"Within The Power of Humanity:" The Launch of the Tesla Powerwall

This week Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Powerwall and set about a media frenzy. What makes this product launch different from any other? The fact that it addresses one of the key challenges facing the future of power, and by extension the future of our climate: energy storage.

The Tesla Powerwall, Musk claims, is the "missing piece" to a world of sustainable energy. It is a battery for the whole home or business, charged by the huge "fusion reactor in the sky". The product itself is a wall-mounted device marginally bigger than a standard home flat screen TV which Musk says owners can mount in their garage or outside their house. At $3,500 USD, much of the discussion surrounding this breakthrough technology has been regarding the economic viability for average homeowners: does this product, many are asking, deserve to be already sold out until mid-2016? Some have claimed it as revolutionary, others say it is a "toy for rich green people". What has been largely unaddressed in many mainstream media, however, is the human impact.

During the launch video, Musk makes an interesting comparison. In a lot of developing countries, rural areas or island states, mobile phones leapfrogged landlines in terms of usage. The infrastructure of landline telecoms was unnecessary. Likewise, the Tesla Powerwall will eradicate the need for a large scale energy network for the parts of the world that do not already have it. A technology that connects, empowers and enriches the world, whilst at the same time dramatically helping to curb carbon emissions, seems like an extraordinary product.

nsquared stands for advancing the world collaboratively, and the Tesla Powerwall is an exceptional example of realising this vision. The future is looking bright.