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Title: Tesla's Powerwall: 12 important facts to know
Source:
Orange County Register
URL Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/battery-660298-musk-tesla.html
Published: May 2, 2015
Author: RINGO H.W. CHIU,
Post Date: 2015-05-02 08:24:17 by Willie Green
Keywords: Battery, Duracell, DieHard
Views: 13187
Comments: 29
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who unveiled his Powerwall home battery Thursday, already is offering the devices to SolarCity Corp. customers seeking backup supply when the grid goes down. SolarCity expects to deliver them in October. Musk, whose Tesla Motors developed the product, is also chairman of the San Mateo-based solar supplier. Poster Comment: Powerwall (Tesla) The Powerwall is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery product manufactured by Tesla Motors for home use. It can store energy for domestic consumption, load shifting, and backup power. It was announced on April 30, 2015, and will retail at prices starting at US$3,000 for a 7kWh model beginning summer 2015. The device will be sold to companies including SolarCity. SolarCity is running a pilot project in 500 California houses, using 10-kilowatt-hour battery packs. Hmmmmm... lithium-ion batteries are interesting technology, but not without concerns regarding their safety. But aluminum batteries being researched at Stanford may eventually provide a competitive alternative.
Tesla gave us its first look at a new stackable battery system to store electricity for homes, businesses and the grid. It’s a product that Tesla said soon will bring in billions of dollars in annual revenue.
Here’s what Musk revealed:
• 1. The home battery version is called the Powerwall. It looks like this:
And it can be stacked, sideways, like this:
• 2. It’s cheap (but not too cheap). Powerwalls cost $3,500 for a 10-kilowatt-hour version that will allow you to run a handful of home appliances for a few days in case of an outage. That’s consistent with the general trajectory of falling battery prices – great for people who want to live off grid with solar power, but not yet cheap enough to make economic sense for most grid-connected customers.
• 3. Notably, that doesn’t include the cost of the inverter or installation. In a conference call a year ago, Musk gave his first hint of what he wanted the Powerwall system to look like, including an “integrated bidirectional inverter, and it’s just plug and play.” The inverter and installation can more than double the price of a home storage system.
• 4. It’s thin. The battery is designed to be hung on a garage wall, or even on an outside wall. It’s 220 pounds but just 7.1 inches deep. That’s 2 inches deeper than what Musk had hoped for, but it’s still pretty sleek.
• 5. "The issue with existing batteries is that they suck.” That’s Musk’s characteristically colorful take on the competition. “They’re expensive, they’re unreliable … stinky.”
• 6. The larger version is called the Powerpack. Musk’s biggest immediate opportunity is in commercial and utility-scale storage. The Powerpack is “infinitely scalable,” he said. It consists of 100-kilowatt-hour blocks that can be clustered to meet any project size.
• 7. Customers are waiting.Tesla already has been approached by a utility that wants a 250-megawatt-hour installation, Musk said, without naming the utility. That’s 2,500 Powerpack towers. Nonutility customers include Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target.
• 8. This is what a utility-scale project looks like:
• 9. Powerpack costs weren’t provided. It’s worth noting that even before this event, Tesla was already the biggest provider of battery storage under California’s generous subsidy program for storage projects. The Powerpack isn’t really a new line of products for Musk, just a streamlined one.
• 10. The event was run entirely on batteries. “This entire night, everything you’re using, is stored sunlight,” Musk told the crowd.
• 11. The spirit of open source continues. Tesla’s open patent policy has been extended to both the battery technology and the design of the company’s $5 billion gigafactory. What’s open patent policy? Tesla says it will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use its technology.
• 12. It has a local connection. Tesla already has three demonstration projects in the works with Southern California Edison – one for homes, one for businesses and one for electric vehicles.
The residential project targets homes with solar panels; the commercial one is for higher storage capacity. Those two projects, which would test the utility’s ability to coordinate battery charging and grid reliability, are expected to be operational this year. The third would allow Edison to control electric vehicle charging rates depending on the needs of the electric grid at the moment. That is expected to come online in 2016.
Edison’s current battery storage projects include the nation’s largest battery project, the Tehachapi Energy Storage Project in Kern County. That facility’s 605,000 lithium-ion battery cells, supplied by LG Chem, will be able to supply 32 megawatt-hours of electricity, or 8 megawatts of power for four continuous hours. That’s enough to power 1,600 to 2,400 homes.
Bloomberg News and staff writer Aaron Orlowski contributed to this report.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 16.
#1. To: Willie Green (#0)
Good to see the downward price trajectory. But I agree about the safety concerns for LI and share the hope for an alternative. The tech is still in its infancy. Have you seen this? Pretty cool.
The tech stuff is mostly still in its fantasy.
Was that Baja EV racer a fantasy when it finished the race?
There are no replies to Comment # 16. End Trace Mode for Comment # 16.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest$3,500 for a 10-kilowatt-hour version
#3. To: VxH (#1)
The tech is still in its infancy.
#16. To: rlk (#3)
The tech stuff is mostly still in its fantasy.
Replies to Comment # 16.
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