Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Elon Musk has announced the release of a new storage battery for home use. The new battery in principle dramatically reduces the cost of going “off grid” – powering your house entirely from solar or wind, and using the battery to provide backup power, to ensure continuous supply.
According to The Guardian;
The electric car company Tesla has announced its entry into the energy market, unveiling a suite of low-cost solar batteries for homes, businesses and utilities, “the missing piece”, it said, in the transition to a sustainable energy world.
The batteries, which will retail at $3,500 in the US, were launched on Thursday at a Tesla facility in California by the company’s ambitious founder, Elon Musk, who heralded the technology as “a fundamental transformation [in] how energy is delivered across the earth”.
Wall-mounted, with a sleek design, the lithium-ion batteries are designed to capture and store up to 10kWh of energy from wind or solar panel. The reserves can be drawn on when sunlight is low, during grid outages, or at peak demand times, when electricity costs are highest.
The smallest “Powerwall” is 1.3m by 68cm, small enough to be hung inside a garage on or an outside wall. Up to eight batteries can be “stacked” in a home, Musk said, to applause from investors and journalists at the much-anticipated event.
I’m excited by this announcement, not because I’m currently considering buying a Tesla battery, but because of the potential this announcement has, for exerting downward pressure on household electricity bills.
Assuming the battery has around 1000 charge / discharge cycles, paying $3500 every 3 years is approaching price parity with some of the more ridiculous electricity utility charges. When you factor in the satisfaction of tearing up your last electricity bill, there is a real chance a significant number of people will be tempted to make the leap.
How will utility companies respond? I suspect they will be forced to cap household bills, to put as much price distance as possible, between the Tesla option, and staying connected to their grid. It will no longer be possible to make electricity rates skyrocket, to treat household electricity consumers as an inelastic revenue source – because now householders have an alternative, to putting up with endless price rises.
The biggest losers from this potential game changer, in my opinion, might be large scale renewable energy providers. Since households now have an alternative to paying ever larger electricity bills, electricity utilities will be forced to keep costs down – they will no longer be able to ignore costs imposed by government mandated renewable schemes. Either the government will be forced to provide higher subsidies, or large scale renewable schemes will have to be scaled back, to keep grid electricity price competitive.
Why do I sense a ‘taxpayer subsidy’ in the wind?
It’s your ‘sense’ of smell. You must be living downwind of Mr. Musk.
Has anybody noticed the CO2 projection up to the year 3000 in Elon Musk’s presentation?
Did a price comparison with my NiFe batteries. NiFe’s are more expensive than most storage batteries, but are supposed to last longer. Longer than 10 years. The Tesla batteries appear to be about the same price. Considering most people think the NiFe’s are overpriced, so are the Tesla’s.
I love the concept, but price is a big issue for any battery system. I can see some advantages in the Tesla system that are not mentioned in the publicity fluf. There is just too much detail missing at the moment.
Tesla need to spell this out before the ordinary plebs like me will pass them buy.
More subsidy-farming from the draft- & war-dodger Musk.
I’ve spotted a few Teslas lately. I get an urge to ram them every time.
Got me to chuckle at that one.
Three decades of green hype. And we have been told on a weekly basis that some company or group of scientists have invented a completely revolutionary battery, wind turbine, wave generator, solar panel, solar thermal plant etc.
Meanwhile, back in reality the only renewable systems generating low cost kilowatt/hours (before subsidies) are hydroelectric and standard vertical axis on-shore wind-turbines.
P.V. solar costs are falling, as they have been historically by about 50% every 7 years.
They observe a trend that is much like Moore’s law. So they will soon hit parity with grid electric.
But, the basic technologies that work in energy storage and generation are almost exactly the same technologies as 30 years ago. AGM lead acid batteries are widely used in telecoms and data-centre back up systems. Wind turbines got bigger. Hydroelectric is the same as it always was – big and cheap.
What is most fascinating to observe is that every single whacky idea produced in the interim seems to have fallen by the wayside.
And yet still, announcements like this can pull in a fresh wave of investment and govt. subsidies.
When I see these units being bought by industry to replace AGM lead acid banks – then I’ll take interest.
Until then, I’ll stick this in the “green hype” category. Along with almost every other bullshit revolutionary idea that has come and gone.
Apologies – I mistakenly wrote kilowatt/hours. When I meant, of course, kilowatthours. Whoops.
I’m clearly half asleep, I also wrote “vertical axis wind turbines” – when I meant “horizontal axis”. I’ll have to make more of an effort to proof read these posts in future. I sometimes forget that you can not edit. Apologies again.
What has not been falling is the amount of CO2 emitted to produce the silicon metal for the most common type of PV cell. It is a very large number
What’s the total budget? For CO2 produced by manufacture versus CO2 not produced during the lifetime of the unit (compared with coal gen. for example.)
Anyone know?
jakee308
May 3, 2015 at 1:18 am
1200 watts x 24 hours is 28.8 Kw-h. Close enough to 30 Kw-h per day.
What’s your problem?
Our house’s daily useage is about half that.
Musk drives me nuts. SpaceX is the best thing to happen to the human race in a long time. Hope is somewhat alive that it in fact *has* a future, even though I think Elton John had it right about Mars (How about an cis-lunar, space habitat based civilisation instead, Elon).
Yet he’s dicking around with electric cars and “renewable” energy etc. WTF?????
Usage varies with house size, heating and cooling systems, insulation, household equipment and amount of electrically heated hot water used.
Nearly 100 comments already, but I feel this needs to be said. Of course this is a good idea, everyone knows it’s a good idea. But like most green energy technologies, it’s not quite there yet.
10 kwh is a joke. It’s a relatively tiny amount of power. Let’s put this into perspective… Mr. Musk’s fancy car has up to an 80 kwh battery! In the announcement video, he explicitly refers to electric heating, i.e. not having to worry about the cold if you lose power. Unless this battery is simply providing a spark for a gas powered furnace, it’s an even bigger joke. An average space heater draws up to 1500W… so you can keep one room warm for about 6 hours, yay… Electric resistance heat takes huge amounts of energy. A small window A/C, maybe around 500W… so if you happen to live in a trailer, or single room apartment, it might keep you comfortable over night… but if you live in a trailer or single, you likely aren’t affording the cost and space requirements for this thing.
As for keeping this battery charged, one would need quite the solar system or turbine! Which is going to be significantly more expensive than the battery itself, if you can even have the generation where you live (good luck getting a turbine permitted unless you live in a rural area).
Let’s talk about energy consumption. I do some energy consulting and efficiency audits in Texas, one of the sunnier states. Yes, some people have solar panels, but they are still very rare, and in practically no cases a “good deal”. When asked about them, I usually just tell customers that I don’t think breaking even in 10 years is a good way to invest $5000.
I’ve seen literally thousands of customers across the state, and can tell you first hand that 99% of them have absolutely no conception of what a “kwh” is, or how much energy they consume. This is partly the fault of deceptive or fraudulent sales people, hawking windows, radiant barriers, and other expensive nonsense, and partly just a lack of education and understanding. In fact, most people have no idea how their HVAC system works, or how their car works, or how to take care of a home, but they spend tens of thousands on these things – how can we expect the general public to worry more about something that costs them so much less? Also typical home square footage is a premium with no basements, which means stuff like HVAC gets pushed into the attic. Stupid, but standard. Where is this closet sized beast going to go?
http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/state_briefs/pdf/tx.pdf
An “average” home here consumes around 40 kwh daily. Of course this is in reality heavily weighted toward summer and winter seasonal usage – meaning when you need power most, this battery will help the least. It *might* be able to power a smaller, efficient home with conservative occupants, in spring and fall months, without letting everything drop off in the middle of the night. But that’s it. Unless you live in something that meets Passivhaus standards or close to, this is really a tiny amount of energy to be able to store and draw upon. We need at least 10 times this in a smaller and cheaper package for it to matter to anyone. But for that to matter, we need distributed generation to be 10 times cheaper and more available. So good luck with that. The grid isn’t going anywhere, any time soon.
/rant… It’s just plain frustrating to see something so pitiful get so much attention. Stick to the car for now, that’s not so terrible… we’re all waiting on the “affordable” EV for the average layperson to really “revolutionize” things, and not just be a tax shelter for the wealthy.
Math, it is a….. reality kind kills it. Something with 10x the capacity would might just cut it for the normal USA home.
‘When you factor in the satisfaction of tearing up your last electricity bill,
Straight after you live in area where the lack of sunlight or wind is never a problem, and when you no longer need to connect to any grid , some of the charge covers the cost of the physical make up of the grid no matter what the power source .
So the author may have a long wait .
Still Musk’s abilities to self promote remain high and no doubt fat government subsides , payed for by the taxpayer , will be winging there way to him , so it is not all bad news.
I have read nothing about this battery that would make me think that it is cost effective. In fact, the 1000 cycle limit, which is new information to me, makes it worse…Imagine having to replace thousands of dollars worth of batteries ever three years.
That said…this is another small incremental step toward what one day might prove to be a viable energy storage medium sometime (in the distant future).
Proud Skeptic,
Cars are not ‘cost-effective’. Neither are clothes or food. If you up-size them, they are even less cost effective. But we do it anyway and all the time.
The wealthy will buy these to feel good about saving the environment. The off-grid cabin types will purchase them because they can actually supply the low energy needs of a small abode or trailer with just a few PV panels. The third world chronically poor can be provided with these by their governments to power refrigerators and lights with the addition of a small windmill or PV system.
Not everyone thinks, or can operate by, the ‘cost effective’ psychology. This system will win or lose based on how it sells and functions in the real world. But one thing is for sure…it will lead to better and more cost-effective systems in the future. And that is what is so important about Musk pursuing leading edge thinking in potentially future technologies.
jakee308 apparently has a challenge with multiplication, so his concerns about the Forbes article lose all credibility.
Li ion batteries have two distinct advantages over other designs; energy density and depth of discharge. Neither of these advantages is of significance in a stand alone home system. Li ion batteries have several disadvantages compared to other designs; thermal runaway, hazardous materials, cost of materials and disposal of materials. All of these disadvantages impact their use in a stand alone home system through increased cost and safety concerns. As an engineer, I am frustrated to see an excellent technology misused in an application where it can only fail to compete successfully.
The 300+ VDC battery working voltage is appropriate for large scale inverters in the 100kW size and up. There are plenty of these available for utility and commercial installations, not individual homes.
There is nothing in this promotion by Tesla that is new or different from the present state of battery technology, which means that it is all hype.
“The 300+ VDC battery working voltage is appropriate for large scale inverters in the 100kW size and up…not individual homes”
That’s not true at all. Some residential grid connected PV inverters run up to 600 VDC, 480V nominal, transformerless (I assume they mean 60Hz), conversion efficiency ~96%.
SMA’s SB 3000TL-US ~$1,500 USD
Paul –
Yes, Sunny Boy inverters allow solar panel strings to be anywhere from 5 to 14 panels long, with an input voltage range of 150VDC to 450VDC for grid connected systems. SMA Sunny Boy’s target market is grid connected 240VAC, so their system design did not have to consider the impact of long strings of 12V batteries to match that voltage. The Tesla Li ion batteries would match their input voltage, but SMA’s inverter design is focused on grid connected operation. Their Secure Power Supply feature does claim to provide daytime power during grid outages, so the inverter may well be able to stand alone, but battery sourced operation is not referenced at all. Although it appears that SMA’s inverters may work in a stand alone system with batteries connected, their inverters were designed for PV panel power control, not batteries as a source of power. Do you have experience that they will operate reliably with batteries as a source?
James, the SB series of PV inverters (and most others) will not export power unless there is already a grid present to push into. It’s a safety feature to prevent islanding. They do make other inverters that target micro-grid applications that might be suitable.
I have no experience operating the SMA on batteries (or even PV, but hopefully soon). I would imagine the MPPT feature wouldn’t be the thing to use on a battery, or maybe it is? The Secure Power Supply feature requires a manual switch to work properly, and to restore grid output operation. Not very useful in my book.
If we are really serious about efficiency & cost reduction, the best approach would be to drop AC for home power, in favor of high voltage DC. The first stage of almost every electronic device and appliance is a rectifier and filter to turn the AC into DC for a SMPS or motor inverter.
I have a plan. Drill and frack for gas. Build super efficient gas power station. Use electricity from said station. Relax in warm glow. (I cannot see a flaw in my plan)
And the problem with coal is?
Here’s a rough and ready price comparison chart for various battery technologies.
The figures presented are per kWh: $150 for lead acid. And $400 for lithium.
Those figures make sense.
It seems to me that the battery reported here is therefore unremarkable.
Tesla have only managed to reduce the lithium price to $350 per kWh. If you buy 10KWh’s worth for $3500.
Probably because they have cleverly designed it to provide a weirdly high DC voltage that necessitates having it and all related components purchased from and fitted by Tesla.
It’s possible therefore that they are promoting the battery in order to attempt to lock people into using their system and services.
It’s still more than double the cost of the same capacity of lead-acid.
Maybe that is why industry power back up is all lead-acid rather than lithium.
People will fall for this though.
And sadly, many of the people who fall for these scams are technically illiterate politicians who get all excited and flustered, and rush in where angels would fear to tread – with vast quantities of taxpayers money.
Here’s that handy chart of battery tech. costs per unit of energy:
http://www.mpoweruk.com/chemical_energy.htm
Many commenters have assumed the desirability of going off grid. some have even noted the possible economic effects of a large portion of the user base going off-grid. So I pose this question.
As public policy, for an entire society, which is the more effective strategy:
A) Use subsidies, user fees, rate increases, taxes, surcharges, etc. to coerce consumers to go off-grid, by increasing prices until they have no choice, except for some otherwise unaffordable solution.
B) Maintain a grid which is as cheap and reliable as possible, making maximum use of economies of scale.
Lets see what people have to say.
B. An analogy would be that there is massive support for high-speed rail (Option A) between the major cities here in Australia. As yet, I have not seen how that would be paid for and how that would compete with the, current, most efficient means to travel between the major cities in Australia which is by air.
The Tesla lithium ion batteries have a considerable cobalt content. Where will this metal come from? Not the USA which has zero cobalt producing mines. Tesla will almost certainly rely on China which processes cobalt from the Democrattic Republic of the Congo. The DRCongo in central Africa supplies more than 60% of the world’s cobalt supply.
Cobalt prices will almost certainly appreciate if Tesla progresses with these energy storage systems.
I like the idea of moving partially or fully off the grid. In many locations, electricity costs are greatly increased by nonsensical grid-connected wind and solar schemes.
Grid distribution and administrative costs add greatly to the burden. In Calgary, the cost of electrical generation is relatively low – about 6 to 9 cents/KWh, but that cost is then doubled or tripled by high distribution and administration costs.
Rather than using batteries, I am more encouraged by other off-grid technologies, such as those that convert methane (natural gas) directly to electricity.
You oant like it in a cold winter when the wind and solar output is negligible and the battery is flat. Survival in that scenario means means burning anything flammable – if you have a fireplace or stove that is.
Using methane is NOT being off grid , it simply changes the nature of the grid and the most efficient way to turn gas into electricity is a Combined Cycle gas turbine plant such as the installations in Calgary owned by ENMAX.
Keith,
Your first paragraph clearly does NOT refer to my comments – you are probably correct, since I’ve lived through a long winter power outage and it was certainly difficult, but you are off-topic.
Your second paragraph is interesting. The grid is defined in my comment as the electrical grid, nothing more. Your comment about GTG’s is valid to the extent that mini-GTG’s are available in sizes suitable and affordable for homes or apartment buildings, and progress is reportedly being made in this field.
My main point is that electricity from the electrical grid has been made much more expensive (and less reliable) by foolish grid-connected green energy schemes and by excessive administrative and distribution costs. Getting off-grid will, I suggest, become the best way to overcome this politically-driven excessive increase in our home energy costs.
Regards, Allan
Is anyone doing research into more efficient compressors for cooling and refridgeration? It seems another way to skin this cat is to target the big draws.
Simple, use a heat exchanger on your outdoor unit. rather than driving a fan and chucking heat out into the desert air, You heat your hot water and make your unit more efficient at the same time.
Get a gas fridge. You only need power for the bulb and fan.
Use a solar water heater to heat the bulb. Instant aircon when you need it
All of this, the “green energy” market, ‘lectric cars, and the resultant high cost of electricity is thanks to CAGW – the biggest lie in human history. We’ve been sold a pg in a poke and we’re arguing about how to keep the costs down for feed and housing.
Green free renewable energy results in electricity at four times the price that is also unreliable.
Here in the UK, many solar panel farms are being paid 43pence/kWh for their output to the grid.
The current wholesale price of electricity is about 4 to 5pence/kWh.
So, in this instance the solar p.v. is costing us 10 times the market rate.
And bear in mind that it is actually worth less than a dependable supply.
Since it is unpredictable, unreliable and the peak solar output occurs when there is low demand.
This Tesla battery is utter crap and the idea is stupid. BTW it’s nothing new, some tech freaks with PV-panels use such batteries since years. BTW you can just take a bunch of car batteries and connect them with a control devices (example: http://www.solaranlagen-portal.com/photovoltaik/stromspeicher/energy-3000-powerstation). Beside some tech-nerds nobody does this – because it’s far away from economic. The price of 350 $/kWh storage is crazy. In a large scale this price goes down to maybe 10 cents per kWh, google for Batterie-Speicherkraftwerk Berlin Steglitz or Golden Valley Electric in Fairbanks battery for more details. The best solution are still pumped storage hydro power station, if you storage there energy for a day, the costs go down to maybe 3 cents per kWh. If you store energy for a longer time, the costs increase accordingly. But 350 $/kWh is just a ridiculous pile of turd.
For German speaking people read more about the topic:
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/lesezeichen-anzeige/stromspeicher-was-sie-sind-was-sie-taugen-was-sie-kosten/
Would a flywheel stepped up during the day by a solar panel and turning a generator at night be useful?
Gribbenski
Consider that most people can no longer be trusted to turn their car headlights on, to change gears with a clutch, and regularly change their oil, oil filter, and AC fan filter, do you “trust” a normal householder to safely operate a multi-ton high-speed generator-motor with oil system and filter and oil reservoir and regulator and controller at 3600 rpm? In their ? basement? garage? Back shed? Back porch?
A lead-acid has the same problems: Gallons of high-concentration sulfuric acid, lead plates, and an un-regulated DC voltage (think arc welder in a basement that can be “turned off” when the shelf tips over, gets climbed on 6 year olds, gets in a house fire, gets the lines “touched” disconnecting/re-connecting the batteries, doesn’t get the acid-covered copper bars torqued down firmly, gets the house broken into to steal the copper wires and regulator/converter, needs regular recharge/discharge/floating charge/overcharge maintenance cycles.
I build and re-build power plant-sized and industrial-sized turbines and generators – they are very, very tough to work on. Very easy to screw up while working on them. (For a house overnight, think of a rotating motor-generator the size of your car, and a stator frame weighing just as much.)
The flywheel? When it breaks, or when the bearings break, what stops it? The house across the street? The house behind you? The wall of the apartment house basement – as it chews up all of the structural members columns and beams holding up the apartment building?
RACookPE1978 must have run the numbers.
A few years back, there was some group trying to push the idea of using flywheels to power cars.
I got them all to thinking when I asked what would happen when you tried to turn the car.
An old idea but used in back generation to keep power up while the backup generator starts. I sure other people have though about it but I have not looked at it for 30 year. Like everything just run the numbers to see is economic. It maybe
Ain’t nobody moving off grid with no 10K battery.
+1
For 4-12 hours maybe if your not cooking, washing or drying or cooling/heating your house.
10 KWh is the same energy as in a quart of gasoline, and storing it costs $3,300??? I’ll sell you my used oil containers for only a hundred bucks each, and they’re reusable indefinitely.
“10 KWh is the same energy as in a quart of gasoline”
ICE that gets 40 miles per gallon = 1 mile per kWh.
Volt users report >3 miles per kWh. YMMV
“they’re reusable indefinitely.”
Both oil and electrons are free for the taking, but on a small scale it’s cheaper to harvest electrons.
Global resource economics.
Each year about 60,000 tonnes of new uranium is mined then purified.
This eventually produces several % of global electricity.
Each year about 40,000 tonnes of new lithium is mined and purified.
This produces zero % of global electricity, but can be used for storage then release on demand of about 0.00001% of global electricity.
Please check my last figure. It looks too high.
For the Musk battery to have global impact, the known lithium reserves are several orders of magnitude too small. It would take decades to upscale. The recovery cost increases as the quality of the ore source gets less as demand increases if indeed there is that much lithium to be found.
If either of these has a future, it is NOT lithium.
(Joke. Besides, who wants a new rechargeable, multi use battery versatile enough to be used off-peak in a mobile smart phone that is six feet high?)
Geoff.
Others have pointed out already that if you want a stationary battery, you have no need to use an expensive Lithium battery, as the reason to use Lithium is its light weight, which is of no use in a stationary installation.
I’d like to add: Tesla Motors seems to try to find bigger markets for its automotive batteries; but these batteries are already prepared to survive most car crashes. This is ANOTHER feature you don’t need in a stationary installation.
So, we have a completely wrong requirement analysis. Tesla Motors obviously thinks that advantages incurred by experience curve / economies of scale outweigh these false requirements; but I don’t think so. IF a viable market for stationary household batteries develops, the economies of scale of that market alone would make it worthwhile to develop a system that avoids the false requirements.
…also, the price of Lithium per tonne is going up and up and up over the past years EVEN as the global economy continues to stagnate, due to Lithium’s popularity in mobile devices and drones, so the consequences of Tesla Motors’ wrong decision will get worse as the price rises further….
I generate over 1000 KWh excess electricity a year on my 6.7KW PV array. Fortunately, since I have net metering, I can recover a few shekels @ur momisugly wholesale rates rather than dump those extra watts into the water heater or A/C. If my utility operator wants me to store it on my property they will need to pay me to install a battery system, I will buy a battery backup system someday when it starts saving or earning me money so I am a future customer when the price is right.
Tesla’s grid scale batteries will be the tipping point though, not the small scale home units.
I see that the difficulty is that you voluntarily signed up as a customer of the supply company. You accepted the terms and conditions because you required (or wanted) a cheap reliable source of electrons.
When you decided to start producing some of your own electrons instead of buying them, why did you expect your usual supplier of electrons to buy your excess at random times and quantities, at retail price instead of the production cost that they usually pay for their electrons? You appear to require the supply company to make a compulsory loss so that you can make a compulsory profit! The market should determine the returns of your generation not some political compunction.
Richard of NZ,
Did you miss the part where I said I get paid at wholesale rates? Granted that’s more than the price of electrons at the nearest central power plant but I assume the cost of building, operating and maintaining my equipment and I don’t get credit for that, nor should I.
PS: Guess what the cost of electrons are when the grid in Texas is at peak demand? Two years ago our PUC (public utility commission) raised the system-wide offer cap (SWOC) to $9,000 per megawatt-hour in 2015. (http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/ERCOT-Will-Raise-Texas-System-Wide-Offer-Cap-to-9000-in-2015). You don’t suppose having your grid bought out by a bunch of Wall St. banks and hedgefunds (look up TXU and Energy Future Holdings) who then proceeded to bankrupt the company just might be more important than me selling solar electricity back to the grid? Maybe your concern about me gaming the system is misplaced?