Tesla Battery Project Seeks To Turn Vermonters' Homes Into Tiny Power Plants | Alternative Energy | Forums

Great idea, good to see a local power company embracing change.

As our reliance on solar and wind energy grows, so does the challenge of reliability: The wind and sun can’t be turned on and off whenever people need electricity. One part of the solution is energy storage. 

That’s why Vermont’s largest utility, Green Mountain Power, is piloting a new project: It’s sold 500 Tesla home batteries to customers, both for the homeowner’s private use, and for the utility to draw on as a source of electricity.

Green Mountain Power is the first utility in the country to pilot the Tesla Powerwall battery in this way.  

Both the utility and Tesla are betting that this could be the way of the future, as we increasingly rely on disparate power sources in fields and homes — and not on massive centralized power plants.

On a recent sunny morning, homeowner Miguel Orantes had a sleek gleaming white Powerwall installed in his rustic basement in Bellows Falls, Vermont.  

“It’s going to be a great back-up system,” Orantes says. “So when power goes out, obviously there are some key things I’d like to keep going, like the alarm system, medical alert, the hot water heater if possible, obviously the food, just in order to to bridge the gap between the outage and whenever the power gets set back again.”

The battery itself stores about 6.4 kilowatt hours of energy, which could power the bare-bones needs of an average home for about six hours. It’s not meant to be relied on as a back-up generator that could power a home for days, but for Orantes, who lives downtown, it should be plenty to meet his needs. 

He had thought about getting a generator before, but didn’t want to keep diesel or gasoline around and deal with maintenance in the winter.

The battery and the inverter combined cost $6,500, not including installation. But Orantes has opted to pay monthly installments of $37.50 for 10 years — a total of $4,500. The price is reduced for homeowners who to allow Green Mountain Power to pull power from the battery.

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