Is it reasonable to expect a “8-15% return on investment” on a Powerwall 2?
Last month, Lyndon Rive, Tesla’s Vice President for Energy Products, stood up in front of a large group of people, including me, and promised the Powerwall 2 will deliver a return between 8% and 15%. [Read more…]
Aggregated, wireless power transfer can enable massive storage to be rolled out very quickly and very cheaply.
These are, quite literally, dark days for national energy security.
The South Australian grid is in disarray and blackouts threaten to engulf other states as soon as summer rolls around again or adverse weather conditions strike. [Read more…]
The BYD B-Box Battery. Is it the perfect B-Boy Beat-Box Battery?
BYD is the world’s largest manufacturer of rechargeable batteries Those three letters stand for Build Your Dreams and apparently their dream was to build a battery box and sell it in Australia because that’s exactly what they’re doing with their B-box battery systems. [Read more…]
Unless your local electricity network provides a local variation to a new Australian Standard that becomes mandatory on Thursday, it may be illegal to install a Powerwall 2 plus solar on a single phase. [Read more…]
Last Thursday in a trendy re-purposed Substation near Melbourne, Elon Musk’s cousin Lyndon Rive claimed he could solve SA’s energy woes in 100 days.
How?
By installing 100-300MWh of batteries.
Big Call.
A day later, via Twitter, Aussie tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes asks Musk if he’s serious about “100MW1” of batteries in 100 days. Musk wagers he’ll deliver and install them in 100 days or it’s free. [Read more…]
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…]
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!
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…]
Will a grid connected Powerwall 2 beat a term deposit as an investment?
Update: read about the newly arrived 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…]
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:
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:
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