I work for a large US company and they are keen on green. We have been talking about these units, actually about the commercial ones for our office buildings and warehouses for >12 months.
There are some very attractive financial incentives for US companies and home owners to go green... wish our government was as supportive....
Colleagues based in Atlanta and Boston are currently working with Tesla on doing a "trial" installation as these units are available, just not to the general public. I was informed this morning that Tesla have actually pre-sold something like 50000 units already... problem they have at the moment is they can't keep up with the demand and there is now a wait list....
With the $$ incentives available to myself, once there is a local distributor, (or I may just become one..???) we will most likely install 2 10Kwh units. Still waiting on confirmation I can connect our existing PV inverter to the battery packs.
For the guys doing the trial, current daily usage for each home is approx. 2400Kwh per year or approx. 7Kwh per day. Atlanta home has a 5Kw PV system and Boston home has 2 x 3Kw installations.
I was chatting with the guys this morning and it looks as though each home will require 2 x 10Kwh battery packs. When I asked about how they determined the size and how long they can survive on that amount they said the calcs they came up with meant the 20Kwh capacity will ensure that for periods of low light and bad weather (reducing the minimal input from the PV system to < 5kwh per day), they should get approx. 4 days before they need to run their generators. Both conceded that they would need to monitor their energy usage during bad weather to know if this was actually true or not... time will tell.
Install cost of the units are not anywhere near the $7,000 range but total for battery and install is just over $5200 US due to the already configured PV set up and dedicated area for the battery packs.
Both homes are energy smart and the biggest consumption of energy is their aircon, then cooking, then fridge. Obviously in extreme weather conditions energy usage can increase significantly so they are also factoring this in.
Considering energy is only going to cost more in the future, at the very least the availability of these units should help create more competition and reduce the price for battery solutions in the short term.
For us its almost a no brainer. Their size and ability to be wall mounted is why I'm interested.
We are still fortunate to be on the .52c feed in rate which means our return on the energy we feed in, we could pay off an installation of 2 x 10Kwh battery solutions in < 5 years. Much less if you factor in the fact we wont be paying anything for electricity except the connection fee...
I'll post the specs of the units I am considering as soon as I get them. Unfortunately there is a slight delay in response from Tesla due to the massive increased in demand to know more about it.
Posted Wednesday 13 May 2015 @ 11:01:17 pm from IP
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