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Tesla's Household Battery: Costs, Prices, and Tradeoffs
Technologist Ramez Naam (hat tip to Tyler Cowen's "Marginal Revolution" blog) has taken a look at the economics of Tesla's new wall-mounted household battery system, and concludes that it's "almost there," at least for many places in the world -- and seems to already make sense in some. From his analysis: For some parts of the US with time-of-use plans, this battery is right on the edge of being profitable. From a solar storage perspective, for most of the US, where Net Metering exists, this battery isn’t quite cheap enough. But it’s in the right ballpark. And that means a lot. Net Metering plans in the US are filling up. California’s may be full by the end of 2016 or 2017, modulo additional legal changes. That would severely impact the economics of solar. But the Tesla battery hedges against that. In the absence of Net Metering, in an expensive electricity state with lots of sun, the battery would allow solar owners to save power for the evening or night-time hours in a cost effective way. And with another factor of 2 price reduction, it would be a slam dunk economically for solar storage anywhere Net Metering was full, where rates were pushed down excessively, or where such laws didn’t exist.
That is also a policy tool in debates with utilities. If they see Net Metering reductions as a tool to slow rooftop solar, they’ll be forced to confront the fact that solar owners with cheap batteries are less dependent on Net Metering. ... And the cost of batteries is plunging fast. Tesla will get that 2x price reduction within 3-5 years, if not faster.
All the discussion I've seen about this Tesla announcement has focused on [1] time-shifting electricity demand and [2] storing electricity from on-site generation. Those are the major uses, no argument. But another one is serving as a whole-house UPS. In some parts of the US (like the NE, where I live), a LOT of people have gasoline or natural gas/propane generators that automatically kick on when the power goes out. Many of these system, which are often as expensive or more so than Tesla's battery system, get pressed into service only a couple of times per year, and then for a couple of hours. A battery system can't replace a generator for long outages, of course, but for short-term issues, this is a non-trivial extra benefit.
Model S battery pack uses 25kg of lithium.
Lithium costs $6/kg. So that 25kg costs $150, or about 0.2% of the cost of a Tesla Model S.
the price of lithium will skyrocket
There are 230 billion tonnes of lithium in the ocean. It can be extracted from seawater for about $20 per kg, with current technology. That is about 3 times the current price, but would still represent only a fraction of 1% of the cost of an electric car, and a modest portion of a home battery system. New technology could push the price of seawater extraction below the current world price. Lithium will not be a bottleneck.
>the more batteries produced the cheaper they will become
i simply don't belive it. the same argument was used to justify subsidies for electric cars, yet they still don't make economic sense and are more of a novelty or rich person's toy. therefore, i don't except your premise that economics of scale can be achieved. there is no shortage lithium ion battery production.
the only thing that will bring the price down is a technological break through. and that may never happen.
The Sun-vs-Electricity-Price-BNEF-Grid-Parity.jpg image incorrectly puts Australia's electricity rates at around 22c/kWh whereas it's closer to 28c/kWh in most places. This makes the Tesla storage tank even more attractive for them.
Do we get fresh water with that lithium extraction? If so that makes this even more attractive!
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TFA makes much of the Tesla battery as a replacement for backup generators.... at 7kWh, it's equivalent to about 4 hours from a low end generator.
Not anything that's going to replace my Honda and it's 20 gallons of gas any time soon.
Lead acid batteries are still about half the price per kWh (look near the bottom, at the 48v x 400Ah bank), and come with the same 10 year warranty. Cars care about weight, houses don't.
The new thing here isn't battery storage of solar power, it's lithium-ion batteries instead of lead acid. The price performance for lithium-ion can't compete with lead acid yet, when weight isn't a factor.
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Problem with electric car is the range anxiety and recharge time. Economically they are very much viable, The brainpack that built the first Tesla have cashed in their stock options and have branched out. They are taking pot shots at all vehicles that have stop-and-go use, with long stops in between. School buses, garbage trucks, delivery trucks, postal vans etc. Quick change battery packs are being designed too. I think electric vehicles will start showing up at the unexpected places.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Companies like SolarCity basically install solar systems for no money up front, and then lease them back to you for a period. For many houses, even with these fees, the SolarCity systems will save the homeowner quite a bit of money. Licenses to sell power back to the grid are usually restricted, even in states they are allowed. If you have a battery system installed, you will no longer have to sell your excess solar energy back to the grid. You'll simply be able to store it in your battery for later use. Thus, homeowners with these systems may not have to apply for licenses for their solar systems, since they will not be doing net-metering. This will allow many users to install solar panels who couldn't before. It removes the ability for utilities and/or state governments to restrict the number of homes with solar panels. This is why these batteries will likely have a huge impact.
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Most of Australia experiences Summer temperatures over the maximum operating listed in this specification, and for remote locations this maximum temperature is exceeded every day for weeks on end.
This may be a design issue so a higher specification version could be issued of a physics issue and then it is no go for Aus.
Do we get fresh water with that lithium extraction?
Desalination plants work with reverse osmosis, which converts seawater to freshwater, with concentrated brine as a by-product. That brine is a better starting point for lithium extraction than seawater, so, yes, they could be co-produced.
But extracting either from seawater does not really make any sense. Some mid-east countries desalinate so they can pursue idiotic schemes to grow wheat in the desert, when they could just buy wheat for far less. California has a few desalination plants, because of dumb policies that vastly inflate the cost of water to urban consumers, while subsiding the delivery of rainwater to farmers growing rice and cotton in the desert.
Likewise, lithium from seawater is not economical, and is unlikely to be so in the foreseeable future. It is better to extract it from salt deposits, or existing brine pools. But the seawater extraction cost is a clear ceiling on the price of lithium, and negates any prediction of a lithium supply crisis.
I think electric vehicles will start showing up at the unexpected places.
I think the place they will dominate first (and next, I guess) is motorcycles. The only thing missing from most current electric motorcycles is top speed. Most people don't ride long distances on them, so it's an ideal kind of vehicle to hit next.
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IF you put this in line with your generator, the generator doesn't need to run as often and doesn't have to ramp to follow load -- it can run at it's peak efficiency. Having this in your house with make that 20 gallons of gas go as far as 40 without it. The military has figured this out and are starting to battery buffer their generators at Forward Operating Bases -- fuel convoys are the most ran convoy, so reducing those by half really reduces attacks and the logistics train.
I think the place they will dominate first (and next, I guess) is motorcycles. The only thing missing from most current electric motorcycles is top speed.
Prepare for major E-cycle-gasm. 140 miles per charge highway, 230 city. Full charge time 1 hour. Insanely fast.
https://youtu.be/W1CSdYsJIWQ
Even this one is reportedly quite fast, and being a replica of a "light cycle" from the movie "Tron", it *should* come with a gold-plated Nerd Card included.
https://youtu.be/6aC57JeJt44
They also makes more cosmetically-conventional (and affordable/practical) models as well.
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Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If only there were something that melts snow.
What could do that?
Why don't you crawl up on my roof during the next howling snowstorm and demonstrate your snow melting technique for us? We'll simulate a power outage to make it realistic so the will be no outdoor lighting to help you. Have fun with that.
I would like to know why you think aluminum would make lithium obsolete ? Aluminum is more common and thus cheaper but everything I've read suggests it would be far worse as a battery source. What makes lithium such a good basis for a battery is that it has an atomic weight of just 3. It's the lightest natural metal on the periodic table. With such a small atomic weight - it's density is immense, you can pack a gazillion lithium atoms in a tiny volume. In fact the only things that you can pack more off in the same volume are helium (inert and so useless for batteries) and hydrogen (likewise not useful for batteries - at least the kinds we know now, and with a tendency to explode).
Lithium is metallic, highly reactive and incredibly dense. The more atoms you can pack, the more ions you have, the more charge your battery can hold without having to get bigger.
Aluminum has an atomic weight of 27 (rounded up for simplicity). Or to put it otherwise - to build an aluminum battery with the same charge-holding capacity as my cellphone it would have to weight 9 times as much or one the same size would run down in a 9th of the time.
The only potential I see for an advantage beside cost is that aluminum has a very low electrical resistance (topped pretty much only by gold) - but I doubt this is sufficient to compensate for the massive increase in mass.
Please do enlighten me, I'm not being sarcastic - but why do you believe aluminum would top lithium other than "we have LOTS of it, so much we can waste it making holders for soft drinks" ?
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Your example fails.
Electrical cars are already much cheaper than they were a few years ago. In fact every study has found the TCO of the Model-S is the lowest of any car in it's class. It's cash-price is currently at the top-end of the luxury-sedan class but it's TCO is way below anything else in the same price-range, you make a LOT back in saving on fuel and maintenance (maintenance on an electric car is much lower - even your brake pads last years longer because of regenerative breaking, and there are so many fewer mechanical parts that can wear out). There's a reason why BMW brought out the i8 for example, the other car companies can see the writing on the wall and are desperate to stay in the game.
They are also, once again, proving the futility of not being leaders anymore. While they are trying to build Model-S killers, Tesla is already seeing the Model-S as just the foot-in-the-door model, they are already working on both an economy car and an SUV model. Expect the same pattern on release, slightly more expensive cash-price when you first buy it, but a LOT more value for that money, and a lower TCO due to savings over time.
What you're describing right now is incredibly short-sighted, give it another 2 years and then you can start comparing. Based on current data, if electric cars are not the vast majority of the market in 10 years I would be incredibly surprised and I would say that for that to happen something else entirely we've not even seen yet would need to take over the market, it sure as hell won't be ICE's.
Trust me, ten years from now the only ICEs that may still be on the roads will be classic cars and long-haul heavy-load delivery trucks.
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Burning natural gas, aka heat, is not a "higher grade" energy than electricity, it's a lower grade energy. Electricity can be converted losslessly into heat. Turning heat into electricity loses a large chunk of it.
I agree though that 2kW sustained / 3kW peak is too low for most people - even if they don't use an electric stove. Yes, one can arrange to not use multiple high consumption devices at the same time, but the goal needs to be to not make people's lives more complicated. It's so easy to forget what you have going, too... I always forget that I can't run my microwave and my electric kettle at the same time because they're both on the same circuit and combined it's too much power consumption.
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The inverter design used for battery systems and for solar power systems differ significantly. There are some that can do both, but they're not the ones being used by the majority of solar installers.
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