Alternative Energies
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Title: Tesla wants to power your home with a battery
Source:
CNN via Slashdot
URL Source: http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/22/technology/tesla-home-battery/
Published: Apr 25, 2015
Author: David Goldman
Post Date: 2015-04-25 09:03:01 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 14253
Comments: 46
In a letter sent to investors and analysts on Tuesday, the electric car company said it will announce a "home battery" and a "very large utility scale battery." Similar products already exist on the market, but Tesla said it will explain why its batteries are better than competitors' solutions at the event. CEO Elon Musk thinks rivals' batteries "suck," according to the note from Jeff Evanson, Tesla's investor relations director. Tesla (TSLA) shares rose more than 5% Wednesday on the news. Home batteries power up overnight, when energy companies typically charge less for electricity. Then, they can be turned on during the day to power a home. Though home batteries cost thousands of dollars, many utility companies will offer rebates. Musk announced the event late last month on Twitter, only hinting then that the new product is not a new electric car. The event will be held at Tesla's Hawthorne, California, Design Studio on April 30 at 8 p.m. PT. Tesla has talked about releasing a home battery storage product for about a year, and Musk announced on a conference call with analysts in February that Tesla would unveil a home battery "fairly soon." At a battery conference last year, Tesla's Stationary Energy Storage Director Arch Padmanabhan showed off some of the company's early plans, including a 10 kilo-Watt hour residential battery and a 400 kWh commercial/utility battery for large buildings. 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. There are 330 U.S. households currently running on Tesla's batteries, the majority of which are in California, according to company analyst Trip Chowdhry. Those batteries start at about $13,000, though California's Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PCG) offers customers a 50% rebate. Tesla's batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide, and they 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. It's unclear if the batteries that Tesla plans on announcing next week are the same as the ones in the pilot program or in the presentation made at the battery conference last year. Poster Comment: As seen at Slashdot: Tesla To Announce Battery-Based Energy Storage For Homes Tesla will introduce a battery for your home during its highly anticipated April 30 event. 
(2 images) 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.
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#1. To: TooConservative (#0)
Something else for hackers to have fun with, burn someones house to the ground when they least expect it.
#2. To: CZ82 (#1)
Always look on the bright side, eh? Musk's Tesla cars have firmware and can be upgraded. They had, for instance, a recent upgrade to the software which extends battery life by propelling the car from only one wheel when cruising at highway speeds instead of wasting electricity driving multiple motors. Slashdot:
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestThey can be controlled with a Web app and a smartphone app.
Replies to Comment # 1. Something else for hackers to have fun with, burn someones house to the ground when they least expect it.
Tesla Motors has announced an upgrade for their Roadster vehicles that boosts the range from about 240 miles to almost 400. In addition to the battery improvements made since the Roadster launched in 2008, Tesla has a kit to retrofit the body to reduce its drag coefficient from 0.36 to 0.31. They also have new tires, which improve the rolling resistance coefficient by about 20%. They say, "Combining all of these improvements we can achieve a predicted 40-50% improvement on range between the original Roadster and Roadster 3.0. There is a set of speeds and driving conditions where we can confidently drive the Roadster 3.0 over 400 miles. We will be demonstrating this in the real world during a non-stop drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles in the early weeks of 2015." Tesla stopped producing the Roadster in 2012.
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