PowerWall and "The Missing Piece..." Event

[Todd Burch]

No, no, no. This is exactly what leads to "what were they thinking" monday morning quarterbacking. If they did a savings financial analysis, it would have been for San Francisco Electricity rates (which are far out of the norm) and CA incentives. That makes sense for the audience but it would be a global corner case. That would be like the Model S pricing calculators they put on the website and got so much crap for. The audience for the home model are people who want to get solar because they want to save money and be green but don't like the utility of essentially having to sell back the power they generate. if your utility buys your overgeneration at retail rates, they ARE your battery and you don't need this. For the rest of us, this makes solar interesting for the first time.

That's fine. Then do an example for a case where someone wants to get solar to save money. I just think that the typical homeowner seeing this...or more importantly the typical journalist covering this event--will have no idea how to interpret its significance based on the presentation, because journalists are not engineers. Journalists need some numbers and examples to relate to what they're seeing. The utility companies will instantly get it. They're sold, I'm sure.

And there were a lot of numbers regarding capacity and number needed to power the world...but this needs to be sold to homeowners and businesses as well. I think many of those potential customers were probably left with big questions after the presentation.

 

[James Anders]

Sorry, that was merely in reference to the, oh by the way... We have been running on batteries all night from power generated by the sun...

As was mentioned earlier in the thread, once long ago, Jobs had a tech demo and at the end said, oh by the way this demo was powered by a Mac running Intel.

Yeah, I got that. As a former Apple developer I listened to many presentations given by Jobs. And I also know that Jobs spent an inordinate amount of time to polish his presentation to ensure that the audience got all the important info in such a way that was enthralling to watch.

Look, Elon is who he is. His manner of speaking is fine for a "mad scientist" visionary. It just would have been so much better for Tesla to hand off a portion of the talk to someone else who could outline the various details in a clear, concise and engaging manner.

I was hoping to send a link to the video to a number of my friends, contacts (many of which are non-tech people). I don't think I will do that until more info is provided.

 

[Nomad]

I'm an environmentalist and a solar owner for over 7 years...

But I'm not even slightly inclined to get one. Convince me am I missing something?

My situation:
1. power generation on an annual basis is even
2. i have variable rates
3. i charge the Tesla in the middle of the night
4. I generate 75% of the energy during 4 months of the year (I'm just guessing here!!!)
5. I don't have big problems with power going out in the last few years and would not pay $3500 to solve that anyways.
6. I pay $10 (guessing here) to stay connected to the grid per month.

I'd have to add more solar to be able to go off grid.

I want to be excited about this and am for some people.

I think you're severely underestimating the solar power generation during non-summer months. Nonetheless, it's impossible for anyone to tell you if the Powerwall makes financial sense without knowing your monthly energy consumption, your exact variable rates, and your monthly solar power generation. Without those details, it's just a guessing game that doesn't serve any real purpose.

 

[Quant]

I believe the disconnect is that we've got a bunch of super smart people putting this all together and simply not realizing that the rest of the world isn't as super smart as they are, and so they often assume everyone else will just get it.

Well said! Sub optimal presentation! They missed a great opportunity to present the details of its features and benefits, technical, economic and operational!

I am quite disappointed in the depth and clarity of the presentation to various audience types.

How can such smart people, who care so much, blow such a great opportunity in a such a huge way??? As a businessperson and corporate executive, I am dumbfounded!

My love and admiration for Elon will continue....but this was totally blown!

 

[ssq]

Is there a recording of this anywhere? I googled but did not find anything yet, I suppose there was a livestream, could not make it in time to watch it

 

[eloder]

I think this presentation was more for investors. The storage business is 1000x more important for business and utilities right now. The home aspect is only relevant to people in a few specific states (in my opinion--it's a very nice tool to have for every home, but not at the price points without solar and without time of use restrictions).

Tons of businesses use batteries now in large quantities. This is going to turn that market completely upside-down.

 

[wk057]

He said 90kWh is a lot....... I have 191 kWh worth of Tesla batteries for my setup.... (see sig)

 

[NuclearPowered]

Solar City is advertising as powering critical loads only. Big difference to just slapping one up in the garage and tying it into the breaker box.

WK should be able to explain what it takes to make grid tie work with the anti-backfeed requirements.

 

[beeeerock]

I think many people are missing the point of this announcement. I don't think it's so much about selling a product as it is unveiling an idea. A BIG idea. The marketing will come with time, because it's an inevitable consequence of the idea. What's important is that Elon has a vision for the future that could actually work. As he noted, the numbers are big, but we're already producing numbers like that every 20 years just in cars alone... which are more complicated and expensive to produce than the packs.

I for one feel somewhat optimistic after seeing that there is a vision developed by a relatively small company that could have consequences for the entire globe. This is stuff that world governments have completely FAILED to champion - they're elected to lead but the only place they've lead us is straight down the garden path. Left or right, democratic or communist - they've all failed. It's embarrassing that the private sector must lead the way... but as long as someone decides to lead, that's a Good Thing.

Finally there's a plan that could actually work and, most importantly, is actually achievable.

Don't worry about whether it'll work in your garage and save you piles of money... consider how this can work for the greater good. It's an example of thinking globally and acting locally if I've ever seen one.

 

[CapitalistOppressor]

Yes, but the solar inverters today are NOT standalone and automatically shut off when grid power is removed. It remains to be seen if existing inverters can integrate with this system, and how a remote service disconnect will work. I was a little confused how a battery in your garage can power your home and how the safety interlock will work for the utility.

Yeah, I just assumed that the presentation just glossed over all of those issues because the intent is that this is sold through their partners (Solar City primarily) and that those partners will be selling integrated systems whose cost is quite a bit more than $3,500/wall. When I saw it didn't have an inverter I just assumed that Solar City was handling that part of the system.

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I agree. This seems much more valuable to the business market than the homeowner.

This is very valuable at commercial scales. Systems in that class are running $1-2k/kWh last I checked. Anything in the $500/kWh range is a revolution.

The residential systems will have a market, but I'm assuming that most of the sales job for those systems will devolve to the individual sales associates who will bundle these into a package based on a monthly fee.

 

[ScepticMatt]

That's how a 11 MWh pack (or 10 MWh with spares?) would look like

 

[James Anders]

Yeah, I just assumed that the presentation just glossed over all of those issues because the intent is that this is sold through their partners (Solar City primarily) and that those partners will be selling integrated systems whose cost is quite a bit more than $3,500/wall. When I saw it didn't have an inverter I just assumed that Solar City was handling that part of the system.

Well then they should have had someone from SolarCity come up and give a brief talk with more details. For something so potentially innovative and important spending an additional 15 minutes would not have been wasted.

Tesla had SO much press and buzz over this announcement too. Again, such a wasted opportunity to really hit it out the park.

 

[SweetP]

Well put Beeeerock. I found it inspiring and hopeful.

 

[Owner]

I don't have it on hand now, the #s were just off the top of my head, but it is really not remotely linear throughout the year.

I think you're severely underestimating the solar power generation during non-summer months. Nonetheless, it's impossible for anyone to tell you if the Powerwall makes financial sense without knowing your monthly energy consumption, your exact variable rates, and your monthly solar power generation. Without those details, it's just a guessing game that doesn't serve any real purpose.

 

[Krugerrand]

How can such smart people, who care so much, blow such a great opportunity in a such a huge way??? As a businessperson and corporate executive, I am dumbfounded!

I just told you how. Really smart people don't always understand how average people think. How could they? They (the smart people) often don't think like the average person. It's clear that Elon and those that he's surrounded himself with are on a whole other level. It would not occur to them to essentially dumb down the presentation and spell out every single item. They'd skip all the stuff that, to them, seems obvious. That's the way it's always been. Most never understood the significance of the SuperCharger Network, or the Gigafactory when those items were first presented. Most still don't. Many aren't going to get the significance of TeslaEnergy. It's all good. Give it time.

 

[Dutchie]

Looked at the site:
- price in Canada and USA is exactly the same :smile:
- AC/DC inverter is not included.

 

[bwa]

• "Operating Temperature -4°F to 110°F / -20°C to 43°C"

So in areas without temperate climate, the place it is installed needs to be weatherized and insulated enough to prevent extreme weather temperatures from entering the room it is installed in. This furthers my point that Tesla is introducing a lot of technology that (a) allows and (b) requires the garage to become a less toxic, more environmentally (temperature) controlled area. Homeowners will have to embrace this to some degree with the proper insulation, ventilation, toxic exhausting, temperature control and things like heat exchangers. Most people won't want to deal with any of this, but it is important.

In the case of Powerwall, at least the thermostat can be set for 5°F - 100°F, and things should be alright. Better yet, set it for 50°F - 85°F, and it will make your car last longer too, and the Powerwall temperature control system won't have to work as hard. Plus you'll be in a sort of more comfortable range when you approach your vehicle.

 

[mochouinard]

AC-DC probably mean of the inverter to CHARGE the battery from an AC power source... But the DC-AC is probably included into it !

 

[bwa]

Another comment: obviously this product is meant to be integrated by integrators. I think Tesla was smart to stay away from trying to get in the business of a zillion integration companies. That's a big customer support headache Tesla doesn't need. So, in other words, Tesla becomes a supplier to total energy management systems. (Note that they will do the "turnkey system" approach for utilities, because they realize that there's some political and business value out of pampering the big guys, but it's simply not worth doing all the little piddly stuff when there's already a large ecosystem of integrators out there.)

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I'm still looking for the video post of this event.

 

[brianman]

I for one feel somewhat optimistic after seeing that there is a vision developed by a relatively small company that could have consequences for the entire globe. This is stuff that world governments have completely FAILED to champion - they're elected to lead but the only place they've lead us is straight down the garden path. Left or right, democratic or communist - they've all failed. It's embarrassing that the private sector must lead the way... but as long as someone decides to lead, that's a Good Thing.

A pure capitalist would be neither dismayed nor surprised by the source of the innovation and vision.