Similarly, we've had electric cars for a while, and we've had high end sports cars and sedans for quite a while, but Tesla came along and blew most of them out of the water. Except for range, which will be solved sooner or later, it's a stunning tour de force, especially coming from an American manufacturer.
I have faith that Elon Musk will also think of a way to disrupt the home energy storage market, which in my opinion scarcely exists anyway. People have clunky, loud generators for emergencies, and it's possible to get rechargeable batteries to store your solar power, but there's not really an elegant solution yet to the after-dark problem. A quiet, high capacity "home battery" such as Tesla is planning might just be the ticket.
You can get 10kW of power from a Gas generator for $3000 (hooked up to a Propane fuel tank... or to a gas line if you trust those). A 500 gallon propane tank will keep you running virtually indefinitely, and will only cost a few thousand after installation costs.
So you're realistically looking at $5k to $6k for a gas generator solution for a lot of people.
In contrast, Power Wall is $3500 for a paltry 2kW of power... not enough to even run my air conditioning unit let alone the rest of my house. This cost does not include the inverter, the additional batteries that need to be built out, or the electrician who needs to come out and set this all up. After that extra money spent... it is unlikely to run for much longer than 24-hours.
It is clear what the sane, reliable solution is. A gas generator. The Power Wall doesn't come anywhere close to the specs.
kWh is energy storage. I'm talking about kW: kilowatts. Tesla's batteries can only output 2kW.
This means that the PowerWall can't even supply a typical 3-ton air conditioner (which uses up 3500Watts of power).
Lets just look at your typical appliances: your air conditioning is on (3.5kW starting, 2kW running), your refrigerator turns on (1200W starting, 200W running), and then the Sump Pump started to go (2kW starting, 1500W continuous).
Just preventing your food from spoiling and your basement from flooding is going to require TWO powerwalls before the inefficiencies of an inverter.
I'm not even talking about capacity (kWh). I'm simply talking about the amount of power the Tesla batteries are rated for. 2kW (3.3kW peak)
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> Anyway, the prices will undoubtedly come down over time. Competition from China, etc.
On the contrary. It looks like Tesla is trying to loss-lead on batteries to help scale up their Gigafactory. Tesla is assuming the cost will come down already, and is burning cash until it happens.
I have faith that Elon Musk will also think of a way to disrupt the home energy storage market, which in my opinion scarcely exists anyway. People have clunky, loud generators for emergencies, and it's possible to get rechargeable batteries to store your solar power, but there's not really an elegant solution yet to the after-dark problem. A quiet, high capacity "home battery" such as Tesla is planning might just be the ticket.