$13,000 offgrid battery

oil pan 4 · April 2015

So we should replace a few thousand dollar recyclable forklift traction battery with the very non recyclable far more expensive lithium battery. As if going off grid isn't expensive enough already.
I see it as good for some CEOs wallet, not super awesome for the environment.
Then if you accidently discharge the battery once, its done. At least you can usually bring back traction batteries from a real deep discharge most of the time, until they get old.

Read all about it.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/new-tesla-battery-could-end-electricity-bills/ar-BBiU7fs

MarkC · April 2015

LIghter weight, higher energy density, cost effective batteries could (eventually) balance the "off-peak" power grid to a massively more effective/efficient use of our existing electrical grid/power gen systems - thru the use of EV technology. There is no doubt - except as you point out THE COST!. Power companies would have to support the late night/early morning (controlled) rapid charging of literally millions of EVs to use the wasted capacity and efficiency of our existing grids. What's the chance???

JoshK · April 2015

oil pan 4 wrote: »

Then if you accidently discharge the battery once, its done.

That will never happen, it will be accompanied by a controller that manages it safely. I know Oil Pan 4 is against giving up his total control, but it needs to happen to get the average person onboard. Not everyone is willing to take on a second job (or third job) as personal power plant operator.
As for the future, the most hopeful business model is that the grid turns more green. But at the moment that is more expensive, and customers wish for green, but demand cheap.

solar_dave · April 2015

Just as a BTW I have to say GM got it right with the active liquid cooling and heating of the battery. Both Volts here (one is 4 and the other is 3.5 yrs old) still show the same range as when new and have no signs of degradation. Personally if all goes as planned they will last the life of the car. What the heck GM did stick its neck out a bit with the 8 yr 100,000 mile warranty but most likely with good engineering behind that. Their battery management is supreme in my book.

here are a couple reference from a couple years back:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/15/gm-and-abb-repurpose-used-chevy-volt-batteries-to-provide-home-b/
http://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2012/Nov/electrification/1114_reuse.html

I suspect they are having trouble getting used batteries as I have only heard of a couple replacements over the last 4 years! LOL Those were for coolant leaks or other minor failures and GM just swapped the whole nine yards.

JoshK · April 2015

solar_dave wrote: »

GM did stick its neck out a bit with the 8 yr 100,000 mile warranty

Ford has the same thing on the Hybrid Fusion, that's a lithium battery warrantied for 8 years too. Lithium batteries impress me.

Photowhit · May 2015

I'm actually pro Lithium and hope it becomes cheap enough and we learn enough about it for my next battery in 10-15 years to be a lithium...

...but since people are bringing up successes, remember it's the failure that we learn on... Nissan Leaf had many failure but no heating and cooling for the battery.

solar_dave · May 2015

Photowhit wrote: »

I'm actually pro Lithium and hope it becomes cheap enough and we learn enough about it for my next battery in 10-15 years to be a lithium...

...but since people are bringing up successes, remember it's the failure that we learn on... Nissan Leaf had many failure but no heating and cooling for the battery.

Yep I agree and Nissan learned the hard way in buying back many as defective. They had some in AZ loose over 30% in the first year. Of course this is much more critical to a BEV compared to an Extended Range EV like the Chevy.

westbranch · May 2015

Here is a link to today's CBC 'The Current' program on Elon Musk, starts at ~ 1 1/2 minutes in..http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-april-30-2015-1.3055108/elon-musk-s-tesla-home-battery-could-start-energy-revolution-1.3055129.

oil pan 4 · May 2015

For a battery pack that only moves twice, once to install and again to get tossed out I don't see any advantage to using light weight batteries.

JoshK wrote: »

That will never happen.

How many people on here have charge controllers and have found a dead bank?
I know its happened, because I have seen the posts about it happening on here.

oil pan 4 · May 2015

Photowhit wrote: »

I'm actually pro Lithium and hope it becomes cheap enough and we learn enough about it for my next battery in 10-15 years to be a lithium...

I run LiFePO4 starting batteries that I made my self out of raw cells for my vehicles so I am pro lithium too. I just think its a little ridiculous that some people claim they are awesome in every respect imaginable.

The first battery pack I bought (then I made a cool enclosure for it), about 4 years ago and it still works great, the other 2 I constructed with in the next year.

Imurphy · May 2015

The guy who wrote this piece Took apart several Tesla Model S 80kw battery banks to build his system.

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/46756-Elon-I-love-you-but-the-PowerWall-isn-t-that-great-yet?p=994934#post994934

Dave Angelini · May 2015

Imurphy wrote: »

The guy who wrote this piece Took apart several Tesla Model S 80kw battery banks to build his system.

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showt...934#post994934

Thanks for the link! I pulled this from it below. I can build a conventional 48V 400ah L16 system for $2.5K that is 20KWH and 10KWH @ 50% discharge. The size is just about meaningless Offgrid.
They do still have quite some work to complete. Good Luck !

My setup

"I have avoided comparisons to my own large off-grid solar project to keep this write up as general as possible. However, I feel that it's worth pointing out that my complete setup including everything (100+ solar panels, 8 inverters, installation, and 191kWh worth of Tesla batteries) is costing somewhere around $500/kWh total per kWh of energy storage. Extracting just the parts that the $3000 PowerWall does for that price, those parts cost about $250/kWh (mainly the batteries). Even if my setup were lead acid based (the "ugly" and "smelly" batteries that Elon compared to in his presentation), which it doesn't, the cost would still be significantly less per kWh than a complete system using PowerWalls.

Not only that, many solar installers already do these battery setups. They may not be in a sleek and fancy case like Tesla's, but your wallet will be better for it.

I have 191 kWh of storage (that's the same as ~28 of Tesla's 7kWh units......) because that's what it will take to get me through a string of a few rainy days at average or slightly below average usage and to stay off grid as long as possible. Grid electricity is only $0.10 per kWh where I am, so no amount of grid arbitrage would ever pay for itself here. Honestly, my project is beyond what I probably should have invested in it. Unfortunately I was already too far into it to not follow through once that became apparent."

lasitter · May 2015

My interest in the Tesla battery is that it can be located inside, where it's warm, without concern about the buildup of explosive gasses.

In studying lead-acid battery arrays and the need for custom cabinets with hydrogen detectors, heated battery mats and automatic fans, it looks like keeping the big batteries happy and safe can be a daunting task.

During our most recent winter here in western Mass, we had temperatures dip to minus 16. Lead-acid batteries can't do much when they get really cold.

I'm going to be following this technology. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for prices to start dipping ...

BB. · May 2015

I believe that most (popular) Lithium rechargeable chemistries cannot be recharged below ~freezing--So keeping them at a minimum temperature (inside, insulated, possible backup heating) will be important for your region. No need to ventilate (hydrogen gasses) is certainly an advantage to Lithium.

-Bill

Dave Angelini · May 2015

BB. wrote: »

I believe that most (popular) Lithium rechargeable chemistries cannot be recharged below ~freezing--So keeping them at a minimum temperature (inside, insulated, possible backup heating) will be important for your region. No need to ventilate (hydrogen gasses) is certainly and advantage to Lithium.

-Bill

Ventilation will be important to the masses if these go residential. To anyone who has lived offgrid for some time, ventilation ranges from not required by code in a garage sized room to a simple fan that is logic driven from the charger that almost all inverter/chargers and charge controllers have. There would have to be huge price/longevity advantages to even consider Lithium offgrid at this stage of it's development over conventional (and very mature technology) batteries. Wait 5 years or when the store at Wind/Sun has them listed for sale.

Alaska Man · May 2015

I don't know why there is so much Hate about Tesla's Home Battery. I have 6 volt 220/ah AGMs at a cost of about $250.00 per. With wires and all it's about $2,500 for my battery bank. The total at 6 Volts (220ah * 8 ) = 1760 ah. Divide that in half to get to 12 volt and I have an 880ah bank. At 50% DOD that gives me 440ah that are available for my use. I prefer to stay above 80% SOC. so in reality my 1760 ah gives me .

kilowatt-hours = (amphours * voltage) / 1000 (220 * 12 / 1000) = 2.6 kilowatthours

2.6Kwh of usable energy. Not even half the Kwh...........for $500 more, Tesla just gave me over 2.5X that amount. Greater depth of discharge, larger storage, safer product, HUGE difference in usable energy. Personally I don't get the Hate. 7Kwh for $3,000 is a steal. to get that with my AGMs id have to shell out over $10,000.00

Unless I'm completely missing something?

froggersix · May 2015

yeah your missing the tesla battery voltage doesn't work with anything so its useless until hey have inverter and charger for it which will be all alone in the market and cost more money so it solves nothing. just a rich mans toy fooling people like his useless cars.

Imurphy · May 2015

Business weekly just wrote an article saying the power wall is a flop. And they talked to Solar City. Guess Solar City has changed its mind about the power wall aswell, since they will not offer it.

Alaska Man · May 2015

To bad........... Still I'm hopeful, was going to give it a few years to shakeout anyway.

Mountain Don · May 2015

Imurphy wrote: »

Business weekly just wrote an article saying the power wall is a flop. And they talked to Solar City. Guess Solar City has changed its mind about the power wall aswell, since they will not offer it.

How do they arrive at that? Apparently they have sold out to mid 2016

http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2015/05/07/powerwall-is-sold-out/

Can you link the business weekly article. It did not come up for me

zoneblue · May 2015

Some sources say the powerwall contains an inverter but most sources say thats addtional. If the battery is around 400VDC, then itll be interesting to see how these are to be integrated with hybrid/grid tie inverters. Alternatively, in terms of reconfiguration, its likely the cell SP arrangement differs a fair bit to those in the model S. People have been able to hack those as the 18650s are in somewhat useful modules of P and S. But at 400V 7kWh, that suggests the powerwall is something like 7P100S. For use with a 48V inverter youd have to cut the long series strings in half, and no doubt lose all the integrated battery managment. Lots of questions until we see one torn down.

Dave Angelini · May 2015

This product is really needed for places that need grid back-up to help keep the grid voltage stable during high usage. I was involved in a project in Hawaii that determined that local battery storage could help with cooling loads during fair weather cumulus clouding. In the tropics these big clouds cause the utility to start generators and Hawaii having the largest percentage of solar just about anywhere has problems. The utility generators need to warm-up and often they would be ready after the event was over.

The problem here is controlling the residential switch from selling to the grid and consuming it's own solar locally and lowering the cooling load for a short time. A nice piece of software that is not there, yet.

BB. · May 2015

Not trying to hate on the product--Just asking questions and making some guesses how it works and fits together. If you are going for a "turn key" system, you pay them for their expertise. If you want to try a DIY system around it, a bit more difficult.

-Bill

oil pan 4 · May 2015

lasitter wrote: »

I'm going to be following this technology. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for prices to start dipping ...

Don't count on it. In 2012 when I bought my AMP20 cells to build my starting battery the cells cost me about $40 each. 3 years later, I picked up 4 more AMP20 cells, paid about $40 each for them.
Pretty sure Lithium will never be able to compete with lead for $/KWH.

oil pan 4 · May 2015

BB. wrote: »

I believe that most (popular) Lithium rechargeable chemistries cannot be recharged below ~freezing--So keeping them at a minimum temperature (inside, insulated, possible backup heating) will be important for your region. No need to ventilate (hydrogen gasses) is certainly an advantage to Lithium.

-Bill

Of course I didn't find this out until after I had switched vehicles over to LiFePO4.
If you charge LiFePO4 batteries that are at or less than 20'F you can permanently damage their capacity. Up to 20% gone just like that.
Lucky for me I had already put them on Anderson connectors aka forklift quick disconnects.

Low temps are not as disabling or damaging to lead acids as they are to lithium.

oil pan 4 · May 2015

BB. wrote: »

Not trying to hate on the product

Make no mistake, I am.
I think using hyper expensive lithium batteries in a stationary application, for a build where "money is no object" and trying to push to make it main stream is absurd.
Put lithium batteries in things that move around and put lead in things that don't, or where you need lots of weight for added traction or ballast.

Mountain Don · May 2015

Don't forget that the lithium battery has some good points, other than just light weight.

The ability to sit for long periods in a partial state of charge, and not deteriorate.
Lower resistance; faster charge time. Very attractive for places with limited solar.
The ability to use a greater amount of the total rated capacity.

Light weight means reduced shipping costs.

Some drawbacks too. Nothing is perfect.

zoneblue · May 2015

Well that same guy also said that his house idles at 30-40kWh/day, when hes not even there. I guess if you can afford 70K for a car you can afford to go wild on power. 20K for one tesla battery. Used.

Dave Angelini wrote: »

Thanks for the link! I pulled this from it below. I can build a conventional 48V 400ah L16 system for $2.5K that is 20KWH and 10KWH @ 50% discharge. The size is just about meaningless Offgrid.

oil pan 4 · May 2015

The biggest problem I see with a forklift traction battery is moving it around. I have never tried to move one with out the use of another forklift or a pallet jack.
I don't even know if a standard habor freight engine hoist is strong enough to lift one with out folding up.

I slightly doubt lithium ability to hold a charge all the time. I put my first lithium battery on the shelf at 13 volts, then went off to Afghanistan and came back a few months later and it was down to 8 volts. No one had touched it, it was sitting on a shelf inside. It has sat for longer since then and held a charge with out issue.

Lithium beats lead every where but cost, recyclability and in the cold.
Lead acids are just cold blooded, where lithiums get frost bite. (that thing where you can lose 20% of your lithium's capacity if you charge the pack when its colder than 20'F and it only takes one single charging to do it)

$13,000 offgrid battery

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