Tesla's Powerwall - more fad than function
While I think the idea is noteworthy, the price point ($100K) isn't low enough for me to consider investing, and I'm in a sunny area.
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There are two fallacies that I see in the article: one is the overall cost and one is an artificially-posed binary choice between having battery and being on the grid. Let me deal with these issues separately.
Overall cost. Dozens of companies will install grid tied solar for free (the company retains ownership of the panels). The company gets the rebate from the state. You pay out of pocket for the battery. So this cuts the price for your solar system plus battery down to $7K.
Not binary choice. You can both have the battery and be on the grid. This is actually what you want to do preferentially - it lowers your profile and it lets you have a big party once in a while. The sun shines, the grid produces energy; you use some of it and store the rest in your battery. When the battery is topped off, you send the rest of the energy out to the grid. (The next sunny day (after your battery is filled - unless you party hearty that evening and night) most of the electricity will go out onto the grid.) When there is an earthquake and the grid goes down, you use your indogenous panels for sun power during the day and the battery for power at night.. and waste the rest of the energy the panels produce (which you would have normally sent out into the grid). When you have a big party, you draw extra energy from the grid and pay the electric company.
This seems reasonable to me.
Jan
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Rereading what I wrote: I spelled "endogenous" wrong - that was probably what confused you.
Do you have any comment on the plausibility of my plan? blarman does not think it will work.
Jan, blames spellchecker
edit- added question
and yes, your plan will work ... imho ... like the diesel-
electric car which has batteries which may be charged
either by the grid or by a small diesel engine.
works fine on "sparks" until you're 20 miles from
the motel and can then crank up the "pony engine" to
make it. . I do not know about the $7k net cost --
it sounds reasonable -- but the battery part is
coming true with li-ion now, and other new batteries
on the horizon. . we live in the woods here and have
batteries for short outages and a gasoline generator
for long ones. . I give out "kitchen lights" consisting
of a li-ion battery (around 15000 mAh) and a 5 volt
light on a wire ... as "party favors" to friends and
family. . works for us! -- j
.
Jan
TN the best is one in 3 days. . just get all of the
subsidy dollars you can, for the capital costs!!! -- j
.
Jan
Just watch for his lobbyists to push for the tax breaks on buying these wasteful toys.
Musk is a predator, a more dangerous terrorist than any other.
I was good friends with a petroleum engineer (actually ran a distillery/refinery in town) and he had some very interesting insights. He pointed out that all energy originates from the sun, it's just that plants have the best methods for converting that energy and storing it. When all those plants from eons past were buried and converted to petroleum, all that densely stored energy became available for us as future generations to exploit. He said that because of the way we are constantly developing new fields through exploration and new methods of exploitation, he said most estimates were that there was probably 1000 years worth of oil and natural gas still left in the earth's crust with which to power vehicles and industry.
We also talked a little about the oil spill and he said that those are a constant fact of nature - man-kind doesn't have a monopoly! He said there are constant leaks of petroleum and natural gas happening all over the world, and the environmentalist nuts gloss over this fact because it doesn't advance their narrative. He also went on to say that oil spills - even big ones - don't harm the environment nearly as much as the politicians say. Hydrocarbons do break down pretty quickly - especially in warm climates. He wasn't advocating in favor of oil spills (it's a waste of money), he just said that there's no real reason to overly panic as the Sierra Club is wont to do.
I agree completely with the concept of self sufficiency at the neighborhood or individual level. A home owner would be economically wiser to retroactively superinsulate his home than buy into this scheme. That would have a much bigger positive effect on the economy, on jobs, and on energy use in America. New homes could easily be built to use less than half the energy for heating and cooling than the most popular designs.
And you're correct about the insulation thing. Most people don't realize that by simply adding more insulation to their attic they can easily reduce heating/cooling costs by 10-20%, recouping their investment in a few short years. If I had my druthers and were ever to build a home, I'd have it all done with the spray-foam-type insulation that goes between the studs and use the 1/2" insulating board on the exterior as well. More spray foam in the attic and ceilings (it also acts as a nice barrier for leaky roof ;) and in the floors (also keeps down noise). It does make it a little hard to wire around if you need to make changes, so you do need to plan accordingly.
www.aidomes.com
In our case, we also have a Chevy Volt... my wife has it at work during the day and she has about a 60 mile commute, so when she returns at night, the battery is depleted (but she only drives a few miles on gas actually on the trip). If we had, say a 25,000 to 35,000 kWh battery in the house, I could really just disconnect from the grid if I also added a nat-gas Kohler generator (sell for practically nothing on the second-hand market). The assumption is that people are 'buying' the panels and battery, but I'm a SolarCity customer, they put in the infrastructure and I buy power from them like I do PG&E, but at basically half the rate per kwh. I could just ask them to add more panels and a battery so that I could basically make it through even a bad-weather time of the year with heavy overcast.
It's not $100,000 either... not sure where that is coming from... Tesla is taking orders for $3500. The $100,000 ones are for the industrial power grid use as capacitors in the grid.
I have a Solar City solar panel system on my house with a reasonable lease. When I was in discussion of their system with a salesperson, mentioned that they werre working on a battery backup to their solar energy system which would be a lease package set-up.
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