All of humanity just won a really important victory in our battle to lower the CO2 emissions
that are causing climate change.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduced the world to the “Powerwall,” a wall-mounted battery
for your house which aims to accelerate our transition to clean solar and wind-power.
Before the powerwall, there was no way to store the energy generated from the panels
that capture sunlight on our roofs.
So during the day they could give you the power you needed, but at night, you had to
rely on the grid, which gets most of its electricity from coal, natural gas, and nuclear reactors.
There had been some early home batteries out there, but nothing that was nearly this affordable.
But Tesla, which has built thousands of large, lithium-ion battery packs for its growing
electric car business, was able to produce a similar battery for buildings at a scale
that dropped the production costs dramatically.
The lowest capacity model will cost just $3,000.
And this is the first generation of the product--before Tesla’s even completed building its massive
new Gigafactory, or any real competitors have entered the market, events that will surely
push the price down even further, while increasing the energy storage capacity of the Powerwall.
Here’s how it works.
When the sun is out, solar panels will power your house and charge the Powerwall at the
same time.
And when the sun goes down, this charged battery will kick in to meet most - or all - of your
electricity needs until the sun comes back up again the next morning.
This is game-changing.
More and more people will go completely off-grid.
Every building -- whether it’s a home, office, business, warehouse, factory -- they can all
install solar panels and some Powerwalls and instantly see their fossil fuel-generated
electricity needs drop significantly.
Not every building will be able to go completely solar-powered, but most will get pretty close,
especially as our appliances become more and more energy efficient.
And it gets even better.
The powerwall will be connected to the Internet and the rest of the energy grid.
Here in Southern California, and most other heavily populated places, the electricity
company charges us a lot more when we use electricity during peak time--that’s in
the afternoon and early evening when the temperatures are warmest and most of us are home and still
awake.
The Tesla battery is smart, and knows when electricity is cheapest, so that’s when
it will draw from the grid to charge itself.
And then, during peak time when you need electricity, the battery will power the house.
Sometimes, you’ll be able to sell back unused power to the utility company during peak time
to even make a profit.
It’s basically going to make each individual building its own power station.
Overnight, Tesla seems less a futuristic car company, and more like the man who inspired
the company’s name, a revolutionary electricity engineer named Nikola.
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For TDC, I’m Bryce Plank.
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