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Yes, Tesla really has been working on battery packs that are going to change the way the world is powered. Through a new system called Tesla Energy, the company will offer a number of solutions for homes and businesses that all have incredible ambitions.
Tesla Energy is currently comprised of two separate products: the Powerwall and the Powerpack.
The first is a home battery system that comes in 10 kWh and 7 kWh options, priced at $3,500 and $3,000 respectively. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the device can be used to create “smart microgrids” that can power homes when the electricity goes down, or even to take a home off the grid entirely.
“The unit is about three feet by four feet in size and six inches thick,” The Verge reports, “and comes with integrated heat management and can fit either on the inside or outside of the wall of your home.”
The Powerwall can be used to store solar energy absorbed during the day, which can then charge your car or power your home. It makes owning an electric car significantly cheaper, which of course has big implications for Tesla’s car business.
The Powerwall has been in testing for over a year, and Tesla has even sold a number of units to select customers already. Those who want their own can pre-order one now in the U.S., and the first orders will begin shipping “in late summer,” Tesla says.
Perhaps the most impressive of the two products, however, is the Powerpack — the Powerwall’s big brother. It’s an “infinitely scalable system,” Tesla says, and it can be used to power entire businesses and even public utility companies.
The Powerpack comes in 100 kWh battery blocks that can scale from 500 kWH to beyond 10 MWh. Tesla says 160 million of these things could power the United States, while 2 billion of them could power the whole world.
With Energy, Tesla is out to change the world in a big way. Musk believes it is “within the power of humanity” to change the way in which we produce and consume energy, and Powerwall and Powerpack will be the first of many products that hope to do that.
