“All the breathless coverage of Elon Musk’s Powerwall battery brouhaha last night is missing the most important thing: a sober discussion of real-world costs,” Christopher Helman writes for Forbes. “So let’s take a look at the costs and see if this world-shaking, game-changing innovation really makes any sense.”
“Musk said Tesla’s 7 kwh capacity battery would cost $3,000, while the 10 kwh capacity one would be $3,500. (That doesn’t include the cost of an AC-DC inverter – about $4,000 — plus professional installation),” Helman writes. “The implication is that a 10 kwh system could supply 1,000 watts of current to your home for 10 hours… So how much is that battery power going to cost? Setting aside for a moment the cost of making that electricity in the first place, let’s look at just the cost of using the battery to store it and get it out again. Researcher Winfried Hoffman, the former CTO of Applied Materials AMAT +1.62%, has done some interesting work on the falling costs of battery power. He figures that for a lithium-ion system with an initial installation cost of $400 per kwh capacity, 80% efficiency and ability to run 5,000 cycles, the average cost of stored electricity will be 15 cents per kwh.”
“To get your real electricity cost, you have to add to that 15 cent battery charge whatever you’re paying for that electricity in the first place… Adding together your 15 cents per kwh for solar power plus the 15 cents to cycle a kwh in and out of the battery, and you’re looking at 30 cents per kwh for electricity. I think 30 cents per kwh is bonkers. At my home in Texas I pay 10 cents per kwh to Reliant Energy for electricity that is mostly generated by natural gas burning power plants,” Helman writes. “Unless your solar-powered home is entirely disconnected from the grid, an expensive battery backup system like Powerwall does not make economic sense.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, who’s buying a Tesla Powerwall unit?
Related article:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk reveals Powerwall home battery – May 1, 2015
The article completely overlooks is the potential to hook up the Powerwall to exercise equipment. This could be of tremendous benefit to families with hyperactive children on sugary diets.
The battery is useless after 10 hours in a power outage. My last two outages lasted 3 days and 9 days. Rather have a generator
We have similar length power outages in western Washington and solar is really not a great option up here. But, if I lived in AZ, TX or CA I would maybe consider it.
A whole house generator is basically what is needed up here, which I have and it runs on propane. When the power goes out for multiple days, I’m good. I should check to make sure my generator is hooked up to charge our Chevy Volt. It may not be as nice as a Tesla (but way less expensive) but damn I love that car. We save about $400 a month in gas and our power company paid for our Bosch charger. Wahoo!
WOW I’m shocked how many people are missing the point. This is filling a real void for people who want to exist the heavily polluting power grid. Solar has issues because of overcast days and nights. Wind has issues because of calm days. The perfect system is solar + wind feeding one power source (something like Musks system). When it overcast there is usually wind. When it hot and sunny usually calm winds. It is rare to go more than 10 hours without either wind or sun. This will be a boon for folks who really want to get off the grid.
Aaaaand, that’s ten hours of acting like a super-indulged westerner… long baths, washing clothes…. acting like nothing has changed.
1000 watts for ten hours!!! If you immediately get more frugal, it’s going to last a lot more than ten hours.
Aaaaaand, see what OpJ says.
I realise this isn’t the main purpose, but what is the cost of a backup generator and generator produced electricity? Perhaps that’s the idea? Not only does it store energy during down times and then provide that during peak periods, but could also be a back-up system during storms etc. Plus, whilst energy in Texas in 10c/kWh, it’s 16c/kWh in Ontario Canada. So, still not economical, but are we not expecting the price of this system to decrease with time, and the price of power to increase with time?
My whole house standby generator 12kw propane by GE cost under $4000 installed.
The Musk will cost more and last only half a day for typical power usage.
I don’t have peak/non-peak energy pricing, so there’s no advantage there as well. Nor do I get any state subsidies to install a solar panel, so, the bottom line is that this option doesn’t work for me, but I’m glad there’s another choice. It’ll probably suit California and Hawaii.
whilst?
A Middle English word disused in modern parlance but is a recent affectation by English people to suggest superiority.
Not economical? Electricity in Ontario is .14c/kWh at the highest price and .07 at the lowest. The PowerWall will be charging at the lowest price and in many cases off Solar. Also rich people now and businesses will be buying this product but just like the Tesla Model S the prices will come down when the Giga factory comes on line in 2018. Yes I will be buying one at that time.
I will get two, one for the day time and one for the night.Anyone know a good supplier of lunar energy panels?
Doesn’t look as a toy.
Yes, for sure, at first only rich people will be able to buy one. But on the long run, it has tremendous potential.
Yeah, how dare those “rich green people” put their money where their mouth is to potentiate the growth of a technology!!
What, do they believe in capitalism?!?!
I truly don’t understand all this “only rich people” talk.
Has anyone else realized that for a LOT of people, you could buy a Powerwall just by swapping your twice-weekly wine indulgence with dinner for a glass of beer or water (for a year or so)? I know a number of middle class couples who easily blow $100 a week on idiotic $16 wine or mixed drinks on a regular basis.
Or just drop cable TV for a couple of years?
Or simply keep your car ONE extra year versus trading in on a new one (and that’s assuming only a $350/year car payment)?
This is not a “rich people’s toy”….but the average American is too intent on wasting their money in other ways, and unwilling to cut back to get something useful…and that could actually save them money in some cases.
These newfangled whatchamacallits – horseless carriages??? – are just silly. Snooty rich people! I’ll stick with my dear old Ed.
I think the cost of a solar cell, battery and invertor will set you back around $10,000. That’s just to collect and store the power locally. If you want to hook into your local grid there could be additional costs,
The $10k installation you’re describing may make a dent in your usage, but it won’t get you off the grid.
I believe you are correct. Great concept – and I’d love to do it – but I’ll stick with early adoption of my Watch, which I was just notified, will be here Monday 👍⌚️😉⌚️😄😎
Screw the solar panel and battery, I gots me a Apple Watch!
Apple must have cut loose the second wave of shipments – to those who overslept by a minute 😄
What time did you order, what time was your confirmation and what ⌚️ Watch?
I ordered my at 12:04 AM EST using the Apple Store app on my iPhone. From there I elected to receive shipment notification. I ordered the ubiquitous black sport with black band.
It’s funny, because I’d checked my account around noon EST and it was still “Processing” and I got a bit impatient-er.
A half-hour later, for whatever silly reason, I checked again and the watch was now “Shipping”! Maybe 20 minutes after that I got a notification on my iPhone that the watch had shipped! I checked the account and saw that it was shipping form a location only 3 hours from me which means I’m getting it Monday afternoon.
I’d expect you’ll see more people getting theirs if they were in the 12:04-12:10 AM EST timeframe (that’s my guess).
And how long before u make/save that 10G?
In five years, 10 hours will be 24 hours and so on due batteries getting better.
True. The products and technology will improve with enough time.
On the other hand, what about reduced battery capacity for the products people buy today? After X charge/discharge cycles, what’s the capacity? Someone who’s getting 10 hours today, might only get 3 hours after 5 years of use. What about end-of-life for the product? Are we creating a large, dispersed waste disposal issue? What about the lithium mining and processing? This is scary stuff. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, just that we don’t know what this all looks like at scale.
And milkshakes are awful to use as antifreeze. If you measure something by what it is not intended to be you can come up with any result you want.
The main use for the powerwall is to time-shift electricity buying–the idea isn’t solar charge during the day to discharge at night, as the article supposed. The idea is to charge at night, at off peak electricity rates, and discharge during the day when electricity is most expensive.
The idea is also that power companies would subsidize, as some are doing, the battery cost, thereby lowering the cost per kwh amortizing over the life of the battery. It would be safe to assume that Tesla is also looking for these to be a sales item in new home construction.
During the day their is heavy commercial use of electricity, as well as people powering their central air. At night the commercial use drops off a ledge as does the home air conditioning use. Power companies need to build generators to cover the peak usage, and those generator then sit idle during off-peak hours.
If a significant number of people switch to charging at night, that lowers the peak usage, and lowers the demand to build additional generators.
Wait old fella, slow down there. Have you tried it? Sure, it will make your car overheat and get your radiator all sludgy, but oh MAN you’ll have the most delicious radiator sludge on the block.
The author of that article hasn’t seen what they pay per kwh in places like Hawaii. Like many things, it has to be initially marketed to those of higher means, until it can become mass marketed. You wouldn’t believe what I paid per minute of cellular usage back in the late 80’s.
Musk is a visionary. He gets the ball rolling. First Paypal, then SpaceX, then Tesla. I wouldn’t bet against his ideas.
Oy, the cell rates back then! I paid .45 cents/minute weekdays and .27 cents/minute nights and weekends. Plus $45/mo for the line. No included minutes – just having the line was $45 and then the per minute charges were tacked on to that. The brick phone cost about $1,000 and there was no subsidy. It was pretty bad.
Wow! Ten cents per kWH! Delivered cost of electricity for me is 0.48 USD / kWH … and the future price will be higher. I’ve already got PV and the inverter, so the hardware I would need is a battery module for the existing inverter and the battery system. I won’t be buying his system this go around, but maybe in a few years. The combination of an upgraded version 2, increased price / feature competition from other vendors, and decreased cost of batteries. Maybe an Apple car would be the “battery pack” on wheels that would power my house in extended emergencies.
It wold be interesting to know the form factor of the Tesla car battery compared to the Powerwall form factor. Maybe Musk is just finding more ways to bump up the production volume in the Gigafactory. He’s kind of smart that way.
It’s not a compelling buy at this point. The pure economic incentive for nearly anyone people to buy one of these doesn’t exist yet. And if you have no power of foresight, you’ll think that’s how it will always be.
You could say, and many people did say, very similar things about the original iPhone. It was widely dismissed as an expensive toy for the rich. We all know how that story actually played out, as the prices and technology kept improving. I see a similar story panning out with local energy storage. The potential for this is huge.
low info anecdotal regionally biased article.
if you have solar panels or a windmill, you already have a DC/AC inverter. This is a niche product that is the missing link and it is not very expensive when financed with new home construction or renovation. If many people are off grid during a heat wave, additional dirty sources of energy would not have to be fired up. Load balancing would reduce power line sag on hot days leading to reduced power line maintenance costs, so if a bunch of rich green people in a neighborhood buy these, it is still of benefit to the whole municipality.
He makes it sound so good, but neglects to mention that if everyone has one of these Powerwalls, off-peak hours will no longer exist because everyone will be buying power at night during “off-peak” hours. That means off-peak demand will become the same as peak demand. That also means the price of electricity will go up during “off-peak” hours (supply and demand) resulting in no savings at all. The only way to make it viable is to install solar panels on your house or in your yard. Before I do that they have to make those panels A LOT less ugly and more integrated into the roof design.
You’re all forgetting it’s main use in a digital environment: a whole-house uninterruptible power supply. I certainly can’t afford Tesla’s battery, but if I had a home-based business with a bunch of workstations, $3,500 might be worth the peace of mind.
I think a point is being missed here.
If you have solar, you already have most of the infrastructure to handle this. So the cost to you is 3 to 3.5K and you get a 10kWh system, to cover night time usage.
In California, a lot of new homes come with solar from the builder. So adding this on won’t effect the purchase price of a new home. I know it’s not like adding a water heater, it’s more in line with AC… But you have to have AC if you live in the South West. Lot’s of extra costs, living under the sun.
Expensive yes, but you need to crawl before you walk. Let’s see what the future brings.
early adopters are the ones responsible for cheaper technology down the road. Yes I can buy electricity cheaper but fossil fuel are not going to stay cheap. Bravo to Tesla and early adopters for pushing the envelope. How much did Edison’s first light bulb cost compared to a candle of the day?
Obviously, the author has not heard “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of what is possible”. Green technology has to start somewhere at some point in time because we cannot keep burning carbon forever. I’d bet this guy won’t be happy until somebody delivers a perpetual motion machine to his doorstep by singing virgins.
Absolutely. And he won’t be totally happy unless the singing virgins are no longer virgins after they leave his doorstep.
You do not get the point.
This is all about WS shysterism. These honorable folks are just finding reason to reward the likes of Bezos, Musk and the Google boys. They manage countless pensions or influence them greatly making them perfect pansies to push the selected few stocks higher.
They use the same pansies to pull down Apple.
Companies that do not even come close to apple’s earnings are rewarded valuations multiple of that of Apple.
The SEC is just plain inutile.
What does the introduction of a reasonably priced whole-house battery have to do with Wall Street and/or the SEC?
I don’t care about the stock market, I care about tech that impacts my life. I had solar in a previous home and wanted a system much like this, but back then it would have meant a wall of car batteries and a cost of about $10,000.
Give Musk some credit. This is a great product for an admittedly limited market.
I think the point is that the Wall Street operatives that try to manipulate Apple stock also go after Tesla stock by writing stories that denigrate Teslas accomplishments. Its widely suspected among Tesla investors (buy and hold) that this is going on. I had the same thought whenI read the article. It based on a straw man argument that downplays the possibilities and importance of this product.
There is no such thing as an AC-DC Inverter. He means a DC to AC Inverter. So one of his “facts” is false. I wonder what else he got wrong?
This will help explain what the author should have said. There are several on the market:
DC-to-AC Inverters for Your Solar Equipment for dummies
I don’t think so. The link discusses the conversion of the DC output of a solar panel to AC, for immediate use or feed into the grid. The problem at hand for the Powerwall is conversion of 350v DC output of the Powerwall to 120v AC for use in the house. Not quite the same problem.
The author does incorrectly say AC-DC Inverter, which demonstrates his grasp of what he is talking about very well. But a quick noodling around the internet makes me think he wasn’t too wrong about the cost of the box. You’d be looking at a 3KW 350vDC to 120vAC inverter. Not cheap (right now), but likely to get less expensive as demand increases.
Ah, you’re right. But the difference will be the input DC voltage and allowed amperage. Thank you!
No problem.
There is a must watch video of Elon Musk introducing Tesla Energy http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall
He seems to say that the DC to AC conversion is built into the box. This is much more than a toy for rich green people. It’s the tip of the future.
I like that attitude! Bleeding edge. Eventually one in every home.
It’s pretty hilarious reading all the post from the naysayers.
Here we are on a site devoted to Apple and it’s products and look at all the folks dishing out fudd like a Microsoft mouthpiece commenting on the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch etc.
Any of you look at the accomplishments of Elon Musk before writing your BS? PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla and now “Powerwall”.
While no one (not even the STEVE) bats a 1000% I wouldn’t bet against Elon. After all we’re looking at the introductory product, and the costs (WAG, Wild Ass Guess here) don’t reflect what happens when Musk gets his Giga-Battery-Factory online.
If you look at the southwest there’s a lot of places that’ll make sense to have these kind of devices in place.
It’s really a question of when the price of solar goes down and their efficiency goes up. Then a storage system begins to make far more sense. Add to that a plug-in electric vehicle (or two) and a rise in electricity prices suddenly on-site energy storage starts making a lot more economic sense.
If you aren’t looking to what the future holds you’ll always be living in the past.
Really?
Tesla in the black due to rebates courtesy of the California tax payer (the biggest among other fools).
Spacex valued at over a billion with only 200 million contributed by the ‘owners’. NASA funding it by prepaid contracts. Shoot, if that is not a sweet deal what is? On top of using technology from NASA paid by again taxpayers.
Amazing how stupid we have all become.
I still see a home battery system hooked up to a home solar system as the night power buffer. Charge it up in the daylight and spend the power in the dark evening.
Talking about power outages can be of side interest. But keep in mind the time limit of your battery backup. If you gotta keep the power going during a serious blackout, you need some sort of generator besides your solar array.
For power backup, if a large capacity battery like PowerWall is available, then you can use a small generator running longer time instead of large generator sized for peak load.
Yeah I’ll be sticking with my existing 16kw system that runs off natural gas.
This battery would be useful for load balancing as well as storing power made by your solar panels while you were away. Then at night you could use your battery to help charge your car when you arrive home at night.
Why charge car overnight from battery? Tesla should offer PowerWall with supercharger option.
That should be obvious. You are away from home in daylight. The battery stores the power not used in your home me while you were away. You can’t charge your car with solar in the dark but you can with the battery. A supercharger connection is just a plug backed by sufficient amperage. But there is no need for speed if you are sleeping anyway.
Yes, but would be nice to have an option to give Tesla a quick 30 min charge after coming home from work, so one can go out for evening or leave for a weekend trip?