Tesla Model X - GivEnergy or Tesla PW

[CarlM]

I currently have a Tesla Model x on order and expect delivery q1 2024.

I currently have 14 solar panels on the house and I have been quoted £7300 for 5.0kw GivEnergy Hybrid Inverter and two 9.5kwh Batteries.

Just doing some reasearch and not sure if this if the correct kit to go with or a Tesla Power Wall.

Also been reading that Octopus is the place to go.

Not an expert on any of this and not wanting to make any mistakes.

Any help and advice would be very appreciated

 

[Dilly]

What’s the output rating of the panels? Circa 4kW?

As my signature shows, I have PW’s. That’s because they will operate during a power cut. That also allows the panels to continue to generate.

I believe Givenergy now have approval for a backup gateway too. It’s certainly worth having, else during a power cut, nothing works!

The other considerations are how well the batteries choose to charge and how quickly they can charge, overnight, if there is not enough solar.

The output from 14 panels, whilst absolutely worthwhile, isn’t going to satisfy the car and the batteries outside of late spring/summer I would suggest.

Nonetheless you are making the right approach. Good luck with your choice.

 

[CarlM]

Total Installed Capacity is 3.92KW

If I understand my research so far, batteries will charge from the panels during the day and then in the evening I can use Octopus tariff to top up the battery and charge the car?

 

[Dilly]

From May onwards you’ll hit 3.9 sometimes until September
I have 11KW and today, which was dull, I managed just 1.8 kWh in total!
On a good day in May I could get over 60 kWh. It shows the extremes!
Your plan is right but do consider a backup gateway.

 

[Zilla91]

The Givenergy system does allow you to have an EPS if there is a power cut but it's pretty limited on how much power it can supply.

I was only able to get all my lights and living room sockets wired up to it.

 

[CaptainSlow]

I currently have a Tesla Model x on order and expect delivery q1 2024.

I currently have 14 solar panels on the house and I have been quoted £7300 for 5.0kw GivEnergy Hybrid Inverter and two 9.5kwh Batteries.

Just doing some reasearch and not sure if this if the correct kit to go with or a Tesla Power Wall.

Also been reading that Octopus is the place to go.

Not an expert on any of this and not wanting to make any mistakes.

Any help and advice would be very appreciated

Where do you get the Q1 2024 timeline from?

I ordered Jan 2021 and have not heard anything.

 

[spon88]

The Givenergy system does allow you to have an EPS if there is a power cut but it's pretty limited on how much power it can supply.

I was only able to get all my lights and living room sockets wired up to it.

Our Givenergy EPS powers the whole house to the limit of the inverter. This is 3.6kw for the gen 2 version, 2.6 for gen 1. Not a huge amount but easily enough to keep going with some sensible appliance management.

 

[Tonybvi]

I have a legacy MX (100kw) plus powerwall and gateway. To date I have never charged the car in anger off the Powerwall and, to be honest I don’t understand why you would want to! In the winter I charge both the PW and the car taking advantage of my low off peak rate. The rate lasts for 5 hours so with a 7kw charger I can put the best part of 35kwh into the car as well as putting enough into the PW to fully run the house which (as we have oil heating) runs at around 10 or 11 kWh a day. If I charged the car off the PW I would then eat into my peak rates to run the house. In the summer of course solar helps and occasionally if I see the PW exporting I may plug the granny charger in for a couple of kw but only because I hate to export rather than to charge the car out of necessity!
The gateway is very useful in the event of power cuts but I prefer to keep the power for running the house rather than charging the car. Don’t forget that even a PW only has 13.5kw useable storage so it doesn’t contribute an awful lot to the car (for an MX we are talking around 30 to 40 miles at best). When we were out for 6 days during Storm Arwen I could still easily find public chargers fairly close to me which still had power - rather pay a few quid to charge the car down the road and be comfortable in the house rather than use all the PW capacity to charge the car.
My own view with which others may disagree is design the battery storage system for the particular needs of your house and power tariffs rather than around the needs of charging your car.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I currently have 14 solar panels on the house

If you were installing a new system I'd be saying "put up all the panels you can" - pay for scaffolding, inverters, initialisation etc. once and the incremental cost of more PV panels would be a small amount, pro rata. But you may have already covered your available roof area ...

If I understand my research so far, batteries will charge from the panels during the day and then in the evening I can use Octopus tariff to top up the battery and charge the car?

Yes. Best part of nothing from PV in Winter (10x more mid Summer than mid Winter)

Not a huge amount but easily enough to keep going with some sensible appliance management.

No disrespect intended, but that's a Boy's Own solution

I have "gear" scattered all over the house. My PowerWalls will power the whole shebang, but in a prolonged powercut I do go round turning off everything that I can to eek out the battery ... but finding it all is a bit of a challenge and a PITA. AM I guessing right that with Givernery it would trip if you didn't (first) turn off all non-essential appliances to get under the "limit"?

I wish (as in "I wish I wish I wish I wish ...") that when I recently had the house rewired the Sparky had say "Do you want to separate essential circuits" and then I could have just thrown a breaker to OFF everything unnecessary ...

My own view with which others may disagree is design the battery storage system for the particular needs of your house and power tariffs rather than around the needs of charging your car.

I agree.

My objective is:

In Winter: Battery sized to go from end of Off Peak to start of next Off peak (or majority of) - so that it is charged from Off peak and using scraps of PV if there is any
In summer: Battery size that will go from Sundown to Sunup - battery then charged from Sun each day and import nothing from the grid for days on end until a cloudy/rainy day happens, and any excess put into the cars. (I have 48 panels and in Summer that powers the whole house, charges the PowerWalls and I also get about 1,000 miles a month into the EVs)

Of those two the second is probably more achievable

I don't know the details, but the Tesla Power offer might be worth a look if you have everything-Tesla. They take control of your PowerWalls, discharge to Grid when they can make money (e.g. as a Peaker Plant) and charge/pay you same for Grid Import / Export - flat rate day and night I think - for someone for whom their formula works I expect its a very competitive rate?

Other than that, as others have said, PowerWall will run the whole house in a power cut (and for most powercuts the Gateway will switch without any break in supply - you'd only know you had a powercut if you checked the "Outage" list in the APP)

But I expect the wait-time for PowerWall is circa 12 months, and Givenergy seems to be shorter

Make sure that the battery can charge 0%-100% within the length of Off Peak that you choose.

P.S. I don't think the EV you have (e.g. Model-X) is relevant - you'd charge that on Off Peak, or from excess PV, whatever model it was. Having a Tesla might make it a bit easier to integrate Car Tesla Car and PowerWalls, but I would choose on other criteria.

 

[Speedking99887]

I currently have a Tesla Model x on order and expect delivery q1 2024.

I currently have 14 solar panels on the house and I have been quoted £7300 for 5.0kw GivEnergy Hybrid Inverter and two 9.5kwh Batteries.

Just doing some reasearch and not sure if this if the correct kit to go with or a Tesla Power Wall.

Also been reading that Octopus is the place to go.

Not an expert on any of this and not wanting to make any mistakes.

Any help and advice would be very appreciated

Hi out of curiosity who did you get the price off for tge Giv energy kit sounds a good price thanks

 

[ThornOfCamorr]

What ever you go for, check the inverter‘s noise level. I’ve a Victron inverter. While it’s working well, it emits a permanent hum which gets louder with increased loads which is audible throughout the house.

 

[spon88]

No disrespect intended, but that's a Boy's Own solution

Yes but absolutely fine for our requirements. We are fortunate to live in an area with very few power cuts so the EPS is there for some belt n braces back up. It would indeed trip in the event of too much load, but unlikely and manageable given that we'd be at home for that scenario. It's more to keep things like freezers, servers etc running when we are out and those wouldn't cause an overload. It does what it was designed to do and gives a bit of peace of mind.

 

[Mrklaw]

that seems a very good price for the givenergy system - thats single 9.5+inverter prices that I’ve seen. Mind sharing?

I’m not fussed about power cut coverage - its a nice to have but not a critical factor for me and I wouldn’t pay significantly more for it. A powerwall is likely almost double that cost for less capacity. It doesnt do much that the givenergy won’t. you can charge both overnight off peak and obviusly top up during the day with solar. The powerwall currently unlocks octopus’ TEP which is a net metering scheme but hopefully that’ll come to other systems eventually.

 

[Fat Wolfie]

I have only (limited as in 3 weeks) experience of the Powerwall and have to say I am delighted with it. There were several reasons why we chose the Powerwall over others, but the main one was the ability to island the house in the event of power outage.

but more importantly, it just works. Does this seem odd.. well… looking at a large UK solar facebook group comments you see:

.my battery has stopped working now it’s zero degrees, so how do I keep it warm in my garage? ( Powerwall operating range due to internal heat management is -20 degrees to +50 degrees, ours sits outside)

.what apps do people use to predict what level of solar the next day will bring so we can limit the overnight top up on the battery so as to allow next day top up from solar? (Powerwall uses some sort of AI/voodoo and tops itself up off peak, we’ve seen 35% first thing when it’s going to be a good day and 90% when we only generated 1.4 kWh for the whole day)

.when I charge my car off peak, the flow is grid to battery to car. So in the morning there is no charge in the battery . How do I stop this happening? (Powerwall in effect ignores any off peak load and so will charge itself at the same time as car is being charged, and other load-shift appliances are on)

and similar things.



Hence my comment “it just works”. I would imagine other batteries could be made do all or any of the above, but apart from setting what my off peak hours are, that’s all we had to do.

Also when I was looking I thought the Powerwall warranty was better, being 10 years or 10,000 cycles -some others were much less.

Hope this helps

 

[CarlM]

Where do you get the Q1 2024 timeline from?

I ordered Jan 2021 and have not heard anything.

I placed my order online for the Model X and then wanted to change the interior colour, when I called up I got through to a manager so took the opportunity to ask about delivery and he went into a lot of detail about which model cars are being produced in which factories and then the ships that will sale to uk and ports etc.

Model X is coming from California and his gut feeling was possibly Q4 this year but said not to get my hopes up and keep Q1 in mind.

The guys seemed really knowledgeable on the current timescales and production output etc but suppose anything can change.

I ordered last month so based on what he said around production and the 2021, 2022 issues around covid, chips and shipping you could have a nice surprise soon.

 

[CarlM]

that seems a very good price for the givenergy system - thats single 9.5+inverter prices that I’ve seen. Mind sharing?

I’m not fussed about power cut coverage - its a nice to have but not a critical factor for me and I wouldn’t pay significantly more for it. A powerwall is likely almost double that cost for less capacity. It doesnt do much that the givenergy won’t. you can charge both overnight off peak and obviusly top up during the day with solar. The powerwall currently unlocks octopus’ TEP which is a net metering scheme but hopefully that’ll come to other systems eventually.

Its a quote from CEF, I am a trade customer and VAT registered, the prices I mentioned are ex VAT. An electrician who works for me as a contractor when needed is an approved GivEnergy installer.

 

[WannabeOwner]

The guys seemed really knowledgeable on the current timescales and production output

I can't think of a single occasion where information of that type came from Tesla Staff and was accurate ... however I do agree that RHD is imminent - if the order book opened tomorrow it might be as much as 3 months before the first ones appeared here, so for someone at the tail of the order backlog the end of this year / start of 2024 seems reasonable ... but I seriously doubt that UK support staff are actually party to the production details, Tesla have never publicised that ahead of time (that I can remember) ... all of a sudden the UK Order book will open (rather than the "reservation book") and then we will know

 

[CarlM]

I can't think of a single occasion where information of that type came from Tesla Staff and was accurate ... however I do agree that RHD is imminent - if the order book opened tomorrow it might be as much as 3 months before the first ones appeared here, so for someone at the tail of the order backlog the end of this year / start of 2024 seems reasonable ... but I seriously doubt that UK support staff are actually party to the production details, Tesla have never publicised that ahead of time (that I can remember) ... all of a sudden the UK Order book will open (rather than the "reservation book") and then we will know

And I had my hopes up!!

 

[WannabeOwner]

And I had my hopes up!!

Well .. the fact that the car is available in EU almost certainly means "Can't be long" for UK ... so I think you'll get one when you expect ... but ...

 

[ringi]

We now know the Octopus Tesla Powerwall tarrif is no more, we also know that Octopus seems to do research jointly with GivEnergy. Teslas have always be strong on the battery management software avoiding the need for customers to do their own integration will electricity sellers.

I not convinced Tesla will be better on integration will UK electricity sellers then GovEnergy going forward. But I do like the well controlled thermal management in the Powerwall.