There was this big announcement today of Tesla Energy. Basically battery packs for home or businesses that can efficiently store solar power.

The obvious problem with solar is that you can't store it; and the peak generation times don't match well with peak usage.

Tesla will be using the same lithium ion battery tech used in it's newest cars to create sleek batteries you can hang on the wall of your home or garage. For $3.5K, you get 10KW/H.

Not exactly sure how quickly it regenerates. In other words, if you are cranking your a/c on a blistering day, does the battery also have the ability to still take on power from the solar cells? If you can completely drain them, how many hours of sunlight does it take to recharge (I'm sure much has to do with the size of the array).

Anyway, he's proposing using this in commercial applications as well. Everything is completely scalable. You can daisy-chain the home units (up to 9) and the commercial units are infinitely scalable.

This may just be the beginning and there are already similar battery packs on the market, but as batteries and solar tech advances, it looks like this is getting very close to be able to take yourself off the grid and better yet, drastically reduce the amount of fossil fuel that is burned to generate electricity.

yKORsrlN-2k

Powerwall | Tesla Motors (http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall)

Tesla's Elon Musk introduces 'beautiful' money-saving home battery backup system - CNET (http://www.cnet.com/news/teslas-elon-musk-introduces-beautiful-money-saving-home-battery-back-up-system/)

An interesting take away is you can recharge the battery at night from the grid when rates can be substantially cheaper. This could very well be a game changer.

An interesting take away is you can recharge the battery at night from the grid when rates can be substantially cheaper. This could very well be a game changer.

Right, you can use it completely independent of solar; charge it up when KW are cheap then discharge as needed.

But using it will solar is particularly compelling.

Just like with cars, we continue to move close to a tipping point where the battery technology becomes advanced enough for all this to make good economic sense, not just environmental sense.

All I know is, with everything he is involved in, Elon Musk will likely be discussed in future history books as Bell and Edison are today.

He's like the new Steven Jobs.

He isn't necessarily creating anything completely new, he's just making it cool and changing social norms.

It's simply incredible. I think Musk truly will go down in history as not just a great marketer, but a great inventor as well. He actually drew out the basics with his own pen in several overnight sessions of the Hyperloop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop) before handing it over to a 12 person engineering team - and by golly, it worked! He's said in interviews he is happiest when he is thinking and inventing. He's brilliant. A professor at Stanford said he was one of the most promising PhD. students he had ever seen before -- he dropped out! But only after he had two degrees from Penn (Physics) and The Wharton School (Economics). The guy is something else. I have pre-ordered Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future which has won rave reviews. Don't bother with the other biography you may have heard about. It was awful. This is the one a lot of people have been waiting on.

How will the traditional power companies try to block this?

How will the traditional power companies try to block this?

They may not be able to. The more Elon Musk makes the incredible happen, the more likely he is to keep the establishment at bay. Just look at Steve Jobs' record or Uber's successful start.

How will the traditional power companies try to block this?

Well I believe in Oklahoma, it is now required to pay a fee to OG&E for installing a solar panel to power your house.

Okla. Utilities Hit Homes Using Solar With Extra Fee | Climate Central (http://www.climatecentral.org/news/oklahoma-solar-surcharge-bill-becomes-law-17335)

I had no idea how young this guy is, or how many other things he's done. Wow!

Well I believe in Oklahoma, it is now required to pay a fee to OG&E for installing a solar panel to power your house.

Okla. Utilities Hit Homes Using Solar With Extra Fee | Climate Central (http://www.climatecentral.org/news/oklahoma-solar-surcharge-bill-becomes-law-17335)

It's for "protection", makes sure your solar panels don't mysteriously break. Interesting article on the need for getting recycling rules, regs and processes in place before the glut hits. The future of automotive lithium-ion battery recycling: Charting a sustainable course (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000037)

Im wondering about the water system that was in the news last week. Heres the link (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3059025/Audi-creates-DIESEL-air-water-fuel-future-powering-car-driven-German-minister.html) on it. So i wonder what the cost is but revving to production levels would bring it down. I would have thought it would have made more headlines since it seems to be more easily compatible.

Maybe he's an alien that was sent down to set the world straight. Seriously smart guy.

Elon Musk is a big dreamer. We need people like that (with the capital to back it up) to push the envelope. He hasn't single-handedly changed the world, but he's a very smart man and has surrounded himself with a great group of engineers on every project so success can be obtained. Great minds are great, but even greater minds work well with others...and he seems to be able to do that well.

He typically handles ideas that don't involve the super technical details, but it would be nice if he would take a look at oh, I don't know....cold fusion. LOL.