ETN_IESAMagazine_Volume2Issue2_2015 (1)
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INTERNATIONAL<br />
NEWS<br />
Seeking to expand its business beyond electric<br />
vehicles, Tesla Motors will sell stationary<br />
batteries for residential, commercial, and<br />
utility use under a new brand, Tesla Energy.<br />
Tesla is launching the home battery business<br />
partly because it’s already making vehicle<br />
<br />
the economies of scale that come from making<br />
both. Another reason is that the market for<br />
storage is expected to grow in concert with the<br />
use of solar power. Tesla needs both electric<br />
vehicles and solar power to boom if it hopes<br />
<br />
billion battery “gigafactory” it’s building in<br />
Nevada.<br />
08<br />
Why Tesla wants to sell a battery<br />
for your home<br />
“The obvious problem with solar power is that<br />
the sun does not shine at night,” Tesla CEO<br />
Elon Musk said at the unveiling of the new<br />
batteries at the company’s design studio in<br />
Hawthorne, California, yesterday. “We need to<br />
store the energy that is generated during the<br />
day so you can use it at night.”<br />
A number of solar companies now offer<br />
batteries to accompany their solar panels<br />
(see “Solar Power, and Somewhere to Store<br />
It”). Although just a tenth of a percent of<br />
U.S. homes now get power from rooftop solar<br />
panels combined with energy storage, such<br />
systems could account for 3 percent of homes<br />
by 2018, according to Greentech Media<br />
Research.<br />
Tesla’s residential battery, called Powerwall,<br />
will be available in several months and will<br />
come in two sizes, a seven-kilowatt-hour<br />
battery system that costs $3,000 and a<br />
slightly larger 10-kilowatt-hour system for<br />
$3,500. The larger battery would keep an<br />
average-sized home running for a day. It is<br />
unclear what the cost of installation would be.<br />
Tesla expects that many sales will come from<br />
commercial customers who pay a variable rate<br />
of electricity over the course of a day based<br />
on demand. Such customers already see<br />
<br />
drawing on stored electricity during periods of<br />
peak energy demand.<br />
In the near term, the market for home energy<br />
T E SLA LAUNCHE S A STATIONA RY B ATTE RY<br />
A IME D AT COMPA NIE S WITH VA RIA BLE<br />
E L E CTRICITY R AT E S AND HOME S WITH<br />
SOLA R PA N E LS.<br />
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