As I wrote earlier this year, I had a solar system installed last year, and I have been loving it. The savings in electricity costs coupled with the peace of mind from being a more green home owner have been great. The big downside? Still being tied to the grid and having to use less green power when the sun isn’t out.
It’s not been a very well-kept secret that Elon Musk and Tesla have been working on home batteries, but last night Tesla officially announced the Powerwall. The Powerwall brings either a 10 kWh or 7 kWh battery to the home market. For high use homes, multiple batteries can even be chained together.
The battery has a great, sleek design and comes in multiple colors. You want this thing to look good in your garage or stuck to the side of your house, right? A battery never looked so good.
For our purposes, a single 7 kWh battery would be plenty to see us through the dark times on a daily basis and at only $3,000 (plus installation costs), it’s pretty much a no-brainer to have one installed. Tesla is taking pre-orders now. If you have a solar system or have been waiting to get one until you could also easily have a battery solution, now’s the time! Delivery will begin this summer.
Would this further reduce your grid electric use? I assume that (for the most part) solar setups involve having juice when the sun is up and then using grid electric when the sun is down. This would store the unused juice from the daytime and make it available at nighttime?
I know RV setups have, usually, a whole bank of 12v car batteries to provide juice when the motor and/or generator isn’t running. Wondering if this is basically the same concept, but with a 110v battery (Tesla) instead.
Absolutely. For at least 9 months out of the year we produce enough excess power with our solar that the batteries would last through the night. We’d essentially be completely off grid for most of the year. Today, when we produce excess, it flows back to the grid and we get a rebate for it, but I’d much rather use it myself and not have to use the power from the grid. That being said, our power is the greenest in the entire country so I don’t feel quite as bad using power from the grid here versus if I still lived in California.
Since I’ve looked at this stuff a bit before, I know that *good* solar/battery setups have a “shut off valve” for the battery when the battery is full so as not to damage the battery with excess juice. I’m sure the Tesla setup has that, too. Question is, if the Tesla says “oops, I’m full, no more for me!” does that additional excess still flow back to the grid to keep you getting rebates, though obviously smaller than before?
They haven’t given that level of specifics yet, but, like you, I assume it would be smart enough for that. In which case, I would think it would then flow back to the grid.