6 ms·

Vermont utility says it will be the first to install Tesla powerwalls in the US

80 points by nkurz 11y ago

johnm1019 11y ago
I believe the article author confuses the pricing. As presented I'm guessing the price quoted by GMP includes the inverter, while the price given by Tesla does not. side note: original article appeared on arstechnica.com http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/vermont-utility-says-it-will-be-the-first-to-install-tesla-powerwalls-in-the-us/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/vermont-utility-says...
- PinguTS 11y ago
  Which is clearly written in the article as you may have read along: > Now, according to GMP, buying a 7kWh Powerwall outright will cost $6,500, including the inverter and the installation fee.
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
This seems to be the most important bit, but Ars skip over it: Or, a GMP customer can buy a Powerwall outright for $6,500 and share access with GMP, receiving a $31.76 monthly credit, which a GMP press release says "represents the value of leveraging the battery to help lower peak energy costs." So this utility (which is generally progressive compared with their peers) is acknowledging that people having energy storage in their home is a benefit to the utility, and are even prepared to put a price on that. There's a parallel battle going on with rooftop solar, with some utilities paying money for the value they recieve from this which is above the consumer cost of electricity in many cases, and other utilities trying to shut down users by imposing fees to cover the costs they claim they are incurring.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  More likely they just want to be seen as hip and serving their customers as a single unit isn't going to going to let you run your house fully during an outage and buying multiple units to support a power user typical wattage need and who else besides those types are buying into this? It might be good for time shifting expensive electrical rates but where in America is that going to happen? I don't think they see value in home storage of power, first off the amount stored is way way WAY too minuscule if you look at it from a grid perspective. If you wanted efficient, safe, and reliable, battery storage the utility or an independent would be better off setting up a dedicated facility for it. Even if just a series of boxes at the front of a subdivision/apartment complex the manageability goes up a lot. tl;dr utility company just riding the cool wave as it really doesn't benefit their consumers. far better options than relying on small storage spread across private homes
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    > More likely they just want to be seen as hip and serving their customers as a single unit isn't going to going to let you run your house fully during an outage and buying multiple units to support a power user typical wattage need and who else besides those types are buying into this? Tesla's site says "Each Powerwall has a 7 kWh energy storage capacity, sufficient to power most homes during the evening using electricity generated by solar panels during the day." As long as you're not turning on every light in the house, I'd imagine it could handle a couple hours of outage, particularly in Vermont where the need for A/C is limited. Might not want to run an electric stove, but it'd certainly power a few lights, phone chargers, and a gas furnace.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      As long as those lights are LEDs, you could turn them all on. As you said, you're only powering light loads like lights, chargers, and the ignition and blower on a gas furnace.
  - sithadmin 11y ago
    >More likely they just want to be seen as hip and serving their customers as a single unit isn't going to going to let you run your house fully during an outage and buying multiple units to support a power user typical wattage need and who else besides those types are buying into this? Holy run-on, Batman! Anyway, it's almost a 100% certainty that a utility company won't throw massive amounts of cash into a capital project just to "be seen as hip"...particularly when they're operating in a state that doesn't have a de-regulated consumer energy market (such as Vermont, in this case).
    - chiph 11y ago
      That's the beauty of this. The utility has no capital expenditure - the people paying for the battery are doing that for them. The utility pays the rebate out of their operating costs, and there's likely a clause in the agreement that the rebate amount is subject to change.
  - 11y ago
- davedx 11y ago
  I completely agree. I've been reading about smart grids a lot lately, and one of the missing pieces to a 100% renewable energy supply is storage. It makes a lot of sense to distribute storage across the grid alongside renewable generation from wind and solar.
PinguTS 11y ago
That is an interesting article in many ways: 1. Elon Musk announces the PowerWall in April with delivery end of 2015 (still on the site). 2. SunEdision announces end of September to deliver the first PowerWalls in Australia by November: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/22/sunedison-australia-taking-delivery-tesla-powerwall/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/22/sunedison-australia-taki... 3. SunEdision will partner with LGChem to deliver a competing product: http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/14040502-tom-collins/4424576-lg-chem-sunedison-just-leapfrogged-tesla-solarcity-in-distributed-storage-but-partner-eguana-tech-are-the-real-story http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/14040502-tom-collins/44245... 4. Vermont utility announces to be the first with 10 PowerWall beginning January 2016. So, why there are no PowerWalls available? Seems that there are production issues.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > So, why there are no PowerWalls available? Seems that there are production issues. Because production is starting up, with equipment being moved from Fremont. http://cleantechnica.com/2015/11/04/tesla-gigafactory-ahead-of-schedule-production-beginning-in-q4/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/11/04/tesla-gigafactory-ahead-...
sremani 11y ago
There is lot of potential out there for retrofitting used Car battery to wall mounts. That is the approach, I would be more interested. Has Tesla reused any of its roadster batteries that have gone stale in wall mounts? Does Tesla as a company has a plan for having old roadster batteries along with Model S etc. to convert into home batteries in the future ?
- greglindahl 11y ago
  80% of the power-wall business is expected to be industrial installations, not home installations. Big installations like that are a much better home for "tired" batteries - a homeowner cares about their 7kWh, a business with a 500 kWh install might not mind if 1/3 of it was used batteries with 1/2 max capacity. And yes, Tesla's been talking about that for more than a decade.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- stevehawk 11y ago
  GE and others have been doing this for nearly a decade with Prius and other batteries.
- ju-st 11y ago
  Recently I heard that BMW (I think) has a project to use old car batteries for energy storage... but the problem is they basically don't have any used LiIon batteries. This recycling approach will only get interesting in 5-10 years.

80 points by nkurz 11y ago

I believe the article author confuses the pricing. As presented I'm guessing the price quoted by GMP includes the inverter, while the price given by Tesla does not. side note: original article appeared on arstechnica.com http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/vermont-utility-says-it-will-be-the-first-to-install-tesla-powerwalls-in-the-us/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/vermont-utility-says...

PinguTS 11y ago
Which is clearly written in the article as you may have read along: > Now, according to GMP, buying a 7kWh Powerwall outright will cost $6,500, including the inverter and the installation fee.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago

This seems to be the most important bit, but Ars skip over it: Or, a GMP customer can buy a Powerwall outright for $6,500 and share access with GMP, receiving a $31.76 monthly credit, which a GMP press release says "represents the value of leveraging the battery to help lower peak energy costs." So this utility (which is generally progressive compared with their peers) is acknowledging that people having energy storage in their home is a benefit to the utility, and are even prepared to put a price on that. There's a parallel battle going on with rooftop solar, with some utilities paying money for the value they recieve from this which is above the consumer cost of electricity in many cases, and other utilities trying to shut down users by imposing fees to cover the costs they claim they are incurring.

Shivetya 11y ago
More likely they just want to be seen as hip and serving their customers as a single unit isn't going to going to let you run your house fully during an outage and buying multiple units to support a power user typical wattage need and who else besides those types are buying into this? It might be good for time shifting expensive electrical rates but where in America is that going to happen? I don't think they see value in home storage of power, first off the amount stored is way way WAY too minuscule if you look at it from a grid perspective. If you wanted efficient, safe, and reliable, battery storage the utility or an independent would be better off setting up a dedicated facility for it. Even if just a series of boxes at the front of a subdivision/apartment complex the manageability goes up a lot. tl;dr utility company just riding the cool wave as it really doesn't benefit their consumers. far better options than relying on small storage spread across private homes
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  > More likely they just want to be seen as hip and serving their customers as a single unit isn't going to going to let you run your house fully during an outage and buying multiple units to support a power user typical wattage need and who else besides those types are buying into this? Tesla's site says "Each Powerwall has a 7 kWh energy storage capacity, sufficient to power most homes during the evening using electricity generated by solar panels during the day." As long as you're not turning on every light in the house, I'd imagine it could handle a couple hours of outage, particularly in Vermont where the need for A/C is limited. Might not want to run an electric stove, but it'd certainly power a few lights, phone chargers, and a gas furnace.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    As long as those lights are LEDs, you could turn them all on. As you said, you're only powering light loads like lights, chargers, and the ignition and blower on a gas furnace.
- sithadmin 11y ago
  >More likely they just want to be seen as hip and serving their customers as a single unit isn't going to going to let you run your house fully during an outage and buying multiple units to support a power user typical wattage need and who else besides those types are buying into this? Holy run-on, Batman! Anyway, it's almost a 100% certainty that a utility company won't throw massive amounts of cash into a capital project just to "be seen as hip"...particularly when they're operating in a state that doesn't have a de-regulated consumer energy market (such as Vermont, in this case).
  - chiph 11y ago
    That's the beauty of this. The utility has no capital expenditure - the people paying for the battery are doing that for them. The utility pays the rebate out of their operating costs, and there's likely a clause in the agreement that the rebate amount is subject to change.
- 11y ago
davedx 11y ago
I completely agree. I've been reading about smart grids a lot lately, and one of the missing pieces to a 100% renewable energy supply is storage. It makes a lot of sense to distribute storage across the grid alongside renewable generation from wind and solar.

PinguTS 11y ago

That is an interesting article in many ways: 1. Elon Musk announces the PowerWall in April with delivery end of 2015 (still on the site). 2. SunEdision announces end of September to deliver the first PowerWalls in Australia by November: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/22/sunedison-australia-taking-delivery-tesla-powerwall/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/22/sunedison-australia-taki... 3. SunEdision will partner with LGChem to deliver a competing product: http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/14040502-tom-collins/4424576-lg-chem-sunedison-just-leapfrogged-tesla-solarcity-in-distributed-storage-but-partner-eguana-tech-are-the-real-story http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/14040502-tom-collins/44245... 4. Vermont utility announces to be the first with 10 PowerWall beginning January 2016. So, why there are no PowerWalls available? Seems that there are production issues.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> So, why there are no PowerWalls available? Seems that there are production issues. Because production is starting up, with equipment being moved from Fremont. http://cleantechnica.com/2015/11/04/tesla-gigafactory-ahead-of-schedule-production-beginning-in-q4/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/11/04/tesla-gigafactory-ahead-...

sremani 11y ago

There is lot of potential out there for retrofitting used Car battery to wall mounts. That is the approach, I would be more interested. Has Tesla reused any of its roadster batteries that have gone stale in wall mounts? Does Tesla as a company has a plan for having old roadster batteries along with Model S etc. to convert into home batteries in the future ?

greglindahl 11y ago
80% of the power-wall business is expected to be industrial installations, not home installations. Big installations like that are a much better home for "tired" batteries - a homeowner cares about their 7kWh, a business with a 500 kWh install might not mind if 1/3 of it was used batteries with 1/2 max capacity. And yes, Tesla's been talking about that for more than a decade.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
stevehawk 11y ago
GE and others have been doing this for nearly a decade with Prius and other batteries.
ju-st 11y ago
Recently I heard that BMW (I think) has a project to use old car batteries for energy storage... but the problem is they basically don't have any used LiIon batteries. This recycling approach will only get interesting in 5-10 years.