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Tesla Announces Home Battery System
An anonymous reader writes: Early this morning, Elon Musk finally revealed Tesla's plans for the home: battery systems designed to store up to 10 kWh of power. The company is leveraging the battery technology they've developed for their electric cars to enable more people to switch to renewable power for their homes. There will be two models of the battery. The 10 kWh version will cost $3,500, and the 7 kWh version will cost $3,000. They can deliver power at a continuous rate of 2kW, with peaks up to 3 kW. Crucially, the batteries will be warrantied for 10 years. Musk thinks the market for home batteries will expand to at least two billion, eventually. But even a much smaller uptake for now will validate the creation of Tesla's "gigafactory."
"The gigafactory is the recipient of the largest incentive package ever given by Nevada at $1.3 billion, which followed a hotly contested tax incentive bidding war between various states to land the Tesla battery plant. For the investment to pay off, Tesla needs to convince hundreds of thousands of consumers per year to buy its cars and battery products, with the gigafactory serving as a cornerstone to the company's sales strategy. ... An early gigafactory rendering released by Tesla stated that the plant will have an annual battery pack output of 50 gigawatt hours — the bulk of which will go toward batteries for cars with most of the remainder to be allocated for stationary batteries, according to figures mentioned by Tesla's chief technology JB Straubel last year. The gigafactory's sheer scope makes other battery products a possibility as well."
"The gigafactory is the recipient of the largest incentive package ever given by Nevada at $1.3 billion, which followed a hotly contested tax incentive bidding war between various states to land the Tesla battery plant. For the investment to pay off, Tesla needs to convince hundreds of thousands of consumers per year to buy its cars and battery products, with the gigafactory serving as a cornerstone to the company's sales strategy. ... An early gigafactory rendering released by Tesla stated that the plant will have an annual battery pack output of 50 gigawatt hours — the bulk of which will go toward batteries for cars with most of the remainder to be allocated for stationary batteries, according to figures mentioned by Tesla's chief technology JB Straubel last year. The gigafactory's sheer scope makes other battery products a possibility as well."
This battery could power a smaller sized home for a whole day. Kind of thing that can make solar energy viable.
Love him or loather him, but Musk is changing the world.
You didn't even read his post before replying.
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Have you calculated the cost difference in hourly rates, your yearly use and the total price of such a setup? How long will it take to pay itself back before you see any financial gains?
IMHO, this is totally the wrong way to look at this technology. Personally I don't care if it's more expensive than conventional power, if I could install a small wind turbine and a few solars on my property and charge this battery, it's off the grid for my acre. Totally worth it. People need to stop thinking in terms of 'its more expensive than conventional power.' That is the wrong way to look at this, IMHO.
And if everyone does that, the cheap rate goes away - its only there because there is excess capacity at that time, and its not worth taking more generators off line during the middle of the night consumption troughs because it takes them time to come back up for the wake-up peaks. Thats the reason the cheap rate exists (we call it Economy 7 in the UK).
So if everyone avails themselves of the cheap electricity in the middle of the night to store for use during the day, the excess capacity vanishes and instead we get an actual load needing to be catered for in additional capacity. So the cheap rate would be discontinued due to changes in consumption habits.
People need to stop thinking in terms of 'its more expensive than conventional power.' That is the wrong way to look at this, IMHO.
No. This is EXACTLY the way people need to look at it.
Cost vs benefit. If a solution is uneconomical NOW, buying it is a silly splurge, like buying a $100,000 sports car as your daily driver in Alaska when what you need is a $30,000 4x4 truck.
That, "SOME DAY" it might be more economical to install an identical system does not change the fact that it's still a silly splurge NOW.
If the system does NOT pay for itself over a reasonable period of time (and within the lifetime of the product warranty), you're splurging. Not spending wisely.
Chas - The one, the only.
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First, none of these things move forward without some enthusiast buy-in. Loads of things are stupid from a strict dollar-efficiency perspective but people still do them anyway. Computers held fairly low value in terms of dollar efficiency for decades, but enthusiasts found them worthwhile and helped move that industry forward.
Second, you confuse cost and value. You know the cost of the utility power and the off-grid generation and storage components but you don't know the value to the consumer of being off-grid. What you see as a splurge they may see as some kind of inherent value.
Steve Jobs merely made trinkets for douchebags with too much money.
Musk, as self-aggrandizing as he may be, at least is genuinely trying to make the world a slightly better place (while making a buck at the same time).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
However much you hate it, the bottom-line finance number gives you an idea of the materials, work, availability, etc. involved.
A system that is not economically viable is taking MORE product out of the earth, and rarer products, that need more refinement and processing, etc. in order to create it in the first place than it is replacing other power-generation methods and their costs.
It's quite simple. The market price changes to reflect the difficult, cost, legislation, rarity, etc. of the materials and labour involved. If something is more expensive it's because it COSTS MORE to give it to you. If something can't pay that cost back (at least, in a reasonable time) you've taken out MORE from the earth including shipping the thing to yourself and paying for machines to modify it, and paying for the companies mass-production plans, etc. than you've stopped being taken out elsewhere.
It's not perfect. It's not entirely accurate. But the monetary cost of something is a pretty good indicator. This is why lithium batteries are more expensive than lead-acid equivalents, why oil products are being taxed, why discovery of shale gas can drop the gas price, etc.
Also, as you're moving the burden from government and entire countries to individual users here, cost matters more than most other things. You're asking ME to take the effort, research, purchase, maybe pay for planning and electrical works, etc. this product that you're SELLING in order for me to help the earth. There's a cost involved in that no matter what. Some of that cost is a "donation" because you want to live in a friendly way. Some of that cost is because of the convenience to you if the power blips for a moment. Some of that cost is for your peace of mind.
At the end of the day, cost is a pretty good measure of all kinds of things to do with a system. This is why energy companies are complaining about the "payback" electricity schemes from solar users... the costs they incur to put their pittance of electricity back into the grid far outweigh anything else. The government has to subsidise those costs, or the electricity companies have to raise their prices. And, suddenly, it's actually more expensive to run "off-grid" than you thought and you end up going back "on-grid" because the cost isn't worth the convenience any more.
I could UPS all my appliances today. I could just buy a tiny UPS, or save up towards a bigger one, each month and stick them on batteries that survive power outages for whatever length of time I choose to do it for. But I don't because it costs. And that cost does not compare to the cost of the power going off every now and then, or the electricity company raising its prices by 10% a year.
If an off-grid system does not return money for you, the money you pay would have been better off just buying a generator and some fuel for it for the rare occasions the power does go off, and forgetting about all these fancy gadgets that help you live off-grid. In which case, both the green-ness and the user suffer.
That's why governments are subsidising PV etc. installs. They have to bring the price down or people will just look and think "Sod it, I'll just buy a genny and keep a tank of petrol in the garage for if anything happens" rather than go off-grid.
Things have to be profitable, and everything has a cost.
Some random googling for "average daily electric usage" seems to indicate that Americans use about 20-30 kWh per day. So a 10 kWh battery will only over 1/2 to a 1/3 of day. As a power backup this seems pretty flimsy. People would have to buy 2 or 3 of these for a single day power backup, which seems a little crazy. Maybe in combination with solar/wind? I dunno, a generator seems more practical, you can just go buy more gas for it. Maybe if my applianced knew when they are running on battery power and could auto adjust their consumption. Otherwise, I am just going to find out about a major power outage a few hours after everyone else. Using it for cheeper electricity is a little funny too. Currently, electricity is already cheep. Even if it cut my electricity bill in half, its not really all that much per month. It's like cutting my bathroom tissue costs in half, not really going to make me a rich man.
So if everyone avails themselves of the cheap electricity in the middle of the night to store for use during the day, the excess capacity vanishes and instead we get an actual load needing to be catered for in additional capacity. So the cheap rate would be discontinued due to changes in consumption habits.
And when that happens the power companies would need far fewer power plants because peak usage would drop dramatically, perhaps around half what it would be otherwise. This sounds like a great situation.
Temporary solutions to many problems is all we need as technology continuously improves. Take advantage of Time of Use rates today, and in five years switch to primarily solar power as the prices drop even further. Everything doesn't have to be a fix that will last a lifetime.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
They will also offer an additional 10-year warranty that can be purchased at the end of the original for a comfortable 20-year warranty total.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Well said, also no one seems to be calculating in the environmental costs of conventional power, or the benefits to society as a whole when those environmental costs are reduced *IF* more and more of us switch over to such systems.