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Saturday, February 21st, 2015

Why Tesla’s battery for your home should terrify utilities

Author:     Josh Dzieza
Source:     The Verge
Publication Date:     February 13, 2015 02:25 pm
Link: Why Tesla’s battery for your home should terrify utilities
Stephan:   Elon Musk is this generation's mix of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. And he usually looks like he is having such a good time.  I think he is correct to focus on the leverage point of storing electricity. It's going to be critical to the noncarbon future and the electrical storage industry that is emerging is going to make billions and billions of dollars. This is another example of looking into the future and seeing the opportunity of a wellness oriented technology.
Elon Musk, Chief Executive of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, attends the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco June 18, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Stephen Lam

Elon Musk, Chief Executive of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, attends the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco June 18, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Stephen Lam

Earlier this week, during a disappointing Tesla earnings call, Elon Musk mentioned in passing that he’d be producing a stationary battery for powering the home in the next few months. It sounded like a throwaway side project from someone who’s never seen a side project he doesn’t like. But it’s a very smart move, and one that’s more central to Musk’s ambitions than it might seem.

To understand why, it helps to look not at Tesla, but at SolarCity, a company chaired by Musk and run by his cousin Lyndon Rive. SolarCity installs panels on people’s roofs, leases them for less than they’d be paying in energy bills, and sells surplus energy back to the local utility. It’s proven a tremendously successful […]

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