Tesla Energy shows battery for home use and for business
Tesla, the car manufacturer of Elon Musk, has presented a series of batteries under the name Tesla Energy. The battery for home use is called Powerwall and the battery for business is called Powerpack. The batteries for home use have a capacity of 10 kWh and 7 kWh.
The batteries are primarily aimed at homeowners with solar panels: the battery can store the surplus of energy during the day, so that the energy can be used again later. The battery can also be used to store it during hours when electricity from the normal grid is cheap, to use it when it is expensive. Of course, the battery can also be used during a power failure.
A Powerwall battery is about 86 centimeters wide, 1.30 meters high and eighteen centimeters deep. The device can be mounted both indoors and outdoors and can deliver 2kW continuously with a peak of 3kW. Large consumers can connect multiple Powerwalls in parallel. The battery is constantly connected to Tesla Energy via the internet. The home version can already be ordered via Tesla’s website, but will not be delivered until late summer. The business community will have to wait a little longer: the precise specifications of the Powerpack and prices will be announced later this year.
Tesla has been testing the batteries in recent months with the SolarCity project in about 300 homes in California and 11 Walmart stores. The aim is to also deliver to Germany and Australia by the end of the year. Musk also sees opportunities for developing countries where people have poor access to reliable networks or where there are no electricity networks at all.
Musk’s main goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and make energy 100 percent sustainable. One of the major companies that Tesla works with is Amazon, with which the company is conducting a 4.8MWh pilot with batteries. These types of systems consist of 100kWh battery blocks that can be grouped and scaled to theoretically more than 10MWh.
The smallest version of the Powerwall, with a capacity of 7 kWh, will cost 3000 dollars, converted about 2676 euros. For the 10kWh version, 3500 dollars have to be deposited, which corresponds to 3122 euros. The factory where the batteries will be built is already under construction in Nevada and will be called Gigafactory 1. Tesla will open source the technology behind the batteries.