Quote:
Originally Posted by Renato1
US$3000 buys one a Powerwall which is good for 10 years. Plus one has to buy an inverter to give the correct voltage.
By their own website, the Powerwall will be able to power a fridge for a day and let one do one load of washing in the washing machine.
If one wishes to live at the standard of living like back in Edison's days, get a Powerwall.
If one wants to live like today and have effective baseload power, one is going to need five or six of these units. At US$18000 for ten years, I suppose that's not so bad. though that is only the cost of the batteries, one needs the inverter and the solar panels as well, and I don't know how much they cost and how long they last.
But the main use would be for people to power it up with either solar electricity or off-peak grid electricity, and make genuine savings by using it at peak times.
Regards,
Renato
P.S. Though things can still become problematic when the sun doesn't shine.
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I see it completely differently Renato - these devices are not an alternative to the grid, but they do overcome the two major limitations of solar energy: 1. solar can now provide power at night. 2. the grid stability is no longer compromised by fluctuating generation. In fact, if enough storage could be made available, the utility companies could generate power much more efficiently since load peaks would also be smoothed out.
These things do not allow you to run your fridge for a day - your solar panels do that for half the day and the storage system only needs to do it for the other half. I could get about twice as much useful power out of my solar panels if I could store some (now I sell excess to the grid at nearly nothing - with storage I could actually use that power at night, rather than buy it back off the grid at 9x the feed in rate). That gives me an extra few bucks a day in the pocket (which would be a really good low risk return on investment), there could be a significant reduction in carbon pollution
and the utility company gets a better behaved grid and reduced costs of meeting peak loads - to me that's a win-win all round. Oh and I will also probably have some power for lights etc if the grid goes down.
Why would you think that getting a powerwall takes me back to the days of Edison? - I get to use all of my solar power for my own benefit and the grid is still there for the rest, only it could be a lot more efficient if these things were in wide use.