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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.
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.