Solar Power and Battery Backup: Tesla and SolarCity's Dream Home Not much actual news, but maybe someone will read more out of it than I did.
Source article has more deets: http://gigaom.com/cleantech/tesla-solarcity-quietly-selling-building-battery-projects/ This comment was interesting.
That works out to a price of $120/kWh. It's also economical for the user. It gives hope on a secondary industry for used EV batteries, esp. if some of that value can be deducted from the initial sale price of the EV.
Wonder if this could be a testbed for a little "smart-grid" connecting your Tesla-car to your PV and house-grid! (Car as back-up battery)
Cool. I doubt it right now--but I hope there's a way add this to existing, non-Solar City PV systems in the future.
At $10 a month for something you use every few years when you have a power-outage your better off buying a portable generator then at least you can take the generator with you and charge your tesla anywhere..
Except you can charge it at low TOU rates (1.25 cents per kWh where I live) and power your house during the peak rate. Or as it says charge it during the day with your solar, and still have AC/lights at night. No gas required. No noise.
You will never makeup the savings in the cost of the replacement battery from all the extra charge and discharge cycles. If you use your old battery after you upgrade/replace it sure but not using the installed roadster battery.
Yup. Now we know why Tesla offers the battery replacement option and buys wrecked Roadsters! :smile: A new Roadster battery pack has 53kWh usable capacity and 11 sheets. If it degrades to 70% capacity, you can use 4 sheets for a storage battery of nominal 13.5kWh and 10.8kWh if cycled in an 80% SOC window. And 8 years after Model S production starts, Tesla will have a continuous stream of virtually "free" sheets for 4x20,000 = 80,000 storage battery packs per year. Nice!
It's not for a power outage. If you read the post by the commenter, it is used for times when the solar panel doesn't provide power (which is every day during the night). You can run your house "off-grid" for most of the year (except during times when you need to use lots of air con or electrical heat) and pay no money for electricity. That's why $10/month sounds like a really good deal.
Jesse W. Pichel – Jefferies & Co., Inc. There is a lot of chatter in the media about the Tesla battery pack, showing up in solar projects and do you think that solar could be a driver of your significant driver of your battery cells in the future? Unidentified Company Representative I don’t think we want to show a little of our cards right now, but I think there is some interesting potential in that direction may be in partnership with the certain solar company. http://seekingalpha.com/article/576141-tesla-motors-ceo-discusses-q1-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=qanda Is it a backup or a car charging system. http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/2983-Solar-City-EV-charging-page?highlight=solar+city
He definitely sai d "all of our cards right now". Those seekingalpha transcriptions are always a mess.
Solar City's page on the backup battery: http://www.solarcity.com/residential/energy-storage.aspx Called about it. Priced at $20,000. Used to be $40,000 Used to have the $10 a month lease. Those sold out in two days. CEO has it installed They really tried to dissuade purchase giving the reason that it won't save you money.
I just called SolarCity because I really wanted to install solar AND the energy storage unit. I'm not interested in leasing, but purchasing. I don't know if telling SolarCity this upfront had any influence on the answer. They told me that the energy storage unit was still in testing and NOT available right now. They couldn't answer by when they expect it to be available. - And when it is, I would much rather have Tesla sell it, so that consumers could buy it and get it installed by their preferred solar company, and would not be required to get their solar system from SolarCity. I am very annoyed that during my conversation they diverted to talking about leasing THREE times. (That wasn't about leasing the energy storage unit, but their solar panels. No doubt they are going to push the lease option when the energy storage IS available, too.) It was such a turn-off, they are the LAST company I would consider installing my solar system.
During Sandy the generator was no use. We had to drive 85 miles to get gas as there was nothing in our area. It's noisy as hell and you have to have it rigged up to you distribution panel. I would pay $10/mnth for solar backup system anyday.
I spoke to SC yesterday about a PV system for my house. They are coming out soon for an initial site audit. I asked about the Tesla-designed battery system they advertise at Home Energy Storage & Battery Backup System - SolarCity The person I spoke to assured me that it would be available next year for purchase and install into an existing PV system, and that the price would be less than $5K.