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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."
I priced out a backup propane generator as a backup for my home that cost about the same thing. Never went with it. This could provide a home with good backup power in case of outage. (keep the sump pump or the furnace going anyway)
Panel efficiency falls by half during cloudy weather, but you will still get some power.
You get less power on cloudy days, but you also need less, since AC is the biggest consumer of residential power.
Just means you pull more from the grid during winter.
Which is not that much of a problem. Winter power consumption is spread out more than summer consumption, so the grid can deal with it more easily.
The biggest challenge is the 5-7pm peak in demand. Just as solar is dropping off, people come home from work, kick on the AC to cool the house down, and turn on the appliances to start dinner. If these batteries can help shave off that peak, that will be a big help.
Tesla dont make batteries they just buy them from Panasonic, American business in a nutshell, buy $product from Asia and tell everyone you made it, Americas is just Asias best salesman, nothing innovative here (except PR) at all.
It's about GBP30-40 for a 100Ah 12V car lead-acid battery on a random site. These are mass-produced, cheap and easily available. Granted that they are heavy and large, but... scaling up... that's 1.2KWh alone. We'd only need ten car batteries to match it. That's GBP300-400.
Why, then does it cost the equivalent of nearly $3,500 (GBP2200) for the same here?
Sure, we allow leeway for different voltages (necessary for high-current loads, etc.), different technologies, deep-cycle, etc. but... that's a five-to-seven-fold increase over what we're using now for quite basic solar, wind, etc. power storage and can be obtained from any garage. And 10 car batteries aren't prohibitively large, expensive, difficult to handle, etc.
With 10 year warranty and 2KW peaks? That's way within range of such a pack. Hell, stick a decent split charger / inverter on the end, one designed for home use, and it still comes nowhere near the price of this home battery.
Is my maths wrong? Have I missed something? Quite what are we trying to sell here apart from an overpriced battery and some electronics on either end of it?
I priced out a backup propane generator as a backup for my home that cost about the same thing. Never went with it. This could provide a home with good backup power in case of outage. (keep the sump pump or the furnace going anyway)
If nothing else, this should be +5'ed for informative.
There is no free lunch. It cost me a good bit to provide backup power for my place, as you note, similar in cost to these batteries.
And once in place, this system is much more convenient and takes much less attention than the traditional petrofueled mechanical generator system.
Because it isn't only (ore even) about ROI. Its about providing a functional adjunct to the grid, which in my area is not as reliable as it once was.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
to power 2 600W HID lights bulbs to grow weed off the grid. The battery would pay for itself in one crop of 8-10 weeks.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
What would make solar energy viable
2 thousand dollar houses would make homes a lot more viable too.
I get your argument, I really do, but it's like saying that finishing the living room or kitchen isn't viable because of the cost. You could just staple plastic to the walls, and get cardboard bankers boxes from Staples instead of cabinets and save a lot of money over kitchen cabinets and drywalling.
Reductio ad absurdum arguments aside, yes, solar and batteries technology is expensive, but it is falling. Coupled with reductions in power needs as we get more efficient lighting and appliances you'll see a lot of the arguments fall like dominos.
If I might give an example. I concurrently re-insulated my house, and switched from an oil furnace to one of the new super-efficient gas furnaces, which burn so clean and efficiently that the chimney is a PVC pipe and a condensate return to the sewer.
I now spend for the entire heating season roughly what others in houses my size and in my area are spending a month. If ROI is paramount, I've reached that point after a few years.
That isn't even taking into account the increases in comfort, less housecleaning because of cleanliness (oil heat is filthy) and reduction of electricity use because the gas furnace blower fans are also engineered for efficiency.
Finally, yeah, its expensive, but all these advancements are at first. Its started off as people for whom money isn't an object, but are interested in the gee whiz factor. Then as production economy starts to kick in, the costs start to come down, and more and more people start using it. Eventually it becomes the norm.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Like the parent post said, "Musk is changing the world":
Solar City lets you buy your solar panels for zero down and "lets you pay off your loan with monthly payments based on the electricity your system produces." So it ends up that the electric bill plus the Solar City bill add up to less than the old electric bill. You don't need a pile of money lying around to buy a modern home solar system. Non-wealthy people who do not care about the environment are signing up with Solar City simply because they'll pay less for utilities.
So, yeah, Musk is changing the world--he's causing people who don't care about the environment to put solar panels on their house that a few years ago would have made zero financial sense. In case you haven't noticed, he also made an all electric vehicle drooled over by people who don't care about saving gas.
We occasionally have these things called Hurricanes in Florida. I've gone as long as 8 days without power in the past. I have solar now, so I would still have some power after the lines are knocked out, but I wouldn't have power at night. So during the day I can run the fridge and freezer to keep them from thawing and maybe run a room sized AC unit set to 60 degrees to cool down my bedroom so it's not stifling at night.
But for $3500 I can now have lights and TV and night even when the lines are down. I'm willing to pay that much just to have the safety of backup power. This will happen within the next 5 years for me.
If I'm a "wind/solar" or other non-24x7-generating company and I know what fraction of my customers have a several-hour-backup power supply, I can offer them lower rates in exchange for "turning them off" or even "buying electricity back from their batteries" in times of peak demand. This will let me offer services to more customers than I normally could handle.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Seriously, the man is a genious, but batteries for homes is not that good, unless it is possible for utility to control them as well. At the very least, Tesla should make available server software that utility can interact with home batteries when owner allows. In seasonal weather with high demands and when solar can be blocked via clouds or length of day, it is best to allow utility to control when to charge them , or buy from them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think that power companies should offer more incentives for people to have these in order to smooth out the electricity demand.
Why?
Why is not the optimal consumer incentive which the electric company could offer the price difference between peak and non-peak rates? By "optimal" I mean socially efficient, not the biggest or whatever you happen to want the most.
Here's why you'd want it in the UK. Apparently it's the only country in the world where consumers regularly cause 3 Gigawatt spikes:
http://www.geek.com/news/tea-t...
These folk are not going going to notice/care if you charge them double during the spike - because it's peanuts, a small fraction of a KWh. If you try and charge them 100X then they'll rebel and have you investigated for price gouging. So, no, pricing alone won't smooth out these demand spikes.
If each house had a battery and a smart grid could tell each house when to use that battery, then it could smooth out those spikes very nicely.
$0.50. That's how much savings one full charge/discharge can save you at current rates. That's $182 per year. Even people that plan ahead balk at a 5 year payoff, so you'd have to have the cost for a 10kWh battery be under $1000 to get people to buy in. Even $2k seems unlikely at technology and market levels.
Obviously those numbers change if the peak/off peak ratio changes, but $0.05 isn't enough of a difference to make it practical for that usage. Of course, it also functions as backup power or quite possibly can be used to increase the effective efficiency of renewables. I'm not trying to say that the system isn't impractical, just not economically sound for the on/off peak power shifting.