Source: flickr/genphys
There is enough solar energy potential in Texas to power the world twice over. Yet currently we rank 10th in the nation (behind New Jersey) with 330 megawatts (MW), which is enough to power about 57,000 homes. Texas is a state of almost nine million households. That’s a lot of rooftops, and when you add the number of commercial and industrial rooftops, parking lots, and garages, we are talking about a significant amount of surface area.
Meanwhile, the cost of solar panels has dropped 80 percent since 2008 and prices for rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems have declined markedly in recent years, dropping 29 percent from 2010 to 2013. Moreover, jobs in the solar industry are booming –SolarCity is hiring significantly more people than leading tech companies like Twitter.
So, what will it take to energize rooftop solar growth in Texas? Well, a recent announcement from one of Texas’ “frenemies” may be part of the solution.
[Tweet “What @TeslaMotors’ #Powerwall Home Energy Storage Battery Means for Texas”]
Introducing the Powerwall
Last week, Tesla Motors introduced what many could argue is the holy grail, or the beginning of many holy grails, the Powerwall – a wall-mounted energy storage unit that can hold 10 kilowatt hours of electric energy and deliver an average of 2 kilowatts of power continuously, all for $3,500. Clearly, the market was ripe for such innovation – in the days following the announcement, Tesla took orders worth roughly $800 million in potential revenue.
The criticism that always befalls renewable energy is its “intermittency,” the overused line that “the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.” Well, the game-changing, holy grail to alleviate that problem in good measure is the emergence of scalable, efficient, non-polluting energy storage.
The Powerwall was part of the reason Tesla is opening its Gigafactory in Nevada: to scale up and bring down prices for battery manufacturing. Unfortunately, Texas lost out on being the home of the Gigafactory, in large part due to the state’s ban on Tesla’s direct-sales model.
Some are saying the Powerwall isn’t a silver bullet (and I agree) – we have to acknowledge there is always room for improvement. But as we’ve seen with SolarCity and Tesla, market adoption and innovation go hand-in-hand. One drives the other, sparking a windfall of new products and better services that will continue to advance the clean energy economy and give customers more energy choice and independence while bringing costs down.
Coming this summer to a store near you…
Tesla founder Elon Musk ultimately sees the home battery becoming as commonplace as the family car. Since the technology is the same, it makes sense to proliferate batteries in both markets. He shares that vision with Treehouse CEO, Jason Ballard, whose Austin-based store (think eco-friendly alternative to Home Depot) is the first retailer chosen to sell the Powerwall. “A home battery could make energy bills an archaic relic of a past system,” Ballard said. “You can now own your own production and storage of the energy you need. This takes us one step closer to completely powering homes without fossil fuels.”
This means Texans can go to Treehouse and purchase a complete solar and battery storage system for their home. If they want the full package, residents can truly catapult to the new energy economy by combining this system with an electric vehicle (possibly the more affordable Tesla Model 3 due out in 2017) and enrolling in a time-of-use electric rate (where, for example, you may pay less for electricity for using power at night, like charging your car, when wind is blowing).
While Tesla and Texas have a complicated relationship, it is no coincidence Tesla chose Texas-based Treehouse as the first store in the country to sell the Powerwall. Not only is it a progressive business charting the way for sustainable home products, Tesla knows the largest market potential for its home battery is here in sunny Texas.
Due to innovation like Tesla’s Powerwall, all of this is possible not at some distant, utopian point in the future, but this summer.
This commentary originally appeared on EDF’s Texas Clean Air Mattes Blog.
4 Comments
While I agree Tesla’s Powerwall announcement is a big step forward, energy storage will always need a hard look at the numbers to make it work on a large scale: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/tesla-s-new-battery-doesn-t-work-that-well-with-solar
Discussing a utility scale battery storage system requires computing the cost of energy storage in the storage system. I have created worksheet for this. My paper, “The Levelized Cost (US$/MWh; €/MWh) of Storing PV (Wind) Electricity (LCOSE) at a Grid-Connected Utility-Scaled (MW) Energy Storage System (ESS)”, is scheduled for presentation at the invited session, SS-3-Energy Storage, of the 15th Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers–International Conference on the Environment and Electrical Engineering (IEE-EEEIC 2015), 10-13 June 2015, Rome, Italy. Getting my paper invited to session SS-3, Energy Storage, is a major professional accomplishment for me. The IEEE is a well-regarded organization. So is KICKSTARTER, a global crowdfunding platform. I am a retired American economics teacher so that I am not in a position to self-sponsor the travel expenses associated with my IEEE-EEEIC 2015 paper. I am not asking you to pay for my time to research and to write my paper. I am asking you to “join the crowd” and help sponsor my paper. Let me quote from my paper; “If the new Tesla Gigafactory [5] is able to manufacture EV batteries for US$100/kWh (€89), the LCOSE is US$124.59/MWh; US¢12.5/kWh (€110.34/MWh; €¢11/kWh)”. KICKSTARTER accepts payments in most major currencies including the US$ and €. On 4/30, Tesla announced that the PowerWall will cost $350/kWh before installation. I have not computed the LCOSE or extra cost storing electricity, but with a copy of my paper you can compute it.
Back my IEEE EEEIC 2015 Kickstarter project at: http://goo.gl/qEe0Uo
My website is http://www.michaelstavy.com
What good is having storage if your continuous power output is limited by your lithium battery’s chemistry and you’re still using the lower efficiency, single sided, glass on plastic, aluminum framed solar panels that most of the solar leasing companies are offering when you could connect that storage system to new, lower cost, Hyper X 2 bifacial, (double sided) glass on glass, frameless, solar panels that offer up to 22.2% efficiency, a 94.3% PTC to STC performance ratio, a -0.28%/degree C temperature coefficient for better performance in warm/hot climates. And a minus 60 degree C extreme cold temperature rating ? https://vimeo.com/127384804
Two corrections needed: The Gigafactory is under construction, not “opened.” And Model III is due out next year in concept form only. Production not until at least 2017.