the people ranting against solar and storage is arguing that if this were a good idea, it would have been done already, because they want to believe that they are more intelligent than Elon Musk, every PG&E employee, and the majority of slashdotters who have woken up and recognized that batteries have gotten immensely better within our lifetimes — and will likely improve just as much in the next thirty or forty years.
People want to believe that they are smart and moral, and therefore they justify their poor decisions and the FUD they've spread by continuing to attack ideas long after they have been proven viable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Would prefer a flywheel over a battery for home storage, longer life, more reliable, non hazardous materials, smaller carbon footprint, faster to charge, can accurately monitor/diagose, can bury them underground.
Let's be optimistic, and assume the battery lasts 10 years - 3000 cycles from full-empty.
This is perhaps optimistic.
I am using the numbers for my electricity costs.
These are $.28 or so.
If it's 10kWh, and lasts 3000 cycles, that's 30000kWh.
Or close on $10K worth of electricity stored.
Even with free electricity - it will never break even against grid cost.
Actually having to buy solar panels makes the numbers much worse.
Is it great for off-grid - perhaps. It's a _lot_ more expensive than even spendy lead-acid batteries.
The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide
First 2D batteries ever! Advances in energy storage at a spooky distance made possible thanks to recently published ER = EPR discovery. Is Elon Musk really Ironman?
Donate free food here
What happens if you buy this battery and a year or two down the road someone comes out with a battery that is twice as efficient as the one you have?
Then the whole world changes, whole corporations go out of business overnight while others swell, and there is widespread financial chaos.
This is the exact question I asked Solar City when I was considering solar panels for my house.
That's because you don't understand the solar industry even a little bit. When new, more efficient panels come out, not only is their price per watt higher but the price per watt on the old panels comes down. The primary benefit is not reduction of cost, at least not at first, but in reduction of panel area needed. That reduces the size of an installation which can reduce its cost — but in the case of a residential solar system, that is rarely the case. Since they're usually fixed and roof-mounted, the amount of materials used to mount them is fairly small and there are no property cost considerations whatsoever. The homeowner doesn't care if they have three or six panels on their roof, because they're on their roof and they're not taking up any space they were using before.
The truth is that improvements in batteries and solar panels do not come in 100% increments. They come in small increments delivered over long periods of time, just like the savings on energy costs delivered by a solar installation. Not installing solar now because you're worried that solar is going to get better is just depriving yourself of the benefits that you enjoy by doing it sooner. Meanwhile, your system can be upgraded piecemeal, so you can replace your batteries in 15 years and your panels in 30, maybe add some more batteries then. You can mix and match different kinds of panels to a certain extent; sure, you need different charge controllers for old and new style panels, but you can have both kinds of charge controllers right next to one another, connected to the same battery bank. So really, there is no basis whatsoever for your concern that a 100% efficiency improvement will come along tomorrow and eliminate the value of your investment. And frankly, if such a leap in efficiency were realized in a commercial product, then some government would probably buy up 100% of it and you wouldn't be able to get any anyway. Kind of like what happened with nanosolar, which was then driven out of existence by the chinese dumping panels on our market so none of us got to buy any of it. That stuff had the potential to be disruptive, but now we have to wait for someone to conceive of the idea again with some new and even cheaper technology because we're okay with goods produced with slave labor so long as it doesn't happen within our borders.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So Edison finally won the War of Currents and got Tesla to start using DC.
They do that already with pumped-storage.
Pumped storage has an RTE (round-trip-efficiency) of about 80%. Modern li-ion batteries are over 90%. Pumped storage requires very specific geography (two reservoirs separated by a hill). Batteries will work anywhere.
There are also some liquid batteries.
The most common "flow" batteries are based on vanadium redox, and have an RTE of 65-75%.
Li-ion is just too expensive and maintenance-intensive to use grid scale.
Well, the point of this announcement is that Li-ion is getting cheaper. Li-ion grid storage still won't make sense in the middle of America, where power is cheap, and grids are wide. But it make make sense in places like Hawaii ($0.40 / kw-hr), where grid stability is already a problem.
"Grid scale" simply can not be more expensive than single-house scale.
It is called "Economy of scale" and although some of such may have limits, beyond which cost of additional units begins to increase, none of the conditions for that would apply in this case.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Agreed. Especially with the subsidies, i.e. my money.
You ar eright. Those oil subsidies are a bit of a nuisance.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There are several problems with your statements:
1. " load following coal plant" No such thing AFAIK, they're all base-load. There are a few load-following nuke plants, but they're all in Europe. Load-following is done by combined-cycle gas plants and hydro while peaking is single-cycle gas and, rarely, diesel.
2. "That peak energy is expensive has not much to do with generation pries, but with grid logistics." Partially correct, but mostly not. Peak load requires peaking generators that are inherently inefficient--see "spinning reserve". Done properly, batteries could be used as spinning reserve and peaking instead of wasting gas turning a turbine that is delivering little power to the grid. Here's an example (using Na-S instead of Li): http://www.pgecurrents.com/2013/05/23/largest-battery-energy-storage-system-in-california-to-improve-electric-reliability-for-customers
3. "So after you have increased the yield you are producing to much energy. So actually you burn more coal than you need to fulfill the demand." Hence they are base-load, not load following, the maximize their efficiency. Ditto for nuclear plants (in most of the world). Since load-following is easiest with combined cycle (or single-cycle tied to a separate steam plant), they are used in modern systems. (The latter config (separate shafts and generators) can also be used for peaking.)
4. "... let it go to waste in a resistor at the power plant." Citation DEFINITELY NEEDED here!
5. "The closer the plants are running at the exact demand of the grid, the more likely it is they mainly create costs instead of revenue when they increase their yield. Or when demand suddenly drops!" This is so beyond wrong. The grid is at its most efficient when supply matches load, up to and just prior to firing up the inefficient peaking plants because the base-load and load-follower plants are maxxed out.
6. "Regardless what you chose: it costs the energy company. Hence they demand a premium price for peak times." You're right here, just not for the reasons you state above.
7. "That is where smart meters and batteries or EVs come in During peak time, when energy is supposedly expensive, charging batteries will prevent that problem. Hence smart meter owners with storage capacity will mainly charge during peak times, and not off peak, for a special low price, not for an expensive price." The is exactly 180 degrees opposite to what's really happening. The cheapest power is produced by base-load and hydro, then combined-cycle gas. Thus, charging during least-demand times and discharging during peak when demand is highest is what the power companies want. See the above link; also many power companies have special late-night rates for electric cars, such as here in Arizona. Guess when that rate is? Is it in the afternoon, like you say? Hell no! It's between 11pm (2300) to 5am (0500). Here's the one for APS: https://www.aps.com/library/rates/ET-EV.pdf
If you maintain charge between 20% and 80%, which Tesla does with its cars and almost certainly will do with its home batteries, you can make the battery last 10 years.