In fact, I'd say it's only immediately beneficial to a minority.
I'm not trying to discount anything they've done, because it's forward-thinking and technologically impressive, but it's not like Elon Musk has saved the world just yet.
"I choose to rent, I choose to have no property rights over the building I live in, I choose to be legally incapable of installing solar panels and batteries on a structure I don't own: Elon Musk has failed me"
Come on now. You made your choice to not be a part of the greater community and culture of property owners.
These options, they're available to owners, not renters.
Did you realize Google Fiber was the same way? As a renter, you have 0 ability to install Google Fiber without your owners permission. (https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/2847916?hl=en)
This is the same.
If you care, you'll petition your landlord to invest in these technologies. Or you'll buy property and change your status to enable yourself materially and legally to be able to do it yourself.
But you can't blame Elon because of your choice to make yourself willingly devoid of the legal authority to make these decisions for yourself.
Elon can never overcome your landlords property rights. Not now, not in 100 years. That's not his failure, it's your choice in a free society. Next time, rent in a location that has these options already installed, or make it known that these are your priorities. I personally have sat down with my landlord and discussed Fiber and the costs and the benefits, and I'm confident he will make that investment on behalf his property. It's not hard to take the initiative and make a case.
Asking your landlord to switch ISPs is not the same as instantly acquiring 100 grand to buy yourself a Tesla automobile. Nor is it the same as instantly having the financial and personal freedom to say "I'm going to go buy some property!" Have you ever considered that some people can't buy certain things because they don't have the means to do so? (Save me the tirade of libertarian talking points, please...)
I'm not blaming Elon for anything and I don't really have any interest in owning property at the moment. I'm simply pointing out that his company isn't really changing the lives of most people.
Please, sir, it's ME who needs to be given a break.
* I'm not a libertarian as you have insultingly labeled me, I'm a social democrat
* Just because you cannot afford a $3500 battery doesn't mean anything except you cannot afford a $3500 battery
* Had you watched even 10 minutes of Elon's presentation, you'd understand that your utility could install a large scale version of these for your benefit. It doesn't have to be a personal installation, a 'smarter' grid means you can send your solar during the day to a central storage run by a utility or government, and then spend that credit when you draw from grid at night.
* Considering that utilities can do this, that means socially speaking, a government could invest in these. In fact, you'll find California providing deep incentives for exactly this kind of work.
Your "100k on a Tesla" remark, when in reality we're discussing $3500 batteries and similarly priced solar setups, goes a long way towards showing that you have an IRRATIONAL reaction here, not a rational once. You clearly have not investigated even the basics of this, and are using hyperbole to make an emotional statement. $100k would power several homes independently of the grid, or power a multi-family structure like an apartment building.
You could ask your landlord to install a $3500 battery, that's a conversation you could have with your landlord.
It's one you choose not to have, and even though you choose that, you still blame Elon.
This world will change without you. Your attitude is no different that that "one guy" we all know who has a clam-shell dumbphone and is good with it. The world changed around him, although that one guy we know is still bemoaning that Steve Jobs did nothing for him.
For all we know, apartment complexes will install 50kwh setups with solar panels on their facility as a way to attract people: "NO POWER BILLS! POWER INCLUDED IN RENT! NO BROWNOUTS! NO BLACKOUTS!" It'd be a powerfully interesting marketing tactic. Just because you don't own a house doesn't mean Elon's ideas can't change the world.
> Come on now. You made your choice to not be a part of the greater community and culture of property owners.
More and more young people are moving to urban areas and making property ownership a low priority.
But given that this is HN, there's a high chance he lives in SF/SV/NYC, where most tech workers could not afford to own property if they wanted to. Property ownership would entail relocating, which isn't always an immediate option for everyone.
With sufficient lobbying juice he could. I mean, the government has intervened in property rights in favor of renters and against property owners when it comes to antennae for certain kinds of data, there's no fundamental reason they couldn't for residential backup power systems. [0]
[0] https://www.fcc.gov/guides/installing-consumer-owned-antenna...
Replacing pouluting cars has had and impact, if infinitesimal at this moment. Point is you don't have to physically own/use any of their products to benefit from the better world their products create.
If that works, if they get update on that, then it will have a much larger impact at once that homeowner uptake will. Being able to take a natural gas plant offline entirely is a phenomenal win.
There's benefits for you as well. They just won't be as directly felt being that they're a few degrees removed. But I'd argue that those wins at the large-scale will have an enormous impact.
Assuming someone rents, and has to pay the monthly energy bill, wouldn't they prefer living in an apartment that had tools like this that lowered the monthly energy bill?
Assuming you rented an apartment, and either paid for the monthly energy bill, or wanted to make your property more appealing, wouldn't you want to install a product that lowered your costs?
Also, the generators are noisier. Perhaps you can turn them off during the night and use only the battery while you are sleeping and the electricity consumption is smaller.
(Just curious :)
"The share of the total environmental impact of E-mobility caused by the battery (measured in Ecoindicator 99 points) is 15%. The impact caused by the extraction of lithium for the components of the Li-ion battery is less than 2.3% (Ecoindicator 99 points). The major contributor to the environmental burden caused by the battery is the supply of copper and aluminum for the production of the anode and the cathode, plus the required cables or the battery management system."
The copper and aluminium foils that make up the electrodes of the battery dominate. Both these metals are highly recyclable. Not much Li-ion recycling goes on currently as there's lots of different battery shapes + sizes, and there haven't been the economies of scale. I would imagine that whatever technology Tesla have standardised on, there will be (possibly closed loop) recycling plants.
But if the ease of installing these batteries makes home solar panels more attractive, that may offset their impact outside of EV use.
Unless you have extreme peak v. non-peak fees, I doubt this will save you money. Even at 20 cent difference, 7kW hours is a 1.40 a day. But that assumes that you could use all 7kW hours at peak times (you probably aren't). Also, you'll lose 10% going form AC-DC, you'll lose 8% on the battery, and you lose 10% going from DC-AC. That is about 25% loss.
2) If lots of people get them, the peak v. non-peak difference will collapse.
Superchargers are around 363V/225A (90 kWh) but supposedly capable of 120 kWh.
http://www.autoblog.com/2013/02/01/hands-on-with-the-tesla-s...
So you're looking at 3 hours at home vs 45 minutes at a supercharger for a full charge. With the 10 kWh wall charger you might be able to cut 45 min off a home charge.
Pretty sure my rate is the same all the time. I wonder what percentage of electricity customers have variable rate pricing.
In a situation where many people were doing load shifting, I think this could even benefit those who aren't doing load shifting themselves (by reducing peak demand across the network).
In the UK, the peak demand is already in the evening[1], because solar has eaten the cheap lunch during the day (which it was supposed to do, but it means that each additional solar panel is going to have a harder job paying for itself). And the demand difference between low and high is about 30GW to 40GW.
I believe peak demand in most non-industrial areas is already evening, because residential areas tend to have less efficient energy use than commercial spaces due to density, and everyone is home at the same time, often doing energy intensive tasks such as cooking, using the A/C, opening the fridge. I heard from someone at a power company that advertisements during the Super Bowl are a major issue, because everyone opens their fridge and flushes the toilet at the same time, and power supply has to spike for 3 minutes and then return to normal.
"Time of use" charges more for kWh use during peak hours and less during off-peak. Depending on your usage patterns it can be cheaper to do time of use pricing.
I would not expect the utility companies to be allies in this transition period to clean energy. It requires major capital outlays from them, it invalidates previous investments that have not fully depreciated, and in the end they will probably make less money.
This is not to throw a wet blanket on solar and storage, I just think we need to be cognizant of the idea that in all likelihood utility companies are both required to change for this whole thing to work and will be very resistant to that change. There might need to be changes to incentives or regulation to get the utility companies moving in the right direction faster.
Electric utilities require capital investment proportional to peak usage, but only earn returns on average usage. This will only increase the ROIC of an electric utility by reducing the peak:average ratio.
Additionally, electric utilities are in a constant cycle of capacity upgrades to keep up with increasing demand. Customers adding distributed storage allows utilities to delay capital investment (which makes the company look better in the near-term).
Don't know if that's their actual cost-structure, but it's plausible in the abstract.
Not if the price they sell at is different at different hours.
I think that the technology to do (2) at grid scale is far from ready. The grid was built to distribute power from generating stations out to users. It was not designed to have power flowing into it from thousands of dispersed battery packs at the tips of the network (i.e. residential service points). Significant reengineering and investement will be needed to make this really workable.
Whilst storing it for your own use later makes sense in theory, it doesn't work with the current economics
1) Immediate benefits to just about anyone. If you have your own solar panels, you need this (or something like it). Even if you don't, you can benefit by drawing more power during cheaper off-peak times.
2) If lots of people get in on this, we'll have the storage capacity we need on the grid to be more dependent on renewable energy. Lack of storage capacity is one of the biggest obstacles to increasing renewable generation.
3) If lots of people buy this, the price per unit goes down, and it's the most expensive component of Tesla's main product, their cars - which are effectively batteries on wheels.