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Tesla Energy

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Re: Tesla Energy

#381

Post by danielweber »

beat wrote: post #358
ams6110 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The environmental impact shouldn't be significantly more than any other hunk of metal of the same mass. And that has to be weighed against the fact that cost-efficient battery technology can make solar/wind viable and cost-effective relative to fossil fuel plants.

There's about $10,000 worth of work in a battery. It's not just a hunk of metal, it goes through a very complicated and energy intensive creation process.

The cost of the raw lithium is about 1% of the cost of the battery. It's engineering it in a very precise way that's expensive.

Re: Tesla Energy

#382

Post by edwhitesell »

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)?

I have the opposite problem: Living in Texas, my garage easily gets above 110F many days during the summer (it would be crazy to pay for A/C in it). But, I'm also not going to put the battery pack(s) "inside" my house (e.g. utility/laundry room).

Re: Tesla Energy

#383

Post by nine_k »

beat wrote: post #358
ams6110 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The environmental impact shouldn't be significantly more than any other hunk of metal of the same mass. And that has to be weighed against the fact that cost-efficient battery technology can make solar/wind viable and cost-effective relative to fossil fuel plants.

Just as a thought experiment, compare the environmental impact of producing a hunk of steel, nickel, lead, gold, plutonium of the same mass. These are vastly different.

Re: Tesla Energy

#384

Post by arielby »

> The world currently consumes 20 trillion kWh of energy annually.

> Enough energy to power a single family home for 1.8 billion years or supply energy to a nuclear power plant for 2,300 years.

That's, ..., not the way I would have written it.

Re: Tesla Energy

#385

Post by greedo »

vanadium wrote: post #17

$3,500. That's crazy good for your average household, on par with natural gas backup generators with half the logistics. I might just be ordering sooner rather than later given some of the grid instabilities in my area over the past year, and through the mid-term in preparation for a solar switch here in Chicago. While Elon might not be the best orator, you can easily derive his authenticity and belief in the product…

I don't think most households (in the US at least) could run off a single unit. You would need three units, and they would only give you 1 days capacity, compared to a natural gas generator which could keep running indefinitely.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=97&t=3

Re: Tesla Energy

#386

Post by jws »

danielweber wrote: post #375
giarc wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Does your insurance company allow you to keep one liter of gasoline in your garage? It has the same energy content as the Powerwall, is insanely flammable, is frequently implicated is home fires, and regularly causes human deaths.

(Ok, a burning lithium battery will release more energy than its storage capacity, but I'm not finding a nice reference, Tesla knows all about containing cells to prevent chain reactions, and one liter of gasoline is still enough to burn down your whole house.)

Re: Tesla Energy

#387

Post by nsxwolf »

roel_v wrote: post #285
TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no every-day use case where the difference in light perception from an incandescent bulb is different, or even distinguishable without measurement, from an LED bulb. Feel free to try it yourself in a light studio, or otherwise, please cite any studies with modern lamps that conclude that the 'light quality' (by whatever metric) of an incandescent bulb is higher (that is, 'higher' as in 'makes a material diff…

The subjective experience of a home lit with incandescents is very different than one lit with LEDs. I don't care if the color temperature is the same. Things just look different. The bulbs cast their light differently.

There may not be a difference in "light quality", photons are photons, but if you convert a home from one to the other things will look different, and you may prefer one way or the other.

And don't forget about fixtures that were designed to work with clear incandescent bulbs for aesthetic reasons. LED bulbs will look downright hideous in those even when the lights are off.

There are people who like how vinyl sounds better because they like the hiss and the pops, not because they fall for audiophile silliness. The same holds for lighting.

Re: Tesla Energy

#388

Post by TeMPOraL »

Shivetya wrote: post #248
CamperBob2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging is where the scaling problems come in. If everybody in your neighborhood plugs in their Tesla at their home at night and/or at their office during the day, it will likely cause brownouts and blackouts in areas with grid service that's already marginal for current demand. Hence Musks's interest in load-shifting technology.

it isn't so much how many people charging, its the ability of people to charge where they live and the lack of ability to truly quick charge the battery. As in, damn the kids left the car unplugged and I have to work. even thirty minutes at a super charger is not a good solution. So it comes down to a compromise, a good range extender technology and batteries for the majority of driving. That until truly faster charg…

> As in, damn the kids left the car unplugged and I have to work. even thirty minutes at a super charger is not a good solution.

I don't see this as something to worry about - it's just a household habit problem. Pretty much every new device introduces some, and people quickly adapt to use the device properly.

Re: Tesla Energy

#389

Post by thomasahle »

rexreed wrote: post #380

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.

Also given they just built the world's largest battery factories, it makes sense to sell some more batteries.

Re: Tesla Energy

#390

Post by danielweber »

geoffharcourt wrote: post #295
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.

NYC has it now, but I think as generation/fuel prices rise (in the long-term) and utilities get slightly more sophisticated, we're going to see more on-demand pricing as utilities seek to apply the same price changes they pay generators for peak-demand supply to consumers. In a situation where many people were doing load shifting, I think this could even benefit those who aren't doing load shifting themselves (by red…

For each person that load-shifts, it slightly reduces the payoff for the next person to load-shift.

In the UK, the peak demand is already in the evening[1], because solar has eaten the cheap lunch during the day (which it was supposed to do, but it means that each additional solar panel is going to have a harder job paying for itself). And the demand difference between low and high is about 30GW to 40GW.

[1] http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

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