NATHANIEL WOOD FOR WIRED
Elon Musk wants to sell you a battery. And he doesn’t care whether you drive an electric car.
Musk, ever the showman, unveiled his grand “Tesla Energy” scheme to electrify the world on Thursday night, and it actually makes a lot of sense. Tesla, which is in the middle of building a vast “Gigafactory” battery production plant in the Nevada desert, plans to offer new versions of the batteries it puts in its Model S car to residential, commercial, and utility customers.
The “Powerwall Home Battery” offers either 7- or 10-kWh of storage, and will allow consumers to store energy they produce with a solar array—even go off the grid if they want. It’s available for small businesses as well, while bigger operations will want the Powerpack, a 100kWh refrigerator-esque unit, to use more renewable energy, avoid peak demand charges, and keep things running in the event of a power outage. These larger batteries are being produced for utilities as well, and can help the energy providers improve demand response and increase their use of renewables.