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Tesla Energy

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Re: Tesla Energy

#371

Post by aerovistae »

breser wrote: post #107
aerovistae wrote: post #101

Hey, for fun let's use this to do a rough math check on Tesla's future plans. The battery is $3500 for 10kWh. Model S with a 270kWh battery is advertised with a range of 240mi. Model 3 aims for a minimum range of 200mi, or 5/6, a.k.a. 225kWh battery. 225 is 22.5 * 10. 22.5 * $3500 = $78,750. Model 3 is supposed to be $35,000. I believe in Elon Musk completely and I want nothing more than to see him succeed and I have…

Your battery sizes for the cars is way off. The Model S has come with a 60 (no longer available), 70 and 85 kWh battery. The 240 mile vehicle is the newer 70 kWh battery. 70 is 7 * 10. 7 * $3500 = $24,500.

Yeah I have no idea how I managed to add 200kWh in there. Thanks for pointing that out. Wow.

Re: Tesla Energy

#372

Post by antaviana »

army wrote: post #359
antaviana wrote: post #321

While I think this announcement is great news, there are at least two caveats to keep in mind that can mine the long term value proposition: - If there are many users, the peak/non-peak price differences (arbitrage) will disappear. This is because of supply/demand law. - If solar energy/battery storage takes off, it will be heavily taxed. There is an impending "Sun tax" being implemented in Spain, that aims to make m…

Your analysis of the arbitrage is faulty - if there's a cost associated with time-shifting energy, then the gap will only narrow to the extent that it's still economically justifiable for people to invest the money in time-shifting energy. What you're describing (no peak/non-peak difference plus people still buying batteries to time-shift energy) isn't a steady state - why would people continue to buy the batteries w…

Yes, what I meant is that each Tesla battery sold will contribute to reduce the peak price and to increase the non-peak price, effectively reducing the gap that is the basis for the value proposition.

Because of this effect, the value proposition for existing Tesla battery owners will lower over time. Ironically, the ones that benefit at long term are the non-owners because their peak time price will be lower.

Re: Tesla Energy

#373

Post by toomuchtodo »

joezydeco wrote: post #290
toomuchtodo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too have ComED (Schaumburg). From midnight to 5am daily, I can get power for 1 cent/kwh. If I were to shift all of my consumption to that time period, its effectively free.

I've been on ComEd RRTP for 6 years now and I've been wanting a nicer way to shift load or arbitrage price drops. The Telsa device, as others have mentioned, seems like a rebranded solar storage device. I suppose the intelligence would be in the inverter/grid cutout mechanism anyway. This system would run my home for about 8 hours in the winter and 4 in the summer before emptying, so I would need a lot more smarts in…

> This system would run my home for about 8 hours in the winter and 4 in the summer before emptying, so I would need a lot more smarts in the box to try and anticipate price spikes without running out.

Most new grid-tie inverters can be controlled from a computer either over IP or a serial interface; you could fairly trivially control the flow of power by polling your electric provider's website (I scrape the RRTP API for current and future pricing data every 60 seconds) and commanding your inverter based on that.

Re: Tesla Energy

#374

Post by mikeash »

aqzman wrote: post #268
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.

Which is more or less the point, of course. If you can even out the peaks and troughs then you can make all this stuff much more efficient.

Of course, that assumes that generation can be consistent. Right now, that is the case. If we took the existing grid and just gave everybody batteries, we could make power consumption flat throughout the day, which would greatly reduce costs. That would be cool!

The idea is that in the future, solar dominates. There you inherently have peak and non-peak hours, because you generate more electricity at noon than at midnight. This is completely impractical if you go straight from generation to use, because the times don't match up. But throw in storage to flatten it all out, and it works.

Re: Tesla Energy

#375

Post by danielweber »

giarc wrote: post #346
wiremine wrote: post #310

What I'd love to see is a ROI calculator that: * uses my zip code to figure out what my non-peak costs might be. * allows me to optionally calculate solar energy capture (so I can see what impact having solar would be, given the average sunny days in my area) * takes into account the wear and tear average cold weather would have on the lifetime of the batter and the payback period. For example, I live in Michigan, an…

Would you not install the battery in a heated place in your house (garage, basement, furnace room)?

What if it's in the garage and someone hits it with the car and pierces the cells?

I didn't see "insurance" anywhere on that Tesla page. Ideally my insurance company won't pitch a fit about about me installing this in my house, but will Tesla guarantee that?

Re: Tesla Energy

#376

Post by mikeash »

DigitalSea wrote: post #158

I hope they have taken the safety technology from their Tesla vehicles and put it into their Tesla Energy batteries, because the thought of a 10Kwh lithium-ion battery exploding in my garage does not sound like the kind of mess I would want to be cleaning up. I couldn't see it mentioned anywhere, but presumably these batteries will be available in Australia for the same price? We always get charged more. If I can get…

Elon mentioned during his talk that the batteries contain all the same active thermal management and safety systems that are in the car batteries.

Re: Tesla Energy

#377

Post by krschultz »

hyperpape wrote: post #332
eli wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> power during cheaper off-peak times Pretty sure my rate is the same all the time. I wonder what percentage of electricity customers have variable rate pricing.

One point is that if batteries in houses (or electric cars) become more common, there's more incentive for a utility to offer variable pricing, because more people can actually make use of it, letting the utility company get by with less peak capacity.

I agree in the long term (50 years) that is true, but in the medium term (15 years) solar + storage might be moving faster than utility companies want. If you built a power plant with a 40 year lifespan in the year 2000, you would not be happy if peak demand is lower than expected in 2025.

I would not expect the utility companies to be allies in this transition period to clean energy. It requires major capital outlays from them, it invalidates previous investments that have not fully depreciated, and in the end they will probably make less money.

This is not to throw a wet blanket on solar and storage, I just think we need to be cognizant of the idea that in all likelihood utility companies are both required to change for this whole thing to work and will be very resistant to that change. There might need to be changes to incentives or regulation to get the utility companies moving in the right direction faster.

Re: Tesla Energy

#379

Post by nine_k »

ams6110 wrote: post #345
wiremine wrote: post #310

What I'd love to see is a ROI calculator that: * uses my zip code to figure out what my non-peak costs might be. * allows me to optionally calculate solar energy capture (so I can see what impact having solar would be, given the average sunny days in my area) * takes into account the wear and tear average cold weather would have on the lifetime of the batter and the payback period. For example, I live in Michigan, an…

I would guess for most people it would show an ROI number that is not conducive to sales. Also, what is the environmental impact of the manufacture of LI batteries at this scale? Lithium mining, processing, assembly, delivery... we can't just ignore that.

Lithium mining has relatively little environmental impact: it's mostly evaporation of lithium-rich brines.

But lithium is still not cheap. I suppose that a different battery technology, with lower energy density per unit of weight, could be much cheaper with comparable efficiency. But Tesla only has expertise in lithium batteries, so some other manufacturer could use the momentum with a lower-cost offer.

Re: Tesla Energy

#380

Post by rexreed »

This is very clever! They're trying to increase demand for batteries independent of sales of vehicles, thus driving the economics of battery cost down and driving their vehicle prices down as a result. Get more batteries out there in different forms and use that demand to make the rest of their portfolio more affordable. Very rational strategy! Let's see what demand is like for their battery products.
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