15 ms·

New Tesla battery could power your home, and maybe the electric grid too

288 points by Libertatea 12y ago

dangrossman 12y ago
There are already widespread programs where utilities pay customers a rebate in exchange for remotely turning off their A/C compressors at the peak of a heat wave in order to chop the top off consumption spikes. Paying high-consumption commercial customers to turn off entirely for a few hours to avoid spinning up another generation plant happens too. It's not too far-fetched to imagine a rebate program on home battery systems if the utility got the same remote control power to disconnect homes from the grid when needed, or even have their batteries dump power back onto it at those times. Essentially, individual homes become part of "smart grid" management systems.
- xxxyy 12y ago
  Doing arbitrage on the power network by storing energy during off-period, and releasing it during high-period is a relatively old concept (eg. [0]). What I don't see happening is the price of this battery going low enough to make this kind of arbitrage profitable in a reasonable amount of time. The article does not mention the cost aspect of such an investment. Germany along with a few other EU countries are currently high on renewable energy. As far as I know the most profitable way to utilize electric solar panels is to sell excessive energy back to the grid, not store it in batteries. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Losing power from snowstorms (well ice storms really) is quite common in New England and many family members have dropped $5k on propane generators. If you can bring this battery down to that price you will catch all those customers as well as have distributed off peak storage capacity. Right now the best way to store power is to pump water uphill, seriously.
    - JshWright 12y ago
      'Pumping water uphill' will likely always be a very good way to store power at those scales. I would take a pretty spectacular number of batteries to match the stored energy potential of a small lake with a couple hundred feet of head.
      - discardorama 12y ago
        > 'Pumping water uphill' will likely always be a very good way to store power at those scales. ... but not when it's ice.
        spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
        And does require the right geography
  - JshWright 12y ago
    The problem is, selling it back to the grid only works when it's a fairly small fraction of the customer base that's doing it. We can't _all_ sell power back to the grid. EDIT: Why the downvotes? This is a real issue... The current model of 'buy solar panels and pay for them by selling power back to the grid' will not scale forever...
    - codingdave 12y ago
      That really isn't the current model. The current model is to buy solar panels today, thereby locking in your long-term electrical cost at the price of today's solar panels, with the expectation that conventional electricity will continue to rise, with a point 7-10 years in the future where you have "paid off" the panels, followed by 15 years of free/cheap power, avoiding the future high costs of electricity from a utility company, finally ending 25-30 years from now when you need a new system, but hopefully renewable technology will have greatly improved by then.
    - hnal943 12y ago
      If the utility is paying a market rate (instead of an inflated rate to get people to invest in alternative energy), why couldn't we all sell power to the grid? Eventually if the home units get efficient enough, what would be the problem with power being supplied entirely peer-to-peer? Granted, I think we're a very long way away from that, but I don't see anything wrong with the funding mechanism.
      - rhino369 12y ago
        The market rate would just fall to near zero. The surplus from different homes would have very similar patterns. When it is sunny and bright out, everyone has surplus. At night, nobody does. You are buying when everyone is buying and you are selling when everyone is selling. That isn't even considering reliability. With wildly variable production, we will have to pay out of the ass for peaker plants to pick up the slack.
        dragonwriter 12y ago
  - brazzledazzle 12y ago
    I think it's worth giving Elon Musk the benefit of the doubt. It seems pretty likely that he'd consider these problems before moving forward with a product.
  - eigenvector 12y ago
    Not only will the batteries need to get cheaper, but the available arbitrage opportunity will need to account for the necessary upgrades to utility distribution systems to accommodate large amounts of distributed energy storage (DES). DES, particularly at high penetrations, generally violates the design assumptions of distribution protection systems and requires non-trivial upgrades to protective relaying and SCADA systems to maintain adequate real-time control.
  - codingdave 12y ago
    You are thinking from a large scale, profit-driven perspective. The early adopters for this, at least in residences, will be people living off-grid, focused on self-sufficiency, and who are willing to take a financial hit to achieve that goal.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  Beyond that, you can opt into paying a real-time price for electricity (like the utility does) instead of a flat rate. You're at the mercy of the market but can save a significant amount if you voluntarily turn off high consumption devices during peak periods and schedule other loads for overnight or slack periods. What really gets interesting are the times (especially during early summer mornings) where there's too much supply on the grid and the price drops into negative territory (i.e. they'll pay you to shed load off the network). That's when you need the storage system charging up as fast as it can. I've been working on a personal system that watches the price and other factors (weather forecasts, family schedule) and cycles the A/C as deep as possible during those times. What might really suck though is if everyone has one of these in their homes, then the price advantage will go away. Not a bad problem to have, but it means we'll have to shift our supply to other places like personal solar panels (hmm, does Musk sell those?)
  - mrfusion 12y ago
    Could you mine bitcoins during those negative times?
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      How much money do you want to sink into your power generation / storage / usage rig? You can increase the efficiency at which you do these things, sure, but that doesn't mean it will be economical.
    - joezydeco 12y ago
      Theoretically? Sure. Practically, when compared to underground Chinese mines full of equipment? No. The negative price situation only happens maybe 0.5% of the year. Your expensive equipment will sit idle the rest of the time.
    - lotsofmangos 12y ago
      I want an electric shower that mines bitcoins. Also, I suspect there's a market for them with stock traders if I include enough chrome and blue LEDs.
- deleted 12y ago
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- NickNameNick 12y ago
  Paper mills and other wood processing make for great instantaneous interruptible load. In NZ one of the major electricity generating companies pays some major industrial customers for the ability to cut them off, enabling them to reallocate the power almost as if it were additional generation. Aluminium smelters are good too, but you can't cut them off without warning, because it will break the arc-furnaces when the aluminium solidifies around the carbon electrodes.
patcon 12y ago
Seems odd to talk about "stationary batteries" as a separate product, as if a car weren't stationary most of its life. (but I suppose that changes in a future of sharing economies and self-driving cars)
- dangrossman 12y ago
  The cars are mostly stationary, but they're stationary in the wrong place during peak consumption hours: a workplace parking lot, not a garage connected to the grid.
  - deleted 12y ago
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- masklinn 12y ago
  > Seems odd to talk about "stationary batteries" as a separate product Why? The constraints (in terms of size, cooling, wiring, weight, temperature changes, …) are completely different. A stationary battery is a separate product, competing in a completely different class and with very different constraints.
- michaelt 12y ago
  Batteries for transport applications have to trade off size and weight as well as the constraints of price, capacity and cycle life. Stationary power storage applications can use larger batteries with worse power density, if they offer a longer life per $.
deedubaya 12y ago
Is it possible for there to be any push back on this from electric utility providers?
- grandpa 12y ago
  Utilities should be happy about this. One of their biggest problems is uneven load on the grid - low at night, too high during a heatwave - and this has the potential to make that problem a lot easier.
  - astazangasta 12y ago
    Utilities won't be happy about thus. They are already upset about having people with rooftop solar selling to the grid (taking their revenue); this will only make it worse.
    - snsr 12y ago
      I imagine generation and transmission rates will certainly be adjusted to cope with changes in demand and grid topology.
    - ammaar 12y ago
      Is there a legitimate concern for maintenance of the grid? Don't current utility costs partially go back into standard maintenance and improvement?
      - vinceguidry 12y ago
        It's not just maintenance. The system as a whole was architected to take advantage of the economies of scale you get when you assume that your customers remain consumers and you control the production. Nobody foresaw back then that each house could be a potential power plant. When you start to change that, you're still having to maintain the current infrastructure, which is steadily becoming obsolete, while also building new infrastructure to handle random power spikes and draws in arbitrary locations. You have to do this across the whole grid, everywhere in the country. This has the utilities very very nervous.
mrfusion 12y ago
But if the Tesla car battery can only handle 1000 charge/discharge cycles, how is a home battery viable? Wouldn't it only last for three years or so? (Maybe I'm wrong about the number of cycles?)
- deleted 12y ago
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- michaelt 12y ago
  Some companies have battery technology they believe is good for 10,000 [1] or even 16,000 [2] cycles until it reaches 80% of its initial capacity. On the other hand, some batteries on the market show substantial capacity loss after just 300 cycles [3]. Needless to say, the product that lasts 50 times longer costs quite a bit more - and they're bigger and heavier to boot. For stationary power storage, you don't care if they're big and heavy, but for transport applications you do. [1] https://www.toshiba.com/tic/datafiles/Battery_Energy_Storage_Solutions_with_SCiB.pdf https://www.toshiba.com/tic/datafiles/Battery_Energy_Storage... [2] http://www.altairnano.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/60Ah-DataSheet.pdf http://www.altairnano.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/60Ah-Da... [3] http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-data/pdf2/ACA4000/ACA4000CE240.pdf http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-data/pdf2/ACA4000/ACA400...
  - mrfusion 12y ago
    So you think they'll build these to have more cycles?
    - michaelt 12y ago
      I think they'll build them so they make economic sense to customers. I think that would probably mean having more than 1000 cycles, but it could mean being really cheap, or some sort of lease/periodic replacement deal, or something like that.
      - danielweber 12y ago
        If you magically made the Tesla S battery last 1000 cycles, it could make $12 per cycle, grossing you $12,000 over its life. The replacement cost of a Tesla S battery is $30,000.
nsxwolf 12y ago
This potentially sounds like a good alternative to a diesel generator.
- chiph 12y ago
  Only for short periods of time. If you live in an area subject to natural disasters, you'd still want a generator (either diesel, propane, or natural gas) to get you enough power during extended outages to run a refrigerator, a TV, a few lights, and charge a phone or laptop. I was without power during Hurricane Hugo for almost 10 days. Cold showers suck, but what sucked more was not getting any news.
  - knob 12y ago
    Located in the Caribbean during Hurricane Hugo?
    - chiph 12y ago
      Rural South Carolina. The apartment complex where I lived was apparently at the end of the transmission line, so we were one of the last in the area to get power back. My sister lived in Charleston at the time (where Hugo made landfall) and her VCR wasn't even blinking "12:00" when she returned after evacuating. Go figure.
  - ericd 12y ago
    You can get a hand crank emergency radio/light/phone charger for roughly $25-$30. Example: http://www.amazon.com/Epica-Emergency-Digital-Flashlight-Certified/dp/B00CZDT30S/ http://www.amazon.com/Epica-Emergency-Digital-Flashlight-Cer... The refrigerator bit is a bit harder...
    - timtadh 12y ago
      It is the furnace blower fan that is the essential thing to power. (assuming a natural gas/propane furnace) With that you can heat your house. If you can heat your house you can have running water. Without heat you will need to shut off the water and drain the pipes so they do not burst. At that point you have no heat and no water and you probably need to just leave.
gorillapower 12y ago
This would be great for the situation were having in South Africa; were experiencing daily loadshedding at the moment as our only power utility basically, cannot meet demand. The situation is set to continue for at least a year while the new coal power plant "Medupi" is being constructed - its more than 4 years behind schedule. A battery that could be charged and then used to power your home during loadshedding could be a breakthrough solution as the costs for generators and solar are quite expensive. That being said not sure how much the Telsa "Home Battery" would be. Any event, if its feasible it could really be a good solution. Im sure in the long run countries experiencing similar a situation could use this.
- deleted 12y ago
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- malandrew 12y ago
  Brazil likely would also benefit. Our electricity production and grid are precarious at times and there are occasional rolling blackouts when things are mismanaged. A distributed great would help there.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    s/great/grid/
- nerfhammer 12y ago
  It's a phenomena in the UK that everyone makes tea using electric kettles during commercial breaks, which is magnified by the popularity of TV events such as sporting events to the point where the power grid is affected by how well the English team is faring in the game. The power service ends up having to predict the popularity of TV shows and how long sports games may last. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
Shivetya 12y ago
I am not all that sure I want it IN my house, and the garage for many homes is in the house. Yeah I know, people garage their cars but this is wholly different. Maybe outside the back in a small enclosed space, similar to an AC unit I will be curious as to regulations for ventilation, wiring, and similar, are.
- mrfusion 12y ago
  I think operating temperature is important, so I'd imagine outside or garage is a no go? (My garage gets down to 40F at night, not sure if that's typical). But maybe with enough insulation you could put it anywhere?
  - aquark 12y ago
    Well, depends on location ... I think mine was down around -10F last night and I don't have room for one in a heated space. I suspect it will be a while longer before battery technology is as useful above the 49th parallel.
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  - alexhawdon 12y ago
    Tesla cars are popular in northern European countries and I imagine these will work along the same lines: active heating of the battery. In the cars the capacity sacrifice is minimal and I imagine stationary batteries will be even better as (like you say) you can wrap them in a ton of insulation without having to worry too much about bulk and weight.
- johnward 12y ago
  I have a propane generator that sits outside. I'm not sure why a battery couldn't aside from heat in the summer.
andyl 12y ago
Musk seems to specialize in bringing innovation to slow-moving industries. Tesla > Cars & Oil/Gas, SpaceX Rockets > Aerospace, SpaceX Satellites > Telecom, Solar City & Tesla > Utilities Where is the Musk for Finance and Health Care?
- virtuallynathan 12y ago
  Well, he already had PayPal...
mrfusion 12y ago
I wonder if they should also market this to the whole house backup generator market? Those run 2,000-4,000 $ at least, I think. I'd imagine a lot of houses would pay $1500 for a battery to operate their whole house during an outage. Another product I'd like to see is a plug in battery to operate the sump pump for a few hours during an outage? Apparently a UPS can't handle the high load, and the battery backup ones you make require an expensive plumbing visit to install the special DC powered pump.
- JshWright 12y ago
  How long will that $1,500 battery power my house? It's still not possible to beat hydrocarbons in terms of energy density, and if you are looking to weather a multi-day outage, it's energy density you care about...
  - sp332 12y ago
    The added reliability should be a plus. And convenience in not having to keep it fueled up. Also you can use these in places where there's not enough ventilation to run a generator, and it's quieter.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      It would be interesting to see the market statistics for installed generators. I bet propane and natural gas have a lot more of that market than gasoline and diesel. (for homes with nat gas it's a no brainer)
  - danielweber 12y ago
    Using a Tesla S battery as a baseline, it gives you 85KWh at $30,000, or 2.83KWh per $1000. $1500 would give you 4.25KWh. The average home averages 1KW, so you'll have 4.25 hours. Obviously you could get more efficiency with a stationary battery.
    - JshWright 12y ago
userbinator 12y ago
From the headline I thought it would be about using your electric car as a gigantic powerbank for the house. ...which is not such a bad idea (e.g. power outages), until you realise that you might need that power for driving too.
- dangrossman 12y ago
  I think people under-estimate the capacity of car batteries, or over-estimate their home power usage. I used about 300 kWh last month, or about 10 kWh per day. A Model S has an 85 kWh battery. I could run my entire house on it for 4 days and still have 150 miles of driving range.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    People are really shocked when I tell them a car in motion uses 10 times the power of a house.
krschultz 12y ago
This sure looks like pure PR to deflect from the bad earnings announcement yesterday. I'm sure they'll build it some day, but call me when you can buy it.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  it cannot help that GM has announced they will built the Chevrolet Bolt, a 200 mile range EV. Combined with other articles this car will start building in mid to late 2016. http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2015/feb/chicago/0212-bolt-ev.html http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail...
  - samatman 12y ago
    A Bolt and a Volt? Someone flunked high-school Spanish.
    - robszumski 12y ago
      They started with the Model V and are now moving to the Model B.
    - Shorel 12y ago
      What has Spanish to do with this?
      - samatman 12y ago
        In Spanish, these are homonyms.
        Shorel 12y ago
        In Spanish, these are 'voltio' and 'rayo'. The words you mention are not Spanish words. However, it is true than in Latin American Spanish we do not perceive the difference between V and B. I guess the Aztecs and Incas did not have that in their own languages. In Spain they do. And in portuguese (the most similar language to Spanish) the difference is important as well.
rootbear 12y ago
I like the idea of having solar cells that charge up a bank of batteries that could power my house at night. I was recently talking to a Solar City rep and they are thinking along those lines. I wonder if this would be a good time to define a standard low voltage plug for house hold use. An awful lot of modern electrical devices don't need 110VAC and end up wasting a lot of power converting AC to DC. I've seen replacements for wall sockets that combine a single AC socket with a few USB power ports. That's convenient, but USB wasn't designed as a power plug, it's just been co-opted for it. A well designed system of 24VDC or 48VDC would be a nice thing to have. Bonus points if it's a world standard. I'd also like a pony.
- ph0rque 12y ago
  One could bootstrap by using 12V RV appliances, with the exception of big items like the refrigerator, range, and washing/drying machines.
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    Don't forget AC and furnace. In most places where you can efficiently use solar panels, AC is pretty essential.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      It would be nice to re-think the necessity of AC, as well. It's been around for quite a long time and the ineffectiveness are crazy (same thing with whole-house heating). Why heat or cool your house and deal with the insulation problems that come from having doors and windows and walls and exposure to sun or wind on one side? Your house doesn't get hot or cold, it doesn't care. You get hot and cold. Supercomputers run on batteries for an entire day or more in our pockets. Powerful mobile gaming machines can be run from a USB socket. There has to be a way to cool me down in the summer without needing to cool my entire house (and watch as the cold air streams out underneath my door).
      - bkmartin 12y ago
afarrell 12y ago
I suspect this market will be captured by folks not in homes, but in neighborhoods buying things like Sadoway's liquid metal batteries* and either participating in the bulk electricity market directly (fun fact: the markets run by New England ISO and NYISO are run as linear programming problems to minimize total cost over a bunch of supply curves bid in by suppliers and nuclear plants usually bid negative cost to make sure they get scheduled) or providing reliability-boosting service to utilities. * http://www.ambri.com/technology/ http://www.ambri.com/technology/
zimbatm 12y ago
OT: For electric cars to succeed someone really needs to step-up and standardise the plug. It's ridiculous to have charging stations that are tied to a particular brand of cars.
- diydsp 12y ago
  SAE J1772 is a North American standard for electrical connectors for electric vehicles maintained by the Society of Automotive Engineers and has the formal title "SAE Surface Vehicle Recommended Practice J1772, SAE Electric Vehicle Conductive Charge Coupler”.[1] It covers the general physical, electrical, communication protocol, and performance requirements for the electric vehicle conductive charge system and coupler. The intent is to define a common electric vehicle conductive charging system architecture including operational requirements and the functional and dimensional requirements for the vehicle inlet and mating connector.(1) The SAE J1772-2009 connector specification has been added to the international IEC 62196-2 standard (1) The SAE J1772-2009 was adopted by the car manufacturers of post-2000 electric vehicles like the third generation of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf as the early models. The connector became standard equipment on the US-market due to the availability of charging stations with that plug type in the nation's electric vehicle network (with the help of funding such as ChargePoint America program drawing grants from provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act).(1) (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
  - zimbatm 12y ago
    Thanks, I just found that Tesla has an adapter for it's cars to connect to SAE J17772 plugs: http://my.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-connector http://my.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-con... . Too bad Tesla didn't standardise on that format so that other cars can benefit from their chargers.
    - SEJeff 12y ago
      Tesla didn't use that standard because it doesn't provide enough charging power due to being lower voltage. The Tesla charger is actually better tech: https://transportevolved.com/2014/06/16/nissan-bmw-look-adopt-teslas-charging-standard/ https://transportevolved.com/2014/06/16/nissan-bmw-look-adop... I suspect the standard will go no where as Tesla also owns more charging stations than anyone else and is expanding them constantly: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
joshstrange 12y ago
Whenever Solar/Battery power comes up I like to link back to this [0]. There was a HN discussion about it [1] when the article in question [3] referenced that PDF. My favorite quote is probably: > To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?” [0] Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business (http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivechallenges.pdf http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivecha...) [1] Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities (http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/ http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-util...) [2] HN Discussion 261 points, 670 days ago, 139 comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543603)
- DINKDINK 12y ago
  Solar panels would only affect the revenue of coupled utilities. Depending on the regulatory framework of the state, Decoupled utilities [0] would be unaffected by solar (and may even benefit if they supply the capital investment to install the solar) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_%28utility_regulation%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_%28utility_regulati...
- freyr 12y ago
  The linked document by the Edison Electric Institute is titled "Disruptive Challenges" and it identifies distributed power generation (among other things) as a potential disruption in the industry. I assume the point is that if the electrical companies view this as a plausible future scenario, then we shouldn't rule it out.
snarfy 12y ago
I love it. The elephant in the room with electric cars has always been the power grid. It is simply not capable of sustaining the energy equal to the amount of gasoline distributed to gas stations. The last rough measure I've seen was the grid is about 1/4 what it needs to be to sustain electric cars. Having batteries as energy cache spread out around the network is a great idea and will offset the need to build out more power lines.
- lotsofcows 12y ago
  I think you're complicating things. You don't need the car and the battery. Enough cars can act as a distributed power cache.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Indeed. Power use problems with electric cars are somewhat self-solving.
themgt 12y ago
The financial implications of these threats are fairly evident. Start with the increased cost of supporting a network capable of managing and integrating distributed generation sources. Next, under most rate structures, add the decline in revenues attributed to revenues lost from sales foregone. These forces lead to increased revenues required from remaining customers … and sought through rate increases. The result of higher electricity prices and competitive threats will encourage a higher rate of DER additions, or will promote greater use of efficiency or demand-side solutions. Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector. These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines). http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/ http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u...
- xxxyy 12y ago
  I guess we should feel sorry for Comcast as well. Damn this Silicon Valley, always innovating, breaking things down.
peter303 12y ago
I read somewhere that solar installations in Japan have about a two-day battery capacity.
eldavido 12y ago
Related economist article: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes-electricity-providers-face-existential-threat-how-lose-half-trillion-euros http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes-elec... Who's building the "I have a 10kW load, I'm in zip code XXXXX, when is the cheapest/best time to turn this on" API?
startupfounder 12y ago
I have been speaking with Solar City's commercial division about doing large grid-tied solar projects with Tesla batteries in one of USA largest cities and have $100M in projects under development. These batteries aren't going to power your home at night, nor should they as electricity rates at night are dirt cheap (comparatively) when people aren't at work, in factories and in bed sleeping. These batteries are going to be performing grid marketplace arbitrage and some governments and utilities are providing amazing incentives to do so. (Currently the incentives require the batteries to be tied to solar.) There are two pieces of your electricity bill (I'm simplifying here) 1) the electricity charge (EC) and 2) the transmission charge (TC). The EC is calculated by how many kWh you use during each (peak/off-peak) period of the day and the TC is calculated by your max grid demand during your largest 15 minutes for the month. Tesla Batteries are not just about the batteries, the system calculates how to remove kWh demand from peak hours by pulling power from batteries and then recharging during off-peak hours. This covers the EC cost reduction. To reduce TC costs the system calculates your peak load over the given month and tries to turn it from a "mountain range" (with many peaks) to a "platou". You pay your TC for the tallest mountain for the month. At first the system doesn't know that much about your usage profile and will just focus on the largest peak demand 15 minute intervals. Then over time it will learn more about your usage patterns and slowly platou your grid demand. At the end of the day it is going to be much more cost effective and efficient to have a distributed grid with thousands of solar arrays and batteries than build out large billion dollar gas fired turbines or even wind turbines.
- driverdan 12y ago
  This is the answer. Commercial power penalizes you for having a large difference between your peak use and continuous use. If you can eliminate peaks using batteries you can eliminate this penalty. You can also recharge the batteries during off hours to cut costs further.
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - danielweber 12y ago
olla 12y ago
The real blocker of going electric on everything is the capacity of rechargeable technologies and their lifetime, not some global conspiracy. Even the high price of batteries/capacitors might not be a problem if lifetime and capacity would be great. In that sense Musk might be onto something, but I think it takes a lot more than 20% improvement over current technologies for batteries to become feasible for storing electricity on large scale. If a smartphone could be done with a battery, that lasts a week and is not dead within a year in winter conditions, it probably would have been done allready.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Smartphone batteries could easily last a week right now, with current technology. The reason they don't is because manufacturers prefer smaller size and lower weight to longer battery life, presumably because their customers do. Size and weight are much less of a concern for fixed installation grid storage, of course.
  - mFixman 12y ago
    > Smartphone batteries could easily last a week right now, with current technology. Source? I always assumed the the main reason why modern cellphones' battery life is a lot worse than a few years ago was because of power-hungry processors and screens.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      I don't think you really need a source for this. Current smartphone batteries last about a day in normal use. If you made it seven times larger, it would still be portable (just less so), and would now last a week. Increasing battery capacity by just adding more battery is trivial. What's hard is adding capacity without adding bulk or cost.
      - olla 12y ago
        Yes, bulk is quite important factor too, especially on storing energy on large scale. Agreeing with the "can do a week of battery phone" on the other hand depends. The problem is that smart-phones have achieved lately their acceptable speeds with quad core (and up) processors. Resolution of screen makes less impact than the mere size of the area that has to be lit, but nobody wants to surf web through a peephole. E-ink would rescue if it could play videos and games fast. A lot of people want to do exactly that. And there are a lot of additional features we are used to keeping active (gps, wifi, ...). Turning these off will decrease the value of having a smartphone. Based on current battery sizes a week of battery would probably mean about 5 times the battery of phones now. That is not pocketable computer territory anymore. In addition I would really like to have the phone component moved to watches (with at least 3 days battery) and leave all the rest for a pocketable computer to handle.
kriro 12y ago
My main hope for vastly improved batteries (desperately needed) is that it'll be possible to combine a bunch of them and store the power for a small community (however it may be generated) thus decentralizing power supply. A localized grid would have major benefits imo
malandrew 12y ago
This makes the name of his company interesting homage to Nicola. Nicola competed with Edison and Edison eventually won out. While Musk's plans aren't the same as Tesla's, the idea that an important part of the new structure of the modern electric grid bears his name is great.
- pm90 12y ago
  How did Edison win out? Our electric grids are AC, right?
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Edison won in business, becoming rich and famous, rather than dying poor and alone like Tesla did.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Tesla made many people rich however. And was wealthy himself from time to time. He spent it all on more basic research and development. A true citizen of the world.
Brakenshire 12y ago
For anyone interested in this issue, I recommend the two reports from Citi and UBS described in these articles: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-solar-battery-storage-socket-parity-in-years-57151 http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-solar-battery-stor... http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ubs-time-to-join-the-solar-ev-storage-revolution-27742 http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ubs-time-to-join-the-solar-e... It all really comes down to battery cost. If Tesla's gigafactory does what it says it will do, in seriously reducing cost per kwh, then a huge home storage market will open up naturally. The projections do seem a bit heroic, though. People seem to have been predicting cost reductions in batteries for the last 15 years, but they don't seem to have come to fruition.
sixdimensional 12y ago
The original inventors of such technology are AC Propulsion [1] (coincidentally, the same company that Tesla licensed the early drivetrain for the roadster from). They referred to it as "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) technology. Some interesting history in this idea - it's taken somebody like Elon Musk and a company like Tesla to start looking at implementing this technology in production/commodity markets. [1] https://www.acpropulsion.com/products-v2g.html https://www.acpropulsion.com/products-v2g.html
spullara 12y ago
I have one of these on order. They are in the process of securing the permission of PG&E to install it.
webXL 12y ago
Cool idea, but I think this is just a fallback plan or hedge for the new gigafactory. If oil prices stay low, it hurts the demand for electric cars. If we get driverless cars and more efficient ride sharing, people will be less inclined to own a car. But I'm sure musk has ideas to directly address those threats. He just doesn't want a $5b battery plant to be underutilized.
EVdotIO 12y ago
Please correct me if I am wrong in any of this, as I have a rudimentary knowledge of battery/capacitor/flywheel/Cox's timepiece tech at best. Li-ion make sense for supplying power for things which need Ah/kg high, but if you are not limited by mass, wouldn't maximizing aH/$ be the driving factor? Tesla has been making a massive push into li-ion fabrication and, as far as I can tell, not pursuing other energy storage mediums. Totally speculating here, but I would imagine a fly wheel, or even banks of lead-acid batteries, way out performing li-ion on total lifetime costs to the energy stored and discharged.

288 points by Libertatea 12y ago

There are already widespread programs where utilities pay customers a rebate in exchange for remotely turning off their A/C compressors at the peak of a heat wave in order to chop the top off consumption spikes. Paying high-consumption commercial customers to turn off entirely for a few hours to avoid spinning up another generation plant happens too. It's not too far-fetched to imagine a rebate program on home battery systems if the utility got the same remote control power to disconnect homes from the grid when needed, or even have their batteries dump power back onto it at those times. Essentially, individual homes become part of "smart grid" management systems.

xxxyy 12y ago
Doing arbitrage on the power network by storing energy during off-period, and releasing it during high-period is a relatively old concept (eg. [0]). What I don't see happening is the price of this battery going low enough to make this kind of arbitrage profitable in a reasonable amount of time. The article does not mention the cost aspect of such an investment. Germany along with a few other EU countries are currently high on renewable energy. As far as I know the most profitable way to utilize electric solar panels is to sell excessive energy back to the grid, not store it in batteries. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Losing power from snowstorms (well ice storms really) is quite common in New England and many family members have dropped $5k on propane generators. If you can bring this battery down to that price you will catch all those customers as well as have distributed off peak storage capacity. Right now the best way to store power is to pump water uphill, seriously.
  - JshWright 12y ago
    'Pumping water uphill' will likely always be a very good way to store power at those scales. I would take a pretty spectacular number of batteries to match the stored energy potential of a small lake with a couple hundred feet of head.
    - discardorama 12y ago
      > 'Pumping water uphill' will likely always be a very good way to store power at those scales. ... but not when it's ice.
      - spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
        And does require the right geography
- JshWright 12y ago
  The problem is, selling it back to the grid only works when it's a fairly small fraction of the customer base that's doing it. We can't _all_ sell power back to the grid. EDIT: Why the downvotes? This is a real issue... The current model of 'buy solar panels and pay for them by selling power back to the grid' will not scale forever...
  - codingdave 12y ago
    That really isn't the current model. The current model is to buy solar panels today, thereby locking in your long-term electrical cost at the price of today's solar panels, with the expectation that conventional electricity will continue to rise, with a point 7-10 years in the future where you have "paid off" the panels, followed by 15 years of free/cheap power, avoiding the future high costs of electricity from a utility company, finally ending 25-30 years from now when you need a new system, but hopefully renewable technology will have greatly improved by then.
  - hnal943 12y ago
    If the utility is paying a market rate (instead of an inflated rate to get people to invest in alternative energy), why couldn't we all sell power to the grid? Eventually if the home units get efficient enough, what would be the problem with power being supplied entirely peer-to-peer? Granted, I think we're a very long way away from that, but I don't see anything wrong with the funding mechanism.
    - rhino369 12y ago
      The market rate would just fall to near zero. The surplus from different homes would have very similar patterns. When it is sunny and bright out, everyone has surplus. At night, nobody does. You are buying when everyone is buying and you are selling when everyone is selling. That isn't even considering reliability. With wildly variable production, we will have to pay out of the ass for peaker plants to pick up the slack.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
- brazzledazzle 12y ago
  I think it's worth giving Elon Musk the benefit of the doubt. It seems pretty likely that he'd consider these problems before moving forward with a product.
- eigenvector 12y ago
  Not only will the batteries need to get cheaper, but the available arbitrage opportunity will need to account for the necessary upgrades to utility distribution systems to accommodate large amounts of distributed energy storage (DES). DES, particularly at high penetrations, generally violates the design assumptions of distribution protection systems and requires non-trivial upgrades to protective relaying and SCADA systems to maintain adequate real-time control.
- codingdave 12y ago
  You are thinking from a large scale, profit-driven perspective. The early adopters for this, at least in residences, will be people living off-grid, focused on self-sufficiency, and who are willing to take a financial hit to achieve that goal.
joezydeco 12y ago
Beyond that, you can opt into paying a real-time price for electricity (like the utility does) instead of a flat rate. You're at the mercy of the market but can save a significant amount if you voluntarily turn off high consumption devices during peak periods and schedule other loads for overnight or slack periods. What really gets interesting are the times (especially during early summer mornings) where there's too much supply on the grid and the price drops into negative territory (i.e. they'll pay you to shed load off the network). That's when you need the storage system charging up as fast as it can. I've been working on a personal system that watches the price and other factors (weather forecasts, family schedule) and cycles the A/C as deep as possible during those times. What might really suck though is if everyone has one of these in their homes, then the price advantage will go away. Not a bad problem to have, but it means we'll have to shift our supply to other places like personal solar panels (hmm, does Musk sell those?)
- mrfusion 12y ago
  Could you mine bitcoins during those negative times?
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    How much money do you want to sink into your power generation / storage / usage rig? You can increase the efficiency at which you do these things, sure, but that doesn't mean it will be economical.
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    Theoretically? Sure. Practically, when compared to underground Chinese mines full of equipment? No. The negative price situation only happens maybe 0.5% of the year. Your expensive equipment will sit idle the rest of the time.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    I want an electric shower that mines bitcoins. Also, I suspect there's a market for them with stock traders if I include enough chrome and blue LEDs.
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NickNameNick 12y ago
Paper mills and other wood processing make for great instantaneous interruptible load. In NZ one of the major electricity generating companies pays some major industrial customers for the ability to cut them off, enabling them to reallocate the power almost as if it were additional generation. Aluminium smelters are good too, but you can't cut them off without warning, because it will break the arc-furnaces when the aluminium solidifies around the carbon electrodes.

patcon 12y ago

Seems odd to talk about "stationary batteries" as a separate product, as if a car weren't stationary most of its life. (but I suppose that changes in a future of sharing economies and self-driving cars)

dangrossman 12y ago
The cars are mostly stationary, but they're stationary in the wrong place during peak consumption hours: a workplace parking lot, not a garage connected to the grid.
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masklinn 12y ago
> Seems odd to talk about "stationary batteries" as a separate product Why? The constraints (in terms of size, cooling, wiring, weight, temperature changes, …) are completely different. A stationary battery is a separate product, competing in a completely different class and with very different constraints.
michaelt 12y ago
Batteries for transport applications have to trade off size and weight as well as the constraints of price, capacity and cycle life. Stationary power storage applications can use larger batteries with worse power density, if they offer a longer life per $.

deedubaya 12y ago

Is it possible for there to be any push back on this from electric utility providers?

grandpa 12y ago
Utilities should be happy about this. One of their biggest problems is uneven load on the grid - low at night, too high during a heatwave - and this has the potential to make that problem a lot easier.
- astazangasta 12y ago
  Utilities won't be happy about thus. They are already upset about having people with rooftop solar selling to the grid (taking their revenue); this will only make it worse.
  - snsr 12y ago
    I imagine generation and transmission rates will certainly be adjusted to cope with changes in demand and grid topology.
  - ammaar 12y ago
    Is there a legitimate concern for maintenance of the grid? Don't current utility costs partially go back into standard maintenance and improvement?
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      It's not just maintenance. The system as a whole was architected to take advantage of the economies of scale you get when you assume that your customers remain consumers and you control the production. Nobody foresaw back then that each house could be a potential power plant. When you start to change that, you're still having to maintain the current infrastructure, which is steadily becoming obsolete, while also building new infrastructure to handle random power spikes and draws in arbitrary locations. You have to do this across the whole grid, everywhere in the country. This has the utilities very very nervous.

mrfusion 12y ago

But if the Tesla car battery can only handle 1000 charge/discharge cycles, how is a home battery viable? Wouldn't it only last for three years or so? (Maybe I'm wrong about the number of cycles?)

deleted 12y ago
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michaelt 12y ago
Some companies have battery technology they believe is good for 10,000 [1] or even 16,000 [2] cycles until it reaches 80% of its initial capacity. On the other hand, some batteries on the market show substantial capacity loss after just 300 cycles [3]. Needless to say, the product that lasts 50 times longer costs quite a bit more - and they're bigger and heavier to boot. For stationary power storage, you don't care if they're big and heavy, but for transport applications you do. [1] https://www.toshiba.com/tic/datafiles/Battery_Energy_Storage_Solutions_with_SCiB.pdf https://www.toshiba.com/tic/datafiles/Battery_Energy_Storage... [2] http://www.altairnano.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/60Ah-DataSheet.pdf http://www.altairnano.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/60Ah-Da... [3] http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-data/pdf2/ACA4000/ACA4000CE240.pdf http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-data/pdf2/ACA4000/ACA400...
- mrfusion 12y ago
  So you think they'll build these to have more cycles?
  - michaelt 12y ago
    I think they'll build them so they make economic sense to customers. I think that would probably mean having more than 1000 cycles, but it could mean being really cheap, or some sort of lease/periodic replacement deal, or something like that.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      If you magically made the Tesla S battery last 1000 cycles, it could make $12 per cycle, grossing you $12,000 over its life. The replacement cost of a Tesla S battery is $30,000.

nsxwolf 12y ago

This potentially sounds like a good alternative to a diesel generator.

chiph 12y ago
Only for short periods of time. If you live in an area subject to natural disasters, you'd still want a generator (either diesel, propane, or natural gas) to get you enough power during extended outages to run a refrigerator, a TV, a few lights, and charge a phone or laptop. I was without power during Hurricane Hugo for almost 10 days. Cold showers suck, but what sucked more was not getting any news.
- knob 12y ago
  Located in the Caribbean during Hurricane Hugo?
  - chiph 12y ago
    Rural South Carolina. The apartment complex where I lived was apparently at the end of the transmission line, so we were one of the last in the area to get power back. My sister lived in Charleston at the time (where Hugo made landfall) and her VCR wasn't even blinking "12:00" when she returned after evacuating. Go figure.
- ericd 12y ago
  You can get a hand crank emergency radio/light/phone charger for roughly $25-$30. Example: http://www.amazon.com/Epica-Emergency-Digital-Flashlight-Certified/dp/B00CZDT30S/ http://www.amazon.com/Epica-Emergency-Digital-Flashlight-Cer... The refrigerator bit is a bit harder...
  - timtadh 12y ago
    It is the furnace blower fan that is the essential thing to power. (assuming a natural gas/propane furnace) With that you can heat your house. If you can heat your house you can have running water. Without heat you will need to shut off the water and drain the pipes so they do not burst. At that point you have no heat and no water and you probably need to just leave.

gorillapower 12y ago

This would be great for the situation were having in South Africa; were experiencing daily loadshedding at the moment as our only power utility basically, cannot meet demand. The situation is set to continue for at least a year while the new coal power plant "Medupi" is being constructed - its more than 4 years behind schedule. A battery that could be charged and then used to power your home during loadshedding could be a breakthrough solution as the costs for generators and solar are quite expensive. That being said not sure how much the Telsa "Home Battery" would be. Any event, if its feasible it could really be a good solution. Im sure in the long run countries experiencing similar a situation could use this.

deleted 12y ago
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malandrew 12y ago
Brazil likely would also benefit. Our electricity production and grid are precarious at times and there are occasional rolling blackouts when things are mismanaged. A distributed great would help there.
- malandrew 12y ago
  s/great/grid/
nerfhammer 12y ago
It's a phenomena in the UK that everyone makes tea using electric kettles during commercial breaks, which is magnified by the popularity of TV events such as sporting events to the point where the power grid is affected by how well the English team is faring in the game. The power service ends up having to predict the popularity of TV shows and how long sports games may last. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

Shivetya 12y ago

I am not all that sure I want it IN my house, and the garage for many homes is in the house. Yeah I know, people garage their cars but this is wholly different. Maybe outside the back in a small enclosed space, similar to an AC unit I will be curious as to regulations for ventilation, wiring, and similar, are.

mrfusion 12y ago
I think operating temperature is important, so I'd imagine outside or garage is a no go? (My garage gets down to 40F at night, not sure if that's typical). But maybe with enough insulation you could put it anywhere?
- aquark 12y ago
  Well, depends on location ... I think mine was down around -10F last night and I don't have room for one in a heated space. I suspect it will be a while longer before battery technology is as useful above the 49th parallel.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- alexhawdon 12y ago
  Tesla cars are popular in northern European countries and I imagine these will work along the same lines: active heating of the battery. In the cars the capacity sacrifice is minimal and I imagine stationary batteries will be even better as (like you say) you can wrap them in a ton of insulation without having to worry too much about bulk and weight.
johnward 12y ago
I have a propane generator that sits outside. I'm not sure why a battery couldn't aside from heat in the summer.

andyl 12y ago

Musk seems to specialize in bringing innovation to slow-moving industries. Tesla > Cars & Oil/Gas, SpaceX Rockets > Aerospace, SpaceX Satellites > Telecom, Solar City & Tesla > Utilities Where is the Musk for Finance and Health Care?

virtuallynathan 12y ago
Well, he already had PayPal...

mrfusion 12y ago

I wonder if they should also market this to the whole house backup generator market? Those run 2,000-4,000 $ at least, I think. I'd imagine a lot of houses would pay $1500 for a battery to operate their whole house during an outage. Another product I'd like to see is a plug in battery to operate the sump pump for a few hours during an outage? Apparently a UPS can't handle the high load, and the battery backup ones you make require an expensive plumbing visit to install the special DC powered pump.

JshWright 12y ago
How long will that $1,500 battery power my house? It's still not possible to beat hydrocarbons in terms of energy density, and if you are looking to weather a multi-day outage, it's energy density you care about...
- sp332 12y ago
  The added reliability should be a plus. And convenience in not having to keep it fueled up. Also you can use these in places where there's not enough ventilation to run a generator, and it's quieter.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    It would be interesting to see the market statistics for installed generators. I bet propane and natural gas have a lot more of that market than gasoline and diesel. (for homes with nat gas it's a no brainer)
- danielweber 12y ago
  Using a Tesla S battery as a baseline, it gives you 85KWh at $30,000, or 2.83KWh per $1000. $1500 would give you 4.25KWh. The average home averages 1KW, so you'll have 4.25 hours. Obviously you could get more efficiency with a stationary battery.
  - JshWright 12y ago

userbinator 12y ago

From the headline I thought it would be about using your electric car as a gigantic powerbank for the house. ...which is not such a bad idea (e.g. power outages), until you realise that you might need that power for driving too.

dangrossman 12y ago
I think people under-estimate the capacity of car batteries, or over-estimate their home power usage. I used about 300 kWh last month, or about 10 kWh per day. A Model S has an 85 kWh battery. I could run my entire house on it for 4 days and still have 150 miles of driving range.
- danielweber 12y ago
  People are really shocked when I tell them a car in motion uses 10 times the power of a house.

krschultz 12y ago

This sure looks like pure PR to deflect from the bad earnings announcement yesterday. I'm sure they'll build it some day, but call me when you can buy it.

Shivetya 12y ago
it cannot help that GM has announced they will built the Chevrolet Bolt, a 200 mile range EV. Combined with other articles this car will start building in mid to late 2016. http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2015/feb/chicago/0212-bolt-ev.html http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail...
- samatman 12y ago
  A Bolt and a Volt? Someone flunked high-school Spanish.
  - robszumski 12y ago
    They started with the Model V and are now moving to the Model B.
  - Shorel 12y ago
    What has Spanish to do with this?
    - samatman 12y ago
      In Spanish, these are homonyms.
      - Shorel 12y ago
        In Spanish, these are 'voltio' and 'rayo'. The words you mention are not Spanish words. However, it is true than in Latin American Spanish we do not perceive the difference between V and B. I guess the Aztecs and Incas did not have that in their own languages. In Spain they do. And in portuguese (the most similar language to Spanish) the difference is important as well.

rootbear 12y ago

I like the idea of having solar cells that charge up a bank of batteries that could power my house at night. I was recently talking to a Solar City rep and they are thinking along those lines. I wonder if this would be a good time to define a standard low voltage plug for house hold use. An awful lot of modern electrical devices don't need 110VAC and end up wasting a lot of power converting AC to DC. I've seen replacements for wall sockets that combine a single AC socket with a few USB power ports. That's convenient, but USB wasn't designed as a power plug, it's just been co-opted for it. A well designed system of 24VDC or 48VDC would be a nice thing to have. Bonus points if it's a world standard. I'd also like a pony.

ph0rque 12y ago
One could bootstrap by using 12V RV appliances, with the exception of big items like the refrigerator, range, and washing/drying machines.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  Don't forget AC and furnace. In most places where you can efficiently use solar panels, AC is pretty essential.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    It would be nice to re-think the necessity of AC, as well. It's been around for quite a long time and the ineffectiveness are crazy (same thing with whole-house heating). Why heat or cool your house and deal with the insulation problems that come from having doors and windows and walls and exposure to sun or wind on one side? Your house doesn't get hot or cold, it doesn't care. You get hot and cold. Supercomputers run on batteries for an entire day or more in our pockets. Powerful mobile gaming machines can be run from a USB socket. There has to be a way to cool me down in the summer without needing to cool my entire house (and watch as the cold air streams out underneath my door).
    - bkmartin 12y ago

afarrell 12y ago

I suspect this market will be captured by folks not in homes, but in neighborhoods buying things like Sadoway's liquid metal batteries* and either participating in the bulk electricity market directly (fun fact: the markets run by New England ISO and NYISO are run as linear programming problems to minimize total cost over a bunch of supply curves bid in by suppliers and nuclear plants usually bid negative cost to make sure they get scheduled) or providing reliability-boosting service to utilities. * http://www.ambri.com/technology/ http://www.ambri.com/technology/

zimbatm 12y ago

OT: For electric cars to succeed someone really needs to step-up and standardise the plug. It's ridiculous to have charging stations that are tied to a particular brand of cars.

diydsp 12y ago
SAE J1772 is a North American standard for electrical connectors for electric vehicles maintained by the Society of Automotive Engineers and has the formal title "SAE Surface Vehicle Recommended Practice J1772, SAE Electric Vehicle Conductive Charge Coupler”.[1] It covers the general physical, electrical, communication protocol, and performance requirements for the electric vehicle conductive charge system and coupler. The intent is to define a common electric vehicle conductive charging system architecture including operational requirements and the functional and dimensional requirements for the vehicle inlet and mating connector.(1) The SAE J1772-2009 connector specification has been added to the international IEC 62196-2 standard (1) The SAE J1772-2009 was adopted by the car manufacturers of post-2000 electric vehicles like the third generation of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf as the early models. The connector became standard equipment on the US-market due to the availability of charging stations with that plug type in the nation's electric vehicle network (with the help of funding such as ChargePoint America program drawing grants from provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act).(1) (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
- zimbatm 12y ago
  Thanks, I just found that Tesla has an adapter for it's cars to connect to SAE J17772 plugs: http://my.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-connector http://my.teslamotors.com/roadster/charging/j1772-mobile-con... . Too bad Tesla didn't standardise on that format so that other cars can benefit from their chargers.
  - SEJeff 12y ago
    Tesla didn't use that standard because it doesn't provide enough charging power due to being lower voltage. The Tesla charger is actually better tech: https://transportevolved.com/2014/06/16/nissan-bmw-look-adopt-teslas-charging-standard/ https://transportevolved.com/2014/06/16/nissan-bmw-look-adop... I suspect the standard will go no where as Tesla also owns more charging stations than anyone else and is expanding them constantly: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

joshstrange 12y ago

Whenever Solar/Battery power comes up I like to link back to this [0]. There was a HN discussion about it [1] when the article in question [3] referenced that PDF. My favorite quote is probably: > To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically “cut the cord?” [0] Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business (http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivechallenges.pdf http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivecha...) [1] Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities (http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/ http://grist.org/article/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-util...) [2] HN Discussion 261 points, 670 days ago, 139 comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5543603)

DINKDINK 12y ago
Solar panels would only affect the revenue of coupled utilities. Depending on the regulatory framework of the state, Decoupled utilities [0] would be unaffected by solar (and may even benefit if they supply the capital investment to install the solar) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_%28utility_regulation%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_%28utility_regulati...
freyr 12y ago
The linked document by the Edison Electric Institute is titled "Disruptive Challenges" and it identifies distributed power generation (among other things) as a potential disruption in the industry. I assume the point is that if the electrical companies view this as a plausible future scenario, then we shouldn't rule it out.

snarfy 12y ago

I love it. The elephant in the room with electric cars has always been the power grid. It is simply not capable of sustaining the energy equal to the amount of gasoline distributed to gas stations. The last rough measure I've seen was the grid is about 1/4 what it needs to be to sustain electric cars. Having batteries as energy cache spread out around the network is a great idea and will offset the need to build out more power lines.

lotsofcows 12y ago
I think you're complicating things. You don't need the car and the battery. Enough cars can act as a distributed power cache.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Indeed. Power use problems with electric cars are somewhat self-solving.

themgt 12y ago

The financial implications of these threats are fairly evident. Start with the increased cost of supporting a network capable of managing and integrating distributed generation sources. Next, under most rate structures, add the decline in revenues attributed to revenues lost from sales foregone. These forces lead to increased revenues required from remaining customers … and sought through rate increases. The result of higher electricity prices and competitive threats will encourage a higher rate of DER additions, or will promote greater use of efficiency or demand-side solutions. Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector. These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology-disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines). http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u-s-utilities-according-to-u-s-utilities/ http://grist.org/climate-energy/solar-panels-could-destroy-u...

xxxyy 12y ago
I guess we should feel sorry for Comcast as well. Damn this Silicon Valley, always innovating, breaking things down.

peter303 12y ago

I read somewhere that solar installations in Japan have about a two-day battery capacity.

eldavido 12y ago

Related economist article: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes-electricity-providers-face-existential-threat-how-lose-half-trillion-euros http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes-elec... Who's building the "I have a 10kW load, I'm in zip code XXXXX, when is the cheapest/best time to turn this on" API?

startupfounder 12y ago

I have been speaking with Solar City's commercial division about doing large grid-tied solar projects with Tesla batteries in one of USA largest cities and have $100M in projects under development. These batteries aren't going to power your home at night, nor should they as electricity rates at night are dirt cheap (comparatively) when people aren't at work, in factories and in bed sleeping. These batteries are going to be performing grid marketplace arbitrage and some governments and utilities are providing amazing incentives to do so. (Currently the incentives require the batteries to be tied to solar.) There are two pieces of your electricity bill (I'm simplifying here) 1) the electricity charge (EC) and 2) the transmission charge (TC). The EC is calculated by how many kWh you use during each (peak/off-peak) period of the day and the TC is calculated by your max grid demand during your largest 15 minutes for the month. Tesla Batteries are not just about the batteries, the system calculates how to remove kWh demand from peak hours by pulling power from batteries and then recharging during off-peak hours. This covers the EC cost reduction. To reduce TC costs the system calculates your peak load over the given month and tries to turn it from a "mountain range" (with many peaks) to a "platou". You pay your TC for the tallest mountain for the month. At first the system doesn't know that much about your usage profile and will just focus on the largest peak demand 15 minute intervals. Then over time it will learn more about your usage patterns and slowly platou your grid demand. At the end of the day it is going to be much more cost effective and efficient to have a distributed grid with thousands of solar arrays and batteries than build out large billion dollar gas fired turbines or even wind turbines.

driverdan 12y ago
This is the answer. Commercial power penalizes you for having a large difference between your peak use and continuous use. If you can eliminate peaks using batteries you can eliminate this penalty. You can also recharge the batteries during off hours to cut costs further.
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- danielweber 12y ago

olla 12y ago

The real blocker of going electric on everything is the capacity of rechargeable technologies and their lifetime, not some global conspiracy. Even the high price of batteries/capacitors might not be a problem if lifetime and capacity would be great. In that sense Musk might be onto something, but I think it takes a lot more than 20% improvement over current technologies for batteries to become feasible for storing electricity on large scale. If a smartphone could be done with a battery, that lasts a week and is not dead within a year in winter conditions, it probably would have been done allready.

mikeash 12y ago
Smartphone batteries could easily last a week right now, with current technology. The reason they don't is because manufacturers prefer smaller size and lower weight to longer battery life, presumably because their customers do. Size and weight are much less of a concern for fixed installation grid storage, of course.
- mFixman 12y ago
  > Smartphone batteries could easily last a week right now, with current technology. Source? I always assumed the the main reason why modern cellphones' battery life is a lot worse than a few years ago was because of power-hungry processors and screens.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I don't think you really need a source for this. Current smartphone batteries last about a day in normal use. If you made it seven times larger, it would still be portable (just less so), and would now last a week. Increasing battery capacity by just adding more battery is trivial. What's hard is adding capacity without adding bulk or cost.
    - olla 12y ago
      Yes, bulk is quite important factor too, especially on storing energy on large scale. Agreeing with the "can do a week of battery phone" on the other hand depends. The problem is that smart-phones have achieved lately their acceptable speeds with quad core (and up) processors. Resolution of screen makes less impact than the mere size of the area that has to be lit, but nobody wants to surf web through a peephole. E-ink would rescue if it could play videos and games fast. A lot of people want to do exactly that. And there are a lot of additional features we are used to keeping active (gps, wifi, ...). Turning these off will decrease the value of having a smartphone. Based on current battery sizes a week of battery would probably mean about 5 times the battery of phones now. That is not pocketable computer territory anymore. In addition I would really like to have the phone component moved to watches (with at least 3 days battery) and leave all the rest for a pocketable computer to handle.

kriro 12y ago

My main hope for vastly improved batteries (desperately needed) is that it'll be possible to combine a bunch of them and store the power for a small community (however it may be generated) thus decentralizing power supply. A localized grid would have major benefits imo

malandrew 12y ago

This makes the name of his company interesting homage to Nicola. Nicola competed with Edison and Edison eventually won out. While Musk's plans aren't the same as Tesla's, the idea that an important part of the new structure of the modern electric grid bears his name is great.

pm90 12y ago
How did Edison win out? Our electric grids are AC, right?
- mikeash 12y ago
  Edison won in business, becoming rich and famous, rather than dying poor and alone like Tesla did.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Tesla made many people rich however. And was wealthy himself from time to time. He spent it all on more basic research and development. A true citizen of the world.

Brakenshire 12y ago

For anyone interested in this issue, I recommend the two reports from Citi and UBS described in these articles: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-solar-battery-storage-socket-parity-in-years-57151 http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-solar-battery-stor... http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ubs-time-to-join-the-solar-ev-storage-revolution-27742 http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/ubs-time-to-join-the-solar-e... It all really comes down to battery cost. If Tesla's gigafactory does what it says it will do, in seriously reducing cost per kwh, then a huge home storage market will open up naturally. The projections do seem a bit heroic, though. People seem to have been predicting cost reductions in batteries for the last 15 years, but they don't seem to have come to fruition.

sixdimensional 12y ago

The original inventors of such technology are AC Propulsion [1] (coincidentally, the same company that Tesla licensed the early drivetrain for the roadster from). They referred to it as "vehicle-to-grid" (V2G) technology. Some interesting history in this idea - it's taken somebody like Elon Musk and a company like Tesla to start looking at implementing this technology in production/commodity markets. [1] https://www.acpropulsion.com/products-v2g.html https://www.acpropulsion.com/products-v2g.html

spullara 12y ago

I have one of these on order. They are in the process of securing the permission of PG&E to install it.

webXL 12y ago

Cool idea, but I think this is just a fallback plan or hedge for the new gigafactory. If oil prices stay low, it hurts the demand for electric cars. If we get driverless cars and more efficient ride sharing, people will be less inclined to own a car. But I'm sure musk has ideas to directly address those threats. He just doesn't want a $5b battery plant to be underutilized.

EVdotIO 12y ago

Please correct me if I am wrong in any of this, as I have a rudimentary knowledge of battery/capacitor/flywheel/Cox's timepiece tech at best. Li-ion make sense for supplying power for things which need Ah/kg high, but if you are not limited by mass, wouldn't maximizing aH/$ be the driving factor? Tesla has been making a massive push into li-ion fabrication and, as far as I can tell, not pursuing other energy storage mediums. Totally speculating here, but I would imagine a fly wheel, or even banks of lead-acid batteries, way out performing li-ion on total lifetime costs to the energy stored and discharged.