Tesla To Announce Battery-Based Energy Storage For Homes 299
Okian Warrior writes: Billionaire Elon Musk will announce next week that Tesla will begin offering battery-based energy storage for residential and commercial customers. The batteries power up overnight when energy companies typically charge less for electricity, then are used during the day to power a home. In a pilot project, Tesla has already begun offering home batteries to SolarCity (SCTY) customers, a solar power company for which Musk serves as chairman. Currently 330 U.S. households are running on Tesla's batteries in California. The batteries start at about $13,000, though California's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PCG) offers customers a 50% rebate. The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide, and need to be installed at least a foot and a half off the ground. They can be controlled with a Web app and a smartphone app.
Combined with solar (Score:5, Insightful)
Would make sense to have pv panels charge them up during the day and release energy at night.
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What about panels charging the batteries during the day, then release energy at the evening (before night and beginning of night), then charge batteries from grid during off-peak night, then release it during the morning.
That gets more complex though and you'd want to add more complexity (smart water heater or something), I'd be wary of that complexity i.e. more and more stuff to build, buy and maintain.
Solar rarely enough for the whole house (Score:2)
Few people have the space for so many panels to run their house on them — even if the problem of storing it were solved. From MIT [mit.edu]:
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And, truth be told, they should be using these wonder-batteries to store electricity during the night so they wouldn't have to charge more during the day
Your plan would cost more than what the utilities are already doing. Doing it your way would mean they would have to charge more at night and during the day.
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Your plan would cost more than what the utilities are already doing. Doing it your way would mean they would have to charge more at night and during the day.
Not really. If the utilities used batteries to store energy generated cheaply at night and charged peak time rates for that energy during the day, the batteries might pay for themselves and provide more peak capacity when it's needed - without having to build new fossil fuel burning plants.
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They do that already with pumped-storage. Reversible hydroelectric. There are also some liquid batteries. Li-ion is just too expensive and maintenance-intensive to use grid scale.
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e.g. flow batteries:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news... [prnewswire.com]
Re:Solar rarely enough for the whole house (Score:5, Informative)
They do that already with pumped-storage.
Pumped storage has an RTE (round-trip-efficiency) of about 80% [energystorage.org]. Modern li-ion batteries are over 90%. Pumped storage requires very specific geography (two reservoirs separated by a hill). Batteries will work anywhere.
There are also some liquid batteries.
The most common "flow" batteries are based on vanadium redox, and have an RTE of 65-75% [wikipedia.org].
Li-ion is just too expensive and maintenance-intensive to use grid scale.
Well, the point of this announcement is that Li-ion is getting cheaper. Li-ion grid storage still won't make sense in the middle of America, where power is cheap, and grids are wide. But it make make sense in places like Hawaii ($0.40 / kw-hr), where grid stability is already a problem [pbs.org].
Cost of replacing worn Li-ion batteries (Score:3)
Modern li-ion batteries are over 90%
Last time I checked, lithium-ion batteries lost a substantial chunk of their capacity after a few years. Does the 10 percent loss figure that you stated include the cost of manufacturing a replacement battery?
Re:Cost of replacing worn Li-ion batteries (Score:4, Interesting)
If you maintain charge between 20% and 80%, which Tesla does with its cars and almost certainly will do with its home batteries, you can make the battery last 10 years.
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Actually you only need one reservoir. The lower one can be a river, and usually is.
Or in your Hawaii example, it could be the sea ... use a salt water pumped storage system :D
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"Grid scale" simply can not be more expensive than single-house scale.
It is called "Economy of scale" [wikipedia.org] and although some of such may have limits, beyond which cost of additional units begins to increase, none of the conditions for that would apply in this case.
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It can, when comparing like things. However, one of these is not like the other. At grid scale, it has to compete against the wholesale price of electricity. At residential scale, even though it is smaller and less efficient, it competes against the RETAIL price of electricity. This difference suggests a different source of the problem.
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The energy is not generated cheaply at night. It basically costs the same. (The idea when to charge batteries is a misconception on /. You charge during peak times, see below.)
That peak energy is expensive has not much to do with generation pries, but with grid logistics.
Consider you have a load following coal plant running at lets say 75% during a peak period, does not really matter, lets say a random time between 10:00 and 17:00 (5PM for the americans).
Now for some reason you get an extra load on the grid
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There are several problems with your statements:
1. " load following coal plant" No such thing AFAIK, they're all base-load. There are a few load-following nuke plants, but they're all in Europe. Load-following is done by combined-cycle gas plants and hydro while peaking is single-cycle gas and, rarely, diesel.
2. "That peak energy is expensive has not much to do with generation pries, but with grid logistics." Partially correct, but mostly not. Peak load requires peaking generators that are inherently ine
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Whoever is doing it, if it makes sense for anybody to store power generated at off-peak times for usage at peak times, it makes more sense for the generating companies to do it: because they can afford bigger storage with dedicated personnel and manage the generation-storage combination finer.
But, of course, this begs the question of whether it makes s
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48kWh... must be a house in the US. ... In The Netherlands, the average electricity use for a family of 2,2 persons is about 3500 kWh/year, or about 9,6 kWh per day. That's around 20% of the energy use of an average house in the US.
Perhaps in the US you don't need batteries or solar energy as much as you need decent insulation.
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24kWh/day = 24kWh/24h = 1kW. Which is a completely ridiculous amount of electricity.
How is that a ridiculous amount of electricity? That is about the amount of electricity a 1.5HP motor uses. That is about 1/24th of he amount of electricity required to charge a Nissan Leaf battery. You people love to chastise people for driving gas guzzlers, and then when people change to electric cars, you chastise them for using too much electricity. At least if we go back to driving gas guzzlers our electric usage will go down.
Re: Solar rarely enough for the whole house (Score:2)
However in my case it may be somewhat valid, as I run a home office with multiple PCs and such that goes with that, am home most of the day, as well as my wife and kids (who are homeschooled). So we use power almost all day long. And we are billed into the 3rd teir pricing as well. We dont have AC but all of our appliances are elec. vs. gas which doesnt help either.
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My home server runs 24x7. It draws 11W when idling, or about 264 watt-hours per day, and the current versions draw barely half that. Compared with heating and cooling, the server is lost in the noise. Unless you're serving a site that absolutely requires staggering
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If you are using 48kWh a day on heating, a heat pump is going to pay itself back in months or even weeks.
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48kwh pr day??? Holy crap. We use 12kwh pr day(no ac) for light, cooking, cleaning, washing machine, dryer, 4 drive NAS always running, home server(NUC) always running, 4 ip cameras, exterior lightning when dark, 3 computers, fridge, freezer, 50 bottle wine fridge, internet router, 2xwifi routers, 3 switches. When it gets hotter (32 Celsius) we add 10-12kWh for the AC(Mitsubishi with inverter controlled compressor), the house are properly insulated to keep the cold or heat inside. 48kwh on average are just wasteful.
That's amazing. How were you able to tell GP was being "wasteful" and not just using a lot of electricity? I guess I should not point out that the amount that GP used was only 50% more than the average household in the U.S. and about on par with the average use in an extreme southern state.
Plus there are many other factors. A large house uses much more than a small house. An all electric house uses more than an electric and gas house. Maybe GP is environmentally conscious and drives an EV and has to charg
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I can't resist bragging. We live on a sailboat. We have 200w of solar. Our electric use use is 0.6 kWh per day. 80% of that goes to our 12v refrigeration system. Is this a hardship? No, we live a luxurious life.
I confess, a big part of the secret is that we sail north in the summer to avoid the need for air conditioning and south in the winter to avoid the need for heating.
What is good for utilities is good for homeowners too. Investments in energy conservation have a much higher ROI than investme
and... (Score:3, Funny)
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Cue Slashdotters claiming it is either impossible or a really bad thing in 3..2..1..
Well, we don't have the information. Its a really expensive thing. My first question is how long will they last before they degrade significantly?
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Re: and... (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Especially with the subsidies, i.e. my money.
You ar eright. Those oil subsidies are a bit of a nuisance.
Re:and... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cue Slashdotters claiming it is either impossible or a really bad thing in 3..2..1..
Impossible? No. Economical? I don't see how, if it were why isn't the power company doing this centrally? Then they could average it out across everyone on the grid, instead of just you as the problem is usually production not transmission capacity. I guess it might make sense if you're producing your own power with solar panels and don't have to transfer power into the grid when it's sunny and out of the grid when it's dark, but the price seems steep for what you're getting. I mean this tech already exists but only for solar powered cabins off the grid, it's really expensive per kWh and usually just to power light bulbs and such.
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Also, the power company IS doing this, but only halfway. It's subsidizing half the cost of the system up front. Honestly, this whole thing makes a lot more sense for the power company than it does for the end consumer.
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Correct, but it does provide battery backup during power outages and the net cost after 5 years is in the $3000 range. A good generator with auto-switchover can cost that with installation and it makes a whole lot more noise. Also the battery should last more then 10 years though with less capacity then when it was new.
Re: and... (Score:2)
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Did you read the cost per battery? There is your answer right there. The summary talks about saving money by buying power during off peak hours and using the battery when power is expensive, but you'll never made $6,500 doing that before the battery wears out.
Apparently you have no clue what you are saying. Have you ever lived in California and payed by the tiered billing? I lived in the central valley and during a heat wave in the summer my elect bills averaged $750 a month with a high one month of $975. I heated with gas and so during the winter my electric bills were $150. So roughly I spend $600 - $800 a month for a/c. The Tier 1 rate currently is $0.359 peak $0.111 of peak a savings of 2/3 or $400 a month but I was Tier 5 which is $0.531 peak vs $0.283 off
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Utilities do use batteries for short term electricity storage. http://www.aesenergystorage.co... [aesenergystorage.com]
Re:and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you really this stupid?
This isn't stupidity, exactly, it's obstinacy. And actually, it's cognitive dissonance. Typically, when you see someone passionately arguing against their own best interests, that is what at fault. In this case, one of the people ranting against solar and storage is arguing that if this were a good idea, it would have been done already, because they want to believe that they are more intelligent than Elon Musk, every PG&E employee, and the majority of slashdotters who have woken up and recognized that batteries have gotten immensely better within our lifetimes — and will likely improve just as much in the next thirty or forty years.
People want to believe that they are smart and moral, and therefore they justify their poor decisions and the FUD they've spread by continuing to attack ideas long after they have been proven viable.
Flamebait? (Score:2)
I take it back, perhaps there is a conspiracy.
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Irrelevant. This is an idea already proven viable.
Has not been proven to be economically viable.
Irrelevant. Not the only technology.
It is the technology the solution in the ARTICLE uses. The rest is pink unicorns.
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I agree. It's more false consciousness than cognitive dissonance.
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Very much possible (they're already doing it). and very much a good thing; decoupling time of energy production from time of energy consumption allows for both cleaner and cheaper electricity. But they still have a VERY long way to go if they cost $13k.
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1. Why the fuck do you care?
2. Sexual reassignment surgery is not "cutting your dick off".
3. She has not even had the surgery.
4. Why the fuck do you care?
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I'm sure your wife appreciated your insane presumption of entitlement to tell people how they should look.
A first step (Score:4, Informative)
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I don't think the number of off-the-grid users will change much. Fundamentally, a good-enough and cheap-enough battery will improve the grid and smooth out the fluctuations in daily demand - and with small renewables, the new fluctuations in daily generation.
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13 grand will also buy you lots of electricity. Assuming a 7 year lifespan, you are spending 1.85K per year just on the batteries. My electric bill don't even add up to 1.85K per year.
Re:A first step (Score:5, Interesting)
Mine's more.
Where we moved to in North Carolina, we're only served by two utilities: AT&T (for internet/phone/TV) and Duke Progressive (for electricity). We use electric heating--which is expensive, and while our neighborhood will be getting natural gas in the next few months, it makes no economic sense for us to replace our central heating system with gas. (The payoff exceeds the lifespan of the HVAC already installed.)
I have to admit, the primary reason for not getting solar where we've lived in Los Angeles and now in Raleigh is that it didn't make a lot of economic sense. But as solar cell prices drop, having a battery-backed solar system on my house starts to sound more promising--especially after the last storm which knocked out our power for a couple of days.
Since we are on a well and septic tank, if we can get most of our power from solar then we can pretty much be self-sufficient if there is a major disruption in the future--and that's worth a premium over what we now pay for electric service.
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Resistive heating or a heat pump? If the former, I suspect that replacing your AC with a heat pump would save you a lot of money. I would even go so far to say that if your HVAC is old then it would make sense to upgrade (because you'd have t
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Where we moved to in North Carolina, we're only served by two utilities: AT&T (for internet/phone/TV) and Duke Progressive (for electricity).
What about Timewarner?
We use electric heating--which is expensive, and while our neighborhood will be getting natural gas in the next few months, it makes no economic sense for us to replace our central heating system with gas. (The payoff exceeds the lifespan of the HVAC already installed.)
North Carolina generally has cheap electricity. If you have a heatpump, your electricity bill should not be that bad! Heatpumps generally work well in our climate.
I have to admit, the primary reason for not getting solar where we've lived in Los Angeles and now in Raleigh is that it didn't make a lot of economic sense. But as solar cell prices drop, having a battery-backed solar system on my house starts to sound more promising--especially after the last storm which knocked out our power for a couple of days.
I've run the numbers for the Triangle area after getting quotes through several local companies. Including both the federal and state tax credits and depreciation (this was for a commercial installation), break even is generally 7-8 years off. Probably worthwhile, but not a clear case. Add in a number 10 grand plus for batter
Re:A first step (Score:4, Interesting)
That's only true if you figure that the battery is worthless at the end of its useful life. That's a silly assumption, because it's still full of the same amount of lithium as when you bought it. Recycling that lithium is much easier and cheaper than mining new lithium, so they battery is going to have a decent trade in value.
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Recycling that lithium is much easier and cheaper than mining new lithium, so they battery is going to have a decent trade in value.
If this were true, we would be seeing a big market for trading-in old lithium batteries. Where can I sell/trade-in my old notebook batteries?
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Sorry for the sarcasm, but I've heard this stuff before, Some years ago, I replaced my oil furnace and re-insulated my house. I had a good oil furnace, and replaced it with one of the 99+ percent gas furnaces. Pretty cool, they extract so much heat from the gas that the "chimney' is a piece of PVC pipe. The house was already insulated
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Not really. This is a step closer to having a more useful grid. Right now, the grid isn't much of a grid, it's more like a loose net with lots of big holes in.
What would get more houses completely off the grid would be batteries that last forever and are relatively inexpensive. They don't need to be space-efficient, they just need to last effectively eternally, a human lifetime at least.
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Actually, I think one of the biggest results of this will be to allow homes with solar energy to store ALL the energy they capture with their panels, instead of feeding that energy back into the grid. This will effectively neuter the arguments of power companies who say that grid feed-in is making the grid unstable, thus reducing the impetus for putting punitive fees on houses with solar panels.
Re:A first step (Score:4, Insightful)
Since Pacific Gas and Electric is actually subsidizing the batteries in the pilot program, which is for solar users, it would seem to demonstrate that the power companies aren't lying when they say grid feed-in is a problem.
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"GTAI and Deutsche Bank’s conclusion - based on the price trends of solar, batteries, electricity in Germany, and German feed-in-tariffs - is that ‘battery parity’, the moment when home solar + a lithium-ion battery makes economic sense, will arrive in Germany by next summer, 2016."
http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/1... [rameznaam.com]
Crippling exploit in 3...2...1.... (Score:2, Insightful)
The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide
They can be controlled with a Web app and a smartphone app.
Gee, that sounds like a great idea. I wonder what could possibly go wrong.
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Gee, that sounds like a great idea. I wonder what could possibly go wrong.
Probably nothing. The battery controller will simply prevent anything stupid from happening.
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Gee, that sounds like a great idea. I wonder what could possibly go wrong.
Probably nothing. The battery controller will simply prevent anything stupid from happening.
I see that you don't work in software.
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big news! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:big news! (Score:5, Informative)
Distributed storage capacity has the potential to even out the prices over the day and match consumption and production. It also solves a major issue with most renewables. It would be even more interesting if people were allowed to store cheap electricity and sell it back during expensive hours for profit.
true, and in a free market, that is exactly what would happen. sadly, the US energy market is no where near free. In the last three years, Koch Industries has successfully lobbied legislative bodies in 17 states to impede the deployment of alternative energy, and to drastically roll back, if not outrightly abandon existing programs. Case in point: net metering, where the utility company monitors power use and credits a homeowner for power sent back to the grid. In 2014, right here in sunny Az, three Koch-funded candidates were elected to our five person Corporation Commission, which, among other duties, sets utility rates. in february this year, they announced two structural changes that effectively kill net metering. the first change eliminates the ability to bank your credits over the length of a year, meaning that the credits needed to offset months where your PV array doesnt cover your power use are no longer available. the second change reduces the amount of money the utility will pay for your excess production, from full retail to less than half of wholesale. Arizona was seeing fairly strong growth in rooftop solar, until that announcement. in march, new residential solar permits were down 42% over Mar 2014. so far in april, there have been zero new residential permits.
Re:big news! (Score:4, Insightful)
You are wasting your time arguing against government meddling in markets. This /. article alone is full of posters extolling the virtues of regulations, subsidies, rules, taxes and mandates. The Koch brothers are grateful.
The same applies to the healthcare business, where we have reached to point that going to a doctor's office is no different to going to the DMV.
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In 2014, right here in sunny Az, three Koch-funded candidates were elected to our five person Corporation Commission
I'm in AZ also and are familiar with the race you're talking about. I knew they were utility-company supported, didn't see anything Koch related. Do you have a news report or campaign financing source or something I can look it showing major Koch money involvement somewhere?
Re:big battery mining cost (Score:2)
Usually mining and extraction are the greatest energy and pollution generating periods of a device's life. Not greater than the entire lifecycle of use and disposal, unless the product is used less than 10 years. if its used less than 5 the impacts of mining can be even greater than the product 's use. Don't crash and total your Tesla or Prius. http://science.howstuffworks.c... [howstuffworks.com]
What's interesting with this home-battery is that this its use may not achieve any real energy savings, like a hybrid motor (w
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Distributed storage capacity solves nothing if the grid operators cannot manage it.
I bet you don't downshift your car because you think it's going to hurt your engine, too.
It's only a solution if the batteries help balance the grid.
Yes, that was what the GP was talking about. Good news! You get at least a "D" on your reading comprehension test!
This is bad for homeowners with PV, because they want to run their meters backwards and get paid, and grid balancing would reduce their ability to do that.
You have no idea what you're on about. Increasing homeowner battery capacity is how we're going to implement grid balancing, and when the homeowner's battery bank balances the grid, their meter is going to run backwards and they're going to get paid. But unlike a grid-tied system without batteries, they'll b
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Actually the money you earn if you provide "balancing energy" is usually much higher than the money you get for feed in tariffs.
And keep in mind: balancing goes in both directions: sucking up surplus production balances as much as providing extra energy when demand is increasing.
PV can only provide power into one direction and as it is not dispatch able it can not really balance the grid.
However bigger PV installations have a notice able electric capacity, and can be used to stabilize the grid frequency to
Fixed vs mobile longevity? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if they'll last any better as a fixed battery vs a car mounted battery, I think the car mounted ones loose 20-30% of their capacity after 10 years. For example I've heard that a lead acid battery that will typically only last 5 years in a car will last 20 years in a backup battery bank for a home/business. If the pack only lasts 10 years then I highly doubt this will be economical ($108 a month? that's more than my entire electric bill) except in very specialized applications. If it lasts 20 or 30 years ($54-$36 a month) then we're starting to get into the realms of sanity especially in areas with high peak usage costs.
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I wonder if they'll last any better as a fixed battery vs a car mounted battery,
Probably, since the job they will be doing is easier. More sustained charge and discharge cycles, less start-and-stop.
If the pack only lasts 10 years then I highly doubt this will be economical
There's no reason to believe it will last only 10 years. The 10 years number has to do with suitability for automotive use.
sound idea? (Score:2)
Subsidy doesn't reduce the cost (Score:2)
Subsidy just changes who pays, the total cost of the battery is still the same.
And your calculation of $13k/$50 is incorrect. Go to a bank and tell them you want to borrow $13K for 21 years at 0% interest and see what they tell you.
Re:sound idea? (Score:4, Informative)
Let's be optimistic, and assume the battery lasts 10 years - 3000 cycles from full-empty.
This is perhaps optimistic.
I am using the numbers for my electricity costs.
These are $.28 or so.
If it's 10kWh, and lasts 3000 cycles, that's 30000kWh.
Or close on $10K worth of electricity stored.
Even with free electricity - it will never break even against grid cost.
Actually having to buy solar panels makes the numbers much worse.
Is it great for off-grid - perhaps. It's a _lot_ more expensive than even spendy lead-acid batteries.
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You did read the part about this being a pilot project? The first automobiles were out of reach cost-wise for most people when they first came out. The price will drop with volume of sales. And Musk knows economics well enough to know that your argument is the spur to get the cost point down someplace where your math will actually make these cost-effective.
Also, electrical rates are coming up, if you haven't noticed. That accelerates the time to cost-effectiveness.
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What did you assume for the battery trade in value when it's worn out ?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
Furthermore, that assumes a full charge-discharge cycle. That's not likely what's going to happen, further prolonging the life of the battery system.
Flywheels (Score:5, Insightful)
Would prefer a flywheel over a battery for home storage, longer life, more reliable, non hazardous materials, smaller carbon footprint, faster to charge, can accurately monitor/diagose, can bury them underground.
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I agree very strongly. Flywheels have some enormous advantages over chemical storage. One additional advantage to add to the splendid list you provided: they can accommodate any load and load profile.
A sealed flywheel with magnetic bearings can theoretically last forever.
Re:Flywheels (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the downside of flywheels? Looking at wikipedia, the comparison to batteries is very one-sided, offering zero downsides.
I would imagine that there must be some, or we'd all have flywheels sitting in our basements. Is it cost?
Infinite storage density (Score:5, Informative)
The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide
First 2D batteries ever! Advances in energy storage at a spooky distance made possible thanks to recently published ER = EPR [slashdot.org] discovery. Is Elon Musk really Ironman [youtube.com]?
big deal (Score:3)
So, for $13,000 up front, I can save at most about $80/month, maybe less, depending on the particular battery technology and how deeply the batteries can be safely discharged. (Yes, I used actual numbers.) It's a first step, but assuming that the capacity is 10KWh as mentioned in earlier articles, it's not really any cheaper than existing solutions. Now maybe Tesla will ramp up capacity and make them more available, or maybe it will actually be higher capacity, or maybe the price will come down substantially as volume increases. Because at 1/2 the $/KWh it would start to be really interesting, but right now, it's kind of marginal--at least for me at ~$0.15/KWh peak; obviously, in a state, CA for instance, where peak power prices are higher, the economics are better.
Dear Musk. (Score:2)
Offer a package with solar panels so we can get off the grid with no maintenance that a typical solar+wind offgrid setup requires.
Most people can barely change the batteries in their TV remote, they cant handle the work involved in taking care of an offgrid power system. Been there done that.
130 years too late (Score:5, Funny)
Old Wives' Tales (Score:2)
"need to be installed at least a foot and a half off the ground"
For what purpose? That old wives' tale of putting a battery on the ground causing it to discharge or drain is absolute bullshit.
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I assume this is to prevent a leaking main from electrocuting everyone in the area, and/or to prevent gasses building up underneath and/or to have better airflow around the battery to keep the temperature from going up in hotspots.
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Cooling, most likely. Charging and discharging a battery results in heat; this battery is probably designed to take cool air in at the bottom and discharge warm air at the top.
Cost of the battery covers my electrical bill (Score:2)
For the next 10 years. If the funds are invested at a reasonable rate could easily be 20-30 years.
What's the lifespan of this thing ?
This is of great interest to me. (Score:2)
Thro
Wendy's strategy: sell excess hamburger as chili (Score:3)
Tesla seems to be adopting the "Wendy's strategy". Wendy's apparently sells excess hamburger as chili, thus somewhat compensating for daily swings in hamburger sales. Similarly Tesla is probably anticipating that their Gigafactory will also have unexpected swings in demand depending on vehicle sales and existing contracts with other battery suppliers.
By selling the excess Gigafactory battery production as battery based storage for homes, Tesla ensures two things: 1 - a better ramp up in Gigafactory utilization during the early years, and 2 - protection from unexpected swings in vehicle sales.
Re:Nice idea but... (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens if you buy this battery and a year or two down the road someone comes out with a battery that is twice as efficient as the one you have?
Then the whole world changes, whole corporations go out of business overnight while others swell, and there is widespread financial chaos.
This is the exact question I asked Solar City when I was considering solar panels for my house.
That's because you don't understand the solar industry even a little bit. When new, more efficient panels come out, not only is their price per watt higher but the price per watt on the old panels comes down. The primary benefit is not reduction of cost, at least not at first, but in reduction of panel area needed. That reduces the size of an installation which can reduce its cost — but in the case of a residential solar system, that is rarely the case. Since they're usually fixed and roof-mounted, the amount of materials used to mount them is fairly small and there are no property cost considerations whatsoever. The homeowner doesn't care if they have three or six panels on their roof, because they're on their roof and they're not taking up any space they were using before.
The truth is that improvements in batteries and solar panels do not come in 100% increments. They come in small increments delivered over long periods of time, just like the savings on energy costs delivered by a solar installation. Not installing solar now because you're worried that solar is going to get better is just depriving yourself of the benefits that you enjoy by doing it sooner. Meanwhile, your system can be upgraded piecemeal, so you can replace your batteries in 15 years and your panels in 30, maybe add some more batteries then. You can mix and match different kinds of panels to a certain extent; sure, you need different charge controllers for old and new style panels, but you can have both kinds of charge controllers right next to one another, connected to the same battery bank. So really, there is no basis whatsoever for your concern that a 100% efficiency improvement will come along tomorrow and eliminate the value of your investment. And frankly, if such a leap in efficiency were realized in a commercial product, then some government would probably buy up 100% of it and you wouldn't be able to get any anyway. Kind of like what happened with nanosolar, which was then driven out of existence by the chinese dumping panels on our market so none of us got to buy any of it. That stuff had the potential to be disruptive, but now we have to wait for someone to conceive of the idea again with some new and even cheaper technology because we're okay with goods produced with slave labor so long as it doesn't happen within our borders.
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I do understand the solar industry, that's why I fliped two big middle fingers to them and bought and imported all china solar panels and installed a 5Kwh setup for drastically cheaper than any of the overpriced US crap.
Spent 1/2 the price got the same panels all monocrystalline and of very good quality build. It's been in operation for 3 years now with no problems. I use grid intertie and drive the meter backwards. No local storage.
Electrical bill is $14.95 a month because you have to pay the "fees" an
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I do understand the solar industry, that's why I fliped two big middle fingers to them and bought and imported all china solar panels and installed a 5Kwh setup for drastically cheaper than any of the overpriced US crap.
Like anyone else, I will buy the panels which provide the most output for my dollar, and which fit in the space available. But if the world would institute some laws which would penalize countries for slave labor and environmental abuse, then it would cease to make sense to buy a lot of that crap. I sit here surrounded by similar crap, but the point remains.
I use grid intertie and drive the meter backwards. No local storage.
That's certainly cost-effective, but it won't help as much in an outage.
Electrical bill is $14.95 a month because you have to pay the "fees" and the scumbag leaders in my states government passed a law that allows the power company to not pay for any surplus I generate above my own use.
Yes, scumbags are always the problem. Obviously it wouldn't make sense for you t
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That's how Musk makes his money. By selling over priced panels supported by dodgy break even calculations. Buying your own panels is the way to go. I know people that have done it and it's not that difficult.
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"Not installing solar now because you're worried that solar is going to get better is just depriving yourself of the benefits that you enjoy by doing it sooner" - What benefits? Not economic, that's for sure. The numbers Solar City gave me showed a net savings of $30 a month. That's it - 30 bucks a month. And that is assuming you buy into their calculations - which I don't. As I mentioned, they cannot control the rates that the utility company pays for the power you sell them back and the rate increases are
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Regarding efficiency there is not much to expect from new solar panels anymore.
The only thing you can do is combine several technologies, to gather light in several wave lengths.
A typical mono crystalline PV cell might improve by 1% ... perhaps ... however the future gains will likely be in cheaper production, not in efficiency gains.
Other gains are paint based solar cells, that can be painted on houses. So far they have low efficiencies, around 1% to 5% ... but they don't look like PC modules and can be pa
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having storage to even out the peaks means that peak demand will decrease, making the system cheaper overall.
You are assuming that battery storage is cheaper than generation capacity. I don't see anything to support that assumption, in fact I would be very surprised if it's true.
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In Germany, companies that accept energy during peak supply actually *get paid* to use energy. Those batteries will not just break even, they're going to be a major money maker even in the first year.
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They make deep cycle lead acid batteries for (mostly) boats. Typically they last 5-6 years in a marine application and you can drain them to about 10% without problems. Newer controllers are good in that regard. I'm using six deep cycle batteries pulled from various boats as my backup system. They should last for at least another 5 years since they are now warm and dry and not vibrating all of the time. They are also fully recyclable.
Not sure why you'd want to go to a lithium based technology in a stat