Is this the future? [View all]

[kentuck]

http://nerdist.com/elon-musks-next-game-changer-is-a-battery-called-the-powerwall/

<snip>
Last night in Hawthorne, California, Elon Musk unveiled “the missing piece” in the transition over to clean energy. The Tesla Powerwall, a large household battery (with industrial applications as well), was that piece.

In Musk’s mind, we orbit the key to weening the world off of fossil fuels. “We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the Sun,” he said to the crowd as his keynote. Solar energy then, relying on commercially available solar panels, is the first step in the weening process.

We’ve long heard the promise of solar power, but the public hasn’t viewed it as a real competitor to fossil fuels (at least the American public). However, the math is all there. Musk referred to a striking graph to make his point (shown below). The blue square is the total amount of surface area that would need to be covered by solar panels to take the US off the grid:

<snip>
The second part isn’t so obvious. Solar panels can’t collect energy at night, so it’s hard for them to reliably provide power like a coal power plant can. Batteries could theoretically solve the problem. During the day solar panels around the country would provide energy and store any excess energy that the grid cannot accommodate in large battery installations. And those large installations would only require a “pixel” of space, Musk explained.

...more at link