Battery Storage Bonanza: Tesla Rules the World
Game changer is usually a term that is usually overused by entrepreneurs seeking a lot of your hard-earned money. But the shocking truth is that yes, the new battery announced by Tesla is potentially, in the words of our esteemed vice-president, a big f—king deal. Game changer may indeed be an understatement if the potential of the Powerwall is realized.
Elon Musk doesn’t do things small. (Full disclosure: Elon Musk is my son’s hero so I am probably biased, although this didn’t get us a tour of SpaceX, but I don’t hold grudges against him.)
If you have been working the solar industry for the past few years, you know that off grid systems are very expensive, but very convenient if you live in a remote area, or if you need to take power on the run like a soldier needing to power up some communications equipment. All of the action is on grid tie installations, which means that you have to be connected to the grid.
Many of our customers don’t understand that the grid acts like a big battery. You store your power on the grid, which is great—except when the power goes down. You would think that if you have those home solar panels on your roof generating electricity, in a power outage you would have energy, while those less green neighbors of yours are out of luck. Well, wrong. You will be there with your neighbors candle in hand unless you have a battery backup system to your solar system.
A backup system usually can add as much as 50% to the price of your solar installation because you need a special kind of solar inverter plus the cost of the batteries.
The Powerwall’s price is about $3,000 for a 7 kilowatt hour model to $3,500 for a 10 killowatt hour model. I have seen some estimates that this may add up to about 30 cents per kwh to get electricity from the Powerwall—compared to what you might pay about 12 -15 cents per kwh around Washington DC (some places like Hawaii is a lot more and would be ideal for the Powerwall).
As the cost comes down even further as the technology improves, would you consider ditching your utility completely? Stay tuned for Musk’s next announcement.