Battery to power most of your home coming soon?

[PlanetJosh]

Tesla plans to sell a home battery this year. You could avoid having to depend on a fuel powered generator in your back yard or property. Save money on your electrical bill maybe? Well depends on the price of the battery I guess.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/13/8033691/why-teslas-battery-for-your-home-should-terrify-utilities

I'm still trying to search the net for the cost of recharging this thing from your regular electrical outlets. Or if you even can. Surely you can right? As long as it's cost effective to recharge it that way after it's paid itself off from the purchase price. You can recharge it from solar panels if you're lucky enough to have them.

 

[manimal]

I would be happy if they made a conversion kit that had the electronics and volt conversion and regulation that would allow us to throw say 12-20 car batteries for 2-4 years to do the same function. I bet its gonna be MUCH cheaper than what they what to do because those batteries are not cheap.

 

[phucheneh]

Well that's one website that doesn't deserve to get read anymore.

Yes, I'm sure the electric company is terrified of a battery. Because, you know, batteries just make electricity. By magic.

Obviously, 'why they should be afraid of solar panels' would be more accurate...and they're not. At all.

 

[Kaido]

That's pretty much what residential solar is missing...an easy, turnkey battery system for using stored power at night. And for power outages. And for charging your Tesla or other EV after dark. If anyone can do it, it's Tesla - they're the biggest battery buyer on the planet!

Downside is, the Tesla's car battery warranty is only like 8 years & I think you only get like 10 years max of good life out of them, and the battery costs $30k (or $12k pre-paid). In comparison, you can get a pretty pimp whole-house 48kWh Generac gas generator for under $15k:

http://www.generac.com/all-products...rs/quietsource-series/quietsource-series-48kw

It all boils down to how much it's going to cost the homeowner out-of-pocket.

 

[Kaido]

Well that's one website that doesn't deserve to get read anymore.

Hah, you should read the article titles on Weather.com sometime. I'm pretty sure they gave a copy of "Clickbait 101" to their marketing department 😀

 

[manimal]

That's pretty much what residential solar is missing...an easy, turnkey battery system for using stored power at night. And for power outages. And for charging your Tesla or other EV after dark. If anyone can do it, it's Tesla - they're the biggest battery buyer on the planet!

Downside is, the Tesla's car battery warranty is only like 8 years & I think you only get like 10 years max of good life out of them, and the battery costs $30k (or $12k pre-paid). In comparison, you can get a pretty pimp whole-house 48kWh Generac gas generator for under $15k:

http://www.generac.com/all-products...rs/quietsource-series/quietsource-series-48kw

It all boils down to how much it's going to cost the homeowner out-of-pocket.

The only market that will see serious penetration from products like these is what Kaido mentioned the home generator rich crowd. 15-20 k for an installation of a home gas Gennie is pretty comporable and in remote places something like this could be a boon.


Totally agree that the only things holding solar back are home storage options and cheaper materials. If they roll out something like this and it sells next generaitons should obviously be cheaper.

I would be more likely to do a solar setup on my roofs if I could sell back my energy to the grid though that isnt as easy as it sounds.

 

[phucheneh]

Hah, you should read the article titles on Weather.com sometime. I'm pretty sure they gave a copy of "Clickbait 101" to their marketing department 😀

See, and that's the thing- I'm not just shitting on the idea of solar or a battery for storing solar energy (though I think the latter is a moot point since you're not going to generate excess solar power during the day unless NOTHING in your house is turned on...I bet a single refrigerator could tax the amount of solar panels your typical consumer would think is going to OMG keep me 'off the grid!').

But sensationalist titles and misleading crap needs to go away. Or at least stick to the fake news sites, like DailyMail. Or CNN. 😛

 

[jpiniero]

Something like this is going to be needed if Solar is going to go anywhere since it's pretty much inevitable that the utilities are going to stop net metering eventually or seriously curtail how much you can save by sending power to the grid.

 

[Kaido]

But sensationalist titles and misleading crap needs to go away. Or at least stick to the fake news sites, like DailyMail. Or CNN. 😛

I always wonder about emotion entity designation - "this product makes power companies cower in fear" makes me visualize a power company CEO squatting in a corner biting his nails in a dark office...which isn't exactly a realistic visualization 😀

 

[mmntech]

Kaido is right. I'd love to flip a huge middle finger to the government and go off grid, but it's just not financially viable for the average person. I really don't see that changing over the next decade or two.

 

[KeithP]

But sensationalist titles and misleading crap needs to go away. Or at least stick to the fake news sites, like DailyMail. Or CNN. 😛

I can't tell if Elon Musk actually believes his businesses will be eventually successful and that his dog and pony show is designed to bridge the time gap between now and when that happens or if he knows he is in trouble and is just praying for some sort of miracle.

Either way, stories like these are integral in the way Elon Musk's keeps his businesses afloat.

-KeithP

 

[Red Squirrel]

I have a small battery bank, as a start. It will run a couple servers for about 4 hours. 😛

I could see a super high capacity battery being a slight threat to energy companies though, because it makes alternative energy like solar and wind that much more viable. It basically acts as a long term capacitor to smooth out the ripple of sun/wind which is not a constant source of energy, but with a big enough battery it can very well be constant.

I don't think the government would let this happen though, they'd just make it illegal to have such a battery, saying it's a hazard or something and make sure there are building codes against it. Heck, places with HOAs already don't allow solar panels. Would not surprise me if the energy companies pay the HOAs to make those rules, or stock holders are part of the board, etc. Companies will do corrupt stuff to get their way.

I support Tesla in all their efforts though, if a company can pull stuff like this off, it would be them.

 

[Imp]

Couldn't find a cost for the battery from skimming the article.

But going from experience, my SLR batteries are about $100 each... Will a Tesla verified OEM battery cost $100k?

I'm more surprised that we haven't figured out a way to just store potential energy locally -- spare electricity used to power a motor to move water or some solid up, when need power, water/solid falls down and you make juice like a waterfall.

 

[phucheneh]

Couldn't find a cost for the battery from skimming the article.

But going from experience, my SLR batteries are about $100 each... Will a Tesla verified OEM battery cost $100k?

I'm more surprised that we haven't figured out a way to just store potential energy locally -- spare electricity used to power a motor to move water or some solid up, when need power, water/solid falls down and you make juice like a waterfall.

He's all-in on Li-Ion, so those batteries are gonna be $$$. A grand worth of lead-acid batteries could probably do a hell of lot more than five times that amount put into Li-Ion. If properly maintained (as far as state of charge), they'd still probably last ten years, too...not subject to the near-discharges common with cars, none of the vibration, huge temp swings, ect.

But you make a DAMNED fine point with that last paragraph. As relatively simple an idea as that is, it seems pretty profound, actually. I wonder what the lowest-loss way would be to store energy in a mechanical form?

I would definitely say water is out, but the same concept applies to lifting a big weight, like a giant wind-up clock. Very large weight + lots of gear reduction = profit?

 

[twinrider1]

So when do we switch to DC-power in the home.

 

[Red Squirrel]

What I'd like to see is modular lead acid batteries. You can pop the top off, pull individual plates out, clean/recoat them, drain the acid, remove any gunk in it, put it back etc... make this a fairly standard thing. It would be much better for the environment too than recycling entire batteries into completely new ones when you could just refurbish existing one and they'd last a long time, short of maybe replacing the plates once in a while. You could buy "containers" that are different sizes and take the same plates too.

 

[Sonikku]

Tesla was supposed to give us free power from the AIR. WTF ever happened to that??

 

[Red Squirrel]

There's a huge school yard in front of my house, nice flat area. I need to experiment with lighting harvesting devices one of these days.

 

[Puppies04]

Tesla was supposed to give us free power from the AIR. WTF ever happened to that??

As usual in America people with lots of money didn't like the idea of being stopped from taking little bits of money from lots of people so the idea got squashed.

 

[Jeff7]

Well that's one website that doesn't deserve to get read anymore.

Yes, I'm sure the electric company is terrified of a battery. Because, you know, batteries just make electricity. By magic.

Obviously, 'why they should be afraid of solar panels' would be more accurate...and they're not. At all.

Right now, renewables aren't terribly easy to use because they make power whenever their surroundings feel like providing it, and that's not always when you need it.

If it can be stored effectively though, that could make a difference in how the grid operates, at least for low-density residential areas. Industrial consumption would need absolutely enormous batteries to keep production equipment running, so that wouldn't be as practical.


But yes...sensational headlines.
Birds and locusts make loud attention-whoring noises to attract mates.
Humans make attention-whoring headlines to attract views.

 

[Mark R]

I could see a super high capacity battery being a slight threat to energy companies though, because it makes alternative energy like solar and wind that much more viable. It basically acts as a long term capacitor to smooth out the ripple of sun/wind which is not a constant source of energy, but with a big enough battery it can very well be constant.

I don't think the govt are worried.

At the moment, the cheapest deep-cycle batteries cost about $150 and have a life-time cycle capacity of about $10. Unless you need backup power, or want to go off grid and can implement some sort of load shedding when the batteries start depleting, no one is going to pay that.

Energy storage is simply not economically viable, except for very simple technologies such as pumped-storage hydro (and this is geographically limited, since it needs 2 lakes with enough height between them - it's also not very efficient, you're lucky to get 65% of you energy back). It is more than 95% cheaper to run diesel or nat gas generators during periods of energy shortage, than to use batteries - at least at grid scale.

The only exceptions are where zoning regulations mean that power lines cannot be upgraded to an area of power shortage, and where zoning for an additional power plant has been refused (there are a number of sites and towns like this, where town planners have refused new power lines and new power plants, forcing electrical utilities to install battery storage to be able to handle peak loads).

 

[Rakehellion]

So what's the point of having a home battery?

 

[BUTCH1]

Well that's one website that doesn't deserve to get read anymore.

Yes, I'm sure the electric company is terrified of a battery. Because, you know, batteries just make electricity. By magic.

Obviously, 'why they should be afraid of solar panels' would be more accurate...and they're not. At all.

They would be to a small degree if the F-ing panels were not so damm expensive, I can't understand why everything else from microprocessors to CCD's to RAM all have been vastly improved and plummeted in price in the last 25 years yet no one seems to be able to bring an affordable solar panel to market. Yea, I realize that part of the price is the installation but the killer cost is still the panels themselves.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Will be interesting to see what they actually do for this and costs.

I thought at one time they were actually planning on their cars serving this purpose (for temporary power losses and to help distribute load) although I think that's more one of their pie in the sky "it's the future" type of things.

They had figured out a new cheap battery, but in order for it to be feasible you basically need large (like shipping containers or even house sized) enclosures full of rocks. Would be possible for large industrial areas or something, but not feasible for residential (unless you do it smart and set it up for whole neighborhoods).

 

[Ken g6]

The cost of solar + batteries is or very soon will be less than the cost of grid power...in Germany. But that's without the Tesla Gigafactory.

With the Gigafactory a similar situation has been predicted in the USA for some time.