I am dubious about the Tesla Powerwall

I spent the morning decoding error messages and tracing water lines for my radiant heat boiler. Initially the codes told me that I had insufficient water pressure on the feed line, and when I fixed that, then the boiler said that the output temperature was not responding as expected – likely because I left the resupply line open, and was trying to heat up a very large body of cold water. Or maybe not, because there is supposed to be a backflow valve preventing that. Whatever, I am operational again after downloading two very large manuals and learning more about burner error codes and operations than I ever wanted to.

This was on top of a separate plumbing issue we’ve been wrestling with for a month.

I don’t think most people want to spend time on the electricity, water, hot water, sewer, or other utilities. They just want it all to work when they hit the button. And are willing to spend a little bit of money to make that happen. Most people just want centrally supplied and centrally managed utilities. To switch to local supply/generation/storage, the savings have to be incredibly dramatic, or you have to value your time at a very low rate, or there must be no central alternative (ie off-grid locations). I am dubious that this will ever be the case in urban/suburban US or other major economies.

I also don’t want a 200 pound lump of lithium in my garage.