The TRUTH About Tesla Powerwalls (2yr Review)

I guess we are lucky here in Albuquerque, NM. We paid $13,500 for 10 panels on our roof. NM has over 300 days of sun a year. We generate an over abundance of energy and the excess goes into the grid. We also receive a credit. Our monthly bill is $8.20 which is just the fees and taxes.

Never underestimate the evil of utility companies. I'm interested in seeing if they are able to start charging you for the number of kw on your roof. It's so important that we fight for the right to produce our own power.

Great video. This info is super helpful. I’m hoping to have a similar setup in my next home

Ben - I have Tesla Solar (10 KW - 24 panels) and 1 Powerwall2. I am north of SF in Sonoma County with solar point due south. I have had mine installed for over two years with one EV (I-Pace) (7,500 miles /year) and my critial home circuits are on a subpanel. I have been able to run successfully over a 2 1/2 day "fire outage" by PG&E. (Normal yearly consumption is 13,500 which is close to yours (I have a bigger home). My power bill has been $120 each of the last two years (PG&E required charge to do Net Metering). I am writing to recommend you push the 1 - Powerwall2 solution more. It does the job fine for me...at least with panels facing directly south. It gives me outage protection and artbitrage that keeps my costs to near zero.

Got my powerwalls in 2018 and agree it is a preppers dream system. Feels pretty good not caring what the energy companies rates or gas prices do.

One aspect many people don’t seem to quantify is a self-sustaining and reliable power supply when the grid goes down for any reason. I find this very important and worth the cost of the Powerwalls.

Tks Ben, shared with my LinkedIn group. Excellent video. 👍

Thanks, Ben. The '2 types' made me laugh out loud even though we all saw it coming... well played.

Exceptional explanation for the benefits of a T P W. Outstanding Ben!

Great show!! Loved it!!! Keep'em coming!!!

great, useable information, thanks for doing all the work :)

Great analysis. Net metering is key here. Our utilities (Edison South Bay) only pays $0.03/kWH. With TOU rate $0.10 - $0.48 With our Solar+PW system, 'Self-Powered' settings saves us more$

One of the energy providers over here in Texas, not mine, has a free nights & weekends plan. So a battery pack would be very tempting.

Yes!!! This is the video I’ve been waiting for. Someday load-shifting will be intuitive to people, crazy to me how abstract it seems now. The analogy I like to use is to compare time-of-use to the stock market. Imagine if every day Apple stock is $100/share before 11AM, and $200/share after 11AM, what would you do? Obviously you’d buy Apple stock before 11AM and sell it after 11AM, duh right?!?! However, when you apply the same rationale to electricity people lose interest. I can’t figure out why. Thanks for putting this together, I’ll reference this video and share it when I try to explain why people should get solar + batteries!

You are not protected against a regulation change about net metering or TOU. In Belgium, we have net metering, but they just add a huge yearly tax to compensate for the usage of the network. (Network cost are here 50-75% off the bill, vs 25% the actual electrons). It’s basically saying that we buy from the grid full price but send back the overproduction at 25% of the price…

I have a farm but work 230km’s away, where I live most of the time. I’m able to do a day trip to my farm & recharge my EV from the Powerwall & solar panels - on a sunny day. It’s a great setup.

Great overview of the problem, opportunity and solution. I find myself in the same boat, with our power company forcing us into time of use because we are a net metering customer. Doing the math on the battery investment, and the opportunity cost of not investing that money in other places.

There's a few details left out: 1. You're not allowed to get the Federal Energy Tax Credit unless your Powerwalls are paired with solar. 2. You're not allowed to charge your Powerwalls from the grid if you have the Powerwall+Solar configuration. The batteries are to be filled by your solar system only. Tesla sets up your app so you are prevented from charging the Powerwalls from the grid. It's part of their agreement with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) of California. From solar charging only, that's why it's important to have the solar capacity. The only exception is during a storm watch event, where Tesla will enable the app temporarily to let the Powerwalls fill up from the grid. 3. If you have Powerwalls only, then yes you're allowed to charge from the grid, but disallowed from getting the federal tax credit (see #1) 4. You cannot discharge the Powerwalls to sell power back to the grid. Your solar panels can discharge to the grid if there's a surplus not needed by the Powerwalls but stored energy from the Powerwalls to the grid, no. Allowing this would be problematic to their business.

We live in Norway, up far North at 67 latitude, and last month we had a power bill of about 130 USD. This gives 4.33 USD per day. Now we are into a cold and snowy period and our prices are rising so we estimate around 6 USD per day if it gets extra cold. Not too bad, but we are using modern AC heating solutions and almost no old fashioned electric ovens. We are also sparse with not heating the bedrooms unless it gets too cold to bare, and then only in the evening. We are going to get an EV eventually and will of course be using more power in average because if that, but we have very short distances to work and the shops are also just 5 minutes away, so we drive less than 3000 km (1864miles) per year, if we are not driving on longer holiday trips

Tesla owner with a 14kw solar array on my roof. Here in NY the utility sells you the power at the retail rate and buys it from you at the wholesale rate. So you cannot make money or credits selling power back to them. Because of this most solar systems are sized exactly for your usage. I oversized my array so I could charge a car, which I didn't even own at the time. Here you also have to pay the tariff every month up front. This is your taxes, 911 fee, delivery charges etc. So with no usage your bill is $30 a month. Fortunately they still let us use oil and propane here so we don't have the burden of an entirely electric home.