Tesla Motors is now more than an electric car maker. As expected, the California company late Thursday night presented new stationary batteries for homes, businesses and even utilities, all wrapped up in a significant new business called Tesla Energy.

There was nothing revolutionary about the lithium-ion battery technology itself in the “Powerwall” and “Powerpack” products that CEO Elon Musk showed off. But the vision Musk presented – in a live-streamed event that was powered, he said, by Tesla batteries that had been charged using the rooftop solar on the company’s Hawthorne facility – was of nothing less than an entire remaking of the global energy infrastructure, one that would render fossil fuels and all their ill impacts obsolete.

All the world’s energy needs – electricity, transport, heating – could be met through a combination of renewable energy and 2 billion 100-kilowatt-hour Powerpacks, Musk said.

He acknowledged it would be a massive undertaking, but noting that there are 2 billion cars and trucks in the world, said, “This is actually within the power of humanity to do.”

The lofty talk lifted an announcement that otherwise fell right in line with expectations; every indication was that Tesla would unveil batteries for home and bigger-scale storage, and it did. Most of the focus was on the “Powerwall” unit for home use.

The Powerwall is a wall-mounted unit measuring around 4 feet high, 3 feet wide and a half-foot deep. There’s a $3,500 version (wholesale, and not including inverter or installation) that can store 10 kilowatt-hours of energy, about a third of what the average U.S. household uses in a day, and “is optimized to provide backup when the grid goes down,” Tesla said in a media release.

A $3,000 version can store 7 kWh and “can be used in daily cycling to extend the environmental and cost benefits of solar into the night when sunlight is unavailable,” the company said.

Up to nine Powerwalls can be installed together, Musk said.

Tesla has been quietly making similar units in very small numbers in the past year or so for pairing with home and business solar installations by SolarCity, the rooftop solar company that Musk has a big hand in. But last night Musk presented the Powerwall as a sleek product for the broader market that would transform the public’s perception of batteries. It was like Jobs talking about a new laptop, or phone.

“The issue with existing batteries is that they suck,” Musk said. “They’re really horrible, expensive, unreliable, stinky, ugly … bad in every way.” So bad (and big) that they are typically hidden away in a battery room, he said.

By contrast, with the Powerwall, “A normal household can mount this in their garage or on a wall outside their house. It doesn’t take up any room.”

While analysts see the energy storage market growing, exactly who can take advantage of battery storage, and how, remains a bit up in the air, beyond those who simply want to free themselves from the grid at whatever cost and those seeking to protect themselves from power interruptions.

Tesla talked about “load shifting,” saying “the battery can provide financial savings to its owner by charging during low rate periods when demand for electricity is lower and discharging during more expensive rate periods when electricity demand is higher.”

That can definitely be true for businesses that pay peak-demand rates – Tesla and SolarCity have already been trying to make that play, and they also recently introduced a microgrid solution with energy storage aimed at municipalities.

Whether or not a battery makes sense for homeowners will depend on their unique circumstances of energy use and electricity rate structure, although as solar becomes more pervasive and battery prices decline the equation will improve for storage. The Powerwall prices Musk announced last night were lower than had been expected, even if they weren’t all-in prices, and Musk is predicting further, hefty declines.

From a utility perspective, batteries could be a threat, stealing demand, although utilities could also benefit from the buffer batteries could provide on a smart grid. And the rise of renewables has introduced the problem of steep ramps (California’s famous duck curve), which batteries could help alleviate..

But all of these potential benefits are a bit fuzzy now; the rate and regulatory structures necessary to make batteries commonplace will have to be developed and business models will need to evolve.

Musk said the Tesla batteries could be ordered now through the Tesla website, and would begin shipping in “three or four months.” Manufacturing is taking place at the Fremont factory where Tesla builds cars, but next year will begin “to transition to the Gigafactory.”

That’s the giant battery factory that Tesla is building outside Reno, Nevada. Experts have lauded the company for incremental improvements with its lithium-ion batteries, but the company is in possession of no secret sauce, and there are plenty of wannabe competitors out there talking up new technologies. But the $5 billion Gigafactory, with Panasonic, could give Tesla a big edge: Varun Sivaram, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a clean energy physicist, wrote on Forbes that Tesla might even crowd out new battery technologies that could offer a true leap forward.

Musk, however, said Tesla wasn’t aiming to own the space, just be a big part of it as it grows. “This is not something we think Tesla is going to do alone,” Musk said. “There’s  going to need to be many companies building Gigafactories.” In that vein, Musk said, Tesla battery and factory tech will be open source, like its EV technology.