On Thursday, Tesla rolled out a suite of batteries in an effort to
wean the U.S. – and the world – off fossil fuels. And, of course,
convince Americans to buy lots of its batteries.
“Tonight is about a fundamental transformation about how the world
works,” CEO Elon Musk said during a presentation on at an event at the
Tesla Design Studio in Hawthorne, Calif. announcing Tesla Energy
batteries.
Saying that Tesla is no longer just an automotive company, Musk is
looking to enable homes, businesses, and utilities to both store and
manage solar energy.
“We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun [which] produces ridiculous amounts of power,” Musk said.
To tap that power for the home, Tesla announced Powerwall, a
rechargeable lithium-ion battery designed to store energy at a
residential level “for load shifting, backup power and self-consumption
of solar power generation,” Tesla said in a statement.
The Powerwall consists of Tesla’s lithium-ion battery pack, liquid
thermal control system and software that receives dispatch commands from
a solar inverter. The unit mounts on a wall and harnesses “excess power
to give customers the flexibility to draw energy from their own
reserve,” according to Tesla.
The ultimate goal is to produce the batteries at Tesla’s gigafactory, now under construction in Nevada.
“Initially the ramp will be slow because the [battery] packs will be made in our Fremont [Calif.] factory,” Musk said.
“Next year the ramp will go much, much higher as we transition to the gigafactory in Nevada,” he added.
By scaling up production at its gigafactory, Musk wants to mass produce Powerwall for American homes.
“A normal household can mount this on their garage or on the outside wall of their house,” Musk said.
He continued. “The problem with existing batteries is that they’re
expensive, they’re unreliable, they’re ugly and there’s not one single
place you can go and buy a battery that just works.”
To illustrate that it is possible to completely transform power usage
in the U.S., Musk, during his presentation, showed a map of the
country.
“Very little land is needed to get rid of all the fossil fuel generation in the United States,” Musk said.
On the map was a small blue square – roughly the size of a large state county in the U.S.
“That blue square is all of the land area that’s needed to transition
the U.S. to a zero carbon electricity situation. And most of that area
is rooftops…the roofs of existing homes,” Musk said.
Musk continued. “We need to store the energy that is generated during
the day so we can use it at night…and there’s a lot more energy
generated in the middle of the day than at dawn or dusk. So it’s very
important to smooth out that energy generation and retain enough so you
can use it at night,” he said.
Tesla threw out all sorts of statistics to back up its argument for
storing solar power. “The US electric power sector alone produces over
2,000 million metric tons of CO2 which is like burning 225 billion
gallons of gas. The EPA says it would require 1.6 billion acres of US
forest to negate the environmental damage,” the company said, in its
statement.
The Powerwall is available in 10kWh, optimized for backup
applications or 7kWh optimized for daily use applications. Both can be
connected with solar or grid and both can provide backup power.
The 10kWh Powerwall is optimized to provide backup when the grid goes
down. When paired with solar power, the 7kWh Powerwall can be used in
daily cycling to extend the environmental and cost benefits of solar
into the night when sunlight is unavailable, Tesla said.
Tesla’s selling price to installers is $3,500 for 10kWh and $3,000
for 7kWh. (Price excludes inverter and installation.) Deliveries begin
in late summer.
The company also announced the Powerpack – a larger battery pack --
that “scales to much larger levels,” according to Musk. That includes
“gigawatt class installations…to power small cities,” according to Musk.
Tesla said it is already working with utilities and other renewable power partners around the world.
Source : http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/05/01/tesla-touts-new-battery-technology-wants-to-change-us-power-usage/