<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Those Tesla Motors lithium-ion battery packs aren\u2019t just powering electric luxury sports sedans for the 1% any more.\nThey\u2019ve started appearing in a small number of California homes to store electricity generated by rooftop solar panels, and beginning today SolarCity, the Silicon Valley solar installer, will start providing Tesla batteries for businesses that want to cut their utility bills. A big box retailer like Walmart could charge up a Tesla battery pack with cheap energy produced by its SolarCity rooftop photovoltaic array and then tap that power when demand \u2014 and electricity rates \u2014 spike.\nThat would let them minimize paying their local utility high \u201Cdemand charges\u201D for electricity when they need it most. And the cost of the SolarCity\u2019s system, called DemandLogic, effectively zero, according to SolarCity, since the monthly payments for energy storage would be less than the money saved by not forking over cash to the utility.\nAnd if that sounds like a threat to century-old monopoly utilities, it is. \u201COur business model is to become the energy company of the 21st century,\u201D SolarCity chief executive Lyndon Rive told The Atlantic. \u201CYou\u2019re still connected to the grid but the grid would be your secondary provider and the primarily provider would be your solar system and your storage device.\u201D\nFor now, though, it\u2019s only a minor threat to utilities that levy high demand charges, such as those in California and parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut where SolarCity is offering DemandLogic. And to get the Tesla battery pack you have to sign up for a solar array, which means only businesses with low-rise buildings and flat roof \u2014 retailers, corporate campuses \u2014 can take advantage of going solar.\nBut the trend is clear. Another Silicon Valley company, Stem, has begun installing 54-kilowatt-per-hour lithium-ion battery packs for corporate customers, allowing them to store electricity from the grid when rates are low and use that power when demand charges spike.\nWhile Stem is a startup, the utilities should be particularly wary of SolarCity and its partnership with Tesla Motors. (Tesla chief executive Elon Musk serves as SolarCity\u2019s chairman and is Rive\u2019s cousin.) Tesla and SolarCity\u2019s combined market cap \u2014 $21.3 billion \u2014 exceeds that of the parent companies of Pacific Gas &amp; Electric and Southern California Edison, the two big California utilities whose customers Rive covets.\nAnd SolarCity is pioneering the securitization of solar \u2014 giving it the ability to dip into a potentially vast pool of capital by packaging leases for photovoltaic systems into asset-backed notes that are sold to pension funds, hedge funds and other deep-pocketed investors.\nRive says DemandLogic should save commercial customers 20% in demand charges. The system\u2019s algorithms constantly monitor electricity supply and demand, charging and discharging the battery to minimize drawing expensive electricity from the power grid. The size of the battery pack will be customized for each business but would be able to store roughly 30% of the electricity generated by the solar array. And the Tesla batteries provide backup power if the grid goes down in an earthquake or storm \u2014 a key selling point as climate change spawns increasingly powerful hurricanes and tornadoes.\nWhile energy-storage systems would cut utilities\u2019 revenues, they would also help them balance supply and demand on the grid as increasing amounts of renewable but intermittent electricity are generated by wind and solar farms.\nLithium-ion batteries remain expensive, and Rive and SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass was sketchy on the details on how the economics pencil out when providing energy storage to customers for no money down.\nBut growing economies of scale are in SolarCity and Tesla\u2019s favor. \u201CIn places with high costs of electricity, I think you\u2019ll see up to 50% of solar systems will have energy storage,\u201D says Rive. \n\"The economics and scale that Tesla has achieved in the automotive market now make stationary energy storage more cost effective and reliable than it has ever been in the past,\" JB Straubel, Tesla's chief technical officer and co-founder, said in a statement. \"We expect this market to grow very rapidly now that we have crossed this economic threshold.\u201D\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\nImage: Flickr, ScaarAT"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/12/26/energy-revolution/>