lqnnn energy storage is becoming a lot more and a lot more interesting to smart home owners and we recently identified this write up of a Tesla Powerwall 2 installation on Michael Vorstermans Blog. A terrific account of the practicalities of installing the domestic battery, how it functions and the finances behind it. read on for all the details….
Late last year, Elon Musk shocked everyone by announcing a new version of Tesla’s less-than-a-year-old Powerwall home battery system, with double the capacity for the same dough.
The other players in this industry need to have been gnashing their teeth, but bravely soldiered on with the expectation that “it’ll take them forever to deliver”.
Not so – my Powerwall2 was installed yesterday, one of the first in new South Wales, Australia – read on for the blow-by-blow and decide if you also want to be complimentary from power blackouts and 3-figure power bills.
What is a Powerwall Anyway?
If you don’t yet know what a Powerwall2 is, read this section – if you do, skip to the next heading.
Simply put, it’s a slim, no-maintenance, weatherproof and near-silent rechargeable Lithium battery system with the front profile of a bar-fridge, located near your power board, paired with a Gateway box that manages power flows from and to your home and the battery system.
Inside it, there’s heaps of cylindrical battery cells, set up into packs, which will also be used to power the upcoming model 3 electric car.
They are made in Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, and packaged inside a shiny white-painted steel enclosure, along with a charger, inverter, and water-cooling system.
The system has an installed cost of just over $10,700 in Sydney [Ed: currently £5,900 + installation in the UK] and you can get one with around a 2 month lead time today.
It’s created to save the output of your solar power system during the day, so when the sun sets (when your solar generation falls away), it will power your entire house until it’s nearly discharged. And, if there’s a power blackout, the PW2 switches to powering your house from the battery instantly, so you still have power for your entire home until power gets restored, or the battery runs down.
It’s capable of supplying 13 kWhr, or so, of stored energy when fully charged, which for a lot of homes will carry them through the night, and as a result saving you the cost of the power you would otherwise have to buy. The power level it can manage is 5kW Steady, 7kW Peak, enough to run a lot of kitchen appliances, a split-system airconditioner, or even charge a short-range electric automobile (such as a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, which only draws 2KW to charge, taking 5 hours).
For me, with 4.8KW of paid-off solar on my roof, a rough calculation says the PW2 could pay for itself in 6 to 9 years, and it’s called for for 10. If you don’t have solar power, it’s not for you, but given prices for power are only going to rise, you must consider getting solar cells anyway, if you own your home and have roofing space available. I’ll go through the financial aspects in detail towards the end.
The install Process
I reserved a Powerwall2 by means of Tesla’s site in October last year – it’s a quick and painless process, pricing is entirely available online, it’s transparent and up front, so you have no need to chase around for quotes.
This is a significant advantage Tesla has, as there’s a lot more than a few cowboys in this industry in Australia. Tesla’s checkout took a $500 deposit by credit scores card at buy time, they followed up with several phone calls over the intervening months, a contractor (Downer EDI) did a site check out a few weeks before install, and then Tesla requested payment by bank transfer for the balance of the $10k this week.
7.00am: two tradie vans arrived immediately as promised, from a local solar outfit called Flash point Solar in Punchbowl. another person from Downer also arrived to supervise. As it turns out, this was the first install for all of them.
The gear came in two large cardboard boxes – the Gateway, and the Powerwall2 itself. The PW2 weighs over 125kg (290 pounds says the sticker, but another one next to it says 67Kg, so clearly the whole “metric system adoption” in the us still has some bugs in it), with the result that a trolley is needed to shift it around. It is just large enough to fit through a conventional door.
8.00: Hardest part so far is figuring out where the wall studs are for the mounting bracket. My house has plastic cladding, so they can’t easily find the studs. ।
The PW2 is expected to rest on the ground on feet, and the bracket is indicated to stop it from tipping over.
8.30: looks like they are working it out as they go – 5 people here now – 3 from Downer, of which 2 were here just to learn, and they said they had done some training with a prototype.
9.00: Mounted, and then had to remove it.
They ended up putting a bigpiece of ply against the cladding to help spread the load (and give them a lot more opportunities to bolt into the elusive frame studs). considering that they didn’t allow for the height of the PW2 bracket placement before bolting the ply to the wall, the ply ended up sticking out beyond the top of the PW2. The mounting bracket has a silver spring clip in the middle of the “T” that locks the frame to the PW2, and the clip can only be accessed with something very long and thin, like a spring-steel ruler. I made them a feeler to dismount it, (Tesla didn’t supply any tools with the PW2), and they pulled it off, and cut the ply down so it wasn’t visible.
9.15: apparently all the cords go in the side, to a junction box under the cooling radiator – this is a respectable size one, like an inter-cooler from a car. They don’t need access to the back of the unit, although there is a wiring gland just visible there, for use with installations that require the cabling to pass through a wall. The black sides are plastic, and clip into place.
9.30: Gateway mounted, now they are going over how to wire all the cords between the 3 boxes. There is an installer manual on an iPad, and a set of paper manuals, which are mostly safety advisories.
1.30: All cabling done. There is a clamp on the solar active input to measure it’s generation, and the gateway procedures the house load from the power cord directly. The PW2 charges only from solar at the moment.
Tim from Tesla arrives to help the installer commission the unit. The Gateway has a built-in Neuros Wifi access point (TEGxxxx, username is installer’s email, password is SN#) and a Telstra 3G telco SIM, but the SIM has yet to be activated by Telstra, so Tim connects it to my home Wifi and uses a web page to update the firmware. He says that the preferred connection method in future is by means of 3G so they do not need to rely on Wifi availability.
The installer used an iPad to connect to the PW2 Gateway’s AP, and defined the size of the solar inputs, identified my inverter model from a list, selected which measuring inputs in the Gateway are monitoring the load and generation, and entered my Tesla account login (you make this when you order, and there’s no ongoing costs involved).
At the end of this, the Gateway’s web page showed the current state of the home current draw, solar generation, and charging status of the PW2. However, the power consumption figure for the home seemed too high for the few lights that were on, and closer assessment of the metering setup in my powerboard showed that the solar net meter is summing the solar generation into the input to the home, so they end up running another clamp into the powerboard to measure the consumption load separately.
2.30: Done – I reckon they could shave off a couple of hours, now that they have the install experience, and if they had a brick wall to mount it on, instead of the foam pillows my house has.
To test the system, I turned on a TV that was visible from the powerboard, and then switched off the mains-input circuit breaker to simulate a power blackout – there was a minor clunking of relays in the Gateway, and the TV didn’t even flicker.
Tim said the switch-over takes only 30milliseconds, which must be fine for running PCs, and you do get a notification from the Tesla app on your phone that the house is now running on backup power. switched on the main circuit breaker again, and with some a lot more clicks, the gateway changed over to the mains about 10 seconds later.
For solar installs here, local policies require any grid-connected solar system to shut down when the grid-power fails, to secure pole-and-wire workers. I expected this to apply with the PW2 as well, but, it doesn’t, and the solar system stays up when the grid goes down.
Tidbits
Other than the Tesla app, the only visible sign of the PW2’s operation is a LED light strip down the side of the unit that blinks when there’s a problem, is consistent when nothing is happening, and pulses slowly when charging or discharging.
Monitoring: I’ve been monitoring the house load and solar generation by means of PVOutput for the last 6 years – this service supplies a complimentary portal to your house power flows by means of a web page and phone app, once you install a small monitor in the powerbox.
There is no provision for PVOutput data from the PW2 yet – apparently it generates a substantial amount of info, and Tesla are going to expose this at some time in the future, but, Tim said, they are focused on the app experience for now.
As only my pet dog is at home during workdays, my home’s generation was mostly exported up to now, and the majority of consumption occurred at night, so my home represents an optimal use case for the PW2. In the graph above, the green line is instant solar output, and the red one is instant consumption, with the shaded areas representing totals for each.
How long before you can get it: Apparently, there are installs”हजारौं” दायरामा बुक गरियो। हार्डवेयरको लागि ब्याकलोग 2 महिना हो यदि तपाईं अब खरीद गर्नुहुन्छ भने। स्थापना गर्नेहरूको प्रत्येक टोलीले प्रति दिन 1-2 स्थापना गर्न सक्दछ, म गणना गर्छु।
केही हदसम्म, वितरकहरू तपाईलाई नियन्त्रणमा राखिएको छ कि तिनीहरुसँग कसरी स्थापना भयो र उपकरणको अनुमोदन समयबद्धता प्रक्रियाहरु को कारण, त्यसैले teslagersts ग्राहकहरु लाई निर्धारित ग्राहकहरुलाई प्राथमिकता दिदैछ NEWERS अब तयार छ।
सामान्य रूपमा, एलोन यस उद्योगको औंलाहरूमा पाइन्छ, जब हामीलाई ऊर्जा एकाधिकार न्यूनतम गर्न सकिन्छ, तिनीहरू स्वाभाविक ब्याट्री भण्डारणको अपुटेकलाई सीमित गर्न यथाशक्य गर्दछन्।
एसी VS DC: जबकि Tesll TESARS सुरुमा TIC- र ac-र एएस-चार्ज पावरवालहरूको बारेमा मात्र कुरा गर्यो, तिनीहरू केवल एक फरक सौर्यका विभिन्न सौर्यताबाट विकास गर्न सक्दछन् युरेले विश्वव्यापी रूपमा प्रयोग गर्यो, जसले यस धारणालाई ध्यानमा राख्दै छ कि एस आउटपुट तुलना गरेर एकदम परम्परागत छ। हो, त्यहाँ ब्याट्रीमा एसी पावरलाई रूपान्तरण गर्न केहि घाटा छ, तर यसले बजारमा छोटो समय, कम मूल्यहरू मात्र संकेत गर्दछ जुन केवल एक प्रकारका कम मूल्यहरू मात्र हो, र PW2 स्थापनाकर्ताहरूको लागि कुनै आवश्यकता छैन अवस्थित सौर्य क्याबिलिंग सेटअपहरूको साथ मर्कको साथ
कमिटिन: स्थापनाको दिनमा यसलाई सक्षम पार्दै ग्राहकको उर्जा वितरणकर्ताको नियमहरूमा निर्भर गर्दछ। त्यहाँ ब्याट्रीमा स्विच छ, र प्रणाली बाइपास गर्न प्रवेशद्वार भित्र एक अर्को भित्र।
म यसको लागि एन एएसडब्ल्यूको साथमा छु, को स्पार्कहरू यसमा हस्ताक्षर गर्न पाउँदा खुसी छन्, जबकि केही वितरक L2-प्रमाणित निरीक्षकहरूमा जोड दिन्छन्। स्पष्ट रूपमा, प्रयास एकल-चरणमा घरको 10 किलमा पनि ठीक छ।
ओभरडलोडहरू: मैले सोधें कि यदि वर्तमान षडयन्त्रको ताजाले pw2 – टिमले पावर आउटपुट नाघ्यो भने, आउटपुट भोल्टेज नाघ्यो र जे भए पनि एकाई रिसेट हुन्छ र तपाईंलाई जे पनि बन्द गर्ने अवसर दिन्छ यति धेरै आकर्षित भइरहेको छ – यो उही विस्फोटन हो जब म गत हप्ता सर्भर चार्ज गर्दै एक अटोबरी चार्ज + डिशवाशर + डिशवशर + clewuver + स्तम्भ हीटर सबै मा गए।
ध्वनिइक्स: यसले कहिलेकाँही बेहोश “टिक” बनाउँदछ, र एक कम पिच टर्च ध्वनि ध्वनि जब फ्यान चलाउँछ। तपाईंले यी सुन्नुहुनेछ यदि तपाईं यसको छेउमा आदर्श बसे। फ्यान वारले रेडिएटर विपरीत माथी दायाँ कुनालाई बाहिर हावा दिन्छ। यो सौर्य विकृति भन्दा शान्त छ, जसले जहिले पनि एक टिभी-बज-बज आवाज बनाउँछ।
चोरी: केहि व्यक्तिहरूले ढकढक्याएको एकाईको बारेमा चिन्ता व्यक्त गरे, यो कुरा गर्दै कि यो एक लक गरिएको ढोका पछाडि छैन। मसँग मेरो घरमा पछाडि राख्नुहोस् (कुनै ग्यारेज छैन), तर यसलाई 1 1300 किलोग्राम, अनियमित जंक तौल गर्न सक्ने छ, र एक टाउन ट्रक यान्क गर्न आवश्यक छैन। यो भित्ताबाट टाढा, फडीजली क्लिपको कारण।
टेस्ला को कुनै पनि विज्ञापन नीति दिईएको, म यहाँ ठूलो अधिकांश व्यक्तिहरु को लागी मेरो भित्ता मा यो रहस्य सेतो बक्स के छ वा यो के लायक छ के छ कि। र, मसँग मामला मा एक ब्याकअप सुरक्षा प्रणाली छ …
Tesha फोन अनुप्रयोग
तपाईं टेन्लाको नि: शुल्क एन्ड्रोइड वा आईफोन अनुप्रयोग डाउनलोड गर्न सक्नुहुनेछ तपाईंको टेस्ला अटोमोबाइलहरू र पावरवालहरू प्रबन्ध गर्न। मेरो टिशेल अनुप्रयोगसँग स्थापना गरेपछि कुनै दर्ता उपकरणहरू थिएन, र तिमैले भने, टाइल्ला अमेरिकामा कसैले बक्समा टिकट गर्नु आवश्यक पर्दछ। मैले भुक्तानी प्रक्रियाको लागि मैले टेन्ला ईमेल सम्पर्कलाई पक्रे र भुक्तानी प्रक्रियाको लागि उनले एक घण्टा पछि फिर्ता बोलाए (शनिबार बिहान पनि)।
मूल रूपमा, यसले तपाइँलाई थाहा दिन्छ यदि प्रणालीसँग सबै ठीकठाक छ भने, पावर प्रवाह र ब्याट्री चार्ज राज्यको निगरानी गरेर। यहाँ केहि स्क्रीनशटहरू
यो होम पृष्ठमा तपाइँले साइन इन गरे पछि हालको राज्यलाई सम्पर्क गर्नको लागि करीव seconds सेकेन्ड लिन सक्दछ जब तपाइँ अनुप्रयोग खोल्नुहुन्छ, र ब्याट्री के गर्दैछ र यो कत्तिको पूर्ण? In this shot, mine is nearly discharged, and very little power was used from my solar