Tesla Powerwall: Crunching the Numbers for Australia

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2015/05/tesla-powerwall-crunching-the-numbers-for-an-australian-suburban-home/

by qzervaas • 11 years ago

64 41 11 years ago

lifehacker.com.au

yitchelle• 11 years ago

Kinda sad situation with the alternative energy source.

I did a similar back of the envelope calculation for my dad when he considered putting solar panels onto his house roof when the Australian Govn't was subsidizing it. It would have taken him 17 years to breakeven from the initial installation. This did not even consider the maintenance and insurance cost. We weren't even sure if my parents would have stayed in that house for that long. So we skipped it.

The initial costs is just too high for average Joe.

dragontamer• 11 years ago

Its as if people have forgotten about infrastructure or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

Spend a few billion on a 3 Gigawatt plant (roughly 30-Gigawatt hours of energy storage). Large-scale infrastructure projects are going to be cheaper and more efficient than most direct-to-home solutions.

The economies of scale, and the innovative designs that exist at the large level (CAES: Compressed Air Energy Storage. Redox-Flow Batteries, Pumped Hydro, Flywheel Energy Storage) are superior to the designs that exist at a micro-level (Li-Ion Batteries)

The new infrastructure projects are occurring all over the place in the US.

* http://www.energy.ca.gov/tour/helms/ * https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/texas-calls-for...

Etc. etc. These infrastructure projects are the future (and past). They're proven, reliable, and there are tons of engineers with decades of experience on these sorts of projects.

--------

Tesla needs to try to make a Utility-scale 500 MW plant.

yellowbkpk• 11 years ago

Those infrastructure projects don't sell Tesla batteries at scale, making future Tesla battery packs cheaper, making future Tesla cars cheaper.

mikeash3• 11 years ago

Tesla is making utility-scale stuff. Their "Powerpack" product starts at 100kWh and can be chained together to scale as large as you want, and is intended for industrial and utility use.

The home version is basically a byproduct of that, for people who want a whole-house UPS, or really want to go off-grid, or whose utilities are slow to get with it.

mhurron• 11 years ago

Kinda sad situation with the alternative energy source.

I find it kind of sad that the only way people will consider alternative energy sources is if it's significantly cheaper than the existing, embedded, kill the planet options.

I find it sad, but I'm not surprised. People in general don't actually give a shit about anything around them.

escherize• 11 years ago

You should cheer up. Rational people (like gp) only care about what's around them. Why should he waste money on solar instead of sending it to charity, etc?

mikeash3• 11 years ago

What I find sad is that we allow dirty, polluting energy sources to remain artificially cheap by not requiring them to pay the costs of their pollution.

If the cost of coal-fired electricity included all the costs from the pollution it emits, alternative energy would look a lot more attractive, and rational economic actors would start switching over a lot faster.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

who would build their own coal/oil/gas power system at home?

I would not mind seeing more solar but why is the onus put on the individual home owner? the loss of efficiency alone by having so many individual and separate setups let alone the maintenance nightmare makes me wonder, who thought this was a good idea? It might become one when the systems become plug and play, something you can go down to your local big box construction store and buy.

just as with wind, coal, and other forms of power generation, solar is far more suited to where it can be deployed in large configurations. The maintenance savings alone make it sensible. The ease of integrating back into the grid make it more sensible.

but solar as an individual home owner with its current roi and complexity? I guess if you need a visual feel good statement.

singingfish• 11 years ago

I've done some sums too. A 4kw system without storage has a payback time of 10 years for me. I can't see storage making an economic difference at this stage.

ljoshua• 11 years ago

Interesting to see the different power usage and electricity rates for a different part of the globe. Here in the Houston, TX area we used 848 kWh in a 30 day winter period for a mid-sized home, which is as much as the article states the household used in a 95 day period. During the summer, when my old AC unit is running like crazy, we'll use ~1800 kWh, and our rate is an average of $0.102 USD, which is around 60% of the top rate from the article.

A Powerwall unit still wouldn't make sense for us, but this is rev 1, and so in a couple of generations we could be looking at something that actually could be impactful.

merb2• 11 years ago

848 kWh sounds a lot. For a 4 person house in germany you have a yearly usage ~1800kWh. You have the same amount in a 1/3 year. That's a shitload.

Currently I'm single and use 848 kWh for a whole year.

noselasd• 11 years ago

That sounds so little. Just having two 50W lightbulbs shining 24x7 would be slightly more than that in a year.

bane• 11 years ago

Houston, TX is both very hot and very humid. It can exceed 30C for 4-5 months out of the year and it will be dreadfully humid for much of that time. A/C is virtually required to do anything productive.

darkr• 11 years ago

I guess if he's in Houston, TX then a chunk of that goes on air con

Cthulhu_• 11 years ago

and so in a couple of generations we could be looking at something that actually could be impactful.

But battery technology in itself isn't new; you could make a similar package out of car batteries if need be. I think that if it was economically viable, it would've been done ages ago.

Then again I'm probably wrong.

mikeash3• 11 years ago

Battery technology has changed a lot over the past couple of decades. A good chunk of the cost here is in the controller electronics (you need a hefty inverter to allow the battery to power your AC household circuits) and that has, of course, changed enormously.

All of this changes the costs and the space requirements, and that in turn changes whether or not it's economically viable.

rhino369• 11 years ago

Not to mention, if people actually used these in large enough numbers--or utilities building a battery reserve--the off peak power and peak power difference will be smaller. Because you have increased demand for off peak due to charging. And decreased peak usage.

keithpeter• 11 years ago

That smoothing out of the daily demand curve might actually lead to significant capital savings on the part of utility companies as less need for short term high power reserve. Also the resilience of the system to problems would increase. UK is providing a degree of subsidy to reduce peak demand already. Smart meters may help in future.

http://www2.nationalgrid.com/uk/Industry-information/Electri...

http://www.eunomia.co.uk/eunomia-supports-uks-first-electric...

http://www.carbonbrief.org/how-national-grid-keeps-the-light...

grecy• 11 years ago

The price for solar is not accurate in this article.

My parents just installed a 5KW system, with an inverter and smart meter in Warrnambool, Victoria. They paid $10k AUD, then the government refunded them $5k, so total out of pocket expense for them was only $5k

oconnore• 11 years ago

The whole notion of the powerwall is based on the assumption that either utilities or consumers are irrational. If buying a powerwall was at all economical, utilities would buy them in bulk, charge them on wholesale power, alter their pricing structure, and make a larger margin than you ever could. If powerwalls aren't economical, the only reason they make sense is to capitalize on consumers who are willing to buy the thing because its cool, or because they like living "off the grid".

Utilities also have access to utility-scale energy storage -- pumped hydro, thermal, etc -- which is far cheaper than consumer focused powerwalls.

Tesla Powerwall: Crunching the Numbers for Australia

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