Has anyone obtained a Powerwall 2 installation quote yet?

[360C]

Bravo on that home setup. Very nice.

This is half of my dream for a future home. Home grown veggies, zero waste, minimal active energy input, electric everything!! I am gradually introducing and trialling sustainable products in my property developments and will go nutso with them when we can build our own home....ahmmm Grand Designs. Totally off topic, but good on you for taking yourself off grid (I'm sure this system will have you at net zero). Now to convince the wife to give up cheese, probably easier to go shopping for a new wife in the vegan shops...and we're too good a match, perhaps I'll just purchase carbon offsets for the cheese!!

Thanks, it is a pretty over the top installation for a residential application which isn't going to be economically viable (yet) for most people. We have a payback period of about 6-7yrs because of site specific factors and the $4k to $6k annual fuel savings on top of the power savings from being "off grid". You also need a lot of suitable roof space for an 80 panel installation and we have the panels in 2 different sections. The visible area uses totally black solar panels with black glass cosmetic infill panels that follow the shape of the roof area. From a distance it looks like a solid pane of black glass end to end and you don't notice it on the dark grey tiles. The 2nd area of panels is on the flat garage section of the house which can't be seen from the street.
We also have a dedicated plant room for the battaries and equipment as you can see in the first 2 pictures.
Last picture is a sample readout from the software post upgrade. The peak in consumption at 11am is charging a Tesla on single phase.
We have 3 chargers on site, 2 triple phase for fast charging and the single phase which will charge the car most days purely from direct power generation. You can also charge overnight on the single phase and it will draw from the batteries for the daily top up Tesla charge.
Charging on the triple phase will exceed the capacity of the system and will draw energy from the grid for the balance of power required.
Essentially the system is sufficient to run 2 daily driver Tesla's and a big house "off grid" for all but a couple of winter months in Melbourne.
Our area has had a few power outages over the last 12mths and I must admit it is pretty cool to keep on trucking as normal when everyone else is using candles. If we don't charge the cars or use the A/C we can run the house purely on direct solar/battery storage for a week or more.

I also run a 60kw solar system with 48kw/h of battery storage at work. That one really pays for itself as I can keep trading in blackouts and at current energy prices saves me about $35k a year.

Forgot to mention both home and work have complete LED and energy efficient equipment upgrades. The bang for your buck with doing that actually exceeds the return on solar so that is always the first step.

 

[Simbul]

Thanks, it is a pretty over the top installation for a residential application which isn't going to be economically viable (yet) for most people. We have a payback period of about 6-7yrs because of site specific factors and the $4k to $6k annual fuel savings on top of the power savings from being "off grid". You also need a lot of suitable roof space for an 80 panel installation and we have the panels in 2 different sections. The visible area uses totally black solar panels with black glass cosmetic infill panels that follow the shape of the roof area. From a distance it looks like a solid pane of black glass end to end and you don't notice it on the dark grey tiles. The 2nd area of panels is on the flat garage section of the house which can't be seen from the street.
We also have a dedicated plant room for the battaries and equipment as you can see in the first 2 pictures.
Last picture is a sample readout from the software post upgrade. The peak in consumption at 11am is charging a Tesla on single phase.
We have 3 chargers on site, 2 triple phase for fast charging and the single phase which will charge the car most days purely from direct power generation. You can also charge overnight on the single phase and it will draw from the batteries for the daily top up Tesla charge.
Charging on the triple phase will exceed the capacity of the system and will draw energy from the grid for the balance of power required.
Essentially the system is sufficient to run 2 daily driver Tesla's and a big house "off grid" for all but a couple of winter months in Melbourne.
Our area has had a few power outages over the last 12mths and I must admit it is pretty cool to keep on trucking as normal when everyone else is using candles. If we don't charge the cars or use the A/C we can run the house purely on direct solar/battery storage for a week or more.

I also run a 60kw solar system with 48kw/h of battery storage at work. That one really pays for itself as I can keep trading in blackouts and at current energy prices saves me about $35k a year.

Forgot to mention both home and work have complete LED and energy efficient equipment upgrades. The bang for your buck with doing that actually exceeds the return on solar so that is always the first step.

Hi 360C, very impress setup, quick question, is the setup because you want to be "green", hate paying the power companies, or a bit of both? Reason for question is instead of using your own power, you can use AGL's ($1 a day unlimited charging) to charge the Tesla and push the excess into the grid to decrease pay period, but the $1 may work out to be more than you use if you don't do a lot of driving.

I am currently building new house (large) with solar and battery setup (not yet configured) and currently average about 25kw a day for Tesla. In my current house average power usage is about 20kw a day, so expect new house to be around 40kw a day plus the Tesla, as there is no town water or sewage where l am moving to, so everything is pumped... so your system is a great starting point to work off, and if payback period is less than 7yrs, definitely worth it.

 

[NovoCasGreeny]

Hi 360C, very impress setup, quick question, is the setup because you want to be "green", hate paying the power companies, or a bit of both? Reason for question is instead of using your own power, you can use AGL's ($1 a day unlimited charging) to charge the Tesla and push the excess into the grid to decrease pay period, but the $1 may work out to be more than you use if you don't do a lot of driving.

I am currently building new house (large) with solar and battery setup (not yet configured) and currently average about 25kw a day for Tesla. In my current house average power usage is about 20kw a day, so expect new house to be around 40kw a day plus the Tesla, as there is no town water or sewage where l am moving to, so everything is pumped... so your system is a great starting point to work off, and if payback period is less than 7yrs, definitely worth it.

Simbul, the other thing you may find is that if it is rural or semi rural and needs a connection or you need to extend any existing connection there are some serious dollars to trump up just for that. Some friends of mine were quoted $35k to 'connect' to the grid, that was going to pay for the minor grid works to connect them. As it was a shed with little need for power they just stuck a PV system on the roof and they use power when it is available. $35,000 though is a 15 kw PV system and two Powerwalls in today's money, the cost of connection is going to make things easier to justify in future.

 

[Simbul]

After doing some more digging, found this

From Solarquote.com.au

"Unless your local electricity network provides a local variation to a new Australian Standard that becomes mandatory on Thursday 30th, it may be illegal to install a Powerwall 2 plus solar on a single phase."

Will it be illegal to install a single phase Powerwall 2 from Thursday? - Solar Quotes Blog

 

[raynewman]

Home builder makes the Tesla Powerwall 2 standard in every new home

 

[360C]

Hi 360C, very impress setup, quick question, is the setup because you want to be "green", hate paying the power companies, or a bit of both? Reason for question is instead of using your own power, you can use AGL's ($1 a day unlimited charging) to charge the Tesla and push the excess into the grid to decrease pay period, but the $1 may work out to be more than you use if you don't do a lot of driving.

I am currently building new house (large) with solar and battery setup (not yet configured) and currently average about 25kw a day for Tesla. In my current house average power usage is about 20kw a day, so expect new house to be around 40kw a day plus the Tesla, as there is no town water or sewage where l am moving to, so everything is pumped... so your system is a great starting point to work off, and if payback period is less than 7yrs, definitely worth it.

Sorry it took me a while to get back to replying to this; but hopefully this will provide some data that might be useful to you.

Why did I go for this setup? Not that easy to answer; but probably because I like to keep life interesting with a never ending series of complex projects I originally started to look into solar/battery systems a few years ago when my energy bills at work started to become a serious expense rather than an incidental one. After a lot of research the work system ended up being over 3 times the size of the home system that I am discussing here; but thats another story. Once the work project was complete I started to look into a home system that would take a pretty big house off grid and also run 2 Tesla EV's, thereby saving about $5k-$6k a year of fuel on top of the energy savings.............and a couple of years down the track thats how I ended up with my home system (version 2). I guess it was the challenge of pushing the boundaries rather than being particularly green or dollar conscious. Having said that, I'm effectively banking the circa $40k of annual savings after the 6-7yr payback period. With a projected system life of 15-20 years that becomes significant money.

Anyway on to the data. The first software printout shows the energy consumption on the top and energy generation on the bottom from 12.00am until 5.39pm on the 30th March. During the day I charged a loaner Model S (no dual charger option) on our single phase charger. Peak energy draw was about 8kw after subtracting the 1kw the house has as a base load. This is the first peak in consumption and it provided about 150km of range. Later on I charged our P85DL (With dual charger option) on our 3 phase charger for about 100km of range. you can see that on the higher 2nd peak in consumption. You can see that it is drawing about 25kw after subtracting the 1kw of house base load. You can see that charging the first Tesla on the single phase charger did not require energy from the grid as there is no red colour in the consumption peak. However charging the Model S with dual charger option on 3 phase exceeded the systems capacity to provide the required energy and the excess was drawn from the grid which is denoted by the red area of the consumption peak.
Now for the sake of a complete 24hr coverage on that day I have included the full days readout in the 2nd attachment. This shows you what happened after 5.39pm at peak energy rates. Basically the house ran off the stored energy in the batteries until 10.50pm that night when it switched to grid sourced power which is again denoted in red. In a nutshell the system generated enough energy to provide 250km of range in the Tesla cars and still take the house essentially off grid. In a day when the Tesla cars are not charged for 250km's (more than most people would use) or they were charged solely on single phase chargers, the house would continue to run off the battaries until the solar kicked in again the next morning.

Now the 3rd attachment was something interesting (to me anyway) that I discovered today. The first peak in consumption is charging the Model S P85DL with dual charger option on a single phase charger. As expected this is covered completely by solar generated/stored energy even though the dual charger option means it now draws at a peak of 11kw for a dual charger equipped car Vs the earlier 8kw for a single charger equipped car. The 2nd peak in consumption is charging our new Model X (with "fast charging" option) on the 3 phase charger. The peak draw for the "fast charger" optioned car is much lower (as expected) at 17.7kw than it was for the dual charger equipped car which drew at 25kw. The system (on this particular day) goes very close to providing all the energy required to charge the Model X on triple phase, so you could pretty much use this set up on any reasonably sunny day without using too much energy from the grid. Obviously this will vary day to day depending on the amount of solar energy being produced and the state of charge of the battaries at the time.

It is worth noting that in a rural situation with no grid power your setup would be quite different. You would likely run a mix of solar and wind generated power with a diesel generator as well as batteries for energy storage. One of the interesting things about all this is that no 2 systems are ever the same and the setup is determined by individual site conditions and requirements.

 

[miimura]

If you had the time available before you had to drive the Model X in the last case, you could have turned down the charging current on the center screen and soaked up more of the solar power without cycling the batteries.

 

[360C]

If you had the time available before you had to drive the Model X in the last case, you could have turned down the charging current on the center screen and soaked up more of the solar power without cycling the batteries.

Very true; but I was experimenting with different scenarios.

 

[Mark E]

I'd be interested to see how that performs in june/July - that's when my solar generation crashes.

 

[360C]

I'd be interested to see how that performs in june/July - that's when my solar generation crashes.

I've been running the system for 2yrs all up, all but the last 6mths in the first version which was half the size. June and July are the worst 2 months for yield where it produces just under half the yield of December/January. It won't be off grid running the 2 Teslas; but it would comfortably run the house by itself, perhaps even one Tesla on top on some days.

 

[Murbs]

There'll be no installation quotes for PowerWall 2s in Western Australia since Tesla have confirmed that it is illegal to connect them to the grid in this state.

 

[Burnt Toast]

Any actual installs here?

 

[WA-T3sla]

There'll be no installation quotes for PowerWall 2s in Western Australia since Tesla have confirmed that it is illegal to connect them to the grid in this state.

Do you know why it's illegal?

 

[meloccom]

An old (2015) article outlining the reasons are poorly worded terms in energy contracts.
WA government feels the heat over “ban” on storage and EVs
I'm sure they will get around to fixing the issue.
When the time is right - At the appropriate juncture - when conditions are right - - -

 

[Jays200]

Not called "Wait-a-while" WA for nothing

 

[moose]

In August we will have had our Powerwall 1 for a year. We have a SolarEdge 5 kw inverter and 20 solar panels. Total cost was $16,000. We have a electric water heater on a timer from 9 to 11 am and a hot tub pump and heater which is scheduled from 12 to 7 pm. Only takes a few hours to heat up. We have 3 fridge, one is a beer can bar fridge. Gas cooktop. Double electric oven and a commercial dryer which we use when the sun shines.

In the summer months we end up with a credit on our electricity bill and a small charge the other months. At the moment what we generate from solar and storage we use. Very little goes back into the grid. In the summer months we return 10 to 15 kw per sunny day.

We are on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland. We are waiting for our Model 3.

PW1 has 888 batteries of the 18650 type. PW2 has the 2170 batteries which are installed in the Model 3 and later version of the S & X. The PW1 holds 6.4 kw of energy while the PW2 holds 13.5 kw and it's not much bigger in size.

 

[ChrsiH314]

I'm going forward with Natural Solar. They gave me a quote of about $16,500 for the solar system, $27,000 with 1 powerwall and $37,400 for two. Going for two. Solar going in this week, powerwalls a bit later. The solar's expensive because I'm going for Sunsolar panels. Part of the cost is I want to be able to run essential bits in the house if there's a blackout.

 

[MichaelVorst]

Installs are starting in NSW now - blow-by-blow at www.mikesgear.com