The Billionaire’s Gambit – Why we should politely decline.

March 13, 2017 2024-01-25T13:16:39 by 31 Comments

 

Note from Finn:

This post is Ronald’s considered opinion of Elon Musk’s offer. My personal opinion (with caveats) is that we should accept the offer. I’ll publish a post later today with my reasoning.

 

Elon Musk has offered to sell South Australia large scale Tesla battery storage of 100 megawatt-hours or more.  He says it will cost $250 US dollars at the “pack level” per kilowatt-hour which is around $333 at today’s exchange rate.  What’s more, he has promised it will be installed within 100 days of the contract being signed or it’s free.

This may be the best offer that has ever been made for large scale lithium battery storage.  But despite the small chance we would get it for free, I think our reply should be a polite, “No thank you.”

South Australia doesn’t need a large amount of battery storage to solve its current electricity supply problems and so there are better alternatives to spend the money on.  If in the future it turns out it would be useful we can get it then and it should be even cheaper. [Read more…]

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Tesla Kills Off DC Powerwall 2. AC Powerwall Delayed

March 2, 2017 2023-01-31T11:40:17 by 53 Comments
powerwall 2 DC is dead

DC’s not pinin! DC’s passed on! This battery system is no more! DC has ceased to be! It has expired and gone to meet its maker! DC’s kicked the bucket! DC has shuffled off its Tesla coil, run down the charge, and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-BATTERY!

I was just relaxing by listening to the musical version of the Massacre of Mankind when I suddenly got some news from the solar grapevine1 concerning the Tesla Powerwall 2.  To cut a short story even shorter:

The DC version of the Powerwall 2 is dead!

Long live the AC version!

If it ever gets here!

[Read more…]

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Tesla Powerwall 2 Vs Ampetus Super Lithium

February 16, 2017 2024-01-30T19:57:19 by 45 Comments
Ironman vs superman

Can Ampetus’ Super Lithium battery beat Elon’s Powerwall 2?

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Note: As of 29 May 2018 Ampetus Energy Pty Limited have been placed in liquidation

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A lot of attention has been paid to the Tesla Powerwall 2 lately on account of how it promises to dramatically cut the cost of home battery storage.  And when I wrote “promises” I chose that word carefully on account of how that’s all we got at the moment.  We won’t know what it’s capable of until next month when Tesla promises the first installations will be done. [Read more…]

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Is The Powerwall 2 A Good Investment?

December 21, 2016 2024-02-22T15:06:52 by 85 Comments
powerwall 2 and piggy bank

Will a grid connected Powerwall 2 beat a term deposit as an investment?

Update: read about the impending arrival of the Powerwall 3 in Australia

Tesla has announced the impending arrival of the Powerwall 2 at a promised price point that, on the surface, looks very compelling: $10,150 fully installed1, or  23c per warranted kWh.

It seems particularly impressive when you consider that in Sydney and Perth, time-of-use tariffs can go to 50c per kWh during peak periods.

That’s 23c for electricity from a battery vs. 50c for grid electricity. Surely that makes the Powerwall 2 a no-brainer investment for people on such a tariff?

I decided to look a little deeper into the economics of using Australia’s cheapest battery2, on Australia’s highest grid tariffs.  Unfortunately I found that high peak rates are not nearly as good for the economics of the Powerwall 2 as they seem.

Read on to discover why. [Read more…]

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How many solar panels should you install with a Powerwall 2?

December 14, 2016 2024-01-25T07:16:23 by 83 Comments
powerwall and solar mix up

Installing more rooftop solar is a better investment than a Powerwall 2, so always rack up as much solar on your roof as you reasonably can first. Unlike this guy.

The Tesla Powerwall 2 is going to be big.  Really big.  I mean that literally and not figuratively.  It’s going to be big as in 13.5 kilowatt-hours of storage big.  From the point of view of most Australian households that is huge.

This large capacity presents households with two main problems:

  1.  It is more than the average Australian household uses at night.
  2. Those that do use that much electricity overnight may not have a rooftop solar system large enough to fully charge it.

So if the average Australian home buys a Powerwall 2 they will use it at less than its full capacity. As Tesla’s warranty is fixed at a maximum of 10 years, this increases the cost of each warranted kilowatt-hour substantially.

The obvious solutions are:

  1. Don’t install a Powerwall 2 unless your household regularly uses 12+ kilowatt-hours of electricity overnight.
  2. Don’t install a Powerwall 2 unless your solar system normally produces enough surplus electricity to fully charge it on a mostly clear day.  Normally this will require at least 5 kilowatts of solar panels.

[Read more…]

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Should you go off grid with a Powerwall 2?

December 9, 2016 2017-05-13T16:26:56 by 25 Comments

 

bloke with powerwall 2 cutting the wires to his house

Thinking of getting a Powerwall 2 and taking yourself off grid? Then you need to read this first.

 

Note from Finn:

Since this post was published Tesla have canned the DC Powerwall 2 in Australia. We will now only be able to get an AC Powerwall 2. A regular AC coupled battery is no good for off grid because it can’t talk to the solar inverter to balance energy demand and supply. So if you live in Australia and want to go off grid do not use a Powerwall 2.

 

 

A long time ago, back in the days before we knew how lame the original Powerwall was compared to its hype or how good the Powerwall 2’s hype is compared to the original Powerwall, I wrote about whether or not my parents in sub-tropical Queensland could save money by going off-grid using lead-acid battery storage.

My conclusion was they could not save money even under almost ideal circumstances.  The benefit of staying on-grid and receiving even a low feed-in tariff for surplus solar electricity was too great to make saying sayonara to the grid connection wire worthwhile. [Read more…]

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Cost Of Powerwall 2 Drops 9% Overnight

December 7, 2016 2018-05-09T09:09:48 by 25 Comments
powerwall 2

The Tesla Powerwall 2 is now $800 cheaper in Australia.

Tesla appears to be unsure about how much to charge Australians for the Powerwall 2.

Or maybe they are sure, but confused about how the Australian dollarydoo works.

Perhaps they’ve been confusing it with the New Zealand doubloon or the Fijian guilder?

I know I often do.

"Crikey! 900 Dollarydoos to the New Zealand doubloon and 6 centaroos to the Fijian guilder!"

“Crikey! 900 dollarydoos to the New Zealand doubloon and 6 centaroos to the Fijian guilder!”

[Read more…]

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Unwitting Warranties: A Ticking Time Bomb For The Battery Industry

November 30, 2016 2016-12-19T16:05:13 by 13 Comments
dodgy battery sales guy

As soon as a battery manufacturer says this, your battery magically gets a 20 year warranty in Australia. No matter what the warranty document says.

The other day a salesperson give me the rundown on a home battery system he had on display.  While it wasn’t cheap, it certainly appeared to be a very impressive piece of technology.  The salesperson clearly had a lot of confidence in it because, even though its written warranty was only for 10 years, he very generously doubled that to a 20 year warranty without batting an eyelid.

Ben Affleck had his eyes batted for two hours a day in preparation for this role.

Ben Affleck would bat his eyelids for two hours a day in preparation for this role.

We weren’t related, so nepotism wasn’t the reason for his generosity.  And it wasn’t because I saved his life in Nam…bour.  (That sugar cane train could be really dangerous.)  We weren’t old schoolmates, and as hard as it may be to believe, he wasn’t taken in by my charm and good looks.

No, the reason why he gave me a 20 year warranty was simply because he didn’t realize he was giving one.  Or possibly, he did realize he was giving one and really hates his company.

He gave me a 20 year warranty when he told me the battery system had a design life of 20 years.  According to Australian Consumer Law, if a salesperson makes a statement that a reasonable person would conclude to mean that a product can be expected to last for 20 years, then that counts as a 20 year warranty.  It doesn’t matter that this warranty was given verbally or that it is twice as long as its written warranty, legally it still counts. [Read more…]

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Powerwall 2 Full Spec Released: Low cost but ‘unlimited cycles’ warranty has limits.

November 25, 2016 2018-05-09T08:52:20 by 79 Comments
powerwall 2 spec

The full spec and warranty of the Powerwall 2 reveal a cost per warranted kWh almost half that of its nearest rival.

[Update March 13: Tesla has cancelled sales of the DC Powerwall 2 in Australia and the first installations of the AC version of the Powerwall 2 will now apparently be done in April.]

Yesterday, Tesla kindly sent me the Powerwall 2’s full data sheet and warranty. We already knew the headline specs:

Storage: 13.5kWh

Power: 5kW steady, 7kW Peak

Price: AUD$8,000 + GST and Installation

But there were lots of questions over the exact configuration and warranty details that could make or break Tesla’s shiny new battery. Most of these questions have now been answered.

Here’s what the new specs reveal: [Read more…]

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Energex Tries To Stop Tide Of Batteries With Bonkers Tariff 31 and 33 Rule

November 23, 2016 2024-01-25T13:39:05 by 9 Comments

king energex on a throne

Cnut from Energex1 tries to stop batteries.

Energex is the state government owned network operator for all of Queensland.  They receive electricity from the high voltage transmission lines that Powerlink manages and distribute it to the state’s homes and businesses. They also kindly distribute it things that aren’t homes or business, including my cousin’s non-profit Fight Club Community Center2. [Read more…]

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