Whatever Tesla Announces Today… Wait
April 30th, 2015Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in NZ.
—
Tesla Powerwall Press Kit Leaks Before Presentation
The Powerwall Home Battery increases the capacity for a household’s solar consumption, while also offering backup functionality during grid outages.
The Powerwall is available in 10kWh, optimized for backup applications or 7kWh optimized for daily use applications. Both can be connected with solar or grid and both can provide backup power. The 10kWh Powerwall is optimized to provide backup when the grid goes down, providing power for your home when you need it most. When paired with solar power, the 7kWh Powerwall can be used in daily cycling to extend the environmental and cost benefits of solar into the night when sunlight is unavailable.
Tesla’s selling price to installers is $3500 for 10kWh and $3000 for 7kWh. (Price excludes inverter and installation.) Deliveries begin in late Summer.
—
Tesla Powerwall Announcement Livestream Scheduled Start 8:30pm PST
—
Solar panel and inverter technologies are mature, safe and economically viable for millions of people in lots of places and circumstances. When it comes to large capacity, high power density battery systems, on the other hand, we’re at the very beginning of an exciting new paradigm.
Whatever Tesla announces today, my personal and professional advice (all of my grid-tie PV customers are now asking about batteries) for the average residential solar user is to wait at least until Tesla’s Gigafactory has ramped production.
What?
Wait two or three more years?
Yep. Definitely. Wait.
The R&D effort that has been going into batteries recently is akin to multiple Manhattan Projects. Dozens of companies are going to bloody themselves competing against each other to convince you (and/or your company) to go with their nextgen energy storage systems over the next few years.
Whatever Tesla is going to show today should be thought of as merely a hint of what’s to come. This is probably going to go down as the energy storage system equivalent of the Motorola DynaTAC:
On October 13, 1983, David D Meilahn placed the first commercial wireless call on a DynaTAC from his 1983 Mercedes 380SL to Bob Barnett, former president of Ameritech Mobile Communications, who then placed a call on a DynaTAC from inside a Chrysler convertible to the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell who was in Germany for the event. The call, made at Soldier Field in Chicago, is considered by many as a major turning point in communications. Later Richard H. Frenkiel, the head of system development at Bell Laboratories, said about the DynaTAC: “It was a real triumph; a great breakthrough.”
Motorola DynaTAC
The same Wikipedia article states, “The DynaTAC’s retail price, $3,995 (about $9500 in present-day terms).”
So sit back, enjoy the show, but hold on to your wallet.
Related: Tesla’s Gigafactory Could be Obsolete Before It Even Opens
Have you seen this column today
http://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/will-the-tesla-powerwall-let-you-go-off-grid-for-3500/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SolarPowerPanels+%28Solar+Power+Blog%29
At the end which I have pasted below is the most interesting item – can we do this in NZ ?
You see your connection to the grid can actually turn a profit for you – if your battery inverter is smart enough. What am I going on about? I’m talking about another announcement today that you might have missed.
There is a little Aussie company in Canberra called Reposit Power. They have developed software that can be uploaded to a battery inverter. This software talks to the National Electricity Market, and does deals with them. To cut a long story short – it lets you trade your solar + battery power on that market instead of getting a piddly 6-8c from your Feed In Tariff. Sometimes the cost on the wholesale market goes up to $13.50 per kWh (yes – you read that right!). If you can pump a few kW out in those peak times you are well on the way to offsetting your grid connection charges. This is not vaporware. I saw it up and running on a farm near Canberra a couple of weeks ago.
Reposit power announced today that the Tesla PowerWall will come with their software pre-installed on some compatible battery inverters. This may well mean that you can keep connected to the grid, with the benefits that brings of backup power and sharing of excess solar, while the software on your battery inverter turns a profit which will offset some – if not all – of your grid connection fees.
That’s big news indeed. Many people think the energy utopia is grid disconnection. It’s not. You wouldn’t disconnect your computer from the internet, and you shouldn’t disconnect your home from the grid.
The benefits of lots of solar+battery systems all connected together – sharing power and flattening power spikes – are much greater than lots of off grid solar systems working in isolation. Now, with the smarts being developed by the likes of Reposit Power – coupled with the affordable battery systems that Tesla have announced – solar owners will be able to profit from staying on the grid. And that’s much better for the soul than railing against the injustice of 6c Feed In Tariffs and cutting the connection in a fit of anger. Grid connected solar with batteries has just become unstoppable. Bring it on.
I’ve almost gone blind trying to find out more information about the Tesla Powerwall. The fact is that we don’t have the actual specs yet or know what the installed cost / kWh is going to be. Nobody knows how that thing is going to integrate with existing solar power systems. I sent requests for information on that to Tesla, SMA and Enphase. No responses yet.
Specs:
Powerwall specs:
Mounting: Wall Mounted Indoor/Outdoor
Inverter: Pairs with growing list of inverters
Energy: 7 kWh or 10 kWh
Continuous Power: 2 kW
Peak Power: 3.3 kW
Round Trip Efficiency: >92%
Operating Temperature Range: -20C (-4F) to 43C (110F)
Warranty: 10 years
Dimensions: H: 1300mm W: 860mm D:180mm
—
Inverter: Pairs with growing list of inverters (???)
Also, input voltage??? Not mentioned anywhere.
What you see on the gearhead forums is a lot of people scratching their heads about how exactly this thing fits in with existing solar systems.