bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Tesla is going to launch a at home battery pack, for storing electricity from solar.

Wherever you go the electricity market is quite convoluted. It’s not easy generating electricity, feeding it in to a leaky grid, then collecting payments for that grid from everyone. It’s almost like a tax system.

For example, how is the price decided? Often it’s the cost of the most expensive contributor to the network. Such that if there is a expensive coal generator, the price is set to that.

For those that are generating solar power, and are feeding in to the grid, the challenge is how do you fairly compensate for that? Of course you would want the most expensive option but the power company doesn’t want that as they lose money on it.

And those that generate electricity at the moment use the grid more as they treat the grid as a battery, feeding in to it on low consumption then drawing at high consumption.

The battery pack helps alleviate a lot of this, you don’t need to feed in to the grid, you can store it for later. And then when you need electricity you can top it up – ideally if at all.

SolarCity has already begun installing Tesla batteries, mostly on commercial buildings like Walmart stores, which have to pay higher rates when they use lots of power during peak hours. Tesla’s batteries let them store up solar power when they don’t need it, then use it when rates are high, shaving 20-30 percent off their energy bills, according to Ravi Manghani, an analyst at GTM Research.

“When batteries are optimized across the grid, they can direct clean solar electricity where (and when) it is needed most,

Source: TheVerge

I suspect, this little innovation will be the catalyst for a lot of disruption in the industry.

And who knows what will happen if electricity becomes as cheap as internet. When kilowatts are consumed like megabits.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 at 8:30 am.