"Billionaire Elon Musk thinks he can pave the way to a better energy future by turning the mattress-shaped batteries in Tesla’s electric car into upright pillars so they can be used to power homes, businesses and even utilities.
Musk will lift the veil Thursday on a new generation of batteries designed to store growing volumes of solar and wind energy. If he gets it right, Tesla Motors Inc. will have spun a significant second business off the technology originally designed for its electric vehicles -- and will gain a toehold in a business projected to generate tens of billions of dollars in a decade.
Nobody in the power industry has yet been able to come up with a cost-effective way to store large volumes of energy for later distribution. Tesla is making a bet that its huge $5 billion “gigafactory” currently under construction near Reno, Nevada, will enable the mass production needed to drive down the cost of batteries and make them competitive for a broad range of customers, including traditional suppliers of electricity."
Mark Chediak and Dana Hull report for Bloomberg April 28, 2015.
"Elon Musk Bulks Up Tesla Batteries in Leap Beyond Cars to Grid"
Source: Bloomberg, 04/29/2015