Tesla is set to announce a home battery tomorrow
This week, Tesla invited journalists to an announcement at the company's base in Hawthorne, California, in which Elon Musk is expected to give details about a new product unrelated to his line of electric cars. Tesla’s next big thing is widely believed to be a stationary battery, which will power homes, offices, and industrial spaces with stored energy.
Reports from The Wall Street Journal suggest that Tesla will devote as much as 25 percent of the capacity of its new $5 billion gigafactory, currently being built in Reno, Nevada, to the production of large battery packs for homes and businesses.
One of the most difficult things about energy distribution is that demand fluctuates dramatically during the day as households use more electricity in the morning and evening and hardly use any during the day while most people are at work. That problem can be multiplied with renewable energy sources, which suffer from supply fluctuations as well—energy is in abundant supply when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, but production drops off as the weather changes. Cost-effective heavy-duty batteries could help store excess energy and smooth out the issues caused by resource inefficiency.
