It is about four feet tall, three feet wide and seven inches deep and could potentially power homes in the future. Silicon Valley’s Whiz Kid Elon Musk recently announced Tesla’s first home battery product, and he thinks it is going to change the way the world consumes and stores energy.
Basically a big lithium-ion battery, the Powerwall is a home power storage solution that charges up using electricity generated from solar panels. It is supposed to fortify your home against power outages by providing backup electricity supply. Now, you don’t need to have solar panels to use the Powerwall, because you can also use the power from the electricity grid to charge it up too. It comes in two versions – a 10kWh version for $3,500 and a 7kWh version for $3,000, and both are guaranteed for 10 years.
Solar energy peaks during the day when you are at work. However, you use electricity at home in the morning hours, when solar energy isn’t at optimum levels, and in the evening and night when the sun has gone down. This means there is a massive under utilisation of solar energy and the Powerwall wants to change that. The sun charges the Powerwall during the day and uses it later at night when demand rises. This is Tesla’s basic premise, which means you can even charge the battery overnight by connecting it to the wall socket and drawing from the grid, for consumption during the day. This could save you money by using off-peak electricity during peak hours.
Break-even However, the economics of this new, potentially breakthrough product isn’t that simple.
According to Wired , if we take the US as an example, the average household consumes about 10,900 kWh. Let’s say you get four of these Powerwalls a grand total of $12,000. The average cost of electricity in the US is $.13 per kWh. Do the math and this means that you will need to use the Powerwall for a consumption of 92,300 kWh before breaking even. And at the average rate of consumption, it would take eight and a half years to break even. And we haven’t even taken into consideration the cost of installation, maintenance, and, if required, price of an inverter and the gradual decrease in its utility.
It doesn’t make sense in the Indian context either, especially for states where power outages are at national lows. That said, the Powerwall will be a life saver in places where electricity is expensive and unreliable. So is this just another toy for rich, green people as Forbes put it? It’s clearly not for those on a budget, but if you have reasonably deep pockets and live in a sunny area then the possibility of freedom from the power grid it offers can be very appealing.
Bottomline Even though this technology is amazing, this is just a first generation product. From a product evolution perspective, this is just the beginning – like the big, bulky and expensive mobile phones when they first came out. What Elon is trying to achieve is the creation of an infrastructure that will reduce our dependence on the grid while moving towards more sustainable energy, and that is a good thing.