The wall mount surprised me, but 10KWh at the same density as the Model S battery should be only 155lb. That's not too bad, although you need a solid connection to the building structure. Having it above floor level is a good thing, since it won't be shorted out by minor flooding.
If you get a new solar installation, installing one of these seems an obvious win. The solar installation already includes the inverters and control gear. Without solar, it's probably not worth the trouble for residential.
The average American house uses 30 KWh per day. If you have daily sun and a low nighttime air conditioning load, 10KWh should get you through the night. Hawaii - perfect. Southern California - looks good. Texas - get two to get you through the night with A/C.
As I've learned more about heat pumps I've been wondering why we all use air-source cooling for central A/C. We are cooling our condensers with hot summer time air when the temperature is much lower just four feet under the yard.
The energy requirements would drop way down by cooling the condenser with a water ground loop.
Ground loops are seen as expensive for installation, but I don't understand why. It's just plastic tubing buried in the yard. I've been wondering if a hole digging robot could lower the price. The carbon and money savings would be huge if we could bring down the cost of ground loop installation.
I very briefly looked into this. It seems to be the same reason that simple and obvious things like solar water heating systems are so expensive in the US, but not elsewhere: Lack of awareness & low demand but few installers who target the eco/luxury niche product at a high price. These systems usually get installed only in high-end homes.
Climatemaster has about a million US ground-heatsink heat pump installations. In their system, the ground loop is water with antifreeze, not Freon, so there's an additional heat exchanger.
Rheem, the big water heater manufacturer, sells solar water heating systems. That's progress; previous solar-only sellers were kind of flaky. (See "hot2o.com", which disappeared.) Solar water heating systems have a reputation for leaking. Buying something that is supposed to last 10-20 years from a small company is a problem.
One of the things I've been working on are open source designs that transform sunlight into heat. I used cardboard, black aluminum foil and tacks for much of the heat for my home this past winter.
I'm also working on a simple open source design for an outdoor solar thermal panel that heats air to 130F. It can be built using diy vacuum forming and foam insulation.
I have a vision of open source diy solar thermal fixing the market failure you are talking about.
I'm just spitballing here, but one has to be concerned about how much heat soaking the ground loop can take before its effectiveness goes down significantly. Dirt is a pretty good insulator. How much will the "ambient dirt temp" increase after X hours of running AC? How long does it take for the heat to dissipate?
That is why its critical to properly size the system. With the right size loop it works well. Also if you figure an ambient air temperature of 80-100 you can raise the dirt temp a lot before its as warm as the air.
I wish the thing was built in such a way as to allow it to sit on a raised pedestal of sorts, with only lightweight bolts into the wall. That would address the flooding concern just fine.
If you get a new solar installation, installing one of these seems an obvious win. The solar installation already includes the inverters and control gear. Without solar, it's probably not worth the trouble for residential.
The average American house uses 30 KWh per day. If you have daily sun and a low nighttime air conditioning load, 10KWh should get you through the night. Hawaii - perfect. Southern California - looks good. Texas - get two to get you through the night with A/C.