Tesla Home Battery

[WaistDeepGroomers]

Wall-mounted lithium ion batteries designed to store energy generated from home solar. 10 kwh unit for $3,500, $3,000 for 7 kwh unit. Can put out 2 kwh of continuous energy. More details here:

http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

what do we think? Looks pretty damn cool!

[PNWbrit]

what do we think?

Fix the fucking bullshit forum updates and improvements.

[Timberridge]

If it can help catch spam and get rid of the Stash I'm all for it.

[MMP]

Im stoking this post

[JayPowHound]

What do we think?

Clearly we think the floating banners and stash ads are fucking awful.

That's what we think.

[GeezerSteve]

we think?

therefore we am?

[altis]

Oops.

[mufasa5446]

Well, it isn't a bad invention. For the pursuit of cleaner energy, we must take one step at a time...this is a big, more affordable step in the right direction

[DJSapp]

Well, it isn't a bad invention. For the pursuit of cleaner energy, we must take one step at a time...this is a big, more affordable step in the right direction

Yes, it is a horrible invention. It is encouraging more self-righteous folks to 'get off the grid' and expand their footprint. The idea being your hippie hut with solar panels on the roof can now bank energy for the night. Now you really can go build that thing house in the middle of the forest! If you have solar panels and you are connected to the grid, you are backfeeding power into it and helping ease the load on your local power plants. This is actually doing real good without the need for strip mining more rare earth metals to make the $3,500 battery.

There is nothing clean about this. It is a secondary energy storage system, it does not create energy. Musk is trying to make his 'gigafactory' in NV actually produce something and bring the cost of his luxury cars down before the market taps out and his investors realize that he has NEVER turned a profit.

And kill the stupid stash. WTF is that?

edit: Also, big Li-Ion batteries have a bit of a tendency to get really hot and catch on fire. See also the 787.

[abraham]

Aren't they lithium polymer batteries instead? And isn't the big innovation here just marketing and bringing this to the US? I'm pretty sure there are home installed battery packs available in Japan

[abraham]

Aren't they lithium polymer batteries instead? And isn't the big innovation here just marketing and bringing thus to the US? I'm pretty sure there are home installed battery packs available in Japan

[PB]

Just think of it as an over-sized UPS for you home .....

I'm with DJ - it does seem to short circuit the evolving, mutually beneficial relationship between the solar home and the well established infrastructure. Perhaps Senor Musk could produce a mega-battery that could automatically pick up the load when a regional power producing unit goes down temporarily?

[Dantheman]

If you have solar panels and you are connected to the grid, you are backfeeding power into it and helping ease the load on your local power plants.

So the claims below about "backflow" problems are just bullshit from utility companies concerned about dwindling profits?

As the number of solar panels on business and home rooftops multiply, America's power grid is bearing an electrical load that it was never designed to handle: bidirectional power transfer. "There's no grid system in the world designed for that," said Anise Dehamna, principal research analyst at Navigant Research. "Every grid has been designed for unidirectional flow of energy -- from transmission to distribution to the end user."

Utilities in regions where solar and wind has grown faster than others are already grappling with the consequences of "backflow," or electricity that's sold back to grid utilities from distributed renewable power generation systems...In Hawaii, for example, 12% of homes have photovoltaic, or solar, panels -- by far the greatest number for any U.S. state. Residents are dumping so much extra electricity onto the grid that it's struggling to handle the increased capacity. The Hawaiian Electric Company said backflow can destabilize the system. Germany, where residential customers consume distributed renewable energy 80% of the time and use grid power 20% of the time, is also struggling with backflow issues on an antiquated utility grid.

http://www.computerworld.com/article...lly-break.html

[Gepeto]

Fix the fucking bullshit forum updates and improvements.

WhachUmean That's been delegate already. He's on to more important stuff.

[DJSapp]

So the claims below about "backflow" problems are just bullshit from utility companies concerned about dwindling profits?

The issue is transmission and distribution. If 1 house out of 5 in a neighborhood is generating excess energy, that energy (in theory) shouldn't even leave the neighborhood, as the other homes would use it up and this would ease load on the plant and wholesale distribution grid. However, the distribution grid isn't able to fully handle this if entire neighborhoods and cities start exporting energy from their local utility to the distribution market. Utility companies on both the local and wholesale level have been dragging their feet on upgrading the grid to handle this for decades and consumers are starting to force their hand.

The other main issue with this is that the entire grid is setup that all of the plants are varying output based upon the real time needs of the consumers. This is more difficult to forecast when you have non-point variable energy generation such as solar panels. A couple of clouds roll through and a plant in Oregon needs to ramp up from 60 to 100% output. They don't like that.

I have been a proponent of large scale and widely distributed hydrogen generation stations and fuel cells to act as a buffer to balance all of this stuff. Then when the grid (or solar) is generating excess power, they create hydrogen via electrolysis and store it. When the grid needs power to balance out local supply fluctuations, they use their own hydrogen supply. Simple, effective, and fuel cells can be cost effective in larger scale applications, but people won't notice as there is no pollution.

All that said, CA power generators and grid operators will be grateful for all of the solar on the grid come summertime and another round of rolling blackouts while we dry up and blow away.

[boarddad]

Price has to come down;
Stated starting price = $5k
Decent sized solar array = $10k
My monthly bill $50
Payback time = $15k/0.05k = 300 months = 25 years.

ummm... No.

The battery would allow me to price out a smaller system. Since my usage is so low I would be able to take a chance and cut the cord with the power company so this helps get the numbers closer. If I could get the battery and panels for around $5k I'd probably pull the trigger - as would a lot of other people. That has to have the power companies concerned to say the least.

[abraham]

Do you still get credits for purchasing solar panels if you aren't on a grid?

[AdironRider]

Price has to come down;
Stated starting price = $5k
Decent sized solar array = $10k
My monthly bill $50
Payback time = $15k/0.05k = 300 months = 25 years.

ummm... No.

The battery would allow me to price out a smaller system. Since my usage is so low I would be able to take a chance and cut the cord with the power company so this helps get the numbers closer. If I could get the battery and panels for around $5k I'd probably pull the trigger - as would a lot of other people. That has to have the power companies concerned to say the least.

So are you talking installed costs? 10k buys a fucking shitton of solar panels these days, way more than needed for a residential house.

[stalefish3169]

WhachUmean That's been delegate already. He's on to more important stuff.

Like bringing back tags?

[old goat]

My kid bought a new house in Sacramento in a little complex of 39 houses with PV panels and Sunverge battery storage. I don't know the specs but it seems to work pretty well judging by his very low electric bills.

[splat]

It is encouraging more folks to 'get off the grid' and expand their self-righteous footprint.

fify, dj.

Some utilities curse the new distributed generation of a hybrid grid and some are embracing it or balancing it more on their terms by building their own large solar projects, etc. A lot of utilities typically fight change until it has overtaken them and third party interests have seized the opportunities the utilities hesitated to embrace. I once had a meeting with a local utility VP when I was in the business who screamed at my partner and me that we would be offering energy efficiency to 'his' customers over his dead body. I live by a super productive geothermal plant that the same utility did everything in their power to ignore, if not close, because of the perceived threat, I would assume. Once the PUC required the utility purchase a certain % of green energy generation, they bought the geothermal power. Now, however, the same utility is fighting buy-back of excess residential solar power tooth and nail at the legislative level, even though the Tesla home batteries will be manufactured 20 miles away.

Purchased at avoided cost levels, utilities get power from geothermal, solar and residential generation at astoundingly low prices. But some utilities tend to act like they own all power and customer decisions and upgrading the grid to handle this distributed generation is virtually impossible. However, once overwhelmed with demand and regulatory requirements, the utilities will jump into action and act as if they invented the solution to hybrid grids. They see their generation and transmission profits dwindling with time and know their business in the future will be maintenance of the new generation hybrid grid at the distribution level.

The root source of utility frustration is disappearing revenue based on the financing of alternative power, which I used to describe to my customers as a no-down financing of an infrastructure upgrade through a 'reallocation of monies currently paid to utilities' in which the amount saved off the monthly historical utility costs is the amount paid monthly to finance the upgrade. Calculating the life cycle of the equipment installed and the lifetime of the payments, the date when the upgrade generates pure savings can be pinpointed. It is that reallocation of monies paid to utilities that is freaking them the fuck out.

[splat]

Price has to come down;
Stated starting price = $5k
Decent sized solar array = $10k
My monthly bill $50
Payback time = $15k/0.05k = 300 months = 25 years.

ummm... No.

The battery would allow me to price out a smaller system. Since my usage is so low I would be able to take a chance and cut the cord with the power company so this helps get the numbers closer. If I could get the battery and panels for around $5k I'd probably pull the trigger - as would a lot of other people. That has to have the power companies concerned to say the least.

Jeezuz, that payback is long. While working on projects at Eielson AFB in Fairbanks, AK, I had my engineers run a solar analysis and an array there had a 14 year payback. We bypassed it because our projects had to hit a benchmark 10 year payback .

[uglymoney]

We tax carbon and the payback debate goes away. Innovators like Elon Musk actually make money selling batteries while raping and strip mining the land for products that are used once and then recycled presumably forever. Carbon producers have to become innovative to stay in the game and they spend their huge capitol resources on that innovation. We win three times and end up with less carbon insulating and heating the earth.

We don't tax carbon and carbon producers retain and grow their wealth and power among the oligarchs while they rape and strip mine the land for products that once used are gone forever while pocketing and offshoring the profits. Elon Musk and other innovators that are ahead of the supply and demand bell curve that will eventually raise the price of carbon anyway (oil in the near term, coal in the long term) go belly up. We lose three times and end up with more carbon insulating and heating the earth.

[splat]

Carbon? Check out the movie Pump on netflix. Total eye-opener.

[uglymoney]

Carbon? Check out the movie Pump on netflix. Total eye-opener.

I'll watch it but if it encourages me to run ethanol I'll sneer because I drive by a massive ethanol plant everyday that has its very own equally massive coal plant to produce the energy to cook the ethanol and hundreds of grain trucks all powered by diesel delivering the corn daily. Not the answer but I concede other ways of producing biofuel still have the jury scratching their heads on viability.