Maybe I will be glad that we have not yet installed a generator...

kmk said:

It's not a car.

RobB, I am not concerned about external beauty, but a battery that has been "elegantly" designed to power my house and hold that power for, say , a year would be a really nice alternative to the noisy, smelly, generator on my driveway that needs fuel from Exxon.

pmartinezv said:

I am definitely curious. Wonder if it will be something like the cube which I sadly have not seen it take off as I had hoped. But I a big follower of Musk and I am sure what he is coming up with will be impressive although likely out of my reach, at least initially. Still waiting for the 30K electric vehicle!!!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-21/tesla-motors-to-unveil-home-and-utility-batteries-april-30

A battery for your home. 

Hey, it's going to live in the garage, so who cares what it looks like? I'm just happy they are getting ready to unveil this kind of product and will definitely be keeping an eye out for the price tag. I imagine it will be very steep, but I hope it will drop quickly as more people adopt it.

I expect this to be a winner, whether or not I can afford it. I love the Tesla Model S car, and I'm glad wealthier people are shaking out the technology, thereby bringing it to the rest of us.

This will certainly make solar even more attractive. 

kathy said:

We have something like this. About the size of a small refrigerator and can keep major systems going for a day or more. What we haven't done is connect it to solar panels, which is configured to do.

 It needs to work for considerably more than a day to be worth bothering with.  I can get through a day or two, even in the middle of winter.  But the 8 days after Sandy was another matter and it wasn't nearly as cold then as it would have been in January or February.

Yes, post-Sandy was a nightmare. I think we were out for 9 days. And I could have sworn it was the middle of February, given all the clothes I was wearing to bed and the extra blankets. For some reason, I was freezing, even though it was technically still Fall.

Please, anyone who sees more news about these developing technologies, update this thread! I am eager to know more as it starts to get out into people's homes.

Tom_Reingold said:

I'm glad wealthier people are shaking out the technology, thereby bringing it to the rest of us.

 I'm grateful for this, too. We probably can't afford to be early adopters, but I find it very exciting.

I am watching this too...some sort of backup solution has been on our long term project list, ever since our 13-day Sandy outage.  We were a single house outage, and the neighbor whose tree fell let us run an extension cord for the duration, but that simply let us alternate between running one space heater, using a CPAP at night, and charging up our various devices.  

I'd like to have a solution that works if the whole neighborhood is out for a few days, that perhaps supports a bit more (the starter for the boiler, and our fridge?), and ideally one that doesn't require gasoline storage or foraging trips.

Peggy - yes, it was cold - but it was still Fall with temps generally in the 40s and 50s.  In January or February with temps in the 20s and 30s (or lower) it could be MUCH worse.

Sandy showed us how important heat is. It was cold, but I thought we would be all right. But we weren't. My wife was worse than I was. She couldn't stand it after a few days. We were lucky that we had a couple of different places to stay at the time. And clearly, it would have been much worse in the winter.

The questions are, how likely is a similar thing to recur, and how much is it reasonable to spend on that eventuality? Tough to answer!

More details. 

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2913380/sustainable-it/tesla-to-announce-home-and-utility-scale-batteries-that-offer-energy-independence.html

Definitely seem more appropriate for those with Solar and Wind energy sources. This seems to also further leverage his role in SolarCity and a further push by Tesla for Solar energy. And not cheap at $13K but the price should drop with time. Not a replacement for a generator yet. Wonder if those who are considering going Solar and are considering SolarCity will see incentives to add the battery as part of their installation.

After Sandy, there was an extensive thread about a DIY battery backup project that someone did, where the battery was recharged continuously when power was on (possibly also with a solar option?)  Maybe someone can find that and link it here, since it seems relevant.  Also, it would be interesting to know how that turned out in practice.

Tom_Reingold said:

Sandy showed us how important heat is. It was cold, but I thought we would be all right. But we weren't. My wife was worse than I was. She couldn't stand it after a few days. We were lucky that we had a couple of different places to stay at the time. And clearly, it would have been much worse in the winter.

The questions are, how likely is a similar thing to recur, and how much is it reasonable to spend on that eventuality? Tough to answer!

 I have to agree with all of this. And at the time I was home all the time, so the cold really got to me, too. I wore layers 24/7. I'd start with leggings, then add sweatpants, with a thermal long-sleeved tee on top, a sweatshirt, and a down vest. I wore sheepskin slippers over two layers of socks, and a wool hat pulled down over my ears. And fingerless mitts on my hands. Horrible.

And yes, it would have been much, much worse in the middle of winter. {{shudder}}

We will be looking into a generator for our next house. Thank heaven we didn't need one in this house.

This battery is not just a back up power source, but actually a way to be more efficient about energy use. Very interesting!!

"Kimbal Musk, a Tesla (TSLA) board member, said the new battery would slash consumers' electric bills by 25% just by being smarter about energy use.

"It's quite a profound thing," Kimbal Musk told CNNMoney's Cristina Alesci on the sidelines of the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles.

Instead of paying premium rates for electricity at 3 p.m., the battery will charge itself at 3 a.m., he said. That's a big deal because peak rates in the afternoon in California are around 35 cents a kilowatt hour, compared with just 8 cents in the hours before dawn."

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/29/investing/tesla-musk-battery/index.html?sr=fbmoney042915tesla0430story

Such a simple concept!

We don't have an equivalent difference in time of day charges here, on residential accounts, do we?  (Pardon my ignorance)

Answered my own question...you can change to one, but it costs an extra $11.50 or so a month in fees.  The three fold difference in summer on vs. off peak rates is perhaps enough to make it interesting, but I'm not running the numbers until I hear what the Tesla product costs.  Right now it seems to be marketed mainly to those with electric cars.

https://www.pseg.com/info/environment/ev/rlm-rs_rates.jsp

susan1014 said:

We don't have an equivalent difference in time of day charges here, on residential accounts, do we?  (Pardon my ignorance)

Answered my own question...you can change to one, but it costs an extra $11.50 or so a month in fees.  The three fold difference in summer on vs. off peak rates is perhaps enough to make it interesting, but I'm not running the numbers until I hear what the Tesla product costs.  Right now it seems to be marketed mainly to those with electric cars.

https://www.pseg.com/info/environment/ev/rlm-rs_rates.jsp

 From what I read is about 12K before rebates. In CA rebates from utility companies are about 50% so it is still 6K. Cheaper than a generator, but also with limited use unless you are a solar power customer in which case it seems a really nice option if you can afford it of course!

Why do you have to be a solar power customer if it charges off the house power (at non-peak rates in that example)??

Also, is this something that can "live" in a basement or other interior location?  (unlike generators that have to be outside with sufficient ventilation, etc.)