Tesla Powerwall

[Boyd]

Was just looking at this. Could be pretty cool for a backup power system.

http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

A bit expensive ($3500 for 10kwh or $3000 for 7kwh). But my experience is that I could make it through a day or two powering essential items (well pump, refrigerator, minimal lighting) with a big battery like that. That would cover most outages aside from catastrophes. And it should be basically maintenance free, unlike generators that are a real pain in the butt to maintain. I guess one would still be needed for extended outages though (like 5 days during the "derecho" here).

Not interested in being an early adopter, but will be following how it works out.

 

[46er]

When they get it down to the cost of a genset I'll take a look. For me the key to these types of units for emergency home use is the recovery time as I would be only interested for a day or more outages. The usual car hitting a pole outage isn't worth it to me. I've found the 2 gensets I have to be no maintenance problem. I run each once a year for a couple of hours, beyond that they sit in the shed; waiting, always waiting...

 

[rc911]

I just watched a 17 minute presentation by Elon Musk on the power wall. What a fascinating concept. The presentation is at theverge.com.