Tesla’s Powerwall can change the look of your home and your electricity bill, but it is quite difficult to purchase. However, that is not a problem anymore as alternatives are slowly coming into the market. Orison is one such alternative, says a report from Gizmodo.
Wall-mounted version like Tesla Powerwall
Orison was launched as a Kickstarter project but has already earned more than $250,000—five times the amount requested. The people who got the opportunity to see the device at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) were quite impressed with some of its intelligent concepts.
Orison’s home battery comes in two versions. One is similar to Tesla’s Powerwall, a traditional wall-mounted device, while the other is a stylized tower that resembles an expensive hi-fi speaker. Irrespective of the form factor, the battery packs in 2.2 kWh with a constant flow of 1.8 kWh–enough for an AC unit, a laptop, and a television set to run for six hours and a refrigerator for 24 hours a day, the report says.
What’s interesting is that Orison’s home batteries connect to their own cloud system to figure out the time of the day that’s best to recharge. To store the energy to be consumed at peak hours, Orison’s batteries consume electricity when the kWh price is cheaper. Also this process is completely automatic.
Expensive but money well-spent
Orison’s batteries don’t need installation, whether they come in wall-mounted or tower form. A user just has to choose a location to place it in, plug the device, and that’s all. The company also offers a ten year or 5,000-recharge-cycle warranty.
The batteries also come with attractive gimmicks. There is a customizable LED backlighting in the powerwall version, and the tower version has a built-in integrated Bluetooth speaker and five 1.5W USB ports. The device also enables users to check the money they saved and see the overall utilization statistics. The first units are supposed to come out this summer.
A warning though: Orison’s batteries are just like Tesla’s batteries and are not inexpensive, so middle income households will have a problem buying them. The wall-mounted version will retail for $1,600, and the tower version will retail for $1,950. In comparison, a 7kWh Tesla Powerwall is $3,000, while the 10kWh one is $3500.
