Tesla to announce new revolutionary product Apr 30

wincrasher · 04-10-2015, 01:47 AM

I read an article on USAToday the other day saying Tesla was going to announce they were going to introduce a "revolutionary" new product at their press event on April 30.

Rumour has it will be home storage batteries and this will be their big push into consumer products. Interesting if true. Depending on sizes, could be of use to us RV'ers.

http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/...battery-units/

http://inhabitat.com/new-tesla-batte...-off-the-grid/

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/02/21/...e-battery-way/

Thoughts?

Bugsy White · 04-10-2015, 09:08 PM

Hmmmm...im wondering if the new Home Storage Battery theory is true, then would these new batteries be a push towards getting closer to being able to have trouble free full size AC / Heater units in RV's and to be able to power most appliances?

( I was reading an article about a couples rv experiment project on Lithium batteries ) http://www.technomadia.com/2015/02/livi ... ry-update/

Davydd · 04-10-2015, 10:06 PM

I don't know if I would call the Technomadia bus RV experimental. It was a commitment. It has been running that way for 4 years. Maybe a first somewhat in RVs but the yachting industry is way ahead. BTW, our Advanced RV has the same type of batteries as Technomadia from Elite Power Systems in Tempe, AZ only we have 800ah bank to their 500ah. Either one is no where near close to full-time air conditioning but our bank can power all electrical systems 120v AC and 12v DC all the time without ever plugging into shore power. On our last trip we went from February 23 to April 1 without ever plugging into shore power and we cooked our dinners on an electrical induction cooktop and microwave/convection oven and brewed our coffee with a Keurig. My wife used her electric hair curler and blow dryer almost daily. We have no propane and no Onan generator.

Roadtrek has two Sprinters out on the the road with 1600ah of lithium ion batteries. I know they had a 24/7 air conditioning goal but not a lot has been said about their performance publicly. They are considered experimental. My Advanced RV is a production model.

markopolo · 04-12-2015, 06:54 PM

We'll have to wait until Apr 30 ...............

It would be nice if it was something that we could use in our RV's.

Mike · 04-13-2015, 01:57 PM

Ahem...... a potential game changer?

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/marc ... 33115.html

http://www.gizmag.com/aluminum-ion-batt ... ord/36936/

Apparently it can only produce half the voltage of lithium, but it's other characteristics may make that an acceptable issue. They say they can probably improve the energy storage capacity, with some tweaking.
Just thought it was interesting.

wincrasher · 04-13-2015, 02:04 PM

Sounds promising, but I doubt this is ready for a commercial product announcement.

Musk has some old interviews if you google search where he talks about the future is not batteries, but capacitors. It would be amazing if they've actually developed a viable capacitor for this kind of product. That would really be a game changer.

booster · 04-13-2015, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike

Ahem...... a potential game changer?

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/marc ... 33115.html

http://www.gizmag.com/aluminum-ion-batt ... ord/36936/

Apparently it can only produce half the voltage of lithium, but it's other characteristics may make that an acceptable issue. They say they can probably improve the energy storage capacity, with some tweaking.
Just thought it was interesting.

They have been working on aluminum based batteries for a long time, as the article states. It will be interesting to see how well it develops. The low voltage is probably not a huge issue as you just need more cells to get to a specific voltage. They said they got to two volts, and lead acid are at 2.1 volts.

If it looks to be real, Musk will probably be in on it very quickly, or at least commenting on it heavily. Good find.

Mike · 04-13-2015, 02:24 PM

A prototype is always a good start.

It may or may not amount to anything, but at least someone's looking into it and seems to have had some success. Sometimes these things just need a lot of persistence to happen.
I was thinking about the voltage issue, and if you can get half the voltage of lithium for a quarter or less of the price in the same sized package, you'd be ahead of the game. Based also on discharge/recharge rates being faster and more efficient. However, I'm not a chemical engineer. Heck, I'm not even a railroad engineer.

rectalogic · 05-01-2015, 02:18 PM

Tesla announced the Powerall home lithium-ion battery last night, specs are here http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

It's wall mounted, 52.1" x 33.9" x 7.1" and 220lbs. Built in thermal management and 10yr warranty.

10 kWh $3,500
7 kWh $3,000

More details here http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... kwh-units/

markopolo · 05-01-2015, 03:53 PM

Interesting and exciting. Fun too.

From the utility grid I pay:

10 kWh $1.10
7 kWh $0.77

but that is every time I use 10 kWh or 7 kWh.

The word "easy" comes to mind. This introduction makes it easy to get some or possible all of your power needs from batteries. Easy could lead to wider adoption of the technology and invite competition which should lower the cost ...............

gerrym51 · 05-01-2015, 04:16 PM

how would a van get enough solar to charge one of these?

Mike · 05-01-2015, 04:30 PM

10 year warranty suggests a 10 year life cycle? Price wise excluding installation it costs around a dollar a day for this system over 10 years based on the numbers posted. Is that about right? Are the panels also part of the system? Included in the price? I wonder how many charge discharge cycles the system can promise? I've seen lithium ion batteries ranging from 500 to 1500 charge cycles. If they discharge overnight and recharge the next day, that works out to 3 + years worth based on a 1500 cycle maximum. I'm probably over simplifying. Interesting backup concept. Around here people use an LNG fed backup automatic switch generator. My cousin has one and it cost around $3000 installed into his electrical panel. LNG is still pretty cheap.

booster · 05-01-2015, 06:37 PM

This may be an off peak system primarily, and not necessarily solar. A lot of places have such good off peak rates, that you can afford to store the off peak power to use later, and still come out ahead.

Musk needs to find as many uses for his batteries as he can, to keep the impending huge battery factory busy.

Mike · 05-01-2015, 07:03 PM

They say you can neither create nor destroy energy. That may be true, but the tricky part is storing it cost effectively for very long periods of time. Current battery technology can't do that as far as I know.
As for Mr. Musk, absolutely. Gotta create demand no matter how thin the premise or flawed the technology. That's why he's a billionaire.

stanw909 · 05-01-2015, 08:16 PM

Maybe we can get David to equip his house with these batteries he's our resident cutting edge guy and his system in his van seems to be working great . I'm all for it if it works. It must be different than current batteries to have 10 year lifespan.

mlts22 · 05-01-2015, 09:33 PM

This technology isn't groundbreaking. This is basically a whole-house UPS, using lithium batteries as opposed to lead-acid. It is the electric equivalent of having a bladder well tank or a water tower.

Would I buy this? As a whole-house UPS, definitely. Especially if I could feed in solar into it, so I wouldn't have to worry about metering, reverse charges, and dealing with the poco in backfeeding the grid. The solar panels would just feed the batteries, resulting in less mains power used.

rectalogic · 05-01-2015, 10:57 PM

technomadia article on it Tesla’s Lithium Powerwall – Awesome, But Not For RVs

markopolo · 05-02-2015, 12:02 AM

It seems to consist of the battery, charger & BMS and DC to DC converter to drop the DC voltage to a useable range. You'd still need the inverter as noted. Adding solar would be up to the end user.

booster · 05-02-2015, 01:08 AM

The more I look into this, the more it is obvious that this is an off peak storage system. There is huge interest in industry in using this technology, because the big users can negotiate really low off peak rates with the local utilities. The more of these systems that go into service, the less peak power generation is needed, and the power companies really like lower peak requirements. There are currently all kinds of systems to store the power, from water pumped uphill, to heated water, to pressurized containers, etc, but the if the pure battery storage gets competitive, it is far less complicated and trouble free. My guess is that we will see lots more of this technology, and it will transfer to the RV applications.

Bruceper · 05-02-2015, 01:21 AM

I read the announcement with very little interest when I saw what it was.

The issue is storage and consumption. I would guarantee this thing would have a heart attack when my electric furnace kicked on. This may be great in warmer climates but when it's -40 for a week no amount of solar is going to keep those batteries up.

Our power here is also dirt cheap.

This might be great in the sun belt and places where power is either limited or expensive. But it's not for me no matter how much I wish it was.

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