Powerpack pricing

[mspohr]

1. I did plan to buy a power pack since you asked.
2. My extrapolation form Elon's tweet is obviously a mistake.
3. From my calculation although $250/kWh per power pack is still financially unsound but it's doable with enough convictions from a sane individual. There is a reason why buying 10 power wall units are not a good idea to start with.

So, why is it not a good idea to buy 10 Powerwalls?
I believe they are designed to work together.

 

[quartzav]

So, why is it not a good idea to buy 10 Powerwalls?
I believe they are designed to work together.

Yes, just because you can do it does not mean it is cost effective thus make sense for me to do it. My assumption from Elon's post was at or above 100kwh level it makes more sense to get bulk pricing which was hinted at much lower per kWh cost than buying in small quantities (such as one 7kWh power wall).

 

[mspohr]

Looks like some slight savings with the Powerwalls but you're right, nowhere near $250/kwh... I guess we'll just have to wait for the prices to come down.
Looks like lead-acid batteries are about $150/kwh so they are more cost effective at this time.

 

[Fallenone]

Looks like some slight savings with the Powerwalls but you're right, nowhere near $250/kwh... I guess we'll just have to wait for the prices to come down.
Looks like lead-acid batteries are about $150/kwh so they are more cost effective at this time.

Not necessarily. Generally, lead-acid battery has lower efficiency and shorter life time. Factoring in these two things and the end cost may still be favorable for TE at near $500/kWh level. Here're some calculations. I think it is a little biased towards Li battery (like assuming 100% depth of discharge for Li battery), but the idea behind is correct. You need to substitute some parameters like the efficiency and life time to get your results.

Lithium-ion vs Lead-Acid cost analysis - PowerTech Systems

 

[techmaven]

As for pricing, if Tesla raised the price because the cost of goods sold is higher than anticipated, then this pricing is not a good thing. However, if Tesla raised the price because this is the price the market will bear and the COGS remain the same, that's just good business with a fat margin. Obviously, if the market won't bear this price, then Tesla would be forced to lower the price. Given what we know about the Model S pricing, I tend to believe this is a price point chosen to see what the market will bear and has a big margin built into it. Therefore this is the MSRP pricing and we don't know how many people actually will pay MSRP. As long as Tesla is production constrained, there is no reason to lower the price.

 

[MitchJi]

I understood the strategy for the transportation sector and voted with my wallet. But I disagree about applying the same principal with energy storage systems as I believe the original intent was to ensure consumption of gigafactory's production should the demand from transportation sectors be softer than they anticipated. I believe there are sufficient incentives to lower the price for the storage systems and drive other manufacturers' price down. There are no lower trim options (i.e. non-scalable version) in the power pack to make it affordable for home owners, which makes it very different than the well known car strategy to be applied here.

It looks like most of you think solar growth is a given and the demand would only be going up exponentially. Perhaps it takes this strategy of losing the fight to win the war. We all agree that gigafactory's success is needed in order for model 3 to succeed. But after witnessing regular Nevadans' losing fight against a utility monopoly that practically destroyed residential solar industry over last few months, I am very aware of the likelihood of sudden policy shifts on significant delaying of home solar adoption. The ground game at Nevada is actually applicable at other states and it won't take that much to turn a relatively financially unfavorable propositon now into financial suicide in the future. Clearly the Tesla's gigafactory focus has shifted their confidence back to supplying model 3 seeing the demand. 30% profit margin is OK for me to swallow but not at 250%- I am also vested in TSLA but I am disappointed that I can't personally support the implementation of grid storage for a few more years with this pricing.

1. I did plan to buy a power pack since you asked.
2. My extrapolation form Elon's tweet is obviously a mistake.
3. From my calculation although $250/kWh per power pack is still financially unsound but it's doable with enough convictions from a sane individual. There is a reason why buying 10 power wall units are not a good idea to start with.

But that is just my opinion. You obviously have a strong sense of holding onto your opinion. No need to be testy

I apologize for the fact that I didn't clearly understand where you were coming from.

I still think that your assumptions in bold above are wrong. I'm sorry that you won't be able to buy a Powerpacks. I think that your belief that Tesla's price raise threatens the adoption of home solar is exaggerated and also contradicts those statements.

I think that within a few years Tesla's prices will drop substantially. Cell production at the GF will lower their costs and increase their production. Did you know that the powerpacks can mix and match new and used cells? Maybe you should get a price on a Powerpack enclosure and buy a used car pack from a wrecked Tesla. It sounds like the car pack modules will drop right in. Of course used pack prices will plummet after the M3 launch.

 

[MitchJi]

Lead batteries are not a good option:
Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

I doubt the market will still stick to lead-acid.
Tesla Powerwall Imergy | CleanTechnica

Note that I’ve actually left out “competing” lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries in the residential section. Basically, even at a glance, it’s clear that they don’t compete with the Powerwall, so I didn’t bother finding all of the specs and doing the calculations.

There is a very large market for large UPS's (e.g. Data centers). The author worked as a datacenter engineer for Microsoft:

Dedicated rooms to monitor and vent unsafe H2 levels. Acidic fumes that tend to destroy most things in the same room with them. Regular failures by design of a lead-acid cell, realistic shallow cycle capacity of 20-30% of name-plate. In exchange for all these absurd drawbacks and faults of lead-acid, you end up paying a premium ovser the clean compact and high efficiency Tesla battery.

The Tesla pack costs you less money up front, doesn't require sacrificing a room of your house to acid-fumes, and includes it's own DC/DC converter electronics to enable you to feed it the input from solar cells directly and have it manage itself and supply the voltage bus out directly to your AC inverter (or whatever thing you were wanting to power with it).

Lead's last hold-out function was stationary UPS supplies due to cost. Now with this pack having a lower system cost than lead, it seems the last useful function for lead-acid is boat anchors.
And why I recommended the modern sealed version, AGM or Gel or otherwise, because, well they're sealed and noxious fumes, etc, are not an issue.
Learn about lead acid. Sealed ones are a joke for longevity.

I spent 5 years in the datacenter UPS industry at the MWh scale, with everything deployed in big installations being lead-acid. I can tell you if your definition of "it works" includes repeated random and regular cell failures, never delivering even 50% of the claims with respect to the ability to extract useful energy from them, constant vampire current needs to keep them charged (many 10's of kW 24-7 in big installations), complete replacement after every couple years, and destroying virtually anything they share a room with from acid fumes than yes, "it works."

The industry standard there is 2,000-4,000Ah 2V flooded lead-acid cells, which they pay an extra big premium for to be carefully screened and binned. You tediously measure specific gravity on the electrolyte of all the new cells before and after installation at full charge, you observe the float balance is perfect between the cells in the string, and that you're running them at exactly the mfg's specs for longest service life. You are running them in a temp and humidity controlled room, mounted in stationary racks with minimal vibration. Then, randomly a cell in the string dies of infant mortality (every other cell shows no issues). They pay another few hundred grand to replace everything with all brand new cells (because the cell mfg's don't recommend having different aged cells in a string together), in a year or two, one dies and you start over. Repeat this cycle indefinitely. AFAIK, that is still the current state of the art in lead for UPS backup as I know it from wasting years of my life dabbling in it.

I realize that during the times a lead acid battery isn't being replaced or maintained or cleaned or tested that it does work as a very disappointing and lossy battery that can make a big UPS system work, and that people have been putting up with them for so long that the industry is used to the exceptionally poor performance and keeps buying them. My hope is that this Tesla battery will end the cycle of making throw-away lead batteries that are just waiting to fail by design.

 

[mspohr]

Interesting article in Computerworld.

Tesla's battery sales this year to dwarf entire industry's sales in '15

Tesla is expected sell 168.5 megawatt-hours of energy storage systems to the nation's leading residential solar system installer, SolarCity, this year according to an SEC filing. That's 60% larger than the entire 2015 U.S. behind-the-meter market and more than six times what Tesla sold to SolarCity last year, according to a note by GTM Research.

Also, Lockheed announced they were getting into the Powerwall market.

 

[quartzav]

I apologize for the fact that I didn't clearly understand where you were coming from.

I still think that your assumptions in bold above are wrong. I'm sorry that you won't be able to buy a Powerpacks. I think that your belief that Tesla's price raise threatens the adoption of home solar is exaggerated and also contradicts those statements.

I think that within a few years Tesla's prices will drop substantially. Cell production at the GF will lower their costs and increase their production. Did you know that the powerpacks can mix and match new and used cells? Maybe you should get a price on a Powerpack enclosure and buy a used car pack from a wrecked Tesla. It sounds like the car pack modules will drop right in. Of course used pack prices will plummet after the M3 launch.

It's Ok. I do not mean to say that raised price from Tesla power pack is going to threaten home solar adoption on a national level currently without utilities company's lobbying. Although it could change as exemplified by the NV energy as to how to do it. SolarCity already pulled out of Nevada as a result of this policy change. I am sure Elon is very aware of the potential impact of utility companies in other states starts to copy what NV energy is doing and to destroy residential solar installation industry. From my perspective, it is a lost opportunity for a home owner like me to have a chance leveraging my over-production against NV energy's policy by using home storage. Google the home solar fight in Nevada between NV energy/Nevada PUC and Solarcity/Sunrun/Solar installation industry. The home solar adoption in Nevada is already slowed down to a stop as the result.

As for the intent, it was from my opinion and we can agree to disagree. I believe there is no way to know for sure what his real intent was when he plans Tesla energy.

 

[MitchJi]

As for the intent, it was from my opinion and we can agree to disagree. I believe there is no way to know for sure what his real intent was when he plans Tesla energy.

I believe that it's obvious that Elon did not launch a business with a targeted $3 billion to $5 in revenue billion by 2017 to hedge car cell demand:

Okay. And can you give an update on stationary storage? Is that still trending to your targeted $3 billion to $5 billion (6:02) by 2017?

Production limited thing, if we imagine the most we could possibly make make in 2016, we've already sold out of that. If even a small percentage of the orders are valid we're already sold out of 2016, and well into 2017... So it's mostly about predicting our production rate, and we expect very dramatic increases in the stationary storage production. The reason I feel a bit cautious about giving exact estimates is because when you have an exponential increase, the exact calendar window...

I mentioned that you might want to try to buy an enclosure and add car cells:

 

[AudubonB]

With my now near-negligible internet connection, I found the $250/kWh reference only this morning. It absolutely jump-started my day, as our operation has for the past six years run on a battery bank of approximately 110kWh; we're slightly undersized and I've been looking for ways to grow both our production (ie, more PV panels - that's easy) and storage.

For that 100% fraction of you who don't follow closely our situation, we're 80 miles from the nearest grid electricity, so we live or die by what we can produce and store.

At that price then, depending on what is necessary to invert to 240V AC - either single- or three-phase - I can justify a complete system makeover. However, as of this morning what shows on TE's "Build" page the Powerpack (NOT Powerwall) price remains at $470/kWh, which is way out of justifiable range for us, unfortunately.