energy storage is becoming more and more interesting to smart home owners and we recently spotted this write up of a Tesla Powerwall 2 installation on Michael Vorstermans Blog. A great 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 surprised 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 must 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 free 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, assembled 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 designed 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 most homes will carry them through the night, and therefore saving you the cost of the power you would otherwise have to buy. The power level it can handle is 5kW Steady, 7kW Peak, enough to run most kitchen appliances, a split-system airconditioner, or even charge a short-range electric car (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 warranted 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 should consider getting solar cells anyway, if you own your home and have roof space available. I’ll go through the financial aspects in detail towards the end.
The install Process
I reserved a Powerwall2 via 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 more than a few cowboys in this industry in Australia. Tesla’s checkout took a $500 deposit by credit card at order time, they followed up with several phone calls over the intervening months, a contractor (Downer EDI) did a site visit 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 promptly as promised, from a local solar outfit called Flash point Solar in Punchbowl. another guy 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 wide enough to fit through a standard 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 meant to prevent it from tipping over.
8.30: looks like they are working it out as they go – 5 guys 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 big piece of ply against the cladding to help spread the load (and give them more opportunities to bolt into the elusive frame studs). since 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 provide 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 cables go in the side, to a junction box under the cooling radiator – this is a decent 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 discussing how to wire all the cables 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 measures the house load from the power cable 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 webpage to update the firmware. He says that the preferred connection method in future is via 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 webpage 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 examination 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 slight clunking of relays in the Gateway, and the TV didn’t even flicker.
Tim said the switch-over takes only 30milliseconds, which should 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 more clicks, the gateway changed over to the mains about 10 seconds later.
For solar installs here, local rules require any grid-connected solar system to shut down when the grid-power fails, to protect 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 steady when nothing is happening, and pulses slowly when charging or discharging.
Monitoring: I’ve been monitoring the house load and solar generation via PVOutput for the last 6 years – this service provides a free portal to your house power flows via a webpage 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 huge 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 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 ideal 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 booked here in the “thousands” range. Backlog for hardware is 2 months if you order now. Each team of installers could only do 1-2 installs per day, I reckon.
Til en viss grad er distributøren du er lenket til å kontrollere hvor snart installasjonen vil finne sted, på grunn av de varierende reglene og tidslinjeprosessene for utstyret de har, som er utenfor Teslas kontroll, så Tesla prioriterer installasjonene til kunder lenket til distributører som har godkjenningene klare nå.
Som vanlig tråkker Elon på tærne i denne bransjen, ved å gjøre det mulig for oss spillere å redusere vår avhengighet av energimonopolene – de vil naturlig gjøre hva de kan for å begrense opptaket av boligbatterilagring.
AC vs DC: Mens Tesla opprinnelig snakket om at både DC- og AC-ladede powerwalls var tilgjengelige, nøyde de seg med å bare gjøre de AC-ladede-Tim sier at dette eliminerte eventuelle problemer som kan oppstå fra varierende DC-muligheter til de mange forskjellige solarrays Brukes over hele verden, siden vekselstrømutgangen fra en eksisterende solcelleanlegg er ganske standard til sammenligning. Ja, det er noen tap når det Ingen krav for at PW2 -installatørene må mumle rundt med kabling av eksisterende solcablingoppsett.
Imidlertid: Aktivering av det på installasjonsdagen avhenger av kundens energifordelers forskrifter. Det er en bryter på batteriet, og en annen inne i inngangsporten for å omgå systemet.
Jeg er med Endeavour NSW, som er glade for å få Sparkys til å logge seg på det, mens noen andre distributører insisterer på L2-sertifiserte inspektører, og slikt for å ta i bruk det. Tilsynelatende er forsøket også bra med opptil 10 kW solenergi på et enfase-hjem.
Overbelastning: Jeg spurte hva som ville skje hvis husstrømtrekningen overskredet PW2 -strømutgangen – Tim sa at utgangsspenningen vil begynne å falle, og deretter vil enheten tilbakestille, kaste belastningene og gi deg en mulighet til å slå av hva som helst Tegner for mye – dette ville være det samme scenariet som da jeg spratt en effektbryter forrige uke, da det var en billading+oppvaskmaskin+mikrobølgeovn+kolonnevarmer alt på samtidig, og lasten gikk over 8kW.
Acoustics: Det gjør en og annen svak “tikking”, og en surrende lyd med lav tonehøyde når viften går. Du vil bare høre disse hvis du sitter rett ved siden av det. Viften blåser ut øverst til høyre, overfor radiatoren. Det er roligere enn Solar Inverter, som alltid gir en tikkende støy.
Tyveri: Noen mennesker nevnte å bekymre seg for at enheten ble slått av, siden den ikke ligger bak en låst dør. Jeg har ikke noen måte å legge den bak en hjemme (ingen garasje), men siden den veier 130 kg, vil tilfeldige junkies ikke være sterke nok til å løfte den, og de trenger en slepebil for å tanke det av veggen, på grunn av det fiddly klippet.
Gitt Teslas ikke-reklamepolitikk, ser jeg for meg at de aller fleste mennesker her ikke hadde noen anelse om hva denne mysteriumhvite boksen på veggen min gjør, eller hva det er verdt. Og jeg har et sikkerhetssystem for sikkerhetskopiering bare i tilfelle …
Tesla -telefonappen
Du kan laste ned Teslas gratis Android- eller iPhone -app for å administrere Tesla -bilene og powerwalls. Tesla -appen min hadde ingen registrerte enheter dagen etter installasjon, og Tim sa den gang at noen i Tesla USA ville trenge å krysse av i en boks. Jeg jaget opp Tesla -e -postkontakten jeg hadde for betalingsprosessen, og han ringte tilbake en time senere for å si at det var gjort (også en lørdag morgen).
I utgangspunktet lar det deg få vite om alt er bra med systemet, ved å overvåke strømstrømmen og batteriladningstilstanden. Med dette noen skjermbilder:
Dette er hjemmesiden du får etter å ha logget deg på. Det tar omtrent 5 sekunder å hente den nåværende tilstanden når du åpner appen, og gir et raskt blikk å se hva batteriet gjør og hvor fullt det er. I dette skuddet er mitt nesten utskrevet, og veldig lite kraft ble brukt fra solenergi
No Responses