Vermont utility says it will be the first to install Tesla powerwalls in the US

Tesla's site says "Each Powerwall has a 7 kWh energy storage capacity, sufficient to power most homes during the evening using electricity generated by solar panels during the day."

As long as you're not turning on every light in the house, I'd imagine it could handle a couple hours of outage, particularly in Vermont where the need for A/C is limited. Might not want to run an electric stove, but it'd certainly power a few lights, phone chargers, and a gas furnace.

Holy run-on, Batman!

Anyway, it's almost a 100% certainty that a utility company won't throw massive amounts of cash into a capital project just to "be seen as hip"...particularly when they're operating in a state that doesn't have a de-regulated consumer energy market (such as Vermont, in this case).

This happens every day, all across America, it just doesn't get made visible to consumers. That's why the utility is asking to be allowed to interact with this battery, it's just a subtle variation on the smart grid demand management stuff that's been going on for the last decade or so, that allows utilities to avoid paying peak rates for electricity generation.

(This is also why solar is worth so much in places where the peak load for air-con roughly matches the solar profile)

A 7kWh battery can hold quite a few hours worth of household usage in state like Vermont where people don't use much air conditioning.

The value to the utility is due to peak shaving, the cost of the marginal energy at peak loads is much more than the average wholesale price.

For a decade or more New York has paid commercial and industrial customers something like $50M to shut down capacity on demand in exchange for lower electric rates.

Doing that delays or avoids $500M investments in power plants. Time shifting and solar build on this idea.

If you live in the boonies where power interruption is routine, partial power preservation means your fridge, well pump and heat continue to work. You don't need to worry about frozen pipes in the winter when your on vacation or lost groceries after a thunderstorm in the summer.