Tesla Powerwall

[Billhook]

2 minutes ago, Vespasian said:

If you have any sense it is about the money..  and yes it is a good idea, if it was cost effective..  

 

batteries will keep getting better, reminds me of the 100mtrs world record.   sure it gets beat here an there, but not by anything worth trumpeting about...

Two years ago I took a friend to Nottingham University where Tesla were giving sales talks.  This was conducted in a pleasant room on the fourth floor with no-one else in the room apart from us two and two Tesla guys.

I am a petrolhead and mechanically minded.  My friend is not, but he does like fast cars and is a large land owner.  He was really only coming out for a day out and was cynical about electric cars and their limited range and limited opportunities to recharge.

 

We went down for a test drive and I sat in the back of this ModelS. with a camera.

On a short stretch of road the Tesla man put his foot down and all my internal organs went towards my backbone and I nearly went into the boot with the camers.

 

We then were allowed to drive it ourselves and he guided us to an industrial estate where there was a roundabout.  He told me to see how fast I could go around it.  Now I have raced cars on a track and done some aerobatics but my nerve went before the car even squeaked.  All the batteries are so low down plus four wheel drive.

 

Anyway my mate bought one and I would have done but I did not have the 75k necessary to hand. (or even £7.5k for that matter!)

Two years ago and he has driven all over England, been to the South of France and never been let down through lack of charging or other issues.

His one had a range of about 270 miles normal driving but I see the new ones are already over 400 miles.  Quite a bit of progress in just two years.

Drives itself where legal and even detected a deer in some fog ahead and braked before my friend saw the deer.

He has an anaerobic digester to create the electricity.

Both Car and Digester I admit are highly subsidised, but how else are we to have the encouragement to steer ourselves away from fossil fuels, renewable energy and clean air to breathe?

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, matelot said:

I read online that these power walls cost £5k. I don't really see how they can add up economically. £5k for me would be about 8 years of electricity...

 

Interesting technology though

 

27 minutes ago, john p said:

I think for off grid living they are gonna be excellent, but as you say if on the mains anyway it’s probably never gonna pay for itself.( before it becomes worn out)

I think you are both right for now. It's difficult to get a handle on because it's like trying to compare apples and oranges, depending on taste you could make a case either way. If I were desperate to show some form of power self sufficiency I would just buy one.

 

AFAICS the Tesla powerwall for domestic use is £6k and stores 13,4kWh to 100% depth of discharge. It's life to 80% capacity may be ten years except it may only have 500 full discharge cycles, at 50% discharge they reckon on 1500 cycles. In the first case that's total storage over lifetime of 6700kWh and in the second 10500kWh. ignoring interest on capital that's 60-90 pence per kWhr retrieved and says nothing about charge discharge and self discharge inefficiencies.

 

In fact I believe they will do better life cycles but time will tell.

 

The second youtube video answered a couple of other of my questions: it cannot currently run islanded and grid tied.

 

With our domestic electric consumption f down with the advent of good LED lights, flat screens and monitors, microwave cooking and induction hobs plus the cost of electricity rising and the possibility of incentives for storing electricity things will change quite fast.

 

On the offgrid front it may offer some more utility especially if coupled with sensible CHP. I do have a bit of experience here and I can see it offers the ability to offset capital cost of a generator sized for peak demand and using a more efficient smaller genset.

 

 

[matelot]

17 minutes ago, Vespasian said:

If you have any sense it is about the money..  and yes it is a good idea, if it was cost effective..  

 

batteries will keep getting better, reminds me of the 100mtrs world record.   sure it gets beat here an there, but not by anything worth trumpeting about...

People buy stuff all the time that doesn't make economic sense. People spend £10k on a Rolex which is less accurate than a £10 Quartz watch... If the OP wants to spend £5k on a power wall I say good luck to him. It's more useful than a Rolex...

 

Yeah, technology doesn't improve over time. When you look at a 1980s mobile phone it's hardly any different to a modern phone. Back in the day a phone like this was £5k....

 

 

[tree-fancier123]

wish I'd foreseen this trend and bought shares in the lithium miners before the smart money hiked the price. No good trying to invest through the rear view mirror

 

 

[matelot]

21 minutes ago, tree-fancier123 said:

wish I'd foreseen this trend and bought shares in the lithium miners before the smart money hiked the price. No good trying to invest through the rear view mirror

 

 

Plenty other shares should benefit if we go to electric cars...

 

SSE and National Grid look cheap to me....

 

[tree-fancier123]

1 hour ago, matelot said:

SSE and National Grid look cheap to me....

and they will have to buy the copper etc for new infrastructure, so I'm holding my Rio Tinto - will pretend the stock market has closed for the next ten years

[Ratman]

Its the old circle of life in the end which ever way you look at it, we get subsidies and grants for new things and when it takes off the government shats itself and says..... we’re not getting enough revenue out of this! And they start with a new tax scheme one way or another and so we’ll end up paying for it in the long run anyhow. Its happened with road tax, its happening with diesel cars, it’ll happen with battery and renewable “free” energy sources.
I still do love the theory and setup of the tesla wall though, think its proper trick, and being tesla it defo will be well made.

[Ian Clarke]

A year ago I looked at getting solar panels and a battery system for my place but my roof faces East west and there are a lot of trees in the way. But it was provided by eon with guarantees on workmanship and the items. They will sell to anyone you don't have to be an eon account holder. It will take about an hour and a half to look at all the possible ways of doing it and discussion. But a way of getting am idea of what it would cost.

[donnk]

On 27/04/2018 at 07:51, Rough Hewn said:

Donnk could you tell us more about your setup?

Do you still need a separate charge control for the input?

House battery.

I like the idea of that.

 

 

 

Just to catch up.

 

I paid for the powerwall from my own pocket, covered by saving the payments from my 3.885kv solar install.

 

You can control how it charges - it has two modes.

 

1. Any excess solar not used by the house is used by the battery and released when house demand is greater than solar available.

 

2. Time shift. You get 1 above, plus the ability to tell the powerwall when to charge from the grid. I have a time of use tariff where I pay 5p KWH for electric between 00-01 and 7am. So the battery is allways charged to full by 7am. This in effect means the most I will pay for electric at any time of day is 5p instead of 17-24p.

 

to buy one there is a long waiting list, it costs £5k + install.  This is a business deductable expensive if used to power your home office/business. I was an early adopter of solar so benefit from the original feed in tariff rate of £0.55p /KWH. from may to early October I average 15KWH per day. As you can see this adds up fast. No wonder the gov scrapped it.

 

These batteries will become commonplace in a year or two and much much cheaper, same as when solar first came out. My panels and install were best part of £10k, they are now £5k.

 

The other tech coming up is using an electric car as a battery for the house, these have much bigger capacity - tesla 90kwh that would power a house for week. Using a combination of solar and time of use you effectively make the electric bill insignificant. Add some heat source pump to this and say good bye to the gas bill as well.

 

For many people, especially retired, after the rent or mortgage, energy bill is the next biggest. If it can be got rid off largely then its a winner.

[donnk]

On 27/04/2018 at 14:13, openspaceman said:

Yes I hope donk comes back with more information. The obvious benefit is in conjunction with solar panels or maybe a wind generator but there may be a case too for off grid where a back up generator is also used. It may better optimise run time and enable use of a smaller genset.

 

I'd like to know what life and charge/discharge cycles it will last. My experience of my smart phone LIon  cell is it's good for about 2 years and 700 cycles.

10 year unlimited warranty.