Elon Musk and Tesla Energy
I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk. Anyone who bets against him on his “Tesla Energy” venture (batteries for distributed energy storage) or any of his other businesses is taking a huge risk, given his track record. But for the life of me, I don’t understand why he is the only person on a planet whose ideas on using storage to drive the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy is taken seriously.
Of course, that’s an exaggeration. For decades there have been environmental scientists all over the world, for example, Amory Lovins, who have been at this quite vocally for many years. And of course these people have been supported by scads of relatively minor players like those of us here at 2GreenEnergy. Having said that, I still find it remarkable how some quality of Musk (charisma? financial strength?), as demonstrated in the video linked here in which he presents the concept of Tesla Energy, generates so much public attention, agreement, and credibility.
Note how Musk points out the tiny “little blue square” on the map of the U.S., a minuscule amount of the land mass of the 3.5 million square mile continental United States, and explains that this is the entirety of the area required to power the country with solar PV. He goes on to describe how most of that area, small as it is, can be composed of rooftops, thus making no disruption of the land use at all.
All of this, of course, is perfectly true, though there is identically zero “new news” in this presentation. Musk goes on to talk about the capability for solar energy combined with batteries to help areas of the world which have no traditional grid infrastructure to leapfrog into renewables, and never incur the financial and environmental expense of fossil fuel plants. Again, great stuff, but a concept thousands of people have been asserting for decades; 2GreenEnergy alone contains eight different references to this fact.
The price he quotes? $350/kWh. Certainly nothing to get excited about.
In any case, perhaps we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Musk is taken very seriously with whatever comes out of his mouth. The fact that his ideas uniformly represent positive gains for humankind is a very good thing, even if, for reasons I can’t understand, he’s the only person on Earth with any credibility.
Craig,
As you know, I’m not nearly as much of a fan of Musk – as I’m on the other side of the debate concerning EV’s.
However, the powerwall is interesting FOR AREAS WITH HIGH WIND POWER PENETRATION.
Most families would see a reasonable payback period for the powerwall (as opposed to the absurd idea of saving ~$1000/year to drive a $100,000 car). I looked up the potential advantage for my own power:
http://en.openei.org/wiki/Utility_Rate_Database
(Just type in your zip code)
For me – for instance – in my zip code, there are 5 hours of the day (7:00 am to 12:00 pm) which have pricing of $0.27/kWh, while the other 20 hours have pricing of $0.10/kWh for 8 months of the year, and for 4 months of the year there are 5 hours (2:00 pm to 7:00 pm) that cost $0.29/kWh while the other 18 hours see prices of $0.10/kWh.
For my power bill, I likely use only ~2-3 kWh/day during the peak period (7 am- noon) in March, April, May, and October… while I may use ~4-6 kWh/day during the peak period (7 am-noon) during November, December, January, and February (electric heat pump)… and I almost certainly use >10 kWh/day during the peak period in June, July, August, and September (it’s hot in South Carolina, we use AC).
My household would presumably save ~$381/year for using a 10 kWh battery for rate-shifting. But that still would payback the $3500 price-tag and the (assumed) ~$1000 install costs in 12 years. That’s on the same order as investing in new high-efficiency windows, only the windows also give you a better view.
But for the environment, the windows mean less coal power production during the night, and less natural gas power production during the day. Unless you are in an area that has saturation-level penetration of wind energy (a region that faces wind curtailments), the battery solution will always result in a reduction of natural-gas sourced energy during the day, and a larger INCREASE in coal-sourced energy during the night.
For most American households, while this could be arguably a poor-but-not-terrible financial investment, the battery storage solution represents support for the coal industry and a direct attack on the environment to save a small amount of money. I support it in general or the plains states… and oppose it for most other regions.
I hope there’s not a generic federal subsidy for this in the works.
When you write “a region that faces wind curtailments” I presume you mean “a region that faces *no* wind curtailments.”
Wow, that seems like a HUGE TOU (time of use) penalty for on-peak. Is it that big in most parts of the country?
Craig,
The TOU penalty is similar in most parts of the country. In some parts of the country – including California – it’s considerably greater.
You should use the link provided and report what your peak/off peak pricing is.
As to the other – I meant “a region that faces wind curtailments”. Wherever the penetration of wind power is great enough that the wind farms face consistent curtailments, that’s where a demand response solution – such as a home battery system – would allow for an environmental benefit. In most places, it would simply serve to shift more load to the coal plant, and the only environmental benefit would be from improving the efficiency of the coal and NG power production by reducing the load variation, but that efficiency improvement would not compensate for shifting load from NG to coal (though in some cases it might be close)…
While I like the idea that this stands for I have to reserve my enthusiasm as there are several problems with this battery arrangement.
For starters there is currently no inverter that operates at the voltage this battery works at which is 350 – 400VDC. It will have to be developed. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done but it is not here yet and works at an odd voltage which will have to use “non-standard” parts and undergo the standard testing and certification. I predict availability at no less than 3 years. The current plan is to try to use off the shelf grid tied inverters modified to work independently if needed. These generally want a solar PV string voltage at a max of 600VDC. These inverters operate on a principal of MPPT or maximum power point tracking to make the most power out of what a string of solar panels might provide. This battery will never get to that voltage level so modifications to the inverter will have to be made there also. Typical off grid inverters are designed to work at 12, 24 or 48VDC so nowhere near where this battery is.
There is a 7kWh and 10kWh versions. The 10kWh version has a peak power output of 2kW and is rated for only 50 charge cycles/year. It is meant as emergency backup power. It is actually the exact same hardware as the 7kWh version with different firmware. Not sure how that works and would need more information as to how they pull that off. Look at the name plates of some of your appliances and add up how many you could run at once. Trust me, a microwave will put a serious hurt on this system. The only current solution would be to parallel several of these batteries together as you can’t put them in series without exceeding current inverter voltage specs and since no two batteries are ever exactly the same one will always charge more than the others and one less meaning in short order you will have a mis-charged set of batteries. I would have to see more about how they might pull this off also.
I hope they do work out the details and come up with an affordable system that works well but at this moment I don’t think they are there.
For what it’s worth, my power is right at $0.15/kWh with no variation for time of day or season.
Brian