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Tesla Energy

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Re: Tesla Energy

#261

Post by ZoFreX »

This is a three-pronged stroke of genius:

1) Immediate benefits to just about anyone. If you have your own solar panels, you need this (or something like it). Even if you don't, you can benefit by drawing more power during cheaper off-peak times.

2) If lots of people get in on this, we'll have the storage capacity we need on the grid to be more dependent on renewable energy. Lack of storage capacity is one of the biggest obstacles to increasing renewable generation.

3) If lots of people buy this, the price per unit goes down, and it's the most expensive component of Tesla's main product, their cars - which are effectively batteries on wheels.

Re: Tesla Energy

#262

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

colinsidoti wrote: post #141
kmod wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you say is true, then with better economies of scale and longer investment horizons, utilities would quickly erase any peak-vs-non-peak arbitrage opportunities.

It's hard to wrap your head around all the challenges in energy. If you're REALLY good at it you can find some incredible arbitrage opportunities...see Enron. Consider the power output characteristics of some common energy sources: Gas, Nuclear, Hydro, Wind, Solar Our "sustainable" sources of power - hydro, wind, and solar - are also the ones with the most irregular and unpredictable power output. This creates a prob…

Gravity batteries have really low power densities, in general.

Now, vanadium-redox flow batteries... That's always been my pet large-scale energy storage. That or hydro.

Re: Tesla Energy

#263

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

roel_v wrote: post #227
jacobolus wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use incandescent lights. They produce a much more pleasant spectrum than “white” CFLs or LEDs.

LED's are available in various color temperatures, including 2700K (commonly referred to as 'warm white' which is basically the temperature of incandescent). It's true that the dollar-bin Chinese LED's have all sorts of bad characteristics that used to be associated with all things LED - pale color, bad spread, bad (or no) dimming capabilities, etc. It's 2015 though - take a 20$ Philips Master LED for example (I deci…

Color temperature is nowhere near everything. Or rather, it would be, were LEDs actually anywhere near a blackbody in terms of radiation output over the visible spectrum. But they aren't. Nowhere near.

Re: Tesla Energy

#265

Post by mrfusion »

roel_v wrote: post #200
kondro wrote: post #32

Doesn't include inverter or installer markup and can only provide 2kW output. It will get expensive by the time you actually have all the bits you need inside your house. How is this better than deep-cycle batteries (with 20+ year lives) again? Why does it need to be slimline?

"and can only provide 2kW output." only 2kW? 2kW is enough to power any residential, single-family house for 95-98% of the time; you only need (a little bit) more than that at very short (few minutes) peak intervals - when heating up an oven, or some cycles of doing laundry. A second unit would provide that headroom, and otherwise (when the extra $5k for a second unit is prohibitive) you could still draw from the gri…

It says 3KW peak output which would handle things starting up.

Re: Tesla Energy

#266

Post by kragen »

raverbashing wrote: post #230
miratrix wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the grid tied solar inverter front - the spec sheet says the battery voltage is 350~450 V, so we're looking at 108 lithium ion cells (25 x 18650 cells?) at 400 VDC nominal. This is quite different from typical lead acid battery pack voltage of 12, 24, or 48VDC that's used for battery backup storage, so a lot of existing solar battery storage infrastructure may not even work... this means that people may need to bu…

Yes, it would be interesting to know if there's an advantage of connecting so many cells in series Most systems limit themselves to something like 48v as you said (I think 48v is the threshold of "being dangerous")

Higher voltage means lower current and thus lower voltage loss, and lower percentage losses for the same voltage loss, so you don’t need lots of copper.

Re: Tesla Energy

#267

Post by jcfrei »

I can't wait to see the first users proudly cutting their connection to the power grid, claiming they are now energy independent and free from oppressive utility companies...

Re: Tesla Energy

#268

Post by aqzman »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #264

If everyone had these and they were all attempting to "charge during nonpeak hours" wouldn't those hours become the peak hours?

If enough people had these in their homes then there would no longer be "peak hours" or "non-peak hours", I would think that this would normalize the grid so that pricing is always fairly consistent.

Re: Tesla Energy

#269

Post by amai »

The competition doesn't sleep: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/sungevity-and-so...

In fact they seem to be ahead. Sonnenbattery offers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery since 2011 in Germany.

For technical details see http://www.sonnenbattery.com/strom-energie-speicher/sonnenba...

Re: Tesla Energy

#270

Post by noir_lord »

freshyill wrote: post #209
ChuckMcM wrote: post #138

Nice, that came in lower than I was expecting. I was thinking $5K for the 7kWh unit. Of course that is the "installers" price so who knows what those folks will consider the 'retail' price. My wife still has her solar installer certification so we could presumably get one that way. It also makes for a really interesting opportunity for grid tied solar inverters. Now you want the inverter to power the house first, the…

How about stuck to the side of your house? From further down the comments, this is a rebranding of a battery already offered to SolarCity customers. http://www.solarcity.com/residential/backup-power-supply The image on SolarCity has been updated to show Tesla branding.

Apropos of nothing but that product page has a lovely clean design.
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