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Play. Play. Play….
I really hate rich guys who PLAY with crap. If Elon is serious then shut the fuck up (STFU)! DO IT!!! Make it a REALITY instead of playing around with more expensive shit that everyone else will almost certainly will be paying for — one way or another.
You just know his failed rockets, car company, space agency, and now this power ball crap will be written off in taxes somewhere. And just WHO do you think has to make up that kind of playful spending? Answer: Not him!
He has done it. Says it is delivering in a few months.
Is it going to fall over and blow up?
In the first minute he puts up a photoshopped picture and declares ‘This is real”.
Cool, I can’t wait to throw some at the Mariner’s relief pitchers.
Yeah, the battery stores up excess energy during the sunny day to power the unit so we can have power at night. Fine. My problem is tying to figure out how many additional batteries I’m going to need to store up sufficient energy to power the unit during extended cloudy day periods (and we get a lot of those up here in the NW).
He’s claiming 90 kWh is plenty. I think he is underestimating how much power people use, especially those in the Elon cult who would be buying. Computers and laptops at a few hundred watts, various phones and other electronic devices, maybe gadgets that have gone from analog to digital, a big screen TV at 1000 watts. A decawatt here, a decawatt there, pretty soon you’re talking about real energy.
Where did you get that? My off grid solar system produces about 6Kw per hour, for an average of 36Kw per day. My house runs completely off batteries and I don’t conserve.
3 Bedroom house with an efficiency apartment, 9 ceiling fans going constantly, 2 refrigerators, 3 large screen TV’s. (LED). Lots of electronics. And I work from home, so I am here using the system resources all day.
And I have plenty of power with this setup. I tracked my usage for a few weeks, and designed the system for 30% growth, I can scale into it.
You only need 90 KW day if you live in a house the size of Al Gorey.
I was wrong about TV power consumption. This has gone down to 200-300 watts where I assumed they had gone up.
I don’t think your power use is at the level of a typical Elon cultist, though 6 kilowatts is a reasonable number. I figure that would require more than 90 backup, but perhaps he had in mind a shorter time frame.
“To support grid defection, we believe the size of the battery needs to be very large, something akin to two-months’ worth of consumption,” Moody’s concluded. “The cost of electricity using that much storage would cost around 552¢ per kilowatt hour (kWh) on a levelized cost of energy basis.”
http://forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2015/01/09/solar-plus-batteries-unlikely-to-threaten-utilities-anytime-soon-study-says/2/
Do you have an electric vehicle too?
On second thought, it is reported that the output of the powerwall is only 2 kilowatts.
This battery pack will work well in the sunshine states. Being able to be off the grid in California will be a boon.
They already have entire systems that are better for cheaper. Musk has the Jobs-reality-distortion field that makes people excited to pay more for less. Lithium’s benefit is it has a good energy to weight ratio, something that isn’t useful for stationary usage.
For a cult leader, that was one of the worst speeches I’ve seen. Takes so long to get to the point. Then I realized that was the point. To first tell people things they already know, so they can feel smart.
It seems Elon Musk is betting the market (consumer & commercial) for alternative energy sources will continue to grow and maybe takeoff! That doesn’t seem unreasonable excepting; Oil’s recent cost drop has certainly hampered renewable energy growth. Will oil costs stay low?
On the solar power generation side, most solar panels are around 11-15% efficient. SunPower SPR-X21-255 is 21.57% efficient. There are solar panels in development with efficiencies of 40% and better that hopefully someday will be mass produced and marketed. With higher the solar panel efficiency, less surface area is needed and increased consumer adoption.
And to store all that alternative energy, Elon Musk is betting on producing cheap energy storage systems, batteries. Certainly batteries can be used to store energy, but are they now reliable, efficient and cheap enough? Elon Musk seems to think so!
Elon’s giga-factory will certainly enable battery mass production on a scale not seen before. Hopefully it doesn’t become another Superfund site! But what good is affordable mass production of unreliable, inefficient and unsafe batteries? I hope Elon has some battery technology break through that makes his batteries and system reliable, efficient and safe!
If he does, he will certainly make a hefty profit and the economy, environment and world will also benefit!
Oil is a small part of electricity production. Coal, natural gas, nuclear are almost all.
The battery also does not include the inverter, home line interface or other items you need to interface it to solar and/or the grid… It is definitely not a total solution.
he said its all included,
Go to the website, DC/AC inverter and professional installation is separate. I’ve seen it reported that it’s $4000 for the inverter. Someone did the calculations and said that it comes to about $0.30 kWh.
You mean Elon lied in his speech? I’m shocked!
$4000 or an inverter is a lot. Given how many people I know with inverters in other countries, I know it can be had for much much less.
Perhaps the high amount is required for the amount of power being used by an Elon cultist.
MikeN you’re not one of those who can’t read or try to understand the fine print?
Where in the speech did Elon explicitly say it came with an inverter?
7:40 You pick your favorite color.
7:55 Wall mounted (doesn’t need a battery room)
8:15 Integrated safety features, thermal controls
8:20 dc to dc converter
8:25 designed to work “very well” with solar systems right out of the box
8:30 addresses all the needs
If you are thinking about buying a battery, what does this provide you:
8:40 Gives you peace of mind if there is a cut in utilities … you don’t have to worry about being out of power.
8:50 You can go completely off grid. You can take your solar panels and charge the battery pack and that’s all you use.
9:00 It gives you safety, security and gives you a complete and affordable solution and the cost of this is $3500.00
I’ve always found & know when the product’s strongest selling points are 1.) peace of mind 2.) safety & security, that what being sold is more psychology then product!
I always listen to the psychology in the seller speech. If the seller’s focuses remains on the product offerings and is not shifted to buyer’s psychology offerings, I am more inclined to trust the seller, but; only after I verify.
In real life and most often, the way it works out (because sellers oft don’t know their product): the more the seller speaks not about product details, the more they misstep in their effort to sell me!
Excellent analysis, noname!
I do the same with every Apple announcement.
Isn’t that the same smoke that’s powering his projector and microphone?
I’ve seen two Teslas in the wild. Thought it may have been the same one twice.
One was parked in a mall parking lot. The other passed me on the interstate travelling at 70+ MPH. The main reason I noticed it was that it was on a trailer being pulled by a Ford F-250 pickup with “Tesla Service” painted on the door.
Why don’t people pay as much attentions to the video presentations of Energizer, Duracell, Rayovac, etc?
Speak for yourself & what’s your point?
Why don’t you post links to Energizer, Duracell, Rayovac video presentations you refer too?
I sure hope this doesn’t portend the end of those Energizer Bunny commercials — I can’t get enough of seeing that cute little bunny beating that drum!
Energizer Bunny® – Darth Vader – 1994 Commercial – YouTube https://youtube.com/watch?v=QxafIhYFOr0
But I digress…. Elon: Where’s your drum? 😉
People have been using batteries to store their solar power for decades, what’s (watts) changed now?
The Jobs reality distortion field Musk inherited. Lithium isn’t even the best stationary battery technology, it is the best mobile battery technology. After this comes out, we won’t hear about it until the division is shuttered.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/05/i-am-not-getting-tesla-battery-hype.html
http://solarlove.org/solar-storage-gets-upgrade-german-inventor/
There are these cable cars. Can I take a PowerWall, an inverter, and connect to the city’s power line a few times a week, and have free power?
The major load for most modern homes is the HVAC system. If heated via fossil fuel, a solar system with battery back up is fine for living off the grid, if you’re willing to give up AC. In colder northern areas where people use heat pumps, a solar system probably (unless there are a large number of batteries and lots of solar panels) can’t generate and store enough power to operate the heat pump compressor, let alone the back up electric resistance heat. Without heat the pipes freeze, and without AC the wife gets hot.
One more thing. People need power to jam!
I think I have figured out Musk’s endgame.
Become the world’s first trillionaire.
How? The classic formula. Create demand, then fill demand. Create demand for batteries, electric cars, etc. Fill demand the old fashioned way.
Problem is, the earth doesn’t have enough rare earth elements to fill the ultimate demand.
Solution: Leave earth. SpaceX.
With the help of Planetary Resources, SpaceX can import enormous quantities rare earth elements using affordable reusable rockets.
Trillionaire, anyone?
Not so exciting.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/04/tesla_powerwall_the_game_change_flavoured_battery/
For sustained power output how does this compare to an electric generator? Not well which is why hospitals and people who wish to prepare for emergencies have generators.
Don’t computer centers and such already have uninterruptible power supplies? I know the phone company does. Other than the claim that his batteries will take more recharges and weigh less I’m not seeing what he’s bringing to the game. It isn’t cost savings.
The gigafactory is just loading lithium ions from Panasonic into his packaging. His batteries take more recharges, because they are limiting the drain thus reducing the number of full discharges.
If the max output is just 2 kilowatts, then you might have to buy 2 or 3 powerwalls.
Ah, no, it really isn’t.
High mileage vehicles, electric cars, etc. are reducing the tax base for some cities. So, now they look for new ways to tax automobiles.
If enough households go off grid, you can imagine how they will make up for the lost revenue…
Has anyone considered the amount and the type of raw materials that these batteries are composed of? One of the issue of batteries today is the materials needed to build them.
Also, what is the lifespan of these batteries, and how much will it cost to replace?
This all sounds great until you realize there’s never a forever thing.
Required reading for all battery speculators >>> http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_lithium
Agreed, solar is definitely moving forward with huge advancements in technology, and with the introduction of new organic fuel concepts – the future of solar is very bright. The only downside is the size and cost – however both of these issues will see solutions within the next 3-5 years, guaranteed. PV panels and AIO home hubs is where we should be focusing our efforts on!