The coming revolution in energy storage

Posted by Jeff on May 10, 2015 @ 4:33 am in Conservation | 0 comments | Last modified: May 9, 2015

On April 30, 2015 the glitzy electric car company Tesla Motors, run by billionaire Elon Musk, ceased to be just a car company. As was widely expected, Tesla announced that it is offering a home battery product, which people can use to store energy from their solar panels or to backstop their homes against blackouts, and also larger scale versions that could perform similar roles for companies or even parts of the grid.

For homeowners, the Tesla Powerwall will have a power capacity of either 10 kilowatt hours or 7 kilowatt hours, at a cost of either $3,500 or $3,000. The company says these are the costs for suppliers and don’t include the cost of installation and a power inverter, so customers could pay considerably more than that. The battery, says Tesla, “increases the capacity for a household’s solar consumption, while also offering backup functionality during grid outages.”

The anticipation leading up to this announcement has been intense — words like “zeitgeist” are being used — which itself is one reason why the moment for “energy storage,” as energy wonks put it to describe batteries and other technologies that save energy for later use, may finally be arriving. Prices for batteries have already been dropping, but if Tesla adds a “coolness factor” to the equation, people might even be willing to stretch their finances to buy one.

Tesla isn’t the only company in the battery game, and whatever happens with Tesla, this market is expected to grow. The major upshot of more and cheaper batteries and much more widespread energy storage could, in the long term, be a true energy revolution — as well as a much greener planet.

Here are just a few ways that storage can dramatically change — and green — the way we get power…