He can afford them.
I'm disappointed you didn't drop any F-bombs on prime-time TV.
Subtle editing
Seriously though, good story. Did it say break-even time was 10 years ?
Some of the stuff I have read has said 20 years ?
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/01/tesla-powerwall-number-crunching-pricing-and-payback-times/
Dunno what figures they're using, but on my current power rates - no off-peak available, the ROI is about 8 years on current estimates, considering inflation.
That gizmodo article makes a lot of assumptions about off-peak power being available, which it isn't in every case (including mine). And the pricing for the 4kW system is plain wrong, even considering the discount, and they've also decided to settle on the pricier single-phase version.
Note also that they have, at NO point, published what the kWh / day is for the "average" household they're measuring, and assume prices will never change.
So I'm going to assume they're neck-bearded, inner city hipsters living in apartments powered by kale farts and the glowing sense of self-worth they get sending money to Uganda or some shit, using only 1kWh per day because they charge their Macbooks at work and go out to eat ethically-sourced quinoa bagels drizzled with Steve Jobs' spooge for every night.
However, I need to deal with the reality of owning a fucking house, with a fucking pool, and fucking air conditioning on a 40+ fucking day, and living in the fucking thing:
My electricity currently is a tick under 23c per kWh ex GST. I usually burn about 18-20kWh per day and the system will pull about 22 out of the sun on an overcast day - based on the sample size of 1 day so far
I did the sums and against the evidence of my existing power bills, knowing that no amount of power generation can cancel out the connection fee, and came up with around 8 years on
current pricing.
Current pricing: 8.3 years
Increase 5%: 7.9 years
Increase 10%: 7.5 years
Increase 20%: 6.9 years
Remember, that's just the increase of the average price of electricity across the ROI period of x years. The longer that period is, the more likely it is to go up on average.
And a 10% increase in this case is only 2 cents per kWh - 36-40 cents a day ex GST at my place!
Further, when the guvmint decides its time to put a carbon tax back out there, there will be a massive impost on the end user that the energy companies won't want to take. Have a look at your power bill when the Carbon Tax was repealed - good win, if temporary, for consumers.
But pricks in some states are paying over 30c per kWh which is just robbery, and will ROI this shit inside 5 years.
And that isn't considering what these guys are going to do - selling power out of your storage system for more than the feed-in tariff:
http://www.repositpower.com/
At the moment I'm about to blow that ROI figure out, because I found a cheaper energy provider (Simple Energy are about 15% cheaper than Energy Australia and have 26% pay-on-time discount for NRMA Members) so that figure now isn't 100% accurate once I change over.
But for the average person it is, and valid in my opinion. I'm not sure what gizmodo's angle is there, trying to spruik figures of 20+ years, but they've got no idea what a regular house out this way goes through in power.
But once you've spent the money up front - and I had it to spend due to a minor windfall - the running costs of $2K per year out of the house kicks the shit out of using that money for my offset account.