By: Jerome Auza
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, announced on April 30, 2015 the diversification of Tesla Motors into energy focusing on energy storage solution for home, businesses and utilities. For homes, he announced the availability of their new product called Powerwall, a new battery system based on lithium-ion technology that Tesla Motors have proven to be a reliable and safe solution for its line of electric cars.
Musk said that one of the hindering factors for the adoption of renewable energy for the home is the cost and maintenance complexity of the batteries that need weekly monitoring. There is also a safety issue with conventional batteries because they use corrosive acids that has fumes and possibly become a fire hazard.
Musk said that the US and the world could be powered 100% by renewable energy sources and their new battery technology could be the turning point in adapting such sources.
Tesla Energy set the price for the 10KWhr Powerwall at $3,500 which brings the cost of storage to $350/kWhr. The Powerwall is guaranteed to operate for 10 years with no maintenance. In contrast, a lead-acid battery with 100AH capacity at 12 volts (just a bit more than 1kWhr capacity) costs PHP7,500 or about $170. You are lucky though if it could last five years with daily charge/discharge cycles. So if you consider that lead-acid batteries may be replaced at least twice in a 10-year period, then the Powerwall is nearly the same price. And because there is no maintenance required, the Powerwall is really an attractive option if you want to take advantage of renewable energy sources such as the sun and wind.
A year and a half ago, I started a series of articles detailing my experiments with solar energy production and storage towards my goal of a 24×7 operation of our office at Auza.Net on solar energy. My existing system of 300W with 2kWhr storage capacity has helped saved some energy cost and it has powered our minimum load at the office during daytime power interruptions.
With Tesla Energy’s Powerwall storage solution, the future of renewable energy use is really bright. On top of the Tesla motors has made all its patents open source so if other energy solution ventures take advantage of it, the cost of converting to renewable energy would go down even more in the foreseeable future.
Powerwall specs (screen grab from www.teslamotors.com)