Tesla Energy CEO Elon Musk introduced “Powerwall” as a scalable, stationary battery power storage system for homes, commercial businesses and even electric utilities. The Tesla battery storage system is a major breakthrough for the 21st Century distributed energy revolution powered by the sun and wind. It marks the beginning of the democratization of energy and the end of reliance on an antiquated and unreliable electric grid centrally powered by dirty fossil fuel and dangerous nuclear power plants.
About the size of a large suitcase, each Powerwall unit is a wall-mounted, stackable unit complete with integrated safety systems, temperature control and DC to DC converter for controlling power flow all specially designed for storing electricity generated by sunshine. It can also store electricity from the grid gathered at peak hours for reliable energy use later at reduced cost or as an emergency backup system during a power outage.
Each Powerwall comes in two power solutions: a 10 kilowatt-hour (kWh) option ($3,500 plus installation) and a 7 kWh option ($3,000 plus installation) that can be used for the daily cycling of photovoltaic power to offset net consumption from the electric grid or disconnect from the grid entirely.
Tesla Energy plans to also market the “Powerpack” which is a utility-scale version to store electricity in gigawatt-hour class systems capable of powering entire cities with sustainable renewable energy.
Tesla Energy is partnering with photovoltaic system manufacturers like Solar City for their joint October 2015 rollout in Hawaii for the off-the-shelf residential solar arrays integrated with out-of-the box Powerwalls.