Tesla expands beyond electric cars into batteries to power homes
Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk unveiled a suite of batteries to store electricity for homes, businesses and utilities, saying a greener power grid furthers the company's mission to provide pollution-free energy.
Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk unveiled a suite of batteries to store electricity for homes, businesses and utilities, saying a greener power grid furthers the company's mission to provide pollution-free energy.
"Our goal here is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy," Musk said. "We're talking at the terawatt scale. The goal is complete transformation of the entire energy infrastructure of the world."
The announcement, after weeks of anticipation, marks Tesla's expansion beyond electric cars. As homes, businesses and utilities use more renewable energy generated by sunshine and wind, the need to provide reliable power grows. Batteries can be used to store electricity during peak production and dispense it later, when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.
Tesla's home battery, named "Powerwall", was a rechargeable seven kilowatt-hour or 10 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery that mounted on the wall, the company said in a statement.
Deliveries would begin in late summer with prices starting from US$3,000, Tesla said.
The battery is designed to enable so-called load-shifting by charging during times when electricity prices are lower due to less demand, and discharging when demand and prices are high.
It can also store solar power generated during the day and release it at night, and serve as backup during power cuts, according to Tesla.
In the utility industry, storage is finally coming of age. In Tesla's home state of California, a groundbreaking energy-storage mandate requires PG&E, Edison International's Southern California Edison and Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas & Electric to collectively buy 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage capacity by the end of 2020. New York is also turning to storage to relieve congestion on transmission lines and plans for the potential retirement of ageing power plants.
The power industry has struggled to come up with a cost-effective storage solution, an issue that has become more pressing as growing amounts of solar and wind are integrated into the grid.
Tesla's utility-scale battery will consist of 100 kilowatt-hour blocks that can be grouped to a scale of 500 kilowatt-hours to more than 10 megawatt-hours.
Tesla is making a bet that its US$5 billion "gigafactory" under construction near Reno, Nevada, will enable the mass production needed to drive down battery costs for both cars and energy-storage products that are already serving as a revenue stream for the company. More such factories will be needed to help make the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, Musk said.