The home as a giant battery

A fascinating debate is taking place about the impact of new products created by Tesla, now a company more focused on batteries than electric-powered cars, will have on the world around us.

From initial skepticism based on cost (between $3,000 and $3,500, and their capacity (between 7 kWh and 10kWh, or around a third of an average home’s daily needs), we are moving toward a more measured analysis about the use of batteries that applies Moore’s Law to solar technology, within which Tesla is has taken an impressive first step toward a technology that could change the world as we know it, even making nuclear energy obsolete.

The impact of this technology cannot be properly assessed on what is essentially a prototype, and we will have to wait until Tesla’s Powerwall batteries can be mass-produced, bringing down their cost and increasing the number of things they can be used for.

The important thing to remember here is that we are about to enter a new era of clean energy. Technology has changed the game: using renewable sources to generate energy is no longer more expensive than using fossil fuels. Wind energy and other renewables are now the cheapest way to generate electricity, and even more so if we factor in the hidden cost of using the atmosphere as a garbage tip, a cost that isn’t paid for by the electricity utilities, but by all living things on the planet.

Economic analysis is already prompting many small cities to generate all their electricity using renewables, while other, larger places, are installing wind turbines to meet a part of their energy needs, even placing them in landmark sites, while companies like Apple, Amazon,Microsoft, Google or Tesla are supplying their own energy, and countries like Scotland or Denmark are able to generate most of their electricity supply in this way. Costa Rica has managed to supply all its energy needs via renewables for 75 whole days.

Not that there isn’t resistance to this change, and some business leaders and politicians will have to be dragged screaming and kicking into the new age. It will be up to us, as voters and tax payers, to make sure that our governments are committed to clean energy.

Of course, Tesla is just one part of this shift toward cleaner energy. In the same way that the manufacturing plants of the world’s leading companies can now provide their own energy, reducing their costs by doing so (and this is the key), the rooftops of our homes must also become giant batteries able to power a lot of our needs, generating and storing constantly. Batteries allow homes to store the electricity they produce, which can be channeled into the national grid more effectively.

I would highly recommend watching Tesla’s Powerwall presentation, given by the company’s founder, Elon Musk. In a few years time, it may well be remembered as one of those moments when we realize that something is about to change.

(En español, aquí)