Tesla Powerwall Offered To Vermont Utility Customers… $0 Down
Originally published on Solar Love.
Vermont’s main utility is going to be providing Tesla Powerwall home battery systems to customers who want them. If the utility’s customer agrees to allow the utility to use electricity stored in a Powerwall at home, the customer will also get paid for its use. There are three ways a customer can pay for the Powerwall:
“GMP outlined to the Vermont Public Service Board its plan to offer three options to customers who want the Powerwall. Customers who share access of the battery will pay about $37.50 a month with no upfront cost, which equals $1.25 a day. Customers can also choose to purchase the Powerwall for about $6500, share access with GMP, and get a monthly bill credit of $31.76, which represents the value of leveraging the battery to help lower peak energy costs. And Vermonters can buy the Powerwall outright from GMP with no shared access for about $6500.”
Of course, the Powerwall battery system is meant to be paired with a solar power system to store excess electricity for periods when there is no sunlight, such as cloudy days and at night. The utility will be able to use some of the stored electricity to meet demand on the grid, rather than using conventional sources, like firing up a peaker plant, such as the Berlin plant. “The Berlin Gas Turbine facility is the largest peaking plant in Vermont, and consists of a Pratt & Whitney Twin Pack gas turbine generator and two Pratt & Whitney Simple Cycle FT4 engines. The unit has an approximate capacity of 50 MW at full output. Low-sulfur kerosene fuels the engines from two on-site fuel tanks.” Peaker plants can be expensive to operate and are typically not very environmentally friendly, because they use fossil fuels.
“This is community energy at the most local level, helping to increase resiliency for customers while we lower costs through innovations like battery storage. This ties into our eHome and eBiz program, as we work with Vermonters to accelerate the adoption of energy transformations in homes and businesses that are cost effective, use dramatically less energy and can operate more independently of the grid,” explained GMP president Mary Powell.
Using many home battery systems filled with electricity generated by solar panels is much better for the environment, and can be cheaper.
The utility will purchase 500 Powerwalls from Tesla in 2016 for the home energy storage program.
Of course, Vermont residents are still free to purchase and install other home energy storage batteries. The Powerwall seems to be the default option because of its low cost and high brand factor. In other words, the Tesla brand has become synonymous with boldness and quality in its niche.
Image Credit: Tesla
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Awesome! I hope this project is successful and other utility companies follow their lead!
Yes it is very encouraging to see a utility want to promote battery storage/sharing. I’d jump at it if it was offered where I live.
This is a very very smart move by the utility. With the Powerwall consumers will feel more insulated from outages and little more independent. Solar over production at peak production times can be absorbed at the source and drawn off during peak demand. The drawbacks of rooftop solar are eliminated for the utility *and* the lights don’t go out on the consumer either as is the case with grid tie solar. Everybody wins, including Tesla 🙂
Tesla would be the biggest winner. A much more resilient grid without needing lots of backbone infrastructure and utilities will still have some control back. If I were the utility, I would be more aggressive in this and would leverage wholesale buying of Powerwalls and from Tesla’s competitors too. Just give the specs out, and get quotes from various suppliers of residential battery storage.
This is a much better idea than the V2G concept. There is much better control for the utility, and it saves some roundtrip losses through the grid as electricity from powerwall will go to the nearest needing points.
I read this report on Greentech media and got a distinctly different impression of what the deal was. I thought that the customer paid $37.50 per month if they agreed to allow the Green mountain power to access their battery. I thought it was a bad deal, however if it is as the present article says then voila, suddenly its a good deal.
So lets see, the company puts a battery in your house for free and pays you $37.50 per month for the privilege of using the power sometimes? Have I got that straight? Is this something like the free solar panel installation from Solar City where they own the panels and you pay them a guaranteed rate which is less than grid rate but you give your rooftop for free?
Here is the report from Greentech media: “The first of these options involves the customer buying the $6,500
Powerwall, and then getting monthly bill credits of $31.76 — a figure
that would take 17 years to pay back the battery’s cost. The other, and
seemingly more attractive, option is to get the battery free of charge,
and then pay a monthly fee of $37.50 — what amounts to an interest-free
14-year Powerwall installment plan.” Sounds different doesn’t it?
From GMP website – (Formatting mine):-
GMP outlined to the Vermont Public Service Board its plan to offer three
options to customers who want the Powerwall.
Customers who share access of the battery will pay about $37.50 a month with no upfront cost, which equals $1.25 a day.
Customers can also choose to purchase the Powerwall for about $6500, share access with GMP, and get a monthly bill credit of $31.76, which represents the value of leveraging the battery to help lower peak energy costs.
And Vermonters can buy the Powerwall outright from GMP with no shared access for about $6500. – See more at:
http://news.greenmountainpower.com/press-releases/green-mountain-power-files-first-in-the-country-in–11g074430-001?feed=d51ec270-a483-4f6c-a55e-8e5fbe2238c2#sthash.q66dLc4p.dpuf
Thanks. I thought that seemed odd. The second-hand source Jake got his info from said, “Those who are willing to share access with the company can lease the system with no upfront investment and will receive a credit of $37.50 on their monthly electric bill.”
I just went and found the actual press release from Green Mountain Power and it was clear that was a misrepresentation/lacking info. I just corrected the article.
Hey Zach
Props to you for admitting to mistakes, and for sorting them out so quickly. That’s all anyone can ask of any of us.
However….
I have a concern with online after-the-fact editing. As much as it is great to be able to virtually white-out any mistakes at the swish of a mouse and correct instantaneously, there is a concern that the people who have ALREADY read the article will already have been misinformed, and will remain misinformed without ever knowing that they have been misinformed.
Not everyone follows the comments on a story, and most people don’t come back to re-read a story.
I think the right way to go about this is to publish a retraction or a correction, either as a separate (short) piece, or as an addendum to the article itself, making it clear that “a prior version of this story contained the line “blah blah blah” that was incorrect.
But of course if the reader has no way of knowing that the original story was wrong, he wouldn’t know to go back to it, so a separate story would be preferable.
I know we’ve differed as to the level of journalistic rigour that should be expected from a “blog”, but I think it’s only fair to do a formal correction when a glaring mistake has been made.
This has a number of advantages:
1. Any regular readers are likely to see the new story in their feeds and make a point of reading it if they had read the original, especially if they had an odd feeling about it at the time. So misinformation is cured before it persists and potentially develops a life of its own.
2. You don’t have two different versions of a story floating about, in two different universes (one of which is temporal). So the original story remains, but it now includes a distinct disclaimer, with a link to the new story.
3. It establishes your credibility as a trusted source .All grown up and professional like. It’s the way “REAL” newspapers do it. Because their integrity is their biggest asset.
4. Raises the level of EVERY other story you publish, if people know that any mistakes would have been in ANY Cleantechnica story they’re reading.
5. A mild level of “name and shame” for the writer of the story, who will hopefully make a little more effort next time. If you keep having to publish corrections for the same few writers over and over again, that’s a pretty good metric for judging the quality of their work. And you could have an award ceremony at the end of the year for those writers with the LEAST inaccuracies. Because people love a good awards ceremony.
6. A mild level of mea culpa on the part of the editorial team, which will hopefully remind them of the importance of their mission and inspire them to strive for even higher standards.
7. It gives you an opportunity to “flesh out” the original story and perhaps get a direct quote from the original source or at least a clarifying email. And you might refer to a debate in the comments and explain how “many people seem to misunderstand the concept of blah blah blah…” and then explain it for us. Or get some expert to do it. Your basic “follow-up” story. And if you can stir up some conflict or drama or strong differences of opinion, that doesn’t hurt for selling newspapers. Sorry, “views”.
8. You get another click (and and paid page view) from everyone who read the original. You might even be able to sell some bespoke advertising on the page to the company in question.
9. If you perhaps have a button at the bottom of each story, for “Report a factual inaccuracy in this story”, which generates a direct email to the editor/subeditor, your readers can do most of the work for you. And you keep them more engaged that way too…
10. It saves face for any other blogger/journo who quotes the (false) original article. Think about it. I wouldn’t want to quote you as a source for a particular controversial “fact, and post a link in my (big name news media) article, only to have people go there and find different information. Embarrassing!
Anyway. Don’t mean to tell you how to do your job or run your business. Just a suggestion, that would make my job easier (of trying to educate myself with as much useful information as possible in the shortest possible time).
If you become that preferred go-to resource for EVERYONE, methinks you will have not only a powerful platform to change the world, but a lucrative business too.
The 2nd paragraph above now explains the pricing, but it’s here again:
“GMP outlined to the Vermont Public Service Board its plan to offer three options to customers who want the Powerwall. Customers who share access of the battery will pay about $37.50 a month with no upfront cost, which equals $1.25 a day. Customers can also choose to purchase the Powerwall for about $6500, share access with GMP, and get a monthly bill credit of $31.76, which represents the value of leveraging the battery to help lower peak energy costs. And Vermonters can buy the Powerwall outright from GMP with no shared access for about $6500.”
Excellent sense of journalistic responsibility Zach! There is such sloppiness even in the biggest media outlets that it is vital that we congratulate journalists who actually care. Remember the architectural slogan “design like you give a damn”? That should be on all green websites as, “Inform like you give a damn”. Now we need someone who can translate that into Latin.
Yeah, we need to be more careful across the team to use the original source. Mistakes like this are not the way to go… 😛
Terribly rusty (It’s been years since I’ve used latin for anything…) and don’t know the translation for damn, so took some artistic liberties, but:
“Certiorem te dare rat asinum”
Sufficient for comic effect at the very least…
I think I can translate part of your latin….”something, something… rat’s ass”/ Perfect.
I chuckled.
Because apparently I’m twelve.
Do they also supply the solar panels? Does this make any sense financially for the utility or customer with just a battery taking power from the grid when it is windy or sunny and feeding it back in when it isn’t?
Yeah, I don’t see the point from the user’s perspective. You either pay 37.50 a year to have a box put in your house (Which you don’t control…) or get paid for buying it – but that’s a 17 year payback (again, only if you surrender control).
So what’s the homeowner’s benefit?
No more three dog nights?
I guess I’d have to mount mine indoors; gets too cold outside.
What I wonder is if I pay $37.50/mo. can I also use the Powerwall during the peak rate time so that the extra expense will be a wash with what I’ve gained?
My business partners needed NM CIT-1 this month and discovered an excellent service that has a ton of fillable forms . If people are searching for NM CIT-1 too , here’s
http://goo.gl/wE0JoA