http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8525309/tesla-energy-elon-musk-battery-announcement
Tesla has finally taken the wraps off Tesla Energy, its ambitious battery system that can work for homes, businesses, and even utilities. The system breaks down into two separate products: the Powerwall is a home battery system, that comes in a 10 kWh version for $3,500, or a 7 kWh model for $3,000, excluding installation and the inverter. The unit is about three feet by four feet in size and six inches thick, and comes with integrated heat management and can fit either on the inside or outside of the wall of your home. The system is connected to the internet — Elon Musk said that the system can be used to create “smart microgrids” — and can be used as a redundancy system, or potentially allow a home to go off the power grid entirely. “The whole thing is a system that just works,” Musk told reporters during a briefing this evening.
The big brother of the Powerwall is what Musk and his team are calling Powerpack — and it’s where things get really interesting. They describe it as an “infinitely scalable system” that can work for businesses, in industrial applications, and even public utility companies, that comes in 100 kWh battery blocks that can scale from 500 kWH all the way up to 10 MWh and higher. “Our goal here is to change the way the world uses energy at an extreme scale.”
In my opinion, this is a big change for people’s life and also a big challenge for traditional resource industry. Elon Musk definitely is the most innovative entrepreneur in Silicone Valley. From PayPal to Tesla car, his extraordinary foresights make him great success in the new businesses. This time, with the Tesla Powerwall, it’s possible to imagine a future where most roofs everywhere have solar panels, and most buildings have some batteries tucked in some corner, and most of the energy we use comes from clean, renewable sources.
MKT 248 Spring 2015 