Seems like they supply each person with 2 Tesla powerwalls for the $55/month and get a reduction in their bills that depends on how much power they choose to share to the grid during power outages.
They've already closed down 2 peaker power plants because of this, so it doesn't seem to just be about handling power outages, but also handling fluctuating power usage instead of firing up extra power plants.
Lithium is not the way to go for home batteries. As size/weight are not an issue for a basement or shed install, oldschool lead-acid are much cheaper and can be easily recycled once at end of life.
Those tesla wall packs will be a massive headache when they give up the ghost. Read the contract carefully. Who is responsable for end-of-life disposal? Where/how are they to be disposed of? Lead acids can be taken to any number of recycling centers, some will even pay you for them.
Lead-acid batteries are amazing for starting an engine, and terrible at basically anything else. They're slow to charge and very sensitive to over-discharge: it's generally recommended to never go below 50% state-of-charge (so you basically need twice the capacity in the first place), and even one full-discharge event will permanently reduce their overall capacity. The fact that they're almost impossible to over-charge means they're never paired with a proper BMS so they usually aren't protected against this type of damage. Also they need to be fully-charged every few days, so they're a poor choice in an application where they're constantly cycled.
Lithium batteries in contrast only need a ~10% buffer, and don't care about being topped off except for calibrating the BMS in certain variants (the only reason why LFP cars want you to charge to 100% regularly), so you don't have to over-provision as much. End-of-life is being sorted out as we speak, recycling companies are popping up as discarded batteries from cars are becoming common. Some may even pay you for them too.
hettygreen · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://electrek.co/2026/07/28/vermonts-largest-energy-source-is-now-a-virtual-power-plant/" rel="nofollow">https://electrek.co/2026/07/28/vermonts-largest-energy-sourc...
Seems like they supply each person with 2 Tesla powerwalls for the $55/month and get a reduction in their bills that depends on how much power they choose to share to the grid during power outages.
They've already closed down 2 peaker power plants because of this, so it doesn't seem to just be about handling power outages, but also handling fluctuating power usage instead of firing up extra power plants.
sandworm101 · · focus · HN ↗
Those tesla wall packs will be a massive headache when they give up the ghost. Read the contract carefully. Who is responsable for end-of-life disposal? Where/how are they to be disposed of? Lead acids can be taken to any number of recycling centers, some will even pay you for them.
emilecantin · · focus · HN ↗
Lithium batteries in contrast only need a ~10% buffer, and don't care about being topped off except for calibrating the BMS in certain variants (the only reason why LFP cars want you to charge to 100% regularly), so you don't have to over-provision as much. End-of-life is being sorted out as we speak, recycling companies are popping up as discarded batteries from cars are becoming common. Some may even pay you for them too.