Tuesday, February 17, 2015

A revolution in home electricity?

Storing home-generated electricity has been a cobbled-together hack for decades.  It involves stringing together a group of golf cart batteries, usually, along with maintaining the cantankerous things.  We haven't done this yet, because we can't generate electricity, but it looms ahead when we'll be able to.

But now, things might change.  Tesla Motors will sell a big home battery this fall, it seems, based on the technology they developed to hold their cars' charges.

It might work like this:
“We are trying to figure out what would be a cool stationary (battery) pack,” Forbes had quoted Musk as saying at the time. “Some will be like the Model S pack: something flat, 5 inches off the wall, wall mounted, with a beautiful cover, an integrated bi-directional inverter, and plug and play.”
If that works, and if it's affordable, unlike the Tesla, the battery is something for us to look into once we can make progress generating our own electricity.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

If you have not yet read Do the Math you should really check it out - well written, numbers-based speculation/discussion on a variety of things (quite a few energy-related).

Relevant to your post, you might start with http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/ and http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/got-storage-how-hard-can-it-be/

Bryan Alexander said...

That's excellent, Chris. I love how it is grounded in practical, quantifiable data.

I think there's a British version of this with a similar title.

But I can't get away from the gloomy conclusion.

Wanda Bailey said...

Wow! I hope that gets mass-produced real fast. At least now you wouldn't have to deal with additional generators and other purchases. You'll just have to master how to circulate the electricity more efficiently. Thanks for sharing that! All the best!

Wanda Bailey @ Douthit Electrical

Bryan Alexander said...

Me too, Wanda.

Can you say a bit more about circulating electricity more efficiently?