He disconnected the house from the power grid. Uses a battery from a broken Tesla car

A US congressman from Kentucky came up with an original idea for energy storage. Instead of using the utility grid, it supplies your home with Tesla Model S electricity.

Design by Congressman Thomas Massey The elektroz.pl . site describes. The politician brags that for several years he has been using his own energy storage, which relies on a battery Who broke Tesla. Messi bought the car in 2018 for $ 15,000 (about 61.4 thousand PLN).

The congressman wrote the control software for his power bank and ran it on a Raspberry Pi computer with an Arduino controller. The energy storage capacity of private production is 85 kWh. It should be noted that Massey has not been connected to the public network for more than 15 years. Before he built his own power bank, he was using photovoltaic cells.

The energy store that occupies the congressman’s house is currently fully charged by 69 solar panels with a maximum power of 17 kW. When it is fully charged, It can provide electricity for three days or six days when the sky is overcast.

The congressman says his family works 24/7 without any interruption. Two years ago, his 14 kW panels were capable of generating 56 kWh of energy during the day. Daily Massie uses about 18 kWh in his house without heat pumps.

The entire structure is located in the basement extension. Massie also has a combustion power generator in the house and a wood gasification boiler with a capacity of 40 kW, which is used for heating.

It is worth noting that Tesla offers special batteries for the direct purpose of supplying electricity to the house. The Powerwall lithium-ion battery is currently available in version 2 with a capacity of 13.5 kWh and 5 kW constant power. So a single battery can easily reach almost annual consumption. 3800-4500 kWh – The service informs fotowoltaikaonline.pl.

On the manufacturer’s website The product is described as follows: Powerwall is a battery that stores energy, detects power outages, and automatically becomes your home’s power source in the event of a power outage. Unlike generators, the Powerwall battery allows you to use lighting and charge phones without noise, fuel, or maintenance. You can connect it to a solar battery and charge it with sunlight.

However, the Tesla Powerwall 2 isn’t cheap. in a Belgium costs about 7.5 thousand for the battery. Euros (more than 34,000 PLN). In addition, you need to add a portal and other hardware (740€), an application deposit (99€) and installation costs (1100-3300€). In this context, Mr. Massey’s energy storage turns out to be a very economical solution. How easy it is to count Its hardware capacity matches that of six Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries.