Elon Musk’s record-setting battery storage project in California announced Tuesday it can only store enough electricity to power 2,500 homes.
Musk’s storage facility only has 20 megawatts of storage capacity, while state regulators have called for 1,300 megawatts of batteries for the power grid by 2020.
The batteries Musk plans to use in California will be similar to the Powerwalls built by Tesla, a company he founded.
The Tesla Powerwall is a $7,340 lithium ion-battery that stores electricity for homes, meaning it would take 38 years, or roughly four times its warranty period, to pay for itself, according to analysis performed by the Institute for Energy Research. The original intention of a Powerwall was to make rooftop solar panels, manufacutred by Musk’s company SolarCity, economically viable for consumers.
This payback time could be reduced with the purchase of a small home solar system to “only” 31 years. Tesla offers five to 10 year warranties on its Powerwalls, and predicts they will last for only 15 years. Additionally, Tesla Powerwalls are lithium ion-batteries, which have a tendency to catch on fire or even explode if damaged in a certain way.
Supporting wind and solar power with batteries is extremely expensive, particularly in regards to home use. Even after billions have been put into battery research by Apple, Samsung, and other huge technology companies, batteries aren’t improving quickly. Despite enormous amounts of financial support from both the private sector and the government, only small gains in battery capacity and reducing costs have been made.
It is currently impossible to economically store power for times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. The best way humans have of “storing” power is pumping water up a hill, which actually accounts for 99 percent of all global energy storage.
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