What Is the Tesla Powerwall, review, cost & features

In this article, we will discuss What Is the Tesla Powerwall, review, cost & features. Among the most widely used solar batteries is the Tesla Powerwall. It is supported by one of the top solar energy businesses and saves extra solar energy that you don’t need during the day so that you can utilise it at night, in power outages, or to reduce expensive electricity bills. Yet, it has a hefty $12,850 price tag.

The Powerwall’s essential attributes and technical details have been examined by the This Old House Reviews Team to evaluate whether the price is justified. For your installation, this handbook also offers cost-saving advice.

What Is the Tesla Powerwall?

In order to complement Tesla’s expanding advancements in solar technology, the Powerwall was released in 2015. Since then, it has risen to the top among household solar batteries.

The Powerwall 2 and the Powerwall+ are the two models that are offered. Both batteries have the capacity to store extra solar energy for use later, including at night, during a blackout, and on days with little sunlight. A battery storage system provides energy independence from your power grid and further home energy savings by allowing you to use all of the energy your system produces.

Direct access to both models is provided by Tesla’s website or sales team. Both authorised Tesla installers and independent solar companies sell the Tesla Powerwall.

Key Points

• Before installation, the Tesla Powerwall costs between $10,600 and $12,850, and its total price ranges between $14,600 and 16,850. (before incentives and taxes).
• A 13.5 kWh lithium-ion home battery from the Tesla Powerwall can increase your grid independence and safeguard you from power interruptions.
• To genuinely be “off the grid,” you might need multiple Powerwall batteries.
• You can get the greatest information on the Tesla home battery system and other energy storage choices for your house from a qualified EnergySage-approved installer.

In this article, we will discuss What Is the Tesla Powerwall, review, cost & features.

Which Tesla Powerwall variants are on the market right now?

The Powerwall+ and the Tesla Powerwall, commonly referred to as the Tesla Powerwall 2, are the two Powerwall variants that Tesla currently sells. The Powerwall+’s integrated inverter and system controller are its key points of distinction. Yet, you might still be able to install a Powerwall. Currently, the Tesla Powerwall+ is installed by the majority of installers.

What is the cost of the Tesla Powerwall?

According to Tesla’s website, the Tesla Powerwall costs between $10,600 and $12,850 before installation. Installation is an additional cost that varies depending on location and home style. Installation expenses should be under $4,000, however this might vary greatly based on your electrical arrangement and other considerations.

While this may appear to be a large sum of money, building a solar-plus-storage system that includes a Tesla Powerwall might be a smart investment: it allows you to harness renewable energy while also protecting you from power interruptions and saving you money! Several factors, including:

• The rate structure of your electric utility or retail energy provider
• Your motivations for putting in a solar power battery
• If you have a lot of power outages or blackouts in your region,
• Your local solar and storage incentives (like net metering)

Assume you actually want to achieve energy independence. In that situation, you’ll almost certainly need to add more Powerwall batteries to boost your energy storage capacity, which will significantly increase the cost of your solar battery system. But, depending on where you live, you may be eligible for financial incentives that might lower the cost of installing home energy storage.

In this article, we will discuss What Is the Tesla Powerwall, review, cost & features.

Tesla Powerwall incentives and rebates are available

It’s vital to keep in mind that the installation prices stated above are before incentives, even though batteries often demand a sizable upfront expenditure. You may be eligible for both federal and state or municipal incentives, such as:

The federal investment tax credit

Any energy storage system, often known as a battery, installed in your home between January 1, 2023, and December 31, 2032 qualifies for the investment tax credit. This includes Powerwalls (ITC). This offers the same 30 percent tax credit that you receive when installing a solar system for your Tesla Powerwall installation. You will be able to take advantage of this incentive whether you install your Powerwall as a standalone storage unit, as part of a solar-plus-storage system, or as an addition to an existing solar system.

The only requirement for a battery to be eligible for this incentive is that it must have a battery capacity of at least 3 kWh. So, a Tesla Powerwall qualifies for the ITC because it offers 13.5 kWh of backup energy.

State-specific incentives

Many states provide additional incentives that can assist decrease the cost of your Powerwall, so check to see what’s available in your area – your installer can likely share information on current programmes. For example, if you live in California, the Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) offered by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) offers a $250/kWh rebate (totaling $3,375 for a Powerwall). You may also be eligible for further refunds through the SGIP based on your income and medical status.

In some places, such as Massachusetts, there are also programmes available to entice you to connect your Powerwall to the grid, which allows your utility company to draw energy stored in your battery during peak electrical demand to help balance the electric grid.

How the Tesla Powerwall works

Particularly if your utility has eliminated or decreased net metering, implemented time-of-use (TOU) rates, or implemented demand charges, the Powerwall works well with solar panel installations. Home energy storage systems can be expanded by stacking up to 10 Tesla Powerwall batteries, which can be used to assist power a home.

The Tesla Powerwall is sized for daily use and frequently used in conjunction with a solar panel system, like many other home battery products. You can use the battery system to store excess electricity instead of dumping it back into the grid when your solar panels generate more than you need. You won’t need to purchase electricity from your utility company later on when your panels aren’t producing enough to fulfil your home’s needs because it is already stored in your battery.

A Powerwall can also be used without solar, however this is less popular. If you reside in a region with TOU rates, you can automatically save money by charging your Powerwall during times of low electricity costs and discharging it during times of high electricity expenses. By sensing an outage and instantly switching to become your home’s primary power source, it will also offer seamless backup power.

The Tesla Powerwall: Is it pricey?

One of the most well-liked home battery solutions on the market is the Tesla Powerwall. The Powerwall is competitive in the home battery market due to its affordability, storage capacity, and constant power. The Tesla Powerwall battery could be a fantastic alternative if you’re searching for a dependable battery that can offer some backup during brief outages.

Even if there are problems with almost every electrical product on the market, it’s important to note that some Tesla customers have complained about communication problems and service interruptions.

In this article, we will discuss What Is the Tesla Powerwall, review, cost & features.

Important information regarding the Tesla Powerwall

One of the first businesses in the domestic energy storage sector to produce small-scale batteries for home energy storage was Tesla, which introduced the Powerwall in April 2015. Tesla has since delivered improved Powerwall 2 variants in November 2020 and October 2016 respectively. You can buy Tesla solar panels or a Tesla Solar Roof in addition to battery storage, while Powerwalls work with almost any brand of solar panel or shingle, so you’re not required to stick with the entire Tesla product line.

It’s crucial to consider a number of metrics and technical details when assessing the Powerwall. The battery’s size (power and capacity), chemistry, depth of discharge, and round-trip efficiency are a few of the most crucial factors.

Size

The Tesla Powerwall models have the same usable energy capacity: 13.5 kWh. When comparing the Powerwall to other home storage alternatives, two crucial criteria to consider are power and useful capacity.

The highest amount of electricity that may be output at a single moment is determined by power (measured in kilowatts, or kW), but usable capacity (measured in kilowatt-hours, or kWh) is the maximum amount of electricity stored in your battery on a full charge. The Tesla Powerwall+ has a maximum power rating of 7 kW when there is no sun and 9.6 kW when there is full sun, as well as 13.5 kWh of usable capacity. The Powerwall 2 has a maximum power rating of 5.8 kW and an useful capacity of 13.5 kWh.

In this article, we will discuss What Is the Tesla Powerwall, review, cost & features.

Power vs. capacity

The Powerwall system is additionally adaptable, allowing you to expand your battery setup. For a home with high energy usage and needs, for instance, you could want to install several Powerwall batteries. According to the Tesla website, a single big storage system can be created by connecting up to 10 Powerwall batteries.

Imagine your battery as a pipe that is being filled with water. Power is the size of the pipe itself, whilst the volume of water that can be forced through it determines the useful energy capacity. Bigger pipes enable more water to flow through at once, causing the water to run out more quickly. Similar to a battery with a higher power rating, a high power rating battery may deliver more electricity at once but will use up its available energy capacity more quickly.

The number of appliances you can run at once with a battery depends on its power, and how long those appliances can run depends on its useful capacity. More powerful appliances or multiple appliances can be powered simultaneously by batteries with a higher power rating. As a result, they can power your appliances for a longer amount of time before needing to be recharged than batteries with a lower useable capacity.

Basic functionality

Different solar power batteries have different functionalities; some are great off-grid batteries, while others provide rate arbitrage-specific software. Here are some of the Tesla Powerwall’s key features:

Backup power

Tesla has worked hard to ensure that their battery solution is compatible with the majority of popular brands and types of off-grid and hybrid inverters, making it a strong match for combining with most solar systems. So long as your installer installs the proper parts, your Tesla Powerwall battery should be able to supply backup power for your home in the event that the grid goes down.

Chemistry

The Tesla Powerwall is a lithium-ion storage product, specifically a lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) battery. This is one of the most used lithium-ion battery technologies, and with good reason: compared to other types of batteries, NMC batteries are known for their high energy density (the amount of energy they can store relative to the physical space they take up) and greater safety. Check out our review of battery chemistry differences to discover more about how different lithium-ion battery chemistries match up against one another.

Parts of a Tesla Powerwall

There are four primary parts to a Tesla Powerwall+:

• Battery Powerwall+
• The link between the Powerwall system and the grid is managed by a Tesla Gateway (Backup Gateway 2). The gateway has two inbuilt metres that your installer can set up to track various kinds of loads.
• Backup switch: a more recent part of the Powerwall system for whole-home backup systems that makes it easier to use backup power when an outage is detected; it needs to be approved by your utility
• Tesla A solar shutdown mechanism must be put on the roof in accordance with the National Electric Code to enable quick inverter shut-down for safety reasons.

The Tesla app

You can control your Powerwall using the Tesla app, just like other Tesla goods (such their solar panels, EVs, or EV charger). You can simply control your Tesla Powerwall from anywhere with this app, monitor and manage your energy use with ease, set preferences, view real-time metrics and stored energy quantities, and receive automatic notifications. Also, you can utilise the mobile app to control how you store excess energy when solar power is involved.

The Tesla app includes a number of options that might help you control how much energy your Powerwall uses, including:

Backup Reserve mode

You can control your battery’s power output during a power outage in this way. You can specify a greater reserve percentage if you would want to keep extra energy on hand in case of a power loss. By choosing Self-Powered mode with a Backup Reserve of 100%, you can also utilise your Powerwall as a backup-only appliance. But, you won’t often save as much money and will be more dependent on the grid.

If you lower your reserve percentage to less than 20%, the app will show a “Low Backup Reserve” indicator. If this occurs, your Powerwall might not have enough energy in its batteries to assist you in case of a prolonged power loss. So, let’s say a blackout or outage happens while the remaining stored energy in your Powerwall is below 5%. You would then quickly lose power, the Powerwall would store its energy, and it would recharge the following morning using your solar power.

Self-Powered mode

By storing solar energy for use at night, if your Powerwall is connected to solar, this option enables you to use more solar energy yourself. This can virtually double the amount of solar energy that powers your home, according to Tesla Energy. Any extra solar power will be sent back to the grid if you generate enough solar energy to completely offset your home’s current energy requirements and the Powerwall is fully charged. Similar to this, you’ll need to use grid power when the energy needs of your home exceed what can be produced by your solar panel system and stored in your Powerwall.

Time-Based Control mode

By entering the specifics of your utility rate plan, this option assists you in making the biggest financial savings if your utility offers TOU prices.

Read about the Tesla Powerwall’s many energy management settings.

Performance metrics

The depth of discharge and round trip efficiency of a solar battery are two important metrics to assess its performance.

The depth of discharge (DoD) of a battery describes the proportion of its energy that has been used up compared to its total capacity. Many manufacturers specify a maximum DoD level for the best battery performance because the usable life of a battery diminishes every time you charge, discharge, and recharge—or cycle—your battery. In general, batteries with a deeper level of discharge are thought to be higher-quality goods. Given its NMC battery chemistry, the Tesla Powerwall promises a depth of discharge of 100 percent.

Round trip efficiency gauges the amount of electricity lost during battery charging and discharge. The battery’s ability to transform incoming electricity into stored electricity and then back into usable electricity depends on the efficiency percentage. Given that the Tesla Powerwall has a high round trip efficiency of 90%, you will receive 9 kWh of output for every 10 kWh that you input into the battery.

How do the top batteries stack up against the Tesla Powerwall?

In terms of price, the Tesla Powerwall is tough to beat. It’s not the only home energy storage device with such outstanding features, though. Other well-known household batteries are the Enphase Smart Battery and the Generac PWRCell.

comparing the Generac PWRCell and Enphase IQ Battery 10 and the Tesla Powerwall

Tesla Powerwall warranty

In the United States, a Tesla Powerwall+ and Powerwall warranty includes:

• A 10-year guarantee period: your Powerwall+ will be free of defects for ten years after the first installation date.
• An energy retention guarantee: your Powerwall+ will retain at least 70% of its capacity to keep a charge throughout the warranty period for an unlimited number of cycles.
• If you have a Solar Shutdown Device(s) installed as part of your Powerwall+ system, Tesla guarantees it will be free of defects for 25 years after its initial installation date.

For more details, see our comprehensive Tesla Powerwall warranty review.

The majority of residences using Tesla batteries regularly charge and discharge their batteries. Tesla’s battery technology is comparable to other big and small rechargeable batteries in that it gradually loses some of its capacity over time.

Consider the difference in battery life between a brand-new smartphone and one that is a few years old: when you often charge and discharge your phone’s battery, it gradually loses part of its capacity to hold a charge. Your Powerwall battery will experience the same decline in life. That does not point to a defect in the product. No matter if it’s an electric vehicle battery, a home energy battery, or a rechargeable AA battery, all batteries eventually lose some of their capacity to hold a charge after prolonged use. For this reason, Tesla provides a warranty that ensures a specific level of storage capacity for the next 10 years.

Visit our Solar Batteries Buyer’s Guide to choose products and contrast them according to efficiency, capacity, power, and other factors if you want to evaluate several battery models side by side.

In this article, we will discuss What Is the Tesla Powerwall, review, cost & features.