Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Energy

teslamotors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 590 posts

Re: Tesla Energy

#191

Post by danmaz74 »

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…

Actually, hydro with reservoirs is not just very predictable, it's the least expensive source to turn on-off-half on demand, or even to run in reverse as a storage mechanism with some upgrades.

Re: Tesla Energy

#192

Post by toephu2 »

markbnj wrote: post #15
sidcool wrote: post #6

$3500. Nice!!!

I'm intrigued at the backup possibilities, because we live in a forested area of the northeast where outages are common during storms. But at 3Kw a single unit isn't large enough to power our entire home, and I didn't see a figure for how long it can operate at peak load. If I need two then we're getting closer to the cost of a natural gas fired generator. This analysis, of course, is completely ignoring the environm…

can we just try living without electricity for 2 days? millions of humans did it for hundreds of years prior to us and they managed just fine

Re: Tesla Energy

#194

Post by will_hughes »

mflindell wrote: post #168
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…

Dont count on it, we also get the product release lag for things like this too. Buying a Tesla Car here is at least double what it is in the US too.

Double? Try 10%,

Telsa Model S 70D:

USA: USD$75,000 cash price = AUD$95,153

AUS: AUD$102,400, the other AUD$13,893 you pay (in NSW) is to the state and federal governments in various taxes.

Re: Tesla Energy

#195

Post by Animats »

The wall mount surprised me, but 10KWh at the same density as the Model S battery should be only 155lb. That's not too bad, although you need a solid connection to the building structure. Having it above floor level is a good thing, since it won't be shorted out by minor flooding.

If you get a new solar installation, installing one of these seems an obvious win. The solar installation already includes the inverters and control gear. Without solar, it's probably not worth the trouble for residential.

The average American house uses 30 KWh per day. If you have daily sun and a low nighttime air conditioning load, 10KWh should get you through the night. Hawaii - perfect. Southern California - looks good. Texas - get two to get you through the night with A/C.

Re: Tesla Energy

#196

Post by meric »

latch wrote: post #150
thewarrior wrote: post #134

Wow This thing could sell like crazy in places like India. 10 kwH is enough to power an Indian home for more than a day and at 3500 dollars most middle class people would consider buying it seeing how frequent power cuts here are.

Really? According to wiki, India's middle-class makes anywhere from $10 to $50 per day. When you factor in that this will cost a lot more than $3500, would these really sell like crazy?

They can afford scooters, which cost one quarter that much. On $50 a day, it could be saved for in less than a year even if it costs $5000. Relative to their income, Indians have a lot of savings, due to their high savings rate (30%+). India's accumulated household wealth per adult is $5500. If you have two pairs of parents and one pair of grand-parents in one house, that is 6 * $5500 = $33000. Could be worth it, IMO it depends what is the lifetime of one such installation.

EDIT: Thanks for the correction on scooter pricing.

Re: Tesla Energy

#197

Post by roel_v »

kondro wrote: post #92
marze wrote: post #66

This is much more groundbreaking than it may appear. The innovation is entirely in the price. At $3500, you can put in two and be entirely off grid. Solar panels are cheap enough you only need batteries to last one night, as you can size the array to operate your loads even on cloudy days.

2 is not enough. 4kW seems to be the maximum potential drain from the battery. That wouldn't power an oven… let alone anything else at the same time. 4kW inverters seem to be around the $1000 mark… but they don't seem to increase linearly (10kW inverter $4000 for example). Of course you could go totally off-grid, but the cost isn't going to be just $7k… it's likely to be at least $15-20k by the time you get everythin…

" 4kW seems to be the maximum potential drain from the battery. That wouldn't power an oven… let alone anything else at the same time."

4kW is enough to power an entire home continuously, without thinking about energy use, even a large one with a home office with several people working in it + washing machine + oven + electrical stove at the same time. I have the data to prove it, too - 10 second interval power consumption logs for the last 4 months for my house/office, and I never had a load of more than 3.5kW. To be fair, this is all with modern, top of the line appliances, so yes that 199$ no-brand Chinese oven will probably draw a lot more power, but still.

Worst case, you'd need a second 'peak power' supply, which could provide e.g. 6 or 8 kw for 10 mins max, maybe using some sort of XXL capacitor. I don't know about the EE side of this, or whether such a thing exists already, just saying - 4kW is perfectly feasible and even heavy users would maybe need just a little bit more.

(of course this also assumes you have a better quality house than the standard American cardboard 'house' in which you need A/C running 24/7 just to not die in summer).

Re: Tesla Energy

#198

Post by latch »

meric wrote: post #196
latch wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? According to wiki, India's middle-class makes anywhere from $10 to $50 per day. When you factor in that this will cost a lot more than $3500, would these really sell like crazy?

They can afford scooters, which cost one quarter that much. On $50 a day, it could be saved for in less than a year even if it costs $5000. Relative to their income, Indians have a lot of savings, due to their high savings rate (30%+). India's accumulated household wealth per adult is $5500. If you have two pairs of parents and one pair of grand-parents in one house, that is 6 * $5500 = $33000. Could be worth it, IMO…

You get a good new scooter in India for less than $1000.

Re: Tesla Energy

#199

Post by robmcm »

You should be able to put this thing on the top of your Tesla (it even looks like a roof box) to double your range!

Re: Tesla Energy

#200

Post by roel_v »

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 grid for peak loads and just not run an oven and washing machine at the same time during grid blackouts.

It does require a 21st century house - led lighting (but it's 2015 - who still uses incandescent except for those places where you don't turn on the lights more than 4 times a year anyway?), energy-conscious appliances, moderate need for A/C (sane insulation and ventilation, localized and intelligently controlled A/C needs - i.e. no 'bring all room in my 3000 square feet sheet rock and tin roof house down to 75 degrees when it's 110 degrees outside'). But whoever doesn't have that, has options to start reducing their bills that are much better than buying energy packs.

Post reply on HN