Tesla unveils a battery to power your home

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, landed an official message unveiling the Powerwall, a battery designed to power your home. The message came at a convention center powered completely by renewable battery power.

The battery unit itself contains the same batteries present in the Tesla electric cars. The 7kWh unit will ship for US$3,000, while the 10kWh unit will go for US$3,500 (get the big one). They will store electricity from the grid or from solar and wind generators on site and if the grid goes down, they will continue to power your home indefinitely This feature makes them ideal for developing nations that are leap-frogging power grids completely.

Musk refers to it as changing the "entire energy infrastructure of the world."

The batteries will begin shipping over the summer of 2015 and mount on the wall, looking like this

[Monk BANzai]

Theres a tuner who has a close friend that uses a version of this...he talked about the savings and being able to live off the grid.. in fact he sells back power to the Supplier (Canada based)

This is so full of awesomesauce i cant even begin to express my "Wantz" for this system....

alas the buffoons here will see it as "dey teefing we powah money from us"...

[src1983]

Take my money

[ruffneck_12]

what a time to be alive

[meccalli]

I don't believe we have the legislation in place for this as yet, to be inputting into the grid and associated risks. Would be illegal currently.

[supercharged turbo]

I can see myself investing in one of this

[gurmuk]

nice!!

[akintl0]

t&tec go tax man for using this

[ruffneck_12]

now they have to work on more efficient solar panels tho

dey cuda make a lil wind turbine one time

[MG Man]

my light bill does be around $250....T&Tec for me

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

I don't believe we have the legislation in place for this as yet, to be inputting into the grid and associated risks. Would be illegal currently.

what about just as a battery backup for your house in case of a power outage?

a lot neater, cleaner and quieter than a generator

based on calculations above it will run your house for at 7-8 hours. Most outages in T&T don't last that long.

[SR]

T&tec will quickly say they own all the solar power in trinidad and tobago and you have to get a license from them to harness it...

[silent_riot]

I don't believe we have the legislation in place for this as yet, to be inputting into the grid and associated risks. Would be illegal currently.

what about just as a battery backup for your house in case of a power outage?

a lot neater, cleaner and quieter than a generator

based on calculations above it will run your house for at 7-8 hours. Most outages in T&T don't last that long.

Agreed, we have cheap enough power here for now to use this as a battery backup/UPS in case power fails.

In order to save money on power consumption, you need another important part of the puzzle: an alternative source of power, because the battery is just storage for it.
You can hook up a wind turbine or solar cells to it to be self sufficient and off the grid, which is an entirely different cost by itself. This, though, does open up huge doors for self sufficient systems.

[silent_riot]

Also keep in mind, that this is a high voltage DC battery.
An inverter with sufficient capacity is also required to get the power out of the battery into AC.

If this does become mainstream, we can probably see DC appliances and rectifier-free devices on the market, as this would improve the efficiency of the devices.

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

Also keep in mind, that this is a high voltage DC battery.
An inverter with sufficient capacity is also required to get the power out of the battery into AC.

If this does become mainstream, we can probably see DC appliances and rectifier-free devices on the market, as this would improve the efficiency of the devices.

I see their partner SolarCity is developing an inverter to work with it.

I wonder what an inverter will cost for the 10Kwh battery?

[meccalli]

I was thinking the same initially, but just relaying what my current lect. on renewables says about being connected to the grid and the current state, ttec owns it. In terms of legislation, there's stuff like feed in tariffs and the issues with net metering in countries that rely on domestic renewables to deal with energy costs. Eventually we have to begin the transition process eventually though, as of now, oil fuh so. We don't realise how nice we have it.
http://www.renewablesinternational.net/ ... 510/61363/

[meccalli]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid-conne ... wer_system
Oh I think this was it, you can possibly electrocute a ttec worker by 'islanding' while the grid is down. Also, tolerance problems on lines and transformers.

[black start]

at that cost, it makes the use of renewable electricity a lot more feasible.....but still not so much in Trinidad....

But for standalone applications, its a great step forward...

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

sure beats the looks and efficiency of these that people use in DIY solar panel setups

[kjaglal76v2]

kanye west really say obama should take a meeting with elon musk

[megadoc1]

http://inhabitat.com/teslas-powerwall-home-battery-is-already-sold-out-through-2016/

Only a week has gone by since Elon Musk announced Tesla’s new, much-hyped Powerwall home battery on April 30, and the company is reporting that they’ve already sold out of their batteries through mid-2016, booking $800 million in revenue, according to Bloomberg. On an investor earnings call on May 6, Musk reported that the demand is so high for their batteries that in the past seven days alone they’ve taken already reservations for 38,000 home batteries and 2,500 of the larger commercial scale batteries intended for industry. Musk says that this means that Tesla will have to expand the current Gigafactory that is under construction or build another one, as the originally-planned five-million-square-foot battery factory they’re working on will not be big enough. According to Musk, the production of batteries alone will easily consume the entire capacity of the $5 billion, 50 GWh Gigafactory in Nevada, which is slated to open next year.

Read more: Tesla's Powerwall home battery is already sold out through 2016 | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

[Duane 3NE 2NR]

^ DAMN!!!

[SMc]

ImageUploadedByTriniTuner1430675542.307530.jpg

This is US average with AC/Heating...

So just imagine one battery will impact your savings alot here in trini...

Sure thats not Austraila?

[teems1]

Hmmmm... If the world were to adopt this, wouldn't this just move the dependency from fossil fuels onto lithium and/or the elements required to manufacture the solar panels?

Basically countries with lithium (deposits?) would become the new middle east?

[meccalli]

No, oil is king. Energy costs energy and there's the difference that exists between electricity and petroleum liquid fuels and their importance.

[noshownogo]

Did the math on my house,

2 story house
2 ac untis working approx 8-10 hrs a day
All the luxuries (i'm very wasteful with electricity)

2month read out is 1158kw consumption
Resulting daily consumption: 19.3 kw perday



Note: 11000usd for solar panel to supply charge (sized accordingly to provide approx 10kw per 12hr period for the tesla battery )

WDA you call that wasteful, I have a 3 bedroom townhouse with two ACs running basically same amount of time and getting 2100kWh usage in 60 days

[src1983]

How much would one need for 38844Kwh over three months?