Tesla Motors Inc. on Thursday unveiled
Tesla Energy – storage systems or batteries for homes, companies and
utilities that will expand its business beyond electric vehicles and tap
into a fast-growing area of the energy industry.
Chief
Executive Elon Musk said the company’s goal was to “fundamentally
change the way the world uses energy on an extreme scale.” He introduced
the products to a crowd of business partners and journalists at a Tesla
facility near Los Angeles.
In Tesla’s view, such storage systems
could become part of a fossil-fuel-free lifestyle in which people can
have solar panels on their roof generating electricity to power their
home and recharge their electric car batteries.
The
smallest battery unveiled on Thursday, known as Powerwall, is housed in
a six-inch-wide container that is meant to be hung inside a garage or
on the outside wall of a house.
At
$3,500 (U.S.) for a 10kWh model, excluding inverter and installation
prices, the Powerwall can be used for backup power or to store solar
energy.
Tesla’s lead installation
partner for the home battery will be SolarCity Corp, the solar installer
backed by Musk. The company will also partner with many others, Musk
said.
Tesla has several hundred
batteries installed with SolarCity systems in California already. The
growth of those projects has been helped by a subsidy from California’s
public utility regulator.
Utilities have also been seeking out
energy storage to help manage increasing amounts of renewable energy on
the grid. To address that market, Musk unveiled what he called the
“power pack,” a 100 kWh battery block that is meant to help smooth out
power from intermittent solar and wind energy production or add energy
to the grid quickly when demand levels are high.
Tesla
already has several utility-scale batteries deployed on the grid in
California, which requires its biggest utilities to source large amounts
of energy storage.
Musk told reporters
Tesla expected to have a low but growing gross margin in battery
products in the fourth quarter of this year and added that battery
products would be “materially profitable” some time next year.
“A
cost effective home energy storage system it could prove far more
valuable, and profitable, than anything the company is doing with
automobiles,” Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with auto industry research
firm Kelley Blue Book, said.
Tesla will
initially manufacture the batteries at its automobile factory in
California but will move production to its planned “gigafactory” in
Nevada next year.
Deutsche Bank
estimated sales of stationary battery storage systems for homes and
commercial uses could yield as much as $4.5-billion in revenue for
Tesla. Analysts expect Tesla will build stationary storage systems
around the same basic batteries it will produce for its vehicles at the
large factory the company is building in Nevada.
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