Toyota Now Competes With Tesla Powerwall With a New Home Battery Pack

With the rise of photovoltaics and the high prices of electricity, more and more people think of partially disconnecting from electricity and if we join the solar panels to a hybrid inverter connected to a domestic battery, we could not only generate electricity for the day, but for part of the night.

Today, Toyota Motor Corporation following other manufacturers such as BYD or Tesla, announced that it has developed batteries based on the concept of safety, long life, high quality, good value for money and high performance so that customers can use them with peace of mind.

Tesla launched its "Tesla Energy" with the Powerwall and Powerpack in 2015. As I mentioned BYD and several other carmakers also got into the home energy market with battery packs. For example, Mercedes-Benz launched its home battery pack and Renault followed soon after. Now it's Toyota's turn with a home battery pack.

Toyota's home storage battery system ships today with deliveries to start in August.

The O-Uchi Kyuden system uses battery technology from electrified vehicles, such as Toyota's Battery Control, to provide a nominal capacity of 8.7 kWh and a nominal output of 5.5 kWh. This ensures safety and provides electricity supply to the whole house not only in normal situations, but even during power outages caused by natural disasters.

Also, by connecting with a photovoltaic system, it can supply the right amount of electricity according to the customer's needs during the day and night.

The system supports power supply from electrified vehicles (HEV, PHEV, BEV, FCEV) at 100VAC and can use the electricity stored in electric vehicles as a backup power source during power outages.

In addition, using a wireless LAN router connected to a hybrid power conditioner, they allow storage capacity, operation mode and other settings to be viewed and configured in real time from a dedicated application on a smartphone.

Torque News' Take On Toyota's Home Battery Pack

Some people say, if Toyota can do these batteries, why not using them to build more RAV4 Primes. I think they can and should do both. I would assumes that the more energy storage systems Toyota builds, the more experience it will get with batteries. Eventually, pricing would go down through efficiencies learned.

Another big question that people ask is the price of Toyota's home battery pack. How much will it cost, an how will the cost and quality compare with Tesla's Powerall? After that, people will be interested in how it interacts with EV charging. Can you supplement the power from your EV for an extended outage?

Please, let me know your thoughts on these issues. You can leave your comments below for discussion.

Armen Hareyan is the founder and the Editor in Chief of Torque News. He founded TorqueNews.com in 2010, which since then has been publishing expert news and analysis about the automotive industry. He can be reached at Torque News Twitter, Facebok, Linkedin and Youtube.