>For the average U.S. home to rely solely on solar panels and Tesla's new batteries, the complete system would cost roughly $98,000, according to analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Even that glum assessment assumes a house in a sunny region such as Southern California.<p>927 kwh / month off grid solar system : <a href="http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solarpowersystems/large-home-7-off-grid-solar-power-system.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solarpowersystems/large-home-7...</a><p>Cost : $20,172<p>Two of Elon's batteries: $7k<p>Total cost = $27,172<p>How the hell did they get $98k?<p>I think they intentionally tried to make that number look ridiculous. I wonder if this is more of ALEC's anti-solar bullshit.
Something this article doesn't address is the potential impact batteries everywhere could have. This quote in particular tells me the author, and the speaker, don't see it this way:<p><i>“The battery-in-every-home idea—not only do I think it doesn’t make economic sense, I don’t think it’s necessary,” said Brian Warshay, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “Having a centralized grid is incredibly useful and incredibly efficient.”</i><p>The difficulty with our current power infrastructure is that there is no buffering at the consumption side. Because there is no buffering at the consumption side, the overall grid must be able to handle peak demand. That is, we must over-provision. With batteries everywhere, this isn't necessarily the case. In theory, we could all have generators, but we don't because they're noisy, smelly, and a maintenance hassle. But sticking a giant battery on the wall? I can see everyone having one, and big institutions having large arrays of them. I think that has the potential to fundamentally change our power grid.
This is the second article I've seen from Bloomberg that ignores two-thirds of what Tesla actually said and thus massively misses the point. I'm starting to think it's intentional.<p>No kidding this isn't (currently) attractive for North American homes. If I recall correctly, they basically said that in the press conference, though I can't find the link now. They were expecting it to be more useful in places with lots of solar and dodgy electric grids, such as Australia.<p>Bloomberg also goes on and on about utility scale storage. They apparently didn't read the press kit, where Tesla talked about how they're doing just that.<p>Press Kit - <a href="http://www.teslamotors.com/presskit" rel="nofollow">http://www.teslamotors.com/presskit</a>
Long time ago I visited the home of a young entrepreneur that had spent all his money installing optical fiber all around his home.<p>I remember what I thought: How stupid someone could be. It does not make financial sense at all when it was so expensive.<p>Turn out I was the stupid one. This man created a company doing exactly what he had done in his house but for others and made a ton of money.<p>In some way he paid a cost for living in the future, and he understood the practical shortcomings and advantages of the new technology much better than anyone else, which made him succeed when others failed.
Net metering doesn't make sense. About half of the cost of residential electricity goes to running the grid.<p>That being said, electric companies aren't stupid. If / when solar power and batteries become ridiculously cheap, they will just switch over to solar and batteries.<p>Residential off-the-grid solar power will make sense in two markets:
- Highly rural areas where it's very expensive to maintain power lines.
- "Be prepared" cultures like Utah where people take pride in preparing themselves for Armageddon.
First, this is the opening price. The economics are going to get better from here, and the early adopters always pay a bit more for the privilege of experiencing the technology - and <i>someone</i> has to be first to get the ball rolling.<p>Next - If I have a $500K+ house (modest, by Northern California standards), and for $10K I could get this sleek, hi technology, 10 year warranty battery that lets me more efficiently leverage my solar panels, plus potentially giving me some insurance against a grid outage? Hell, I'm first in line.<p>Now, does the Tesla Battery make sense, for 100% of the US Population, today? Of course not - but I don't think anyone has suggested that.<p>But this is where we start, and we improve from here.
"So defection from the electrical grid will remain well out of reach for most Americans, and even those who manage the feat will waste a lot of capacity thanks to solar panels and batteries that are rarely used to their full potential."<p>Once again a news outlet (deliberately) fails to see the long-term strategy for the sake of a click-baity nay-saying headline. Just like the Tesla vehicle itself, which is still outside the reach of 99% of Americans, the point is to aim for the luxury market first and through scale and process optimization gradually lower the price so that it is within the reach of most Americans.<p>The luxury market is why Tesla is now able to develop a mass market vehicle, why solar panels are reaching an inflection point where in many parts of the world it will no longer make financial sense <i>not</i> to have them, and why home batteries will eventually be in the reach of everybody.
Typical NYC based media people not getting it.<p>There are many many people who spend money right now on generators as emergency power sources.<p>My parents are a great example of a perfect use case for this product. They live in the country, and have 5-6 significant power outages a year, usually in winter. They need a way to automatically deliver power to critical house systems: furnace, well pump, fridge, freezer. Right now they use a large portable generator, but that requires maintenance and a manual engagement. You also cannot leave it unattended for long periods of time. That basically ties them to their house in the winter months, making vacations difficult.<p>Lots of other markets for this type of thing too. If you have a horse or hobby farm, one of these things keeps the heat on in the barn when the power goes out.
The article is much more negative than it <i>should be</i>. There is some truth in there, but the rest of it seems short-sighted. It's like saying "why in the world would anyone buy a $5,000 4k TV with an OLED screen?" Yet people buy them and that's how the technology becomes cheaper.<p>It's a <i>little</i> different with batteries because they don't improve at the same rate tech products do, but they still improve and I think once Tesla gets a couple of those Gigafactories going the batteries will become more appealing to a wider range of customers.<p>It's also the same with electric cars - 95% of the people still <i>don't want</i> one, even if they had the money for it, because they don't want the range anxiety. Also aren't solar panels still more expensive than buying coal-produced electricity? Or it least it was in the past few years, yet people still installed solar panels.<p>The bottom line is Tesla only needs some "early adopter" customers to hold it over until the product is cheap/good enough for the mainstream market. And by the looks of it, whether it's in electric cars, solar panels or batteries, that seems to have worked pretty well.
I seem to remember a lot of very similar articles arguing the economics of the iPhone didn't make any sense when it first arrived as well. Not trying to say the result here will be the same, just running hard numbers doesn't always tell the whole story.
The article omit use as alternative to UPS + diesel engine. In that use case it is competitive.<p>Moreover, any modern invention could be dismissed as toy/limited use for rich. E.g. Computers, mobile phones, cars... Next generation should be even more competitive.
I'm confused about why 'net metering exists' is a good argument against these batteries. As I understand it this is a mandated buy of excess home-generated solar at retail prices - is this correct? If so, does everyone really think this is sustainable if rooftop solar really takes off? Even if it technically is I expect to see widespread lobbying to end it (like in Hawaii) and expect most of the lobbying to succeed.<p>I don't think the Tesla batteries are a good way to lower your home energy costs, but I don't think I would factor in net metering as a reason why, at least not looking 5-10 years out.
If I recall correctly about 80% of Tesla's battery pre-orders by dollar value were in the commercial and utility categories rather than residential.<p>This article makes a big point that in the residential/solar panel market the battery is marginal at the moment in most of the US where grid electricity is cheap. Ok, but so what?
Imagine the world where only acts that make financial sense are done.<p>1. No kids would be born. They do not make financial sense at all.<p>2. We all would be living in some nasty environment. Caring for the environment doesn't make much sense for companies.<p>3. Caring weak, vulnerable people doesn't make any financial sense at all.
> No matter how cheap prices get, batteries won't be the easiest or the cheapest way to take advantage of solar power.<p>that seems like it can't possibly be true.