[wopwops]

Tesla actually underhypes the Powerwall 2. It's better than most people realize. See: capabilities of the backup gateway. It islands existing grid tie solar systems and allows these systems to generate electricity for household loads and/or Powerwall charging during grid failures. Usually grid tie solar systems are disabled during grid failures to prevent them from exporting electricity to the grid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxAbd-kanI8

Tesla mentions this capability, but most people shopping for energy storage don't realize what it would cost to do this with gear from other manufacturers (SMA for example). Some storage providers don't offer any backup capability at all. Enphase is the saddest example of this. Enphase tried to convince customers that they shouldn't demand backup capabilities from their solar energy storage systems, and Tesla is actually towing a Tiny house around Australia that uses Enphase microinverters with a Powerwall 2 offgrid. Enphase's own AC Battery provide no backup capability at all or a way to run off grid.

I sell solar power systems in New Zealand and the Powerwall 2 makes every other storage solution look stupid at the moment when considering price per warranted kW/h and features. I can't sell my customers a Powerwall 2 yet, but I advise against buying systems that I can sell them from Panasonic, LG, Sonnen, Enphase, etc. The whole storage industry needs to understand that the Powerwall 2 is real (get over the shock) and that if they don't cut their prices roughly in half---look at Aquion.

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/03/15/aquion-energy-files-cha...

Nice battery. Too expensive.

[0xbear]

Powerwall is very expensive too. It would cost well over 10k to install 2 modules that their website says would be adequate for my house. I pay something like $100/mo for electricity. Do the math. Solar is way too expensive as well, even with subsidies.

I don't know who their target market is. Is it only for people who can't count?

[azinman2]

My parents house loses power often when it rains. They just bought one as a house-scale UPS.

[0xbear]

There are a lot cheaper options for a house scale UPS if they have natural gas. Fully automatic, and can run for days on end.

[azinman2]

Interesting. Link?

They’ve already bought it so...

Know there are a number of state/fed discounts on it that bring the price down. It also seems like there’s some kind of power shifting thing in 2018 with more rebates and a potential to save money by paying for low usage rates only (by presumably using the battery during the day).

[0xbear]

Generac, Briggs&Stratton, and Kohler make many generators that are powered by LP or natural gas. These typically start at 10KW or so and go up from there. Powerwall is 5KW sustained and it lasts less than 3 hours at 5KW, after which you're without power again. Natural gas powered units cost about half as much and can run indefinitely. Indeed people even use them to power their cabins and such, with LP delivered only once or twice a year.