Tesla jolts future of energy with new home battery
Culture
Tesla is taking us one step closer to living off the grid.
I'm Bridget Carey and this is you cnet update.
Tesla has created a home battery that is said to cut down on energy bills.
Tesla motors Chief Executive Elon Musk unveiled a brand new product, the power wall home battery, and this battery module hangs on the wall and has two purposes.
It can store energy it gathers from solar panels.
If you have solar panels.
But it also can charge itself up from the power grid during non peak hours like over night.
You see power companies tend to charge a higher price for electricity during peak hours.
So when the demand is high the idea is that your home can pull the juice from the battery to save money.
Now the power walls can also come in handy if the power goes out.
It comes in two capacities, the top model Can supply 1000 watts of current to your home for 10 hours, it costs $3,500, but of course there are also installation costs you have to think about, it comes out this summer.
Tesla wants to change the world when it comes to energy consumption, but outside of our world, we say goodbye to the robotic spacecraft, Messenger.
Which ran out of fuel and crashed on the surface of the planet Mercury on Tuesday.
The probe was launched in 2004 and reached Mercury in 2011.
It was only supposed to be a one year mission, but it was gathering information for over four years.
It used the last of its fuel to enter the gravitational pull of the planet And take its last photos closer to the surface.
This is the final image transmitted back to the Earth before it crashed at the speed of 8,750 miles per hour.
Right as Messenger went out with a bang, Microsoft began a commotion online that tells you how old you look.
Microsoft created a program that's It's learning how to detect age and gender.
And uploading a photo to How-Old.net either made your day or ruined it, because it tended to be off five to ten years for some people.
But the whole thing is totally bogus, because no matter which photo you Put in of Madonna, she's always in her 30s.
And there is something evil about this program, and I will have none of it.
And a quick note about a story from the other day.
The Uber app began offering lunch delivery in New York and I showed you what passes for a.
$13 salad on the service.
Within the app I wrote a comment complaining about the pathetic size of my lunch.
And the company did right back and refunded the cost of the salad.
So, good customer service, but lacking common sense to begin with to even offer some lettuce and side beets as a meal.
If you ordered lunch from Uber Send in a photo and let us know what you thought of the quality.
That's your tech news update.
You can head over to cnet.com for more.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
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