Hi this is John Tisbury and in this video I'm going to talk you through the
Tesla Powerwall 2 installation that we've had. Had it in for about two months now
so it's a recollection on how things have gone since day one. Some of the
readings and a bit of background about it, at sort of high level in terms of the
installation, and then the software and the app, and those sort of things.
So there you go. Run the intro and I'll see you in a bit.
So welcome back. As I said I'm going to spend a bit of time talking you through
the Tesla Powerwall installation. We're based in the UK just to give you some
geography, and it's the middle of Winter here. We had the Powerwall, Tesla
Powerwall, installed on the 4th December 2018. Probably not the best time
to get it installed with the short daytime that we have here in the UK
Winter wise, but the other side of the coin there is that a we get chance to
see how it works and work our way through it but also we can move into the
better time of the year as the daylight increases as we go into Spring and
towards Summer. We have an existing solar panel installation it's a 4 kWh
install with 16 Sanyo panels which goes into a Sunnyboy
inverter, 3.8 kilowatt inverter. We have a some time that was installed in
September 2011 and that has paid for itself.
It cost us £15,000 to install it back then and with the the
feed-in tariff that we've managed to secure then at that point which was 52p
per kWh. We managed to recoup our costs just the end of last
year actually, December 2018. So a 7 year payback time for that which was
good. They did actually forecast that it would take 14 years to pay back. Which
is good and then we've managed to halve that. What else can I tell you...
Yeah, I'm not going to spend too much time on the solar. So you know that that's
existing and what I wanted to do now that the solar had sort of paid for
itself, and was it was earning money was to look at storing the majority of the
power that we produced during the day the excess solar. Two reasons really;
1. is the both Jill and I work during the day so we generally away,
Tuesday through Friday. So that means that most of the electricity that we
produce goes straight back into the grid is excess power. We do turn on
dishwashers and those sort of things on timers so to make the best benefit and
value of the solar generation during the day. But a large quantity of it feeds
back into the grid. So we wanted to capture that and then power the house
during the evening. Hence the Powerwall. So we went with the Tesla
Powerwall. We looked at a few others but the Tesla seem to be the best in terms
of the size and the quality, and it looks nice as well. It's a 13.5 kW, actually it's a
14 kWh, battery with a usable 13.5 kWh
and you get a really useful little app with it so you can monitor
usage. You can also do that straight on your computer as well you
use an Internet browser and get into the gateway and monitor it that way. But the
app is certainly a lot more convenient. So I'll briefly take you through the app. And err
what else can I tell you. Oh yes the other reason, there was 2 reasons I said. So
that's the number 1 reason to capture the the excess solar that we
creating the day. And the 2nd one is we've ordered an electric car. A PV, EV
even, not PV, EV and that's due at the end of August. So I wanted to have charger as
well as benefit from having the battery pack to be able to charge the car.
So the company we went with to do the install, installed our charging point and
also obviously that the Powerwall at the same time,andt tied into the existing
PV installation. Which all went swimmingly well and very smooth. So let's
talk you through and show you some of the bits we've chatted about. Oh costs...
I meant to tell you about costs before I get into that. Cost for the Powerwall,
and the wall charger was seventh, I'having to look at the screen as I can
never remember all the numbers. So £7,100 which is ex VAT
to install it all which included a Zappi charger from MyEnergy.
And we've worked out that if we,
work out the sort of payback time on that it's about 5 - 7 years depending
on the sun really, the amount of sun that we get. And based on our
average daily usage for the house. You can monitor complete usage through
through the app which is very very useful. And you could do that remotely access
it at your desk at work or wherever you are, and see how much power is flowing in.
is flowing in. So let's take a little bit more detail into the app. And currently
it's a nice sunny day although bitterly cold, bitterly bitterly cold out there.
So it's about freezing I think, 1 or 2 degrees, very very chilly. Let's just have a look at the weather.
Sunday, Sunday the 3rd of February 2019.
It's 20 to 3, 14:40, and it says it should be oh look... a brisk
4 degrees, centigrade that is. And we've had about
7 hours hours of sun, or expecting about 7 hours of sun today. So quite
a good day for solar generation. So in terms of what the house is doing at the
moment, it's drawing 0.8 kilowatts. Generally if nothing's on in the house
in terms of no-one here, and just sort of on tickover, it's between to 200
watts and 400 watts, so 0.2 - 0.4. It fluctuates between the two based on fridges and
what have you kicking in, cycling in an out. We've had a bit of a busy day
actually today on the power and the reason for that is the cold. So I bought
up the sort of energy usage today and if we look at the house. The house today
has used 35 kW. Typically we would use 20 in a day. 20 kWh a day.
So as you can see we're heading on to double at the moment where our
normal usage is. And 2 reasons for that is that 1 I've had my studio my
photography studio heater on electric heater and that's pulled power and Jill's
also been in her studio and she's had her heater on. So two additional electric
heaters which are pulling and got a lot of power so that's why those, oh and
we've had the washing machine and the tumble dryer on. So it's been a full on day in terms
of electricity usage. We're 4 bedroom house, electric cooking, and gas central
heating. and that's about it. It's fairly modern and fairly well insulated.
What else going to show you. So that's home usage. To date from the grid, we've pulled
in 22.9 kW and we've actually fed back to the grid
0.2 kW. Solar generated today's 13.6 kW
which is very good for this time of year. And the Powerwall,
what's that done today. So we've sent 1.9 kW to the Powerwall and, no start
again John. 3.1 kW to the Powerwall and from it so far we've used 1.9 kW.
So it's been sort of bouncing in and out today, and I'll just show you that on
the app you will see there that sort of spike. And what that is showing you
that middle line, horizontal line, is the baseline, and anything below it
is feeding to the Powerwall and anything above the line is from the
Powerwall. So it's cycling sort of backwards and forwards between those two.
The solar power as I say, 13.8 kWh today.
And that'll start to tail off now as the sun drops down. It's very low this time of year
with the Winter sun. So to get a 13, almost 14 kW of power out
of a Winter's day here is really good. If I scroll down, the solar panel has
sent 75% to the house. 23% of that went to the Powerwall and 1.5% went
into the grid. And the reason for that is actually down to the temperature because
it's been so cold overnight there's my -5 degrees centigrade. The Powerwall
is liquid cooled, and what happens in really cold temperatures is that it'll
minimise, or reduce, the amount of power that it can safely absorb so if there's
solar panels are pumping out a lot of power, it won't all go to the Powerwall.
So the Powerwall will throttle back
and so it's I'll safely absorb the charge rather than, overheating or
taking too much to charge in. So that's why some of the power today has gone
back to the grid. Under normal circumstances, and normal
ambient temperature, that wouldn't happen. You'll notice we put the
Powerwall outside, the Powerwall can be installed inside or outside it's happy
doing either. A lot of people either put them in inside, or in their garage,
we opted for putting it outside in a convenient location and it's fine,
absolutely fine out there. With that sort of minor limitation that when it's
really cold, or really hot, it'll throttle back. But it's in a position that doesn't
really get too much extremes of temperature. Back to the app and so
that's the power flow. So performance today, bring that up and we are currently
on 30% solar panel and 5% from the Powerwall. And what will happen throughout the
course the day as the sun goes down, that any charge left in the Powerwall will
continue to charge the house. If I bring up a spreadsheet on the old
computer. I've been tracking, day-by-day, the usage so our best self-power so
far, since we've had the installation is 81%. Solar / Powerwall
supported 81% of our power needs. We've done really quite well all
the way from 1% self-power right through to 81%. Since we've had it installed,
just out of interest, in terms of the average. The rolling average is 23%
self-power, which that's pretty good in the Winter. I would expect during
the Summer that we're 100% self-powered. They reckon over the, averaging out, over the
year you end up about 70 - 75% self-powered by having the two. The panels,
solar panels and Powerwall. So we'll monitor that and see
how we get on. The Powerwall itself, since we've had installed, as I say it was
installed on Tuesday the 4th of December 2018. Today it's the 3rd of February 2019
I haven't got time yesterday's figures in yet, but so far the Powerwall has
provided 8% of our total self-power. Which means that the solar has managed
14%. So yeah, so that's that's where we're at. And I also show you on the video
the Zappi charger which we've got. And the reason we went with the Zappi charger is
that you've got different modes on the Zappi. This video it really wasn't about
the Zappi, there's plenty of other really good videos on it. The Zappi will allow
you to charge at various times, so you can set it to charge the car as a priority
but it also you've got the other extreme where you can charge it on in excess solar.
So when you're generating additional solar power that a house doesn't need
you can then sort of trickle charge that into the car. And the car then charges
for free. So that's why we went with a the Zappi charger because it has that
intelligence to be able to meter when it decides to pull and not pull to
charge the car. What else did I need to tell you. I think
there was something else just dropped into my memory. I see now the Powerwall
is discharging so something's clicked on in the house
we're putting 3.1 kW in the home, and solar is only pulling 2 kW in,
so the Powerwall is now made up the difference the balance of 1.1 Kw. So it'll
always do solar and Powerwall there's any charge in there, over the
grid to make sure that, you know, it works to reduce the pull of the grid. And you can
change those settings if you need to there's a customise option in there. And
one thing we're looking to do is go on to an economy tariff and there's a few energy
companies who do different tariffs. It used to be in the old days called the economy
7 that's I'm still available but a lot of them do different tariffs now. So you
can charge your electric vehicle, or your Powerwall, in our case during the cheap
rate. So during the Winter, when there's little solar available we could then
overnight, during that cheap tariff timeframe, charge the Tesla up to a
100% to get the benefit of that, and then that could discharge during the day
during the peak rate times to reduce our electricity usage from the grid. So
that's something else we're looking for towards. Currently our meter, our electric
meter, we've got is the old type. So we need to swap that out to a dual rate
meter to be able to take advantage of that. So I'm just investigating that at
the moment. So perhaps do one on that as and when we get that. So there
you go so anyway I'm rambling on a bit. So that's us, that's the Tesla Powerwall 2
installation. I'm sure I'll do another video later on in the Summer perhaps
when we've got a bit more data and a bit more sun in terms of duration, to see if
we are actually doing 100% self-powered. So any questions, drop them in the
comments below. Thumbs up always appreciated or thumbs down if this was
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Anyway. thanks for tuning in and I shall see you soon. Alright take care, bye.