Wouldn’t it be weird if one day in the future you were buying a home and the listing said,
“batteries not included?”
Yeah well, that could totally happen.
Hey there people, Julian here for DNews.
Electricity is pretty great.
It powers my toaster, my fridge, my hairdryer, my clothes dryer, my air conditioner, my humidifier,
my dehumidifier, and my pc I use to watch science youtube videos.
I think I’m gonna keep using it.
The problem is, everyone in all the other houses feels the same way, usually at about
the same times of day, and they’re driving the cost of those tasty kilowatts up in the
evening.
Of course during the day if you don’t want to use power from the grid, you could get
some solar panels and harvest sunlight, but that’s not helpful when the sun’s down,
also known as nighttime, also known as the time I need to have electricity to turn lights
on to not bang my shins on all the furniture.
Enter the battery powered home.
The idea is a rechargeable battery stores energy from solar panels during the day or
from off-peak hours when grid energy is cheapest, and uses that energy during the rest of the
day.
The problem is if you’ve ever bought batteries you know they cost approximately one arm and/or
one leg.
Elon Musk thought that was a silly hangup for what is otherwise a great idea and decided
to do something about it.
Elon Musk, for y’all that don’t know, is basically what would happen if Tony Stark
lost the goatee.
His interests range from online money movement to commercial space flight to, most importantly
for this topic, electric cars.
His company Tesla Motors has been refining electric car batteries for years, engineering
them to be lighter, longer lasting, and more efficient.
Why don’t we take all those batteries, and put them on a wall?
So they did that.
The Tesla Power wall Is basically a bunch of lithium ion cells in a sleek case.
They’re compartmentalized and liquid cooled to solve the knotty problem of overheating
and burning your house down, something that is generally undesirable.
If you wanted it as your main power supply there’s a model that can store and discharge
up to 7 kWh daily and costs $3000.
Best of all it should last 10 years, which is approximately 8 years longer than my laptop
battery made it before it wouldn’t hold a charge anymore.
The trick to this longevity is how much power it outputs.
It’s only pumping out 2 kW continuously and peak output is 3.3 kW.
The problem that then arises is some appliances will use more than that output.
An electric clothes dryer could draw that much power on its own.
So if you want dry clothes, I hope you weren’t planning on using a microwave too.
If you wanted to be not reliant on the grid at all, you’d probably need a few powerwalls
to go with your solar roof panels.
Depending on where you live, your power consumption can vary widely, but the average US home in
2011 used 940 kWh per month.
A solar setup of that size would cost over $11,000, not including installation or taking
tax credits into account.
Then you’d need 5 Powerwalls to store all of that sunshine juice, so that’s another
15 grand.
It’s an expensive prospect right now, but as the cost of batteries and solar panels
continue to drop, individual homes that are independently powered could become a great
way to kick our fossil fuel habit.
Inexpensive home batteries are looking like a promising innovation.
They’re not the only company innovating.
Intel creates the breakthrough technologies that make amazing experiences possible.
Having Intel inside makes for better experiences outside.
Intel drives innovation with products like processors, wearables and IOT devices, and
within data centers.
In the PC and beyond.
Going green sounds like a lot of effort.
Is it really worth it?
Trace explains why yes, totally, it is, right here.
Would you use the powerwall?
Would it be a supplement for your energy use or would you go all out and be energy independent?
Let us know in the comments, subscribe, and I’ll see you next time on DNews.