So in other words, a battery as good as Tesla claims it has, would be useful because it would help you leverage your electricity usage and buying.

Or if you spike your use at night, such as charging an EV.

It's 'marginally' an accurate story, but it doesn't take into the fact that in many markets (particularly California), electricity rates are both set by time of use, and tier. Selling back to the grid during the mid-morning is fine, but you buy it back at a higher rate later in the day - say.. 6 pm at night, when the sun / heat is at the highest and so are the rates.

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.

you probably get some sun, there in CA;;; here in
TN the best is one in 3 days. . just get all of the
subsidy dollars you can, for the capital costs!!! -- j
.

Whew. When you posted a NAK on this, I was quite concerned. I am more comfortable in biomed than in phy-eng. That being said, I had tried to do a 'due diligence' on this topic. I was genuinely afraid I had made some incorrect assumption and meandered off the path of reality.

Jan

Thank you. I value your opinion on this. I need to get 2 more ducks in a line before I commit to the solar panels - hopefully will do that later this summer.

Jan

By all means don't take Bloomberg as any kind of "objective" source. I thought that while the concept was interesting, the implementation was just this side of absurd to be practical. You are correct in your observations.

This system would have to be better than just hooking up to the "grid". Grid power would have to be less reliable, harder to use, and more expensive for consumers to abandoning it

Thank You! . got it now!
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
.

Sorry. It's a term used a lot in biology to indicate 'something that is part of the organism'. I was thinking of my house as a big organism, with its own (endogenous) power supply and the ability to connect to the grid (exogenous) power supply.

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

The Bloomberg Mgazine article fails to mention along with Musk not mentioning about the battery system the initial idea is to lease these batteries through Solar City as a back up to the lease packages of their solar panel roof systems. By the way Solar City is run bu his brother or cousin, of which I don't remember.
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.

atlantis power management? -- j
.

Jan, could I ask about indogenous? . I love your analysis, but got hung up there. . Thanks!!! -- j
.

What does this post have to do with Objectivism, AR, or AS?

The Tesla Powerwall is like so many ideas of the Green movement, fancy, faddish and more expensive then their worth. If there is going to be a true individual energy solution it must: be a standalone system without any connection to a collectivist grid, it must be self starting and self charging (if charging is needed), it should not consume any fossil based fuels, and should deliver enough power (at current power requirements, ie 120vac 60hz) at least in the short term to help the transition from grid to standalone. It should have enough power for an average size home. Solar, wind, geothermal or batteries do none of this. Galt's motor would be a crowning achievement. It did all those things. The next shift in energy paradigm will possibly be from the "fringe" sciences. As for Elon Musk, he certainly is an innovator and visionary, smart also. However, his ideas are not meant for the public at large but to fatten his bank account. A looter, since a large chunk of his money can be traced back to Gov't. I am not against fattening the bank accounts if it comes from true innovation and the private sector without ANY input from the public sector. Except I would allow Gov'ts to purchase at a price of course.

Gee, I thought it sounded kind of cool, actually. If it turns out to be a crock, I'm sure we'll all find out, just as with Rearden Metal.

I believe this article is misleading in important considerations. PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG BECAUSE I AM HEADING IN THIS DIRECTION.

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

Tesla isn't the first to offer battery backup. He's riding the unrealistic hype of lithium batteries to fund mass production, which he hopes to bring the sales price of batteries down. It's the price of batteries that makes it hard to produce affordable electric vehicles. Zinc or aluminum battery technology breakthroughs would cut the legs from under lithium battery sales.

People will buy into anything. Barnum proved it when he charged 10 cents to see the egress (exit).

$100,000 buys a lot of lead acid batteries. way more energy storage than any 200lb super battery, period! This is just cute without subsidy.

The Powerwall battery has only one advantage: in an emergency, it's the only way you have to store power. In jurisdictions having an unreliable grid, this might prove useful.

I looked at that, too. I could build a 10,000 sq ft dome with three floors - completely insulated - for under $90K with a spray-crete dome. Then all you have to do is finish the inside. I even drew out floor plans which included an underground 12-car garage. ;) I stayed in one for a family reunion and aside from the echoing and noise, it was remarkably easy to heat/cool and incredibly efficient.

I would opt for less conventional construction:
www.aidomes.com

It's all good and it never hurts to elicit clarification.

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.

Sorry if I appeared critical of you, the poster of the article, blarman. That wasn't my intention, although my comment does not make that clear does it? ;^)

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.