PowerShare approved… is having “extra/overkill” on PowerWalls a good thing?

[NiceCybertruck]

Ok, we have solar and have been waiting for HOA approval for an In Law Quarter (Casita), so we can add more panels etc. For those of you who have the PowerWall setup…Is having “extra/overkill” on PowerWalls a good thing? Or just having what the minimum, as suggested, good enough? I am the “do it once, kind of guy, so I am willing to do whatever it take's, but I have no experience with PowerWalls.

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[cyber_danko]

Powerwalls are a good thing. They provide instantaneous power transfer in the event of an outage, and allow for time-of-use power shifting to store solar energy and use it when pricing is at its peak. Be mindful that It is a luxury, and will never pay itself off though.

I see PowerShare as augmenting my Powerwalls for long outages. So if I were to start over and install from scratch, I would just get 1 Powerwall. The CyberTruck has the equivalent of 9 Powerwalls. The CyberTruck does not support instantaneous power transfer. So if you just had PowerShare, you would lose all power and then a period of time later the truck would backfeed and restore energy to your home.

 

[RollingRefrigerator]

Depends on your goal. I was looking to be energy neutral, or as close to it as I could reasonably be. Meaning no import from the grid during normal conditions. For this I got 3 powerwalls and a 12 kW array. This works for maybe 70% of the year, but in the winter I'm limited by the solar due to shorter days and cloud cover, so Dec-Feb I import nearly 50% of my use. The rest of the year I'm exporting to the grid. But in the hottest nights of summer, I'm battery limited due to air conditioning in the evenings, and again I pull a good bit off the grid. Off grid really means hugely oversized your system, or altering your lifestyle around the available power.

That said, with powershare, I might have considered saving $15k and just getting one powerwall. Then the truck is there for power outages, and the powerwall for load shifting to at least push grid power to off peak rates.

PW + PS is a significant upgrade from just PS, if you ask me. And it's looking like folks are being charged as much as $7k just for the PowerShare install. For twice that you could get a PW installed and operate through blackouts, plus load shift, plus keep your solar up during blackouts. We get blackouts 3-5x a year or so, and sometimes it can be 24-48 hours. Last one was 3 days and we never lost power while the entire neighborhood was pitch black for miles. I am dumbfounded that my neighbors with giant solar systems are completely shut down due to no grid forming. Solar without grid forming (PW or other similar) is useless in a blackout.

I agree PW is a luxury item that is tough to justify just from an ROI standpoint, but I love mine and could NEVER go back to depending on the grid and writing $1000 checks every month to PG&E!!!

 

[Sandman1962]

Depends on your goal. I was looking to be energy neutral, or as close to it as I could reasonably be. Meaning no import from the grid during normal conditions. For this I got 3 powerwalls and a 12 kW array. This works for maybe 70% of the year, but in the winter I'm limited by the solar due to shorter days and cloud cover, so Dec-Feb I import nearly 50% of my use. The rest of the year I'm exporting to the grid. But in the hottest nights of summer, I'm battery limited due to air conditioning in the evenings, and again I pull a good bit off the grid. Off grid really means hugely oversized your system, or altering your lifestyle around the available power.

That said, with powershare, I might have considered saving $15k and just getting one powerwall. Then the truck is there for power outages, and the powerwall for load shifting to at least push grid power to off peak rates.

PW + PS is a significant upgrade from just PS, if you ask me. And it's looking like folks are being charged as much as $7k just for the PowerShare install. For twice that you could get a PW installed and operate through blackouts, plus load shift, plus keep your solar up during blackouts. We get blackouts 3-5x a year or so, and sometimes it can be 24-48 hours. Last one was 3 days and we never lost power while the entire neighborhood was pitch black for miles. I am dumbfounded that my neighbors with giant solar systems are completely shut down due to no grid forming. Solar without grid forming (PW or other similar) is useless in a blackout.

I agree PW is a luxury item that is tough to justify just from an ROI standpoint, but I love mine and could NEVER go back to depending on the grid and writing $1000 checks every month to PG&E!!!

I have a similar setup. I understand what you are saying but in our cases, we can now power our homes (with extra back up from the CT) AND drive around during extended outages. In my zombie apocalypse scenario, I’d be driving my CT around looking for old cans of food, etc…

 

[NiceCybertruck]

Depends on your goal. I was looking to be energy neutral, or as close to it as I could reasonably be. Meaning no import from the grid during normal conditions. For this I got 3 powerwalls and a 12 kW array. This works for maybe 70% of the year, but in the winter I'm limited by the solar due to shorter days and cloud cover, so Dec-Feb I import nearly 50% of my use. The rest of the year I'm exporting to the grid. But in the hottest nights of summer, I'm battery limited due to air conditioning in the evenings, and again I pull a good bit off the grid. Off grid really means hugely oversized your system, or altering your lifestyle around the available power.

That said, with powershare, I might have considered saving $15k and just getting one powerwall. Then the truck is there for power outages, and the powerwall for load shifting to at least push grid power to off peak rates.

PW + PS is a significant upgrade from just PS, if you ask me. And it's looking like folks are being charged as much as $7k just for the PowerShare install. For twice that you could get a PW installed and operate through blackouts, plus load shift, plus keep your solar up during blackouts. We get blackouts 3-5x a year or so, and sometimes it can be 24-48 hours. Last one was 3 days and we never lost power while the entire neighborhood was pitch black for miles. I am dumbfounded that my neighbors with giant solar systems are completely shut down due to no grid forming. Solar without grid forming (PW or other similar) is useless in a blackout.

I agree PW is a luxury item that is tough to justify just from an ROI standpoint, but I love mine and could NEVER go back to depending on the grid and writing $1000 checks every month to PG&E!!!

Thank you, just the information I needed. Since they’re giving us a discount on the PowerWalls for purchasing additional solar, I am going to try to be as “future proof” as possible and get as much as we can afford. As it stands, we need 41 additional panels, we added some things since original design of our Solar setup. With 2 additional new electric vehicles and a Casita, our demand will increase significantly. So, we plan to wait for the HOA Approval and go HAM with upgrades to our existing solar setup. I am excited about this project and can’t wait to get my CyberBeast. I have always opted for range, so I decided to live on the wild side with the CyberTruck.

 

[RollingRefrigerator]

I have a similar setup. I understand what you are saying but in our cases, we can now power our homes (with extra back up from the CT) AND drive around during extended outages. In my zombie apocalypse scenario, I’d be driving my CT around looking for old cans of food, etc…

Totally! And after we get bit, gonna need the cybertruck to venture out for fresh prey!

 

[tripzero]

Why are we concluding the PW has no ROI? By my calculations, the V3 Powerwall has an 13 year ROI doing time-of-use power shifting and as low as 8 years with solar charging.

This doesn't include installation costs, but even with Tesla's estimated installation costs, that puts ROI at 18-26 years (depending on install cost and incentives).

That's not never.

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