So who will buy the Tesla home battery?

[UCFKnight85]

I don't get all of it just yet, but seems Musk is making a push for his solar interests by unveiling a "home battery" that can store power from installed solar and allow it to power the rest of your home. To what degree I'm not sure.

Seems interesting but I'm guessing it'll take years for it to be reliable and affordable enough on mass market.

His cars are still losing money.

 

[UCFRogerz]

This is one of those products that makes an already available product easier for a consumer. Standard solar / lead-acid battery tech has been around forever but it isn't pretty or sexy.

Musk is upping the battery tech by pushing out and all-in-one Li-ion battery bank that is pleasing to the eyes and easy to install with everything included in the unit so there is no buying batteries, building an enclosure, selecting cooling, inverters, charge controllers etc.

These Tesla batteries are expensive, but perhaps after mass producing and the longevity of Li-ion vs lead acid, maybe it makes sense.

I'd go traditional until the cost comes down and the first gen bugs get ironed out.

 

[jetsaholic]

His cars are still losing money.

I can't envision driving a car that doesn't make a sound no matter how fast or cool looking it is. It's like a hot chick that refuses to go down on you. You can almost buy 2 Caymans, a way better vehicle, for that price.

 

[UCFRogerz]

I can't envision driving a car that doesn't make a sound no matter how fast or cool looking it is. It's like a hot chick that refuses to go down on you. You can almost buy 2 Caymans, a way better vehicle, for that price.

And like 5 Fiats.

 

[jetsaholic]

And like 5 Fiats.

ALL THE FIATS!!!!!!!

 

[brahmanknight]

I can't envision driving a car that doesn't make a sound no matter how fast or cool looking it is. It's like a hot chick that refuses to go down on you. You can almost buy 2 Caymans, a way better vehicle, for that price.

Prius' and Volts' are already bad enough. It's just freaky to be walking in a parking lot and a car passes you all silent like a stealth fighter.

 

[jetsaholic]

Prius' and Volts' are already bad enough. It's just freaky to be walking in a parking lot and a car passes you all silent like a stealth fighter.

Indeed. Happened to me. All I heard was tires rolling and I turned. That's how moderfukers get shot, you know?

 

[UCFRogerz]

Indeed. Happened to me. All I heard was tires rolling and I turned. That's how moderfukers get shot, you know?

I thought you had to be black and run from the cops to get shot?

 

[UCFKnight85]

So the battery would be $3,500 and the solar install is what, like $50-70K?

That's expensive.

 

[Bob the Citronaut]

Seems like a sound investment, break even is only 46 years for me.

 

[UCFEE]

Seems like a sound investment, break even is only 46 years for me.

Which is why subsidies exist. Climate change or not, we will eventually run out of our current energy sources. This is a perfect example of where a government subsidy should be applied, because the technology has to get mature sooner or later and nobody is going to invest in a project like this based on its short term returns.

Rabble away on why any distortion to the free market is bad bad bad, but fact is prefect free markets won't solve all problems, esp long term ones.

 

[UCFKnight85]

They already subsidize solar and people still aren't buying it. The Obama Admin has tried to force a market for residential solar that simply doesn't exist.

 

[SublimeKnight]

They already subsidize solar and people still aren't buying it. The Obama Admin has tried to force a market for residential solar that simply doesn't exist.

I think these will be bigger overseas in developing 3rd world nations. Musk made a good analogy with cellphones. In a lot of 3rd world countries, phone landline rollout was slow and expensive, then cell phones came out and got continually cheaper and better. So in a lot of countries, they skipped the landline infrastructure and went straight to cellular. This could be the same model. In a lot of places electric service is unreliable or unavailable where you want to be. For them, batteries and solar panels make a lot more sense, because they cut out the nonexsitent infrastructure problem. Plus batteries, panels, and associated power equipment continue to get less expensive annually while labor, land, and copper wiring continue to rise in cost to add power plants and infrastructure.
In the US we already have a reliable grid and cheap fuel (coal, natural gas, nuclear), so the value to us is much smaller.

 

[UCFRogerz]

My next home will have solar / wind. How much capacity, who knows, at least some.

 

[SublimeKnight]

So the battery would be $3,500 and the solar install is what, like $50-70K?

That's expensive.

I wrote off solar for a long time too, but there have been incredible advancements in both how efficient the panels are and how cheap they are to manufacture. For the past 15 - 20 years the price per watt has been cut in half about every 5 years, most predict this trend will continue for at least the next 5 years based on discoveries in labs today. Right now if you get solar, the panels probably won't be the most expensive part. Now it's shifted to the inverters and batteries if you want to be completely untied from the grid (and both of those are dropping in cost at about the same rate).

I think around 2025, when you build a house, the cost of solar+batteries vs being grid tied will come down to if you can pony up the money for 5-10 years of electricity up front.

 

[goodknightfl]

I have solar lights in garden, and a solar rope light for my camper.

 

[jetsaholic]

I thought you had to be black and run from the cops to get shot?

It was a black Tesla. That has to count for something.

 

[fabknight]

My next home will have solar / wind. How much capacity, who knows, at least some.

It would make sense for Dingy to look into the wind power. LMK is a perpetual source of wind.

 

[EweSeaEff]

Our company finances solar and wind installations across the U.S. (in addition to real estate debt and equity finance as well). Granted, we don't finance residential installations - we're focused on the distributed generation and small/medium utility-scale installations - but, the facts speak for themselves. Battery storage technology has been discussed for a few years now. Utilities are beginning to deploy battery storage (see PG&E and SCE in southern California and the PJM wholesale market in the northeast) as a means of frequency regulation. Additionally, many RFPs (mainly in California and New England) are requiring a battery storage component to complement the solar PV installation.

As for programs to induce the adoption of solar - they've been wildly successful, both from a commercial standpoint as well as a residential standpoint. In fact, in 2014, almost 40% of all new electric generation in the U.S. came in the form of solar. Pricing continues to be driven downward - a further 10% reduction in Q3 and grid parity achieved in the southwestern United States as well as Hawaii and some places in the northeast.

One can't look solely at Florida and extrapolate that solar is a failure in the rest of the country. Florida's legislative and regulatory environment are prohibitive of third-party ownership of power producing systems. Namely, third-party power purchase agreements are illegal in the state. There's an effort to change that - being led by both the left and the tea party/libertarians. Floridians for Solar Choice is a grassroots organization that has tasked itself with adding a ballot initiative for 2016 that would allow for third-party power sales of systems up to 2 MW. If passed, that would completely open up the C&I distributed generation market in Florida. The Kochs and EEI are aggressively fighting it, but the hypocrisy is really very amusing. They're all about states' rights, until it infringes upon their oil and natural gas pocket books. They are very eager to point to the ITC (investment tax credit) as a "subsidy", but fail to call into question the 12 subsidies/favorable tax treatments that oil and nat gas enjoy.