The next big thing in renewable energy is battery storage and Tesla Motors is a world leader in this field. The Powerwall is a sleekly designed, home energy storage system that can be used to store renewable energy in your garage, on the side of your house, or wherever else you might want to hang a functional piece of modern art. Elon Musk unveiled the technology on a solar powered stage in California, saying that the only batteries that were previously available on the market were “stinky, ugly, and bad in every way.” Musk’s innovation integrates form and function into addressing one of the key challenges with renewables: intermittency.
Intermittency refers to the fact that the sun only shines and the wind only blows some of the time, making it difficult to rely solely on renewables as a source of energy. It’s difficult to charge your electric car from solar energy at night – unless you have the right battery. Batteries designed specifically for home energy storage solve this problem, removing one of the remaining barriers to household level full-time generation of solar and wind energy. And, with prices for solar approaching grid parity (equal to or less than the price per kWh of electricity purchased from the grid) battery storage makes self-generation a rational, pragmatic choice. It is democratization of our energy system, allowing homeowners, businesses, and public institutions to generate their own renewable energy and reduce their dependency on the centralized grid. At $3,500 a pop, the Powerwall just may prove a game changer.