Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk’s tweeted promise to unveil a “major new Tesla product line—not a car” on April 30 is being interpreted as a sign that the company’s home storage battery is about to hit the market.
If that’s right, the announcement “could ultimately be a game-changer for the solar industry,” writes Energy and Capital Editor Jeff Siegel. “A game-changer that, if it delivers the way the Tesla Model S has delivered on performance, design, and efficiency, could catapult Tesla into one of the most powerful companies in the world.”
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With the solar power market “growing like a beautiful, unstoppable weed,” Siegel writes, Musk made the following statement on an earnings call last month:
“We’re going to unveil the Tesla home battery, the consumer battery that would be for use in people’s houses or businesses, fairly soon. We have the design done, and it should start going into production in about six months or so. We’ve probably got a date to have a sort of product unveiling. It’s probably in the next month or two.”
If the system allowed more and more solar customers to disconnect from the grid, “your utility would become superfluous,” Siegel notes.
