I thought I read that this was a plan Tesla had to repurpose the car batteries into power walls for home consumers. Not sure that ever ended up happening but great to see the retired car batteries given a second life
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
That’s actually an ingenious idea I hadn’t thought about. How much cheaper are these batteries once they’ve been retired? Would this be a viable option for someone running solar at home, and wanting to store the power for later use, or is a home battery still the better option?
IGuessThisIsMyName@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Diplomjodler@feddit.de 10 months ago
A 50 KWh or more battery pack will be overkill for most homes. But those will likely be available for cheap soon so it might still be a good option. Putting a pack that weighs several hundred kilos in your basement might be difficult, though.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
I don’t know that a basement would be a good location regardless. If that thing sparks up, it’ll take out half the building before the fire department shows up.
otter@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Yea, with a car you can’t really use them once the range gets low enough
With this, a bunch of batteries can work together for much longer. You also don’t need to worry about weight since they’re in one place
NateNate60@lemmy.world 10 months ago
A Tesla Model 3, for example, has a battery capacity of 50 to 82 kWh. Let’s assume the lowest capacity of 50 kWh. A car battery is basically unusable long before it has lost around half its capacity. So 25 kWh. American households on average consume 10.6 MWh annually or about 29 kWh per day.
So an old Tesla battery still provides enough electricity to power an American household for nearly an entire day.
pufferfischerpulver@feddit.de 10 months ago
Really puts into perspective what a monumental waste of energy individual traffic, also with electric cars, is as well.
scarilog@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Well, sort of, it’s just that any sort of locomotion requires a lot more energy than you might think.
MyPornAlt@lemmynsfw.com 10 months ago
There’s also something about their peak current being reduced with age, and in this use case, they don’t really need that peak current, so they really can stay useful for a long time in this use case