Tesla Powerwall

[LTLFTcomposite]

^ If I were one of the model x customers with a deposit in place this power wall thing might annoy me - I've been sitting here patiently waiting for my car through one delay after another and you've got people off playing around with this?

 

[RegGuheert]

Hardly! Tesla has a long way to go in providing a complete system/solution where such a statement has any validity.

I'm as skeptical of the product as you are (see my earlier posts in this thread). Still, the vision as Elon Musk has laid it out really does see the electricity grid that Nikola Tesla largely invented becoming superfluous.

 

[Zythryn]

^ If I were one of the model x customers with a deposit in place this power wall thing might annoy me - I've been sitting here patiently waiting for my car through one delay after another and you've got people off playing around with this?

I am, and I'm thrilled!
However, I am not under the assumption you are that one took time away from the other.

Most companies are capable of working on more than one project at a time.
A company like Nissan probably has hundreds of projects they are working on at once.
While Tesla is smaller and younger, I am sure they can handle a half dozen..

 

[Slow1]

However, I am not under the assumption you are that one took time away from the other.

Most companies are capable of working on more than one project at a time.
A company like Nissan probably has hundreds of projects they are working on at once.
While Tesla is smaller and younger, I am sure they can handle a half dozen..

I agree that the company can do more than one thing at a time successfully. Particularly if there is significant overlap in the underlying tech AND it is well engineered such that engineering team A can give a solution to teams B and C without having to customize it materially for either team.

From a company success point of view having a reasonably diverse product line is highly beneficial, again assuming good overlap between products.

Right now I see Tesla marketing to those with the highest disposable income and if they can develop a suite of products to sell this segment good for them. Particularly if it further builds on their brand identity of being progressive, well engineered, reliable, well supported. This is a good market segment for them and I suspect there is more money to be made there.

 

[lorenfb]

Powerwall Problems?

San Jose Mercury News 5/8/2015
Bloomberg News

"Tesla's New Battery Doesn't Work That Well With Solar Yet

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk introduced a new family of batteries designed to stretch the solar-power revolution into its next phase. There's just one problem: Tesla's new battery doesn't work well with rooftop solar--at least not yet. Even SolarCity, the supplier led by Musk, isn't ready to offer Tesla's battery for daily use.
The new Tesla Powerwall home batteries come in two sizes -- 7 and 10 kilowatt hours (kWh)--but the differences extend beyond capacity to the chemistry of the batteries. The 7kWh version is made for daily use, while its larger counterpart is only intended to be used as occasional backup when the electricity goes out. The bigger Tesla battery isn't designed to go through more than about 50 charging cycles a year, according to SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass. 

Here's where things get interesting. SolarCity, with Musk as its chairman, has decided not to install the 7kWh Powerwall that's optimized for daily use. Bass said that battery "doesn't really make financial sense" because of regulations that allow most U.S. solar customers to sell extra electricity back to the grid. 
For customers of SolarCity, the biggest U.S. rooftop installer, the lack of a 7kWh option means that installing a Tesla battery to extend solar power after sunset won't be possible. Want to use Tesla batteries to move completely off the grid? You'll just to have to wait. "Our residential offering is battery backup," Bass said in an email. 

A Tesla spokeswoman, Khobi Brooklyn, said via email that both sizes of the Powerwall battery would be available in the U.S. by late summer. She didn't say which distributors will offer the smaller battery designed for everyday use. 
SolarCity is only offering the bigger Powerwall to customers buying new rooftop solar systems. Customers can prepay $5,000, everything included, to add a nine-year battery lease to their system or buy the Tesla battery outright for $7,140. The 10 kilowatt-hour backup battery is priced competitively, as far as batteries go, selling at half the price of some competing products. 

But if its sole purpose is to provide backup power to a home, the juice it offers is but a sip. The model puts out just 2 kilowatts of continuous power, which could be pretty much maxed out by a single vacuum cleaner, hair drier, microwave oven or a clothes iron. The battery isn't powerful enough to operate a pair of space heaters; an entire home facing a winter power outage would need much more. In sunnier climes, meanwhile, it provides just enough energy to run one or two small window A/C units. 

For more demanding applications, Tesla made its Powerwall batteries so they can be attractively stacked, side-by-side. But SolarCity doesn't offer a discount for multiple batteries. To provide the same 16 kilowatts of continuous power as this $3,700 Generac generator from Home Depot, a homeowner would need eight stacked Tesla batteries at a cost of $45,000 for a nine-year lease. "It's a luxury good--really cool to have--but I don't see an economic argument," said Brian Warshay, an energy-smart-technologies analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Yes, Tesla's Powerwall is cool technology with massive disruptive potential. As battery costs continue to fall and electricity regulations continue to evolve in the U.S., it's going to make ever more sense to own a home battery.

SolarCity said in its earnings call on Monday that it plans to offer an off-grid package next year in Hawaii, where electricity prices are almost triple the U.S. average. And the home-battery system is just one offering in the new lineup of Tesla batteries. The company is also doing business with big companies like Walmart, Amazon and even with electric utilities like Southern California Electric and Texas-based Oncor. The economic argument for the commercial systems is straightforward in states with the right incentives, including battery subsidies and expensive electricity charges during peak hours. Tesla now has a clear pricing advantage against its battery competitors.

But the Powerwall product that has captured the public's imagination has a long way to go before it makes sense for most people. Even in Germany, where solar power is abundant and electricity prices are high, the economics of an average home with rooftop solar "are not significantly enhanced by including the Tesla battery," according to an analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That won't stop homeowners from buying Tesla's new batteries. Germans are already buying storage systems by the thousands at significantly higher prices. In the U.S., the product's launch prompted a record day of inquiries from prospective new customers, according to SolarCity's Bass. "There's a tremendous amount of interest in backup power that's odorless, not noisy and completely clean," he said. 
Tesla is probably making very little profit on the home batteries at this point and might even be selling them at a loss, according to research by BNEF. Both Tesla and SolarCity are just getting started, trying to get some traction before Tesla's massive $5 billion battery factory in Nevada begins production as early as next year. That's when the battery market gets really interesting."

One would have thought it prudent on the part of Tesla and SolarCity to "get-on-the-same-page" before the Powerwall announcement
and avoid media issues, right?

 

[dgpcolorado]

I am, and I'm thrilled!
However, I am not under the assumption you are that one took time away from the other.

Most companies are capable of working on more than one project at a time.
A company like Nissan probably has hundreds of projects they are working on at once.
While Tesla is smaller and younger, I am sure they can handle a half dozen..

Plus, the idea behind other battery products is to develop economies of scale in battery production. Which should lower the cost of future EVs, a major goal of Tesla Motors.

The idea that the Model X will come to market sooner if all other research into batteries, other cars (Model 3, Roadster upgrades), and other products (energy storage) stops, seems like a stretch to me.

 

[smkettner]

Does anyone know what inverter will be mated with the Powerwall?
I can't seem to find an off-grid backup inverter with 350-450 vdc input.

 

[RegGuheert]

Does anyone know what inverter will be mated with the Powerwall?
I can't seem to find an off-grid backup inverter with 350-450 vdc input.

SolarEdge is developing an inverter for this application. Target release is the end of 2015.

 

[evnow]

Please connect the dots here? Pretty please? :shock:

Not having to worry about temporary absence is not a good reason to not have something permanently.

 

[mjblazin]

Until you start seeing some battery scientists going to Oslo to pick up their gold medals, we will still just be playing around at the edges of the same batteries we have had for 50 years or more. The scientists at this point not only do not have a path, they do not even have a path to the path. Remember that every single thing in telecommunications and computers now uses concepts created in 1940's and 1950's. No Moore's Law for batteries exists. Until we have get that level of conceptual improvement we are simply doing simplest of manufacturing efficiencies, driving more volume through a fixed cost base.

We can create lots of 100-200 miles vehicles for specific uses, but will not come close to the storage potential of a gas tank. Getting Powerall batteries vs. a generator does not make economic sense. It is a toy for people with $15-20k to play with and tell their friends.

 

[AndyH]

Please connect the dots here? Pretty please? :shock:

Not having to worry about temporary absence is not a good reason to not have something permanently.

Do you recognize that one that is off grid enjoys both the 'not having to worry about temporary absence' (at least that which is outside her control) while also having all that they want and/or need 'permanently'? Those are not mutually exclusive!

That seems to be the stuck gear in this mental flexibility exercise. People actually are still free to make their own energy without having to sell their souls** every month to a monopoly that wouldn't have any renewable power on their grid if someone didn't force them to do it. Thankfully, due to the multiplying effect of efficiency, one doesn't have to be a multi-millionaire to exercise that right. Though certainly - those that have it are free to waste if if they so desire.


**the word I typed is all lower case "sierra oscar uniform lima sierra"...the marketing arm of this forum is converting something precious to an advertisement. Not happy about that...

 

[Zythryn]

Until you start seeing some battery scientists going to Oslo to pick up their gold medals, we will still just be playing around at the edges of the same batteries we have had for 50 years or more. The scientists at this point not only do not have a path, they do not even have a path to the path. Remember that every single thing in telecommunications and computers now uses concepts created in 1940's and 1950's. No Moore's Law for batteries exists. Until we have get that level of conceptual improvement we are simply doing simplest of manufacturing efficiencies, driving more volume through a fixed cost base.

We can create lots of 100-200 miles vehicles for specific uses, but will not come close to the storage potential of a gas tank. Getting Powerall batteries vs. a generator does not make economic sense. It is a toy for people with $15-20k to play with and tell their friends.

You don't need the storage energy density of gasoline.
As for technology not being successful unless it grows as fast as computer technology, that is rather a bizarre statement.
Hardly any other technology has grown that fast, and many of them have been extremely successful.
Heck, the ICE technology has grown at a snails pace over the last 100 years.

Batteries at one third today's price will make the ICE as common as the EVs are today. That s about ten years at current battery advancements.

 

[mjblazin]

My example of Moore's Law was not the pace, but the idea that practically unending stream of advances are available. We are near the wall with only a little tinkering left. The batteries rolling out of the the Tesla factory in first runs, after it finally gets built, won't be all that much different than current designs. I watched one of the world's experts on CNBC the other day. He said a ton of people are working the issue, tons of money being expended, and major improvements to date have been bupkis. Every promising path has become a dead end. Whatever the hype, simply laying down a timeline won't get it done.

If these car manufacturers found a way to double the storage in same battery pack, and it was going to be in 2017 cars, you would have seen it by now.

 

[RegGuheert]

We are near the wall with only a little tinkering left.

In many ways, this is a true statement.

But what is REALLY required for a battery to be able to meet all our stationary storage needs? Here's my take:

- They need to be manufactured from sustainable materials.
- They need to be fully recyclable.
- They must have extremely high efficiency. (>96% round-trip efficiency, including electronics)
- They must have extremely low cost. (<$50/kWh)
- They must have a very long life. (>30 years is required, IMO)
- They must be zero maintenance.
- They must be extremely safe. (The chance of a fire must be exceedingly low, even after decades of use.)

Note that energy density and specific energy are not listed here. While those may come into play in some applications like BEVs, they are not nearly as critical in a stationary application.

How close are we to being able to realize such a battery? Actually, there seem to be very good candidates out there today. My favorite is the Ryden dual-carbon battery from Power Japan Plus. Here are some of the stated characteristics of this battery:

Safety - ...there is no threat of overcharge and it can be 100% discharged without causing damage to the battery
Performance - ...could enable a 300-mile range electric vehicle. It also charges 20 times faster than the best lithium ion battery available.
Cost - ...manufacturing of the dual carbon battery is under no threat of supply disruption or price spikes from rare metals, rare earth metals or heavy metals...the thermal stability of the battery eliminates the need for complex battery cooling systems
Reliability - ...ated for more than 3,000 charge cycles
Sustainability - ...contains no rare earth or heavy metals...100% recyclable...testing the dual carbon battery with its organic Carbon Complex material, working towards the goal of producing the Ryden battery with all organic carbon in the future

Where does that leave us? Cost is probably still very high for stationary applications and life likely still needs improvements. But those are issues which industry is fully capable of addressing.

So, will the Ryden dual-carbon battery achieve the results predicted? I don't know, but I am very interested to watch this development.

In addition, we need electronics with extremely high reliability and long life. For commercial three-phase systems, SiC MOSFET technology is enabling extremely reliable three-phase inverter designs with efficiencies of 99%. One-phase inverter technology for home use is still hampered by the need for significant capacitance for energy storage due to the fact that power is not delivered continuously be a one-phase AC power line. This issue is being addressed in microinverters (<300W), but we do not yet have enough data to know if a 30-year life will be achieved. But a 10-kW single-phase inverter, there is still a need to use electrolytic capacitors, which limits life. More work is needed in this area.

So, I agree that this product is a toy for the rich today. But it does appear to me that batteries may power more and more of our future as time goes on.

 

[Slow1]

I watched one of the world's experts on CNBC the other day. He said a ton of people are working the issue, tons of money being expended, and major improvements to date have been bupkis. Every promising path has become a dead end. Whatever the hype, simply laying down a timeline won't get it done.

I wonder if that 'expert' is aware of the promise from nan-tech, in particular some of the promising initial results using carbon nano-tubes. How about the so-called 'flow batteries', certainly the possibility of interesting solutions there (swap out the electrolyte to recharge might bring recharge times in line with ICC?). While it is true that none of this has come to widespread commercial applications, research continues and it is hardly a 'dead end.' I have no idea who that individual was or the context of the statement you quoted, but I find the conclusion hard to accept.

As to 'laying down a timeline' - agreed. This applies equally to any technology. when dealing with new applications and/or new technology my experience is that it is rather foolish to commit to a completion date, but that shouldn't stop one from making progress.

 

[mjblazin]

It was Steve Levine, the author of the Powerhouse. He mentioned some far out technologies being applied and nano tech may be one of them. His verdict was technologies themselves, while promising, still have not proven to work with any real life applications, an important first step before then applying them to a battery. It is not that we won't eventually solve it. It is that the solution is not here meaning it won't be in a 2016 or 2017 vehicle.

I still think EVs have an important role, but it means altering behavior to fit the functional need. Promising as good as ICE in 2016, 2017, ... gets in the way of that critical process. When not realized or worse claimed, but not delivered in real world use, it casts doubt on the whole vehicle type.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

In my case, I am basically renting a near-ideal 4MWh battery for about $11/month. If only a few do that, it doesn't add significantly to the costs that others bear. But as larger percentages of people net-meter, the grid costs get transferred to those without PV. The result is that the electricity providers are starting a backlash against individual PV producers. But that backlash can only go so far, since it makes no sense to produce all of your own power and then pay the same fees as those who do not.

Maybe I'm missing something, butit seems to me that you are talking out of both sides of your mouth here. You are paying $11 for a near-ideal battery. You proceed to say that $11/month isn't enough to actually sustain said battery (implied when you say you are shifting those costs to others). But then you say it makes no sense to pay for that "battery" because you produce your own power?

It's not enough to produce the right amount of energy over the course of a year (the typical period applied to net metering). You need to have that energy available when you are actually looking to use it, hence the "battery" you refer to the grid as. Long-term, we (the net-metered PV population in general) should be willing and able to pay the proper amount for the maintanence of our "battery". Or invest in your own personal battery if you prefer.

 

[edatoakrun]

Of course, the timing of the Powerwall announcement was based on sound business principles, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Tesla's deteriorating cash position...

If Tesla finds itself needing to go back to the debt market in the near future to keep operating, it now has a new-and-improved story to sell.

The Super-Giga-factory!

'Nutty' demand has Tesla rethinking battery market

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tesla Motors Inc. is a car company, but perhaps not for long.

A yearlong backlog of orders for the home and commercial batteries unveiled in April under the Tesla Energy brand has persuaded Tesla to consider a further expansion of the $5 billion "gigafactory" that the company is building in the Nevada desert.

Speaking to investment analysts last week, CEO Elon Musk said stationary batteries like the Powerwall and Powerpack, used to store energy from solar panels, may someday require twice as many battery cells as Tesla's cars do. If the battery business pans out, that would leave Tesla in a rare position among automakers, deriving most of its business from homes, factories and offices, rather than car sales.

"The sheer volume of demand here is just staggering," Musk said. Tesla had planned to devote 30 percent of the Nevada factory's battery production to stationary batteries, he added, but "we could easily have the entire gigafactory just do stationary storage."

Since unveiling its batteries on April 30, Tesla has gotten 38,000 orders for residential Powerwall batteries and 2,500 reservations for commercial Powerpack batteries -- as many as Tesla will be able to produce through mid-2016.

"We need to make cars, too," Musk said, "so we're trying to make the factory bigger."

Musk's comments came after Tesla reported that its net losses tripled to $154 million in the first quarter of 2015. The company's stock price held steady, signaling that the news didn't spook investors, but it prompted warnings from analysts.

Tesla's cash burn for the quarter was "eye watering," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, who is usually bullish on Tesla, wrote in a note last week. He said it raised the stakes for a well-executed launch of the Model X crossover later this year...

Despite the demand for power-storage batteries, Musk said Tesla will not divert lithium ion batteries away from its cars.

"I guess we'd pick cars," Musk said, answering a question during the earnings call. "We've got this whole other plant in Fremont making cars, so cars will get the priority. That would be a logical priority. But I mean, it really feels like, man, the stationary-storage demand is just nutty. Worldwide, it's just crazy."

http://www.autonews.com/article/20150511/OEM06/305119957/nutty-demand-has-tesla-rethinking-battery-market" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[Zythryn]

...

I still think EVs have an important role, but it means altering behavior to fit the functional need. Promising as good as ICE in 2016, 2017, ... gets in the way of that critical process. When not realized or worse claimed, but not delivered in real world use, it casts doubt on the whole vehicle type.

This is the biggest hurdle for EVs.
For some, they will never be the best choice.
For others, they are currently the best choice.
As each year goes by, it will be the best choice for more and more people.

In the last ~110,000 electric miles I have had to change behaviors:

I have had to put up with the added convenience of not needing to fuel up away from my house except when on out of state vacations.

I have had to deal with the added comfort of preheating my car.

I have had to get used to a quieter, smoother drive.

I have had to figure out what to do with my fuel savings.

I have also had to get used to having more control over where my fuel comes from.

I have had to deal with sleeping better at night as I know my car isn't going to poison me should I ever leave it on, or have it running in our closed attached garage.

One of the best changes, second only to my marriage, that I have ever gone through.

 

[Slow1]

It was Steve Levine, the author of the Powerhouse. He mentioned some far out technologies being applied and nano tech may be one of them. His verdict was technologies themselves, while promising, still have not proven to work with any real life applications, an important first step before then applying them to a battery. It is not that we won't eventually solve it. It is that the solution is not here meaning it won't be in a 2016 or 2017 vehicle.

Ok, that sounds more plausible to me. This doesn't sound like "Every promising path has become a dead end." to me - rather perhaps "nothing has yet hit the market and very unlikely to see any of these in the next 12-24 months" would fit better.

The rate at which new battery tech can be integrated will also be interesting to watch. Here we have Tesla building a $5B 'giga factory' to build one particular chemistry - I wonder how quickly they could (or would be willing to) adapt that facility to a new tech if it became available...

I still think EVs have an important role, but it means altering behavior to fit the functional need. Promising as good as ICE in 2016, 2017, ... gets in the way of that critical process. When not realized or worse claimed, but not delivered in real world use, it casts doubt on the whole vehicle type.

One of the other challenges here is defining what features/functionality matters in the "as good as" statement. Any given user has specific requirements (even if they can't articulate them). For one set of users BEV's may in fact achieve the "as good as" or even "better than" ICE in the next year. There will always be differences, question is whether those are benefits or liabilities. I happen to value the ability to charge at night and start of with a full charge much greater than being able to drive to a gas station and re-fuel in <10 minutes. For my specific situation, if I had 150 miles of range I think I'd stop even looking at the charge level and thus it would be 'as good as' the ICE it replaced and in fact I'd consider it better than. Granted, I don't take this vehicle more than 125 miles in a day so a 150 mile (real) range would be more than enough.

There currently does not exist a production EV that I'm aware of that could even seat enough folks (8) as I we frequently need, thus our ICE minivan is required. So, BEV's are not 'good enough' to replace that need.

My point here is that I don't believe we have to have BEV's be "good enough" for everyone in every situation to be "good enough" to replace a very significant number of ICE vehicles on the road today.

I don't believe we need a major battery breakthrough to get 'good enough' for a large number of drivers. While I cannot cite statistics to support it, I would not be at all surprised if a 5 passenger, 200 mile range EV could in fact provide a "good enough" replacement for over 50% of the passenger vehicles on the road today. Getting consumers/drivers to realize this is another challenge in itself....