The first question everyone asks about a home battery is not whether it works — it is what it actually costs to get one on the wall. The honest answer is that the sticker price you see in a brochure is only about two-thirds of the real number. The rest is labor, permits, and the electrical work nobody mentions until the quote lands.
Every storm season, the same question lands in my inbox: should I buy a home battery or a standby generator? People usually expect a brand recommendation. What they actually need is a decision about how their house fails — and the answer changes completely depending on whether your outages are two hours or two weeks.
Tesla is the default answer. Someone hears “home battery” and thinks “Powerwall” — the same way people used to say “Kleenex” for tissues. That brand recognition is earned. The Powerwall 3 is a genuinely good battery: 13.5 kWh, 11.5 kW continuous output, integrated inverter, clean industrial design, and the Tesla app experience that the rest of the industry is still chasing.