Tesla Powerwall 2 has no competition – comparison with LG Resu and SonnenBatterie

[Hamartia Antidote]

https://electrek.co/2016/10/31/tesla-powerwall-2-comparison-lg-resu-sonnenbatterie/

As we reported when Tesla officially unveiled the Powerwall 2 last week, the new battery pack is a game changer in home energy storage. The new price point for twice the energy capacity and the integrated inverter are hard to beat specifications for the competition, which had significantly increased since Tesla introduced first generation Powerwall over a year ago.

In order to get a better idea of how disruptive the new Powerwall 2 can be, we compared it with some of the other important residential home battery pack solutions.

The price points of most solutions have so far made them unavailable to most markets in the US. Like Tesla’s first generation Powerwall, other companies have concentrated their efforts on markets with higher electricity rates, like Australia and Germany.

But more recently, some of the biggest players in the field felt confident enough to enter the US market, like LG with the RESU and sonnenBatterie with the Eco Compact. Both companies already had some measure of success with their systems, especially sonnenBatterie in its home country of Germany, but it will be interesting to see how they will fair with Tesla’s new product.

They all offer stackable/modular solutions to increase the power output or energy capacity of their respective system, but when you compare the base version of each solution, it becomes clear that Tesla has a significant energy capacity and cost advantage:

When talking about the upcoming new Powerwall during a conference call with analysts in August, people thought that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was just hyping the new product when he said: “I think it’s going to be really exciting when people see it. That’s why I expect exponential growth from there. I think it’s really going to go ballistic,” but with the specs above, it looks like he might have been right.

It will be very difficult for anyone to justify buying anything else than the Powerwall when for the same price or less, you can get at least twice the energy capacity.

Ultimately, the overall value is found in the cost per kWh delivered, which is determined by how long the battery pack will last. That’s something that remains to be tested for each option, but considering Tesla offers a 10-year warranty with “unlimited cycles”, it looks like they are pretty confident on the Powerwall’s durability.

Regardless of your application, the higher energy capacity is welcomed. If you simply want to use it for backup power, you will be able to power your home for longer periods of time in extended power outages or use more electric appliances during those outages. Powerwall 2 can run the average 4 bedroom home for a full day, supplanting the need for a generator for many, even if they don’t have solar panels to refill the battery during the day.

If you are using it with a solar installation or to offset peak power demand, you will be able to store more cheap energy and use it later when the sun doesn’t shine or when electricity rates are higher in your region.

And what is particularly interesting is that it’s not like Tesla is just the first company unveiling the latest generation of their product and LG and sonnenBatterie will soon update their offering too. Actually, both LG Chem’s RESU and sonnenBatterie’s eco compact have either received an upgrade or been unveiled in the past few months.

It goes to show that Tesla could very well be building a significant lead here.

All 3 products are expected to enter the US market almost simultaneously in Q4 2017. Tesla’s Powerwall will also be available in Tesla’s other markets and LG and sonnenBatterie products are already available in several other countries.

Previous version used by Australian couple to deal with blackouts.

14kWh can run a home for 24 hours that uses 5110 kWh/year.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity-consumption

if you wondering what American residences are using all that electricity for:
http://gizmodo.com/how-the-american-dream-is-killing-the-american-electric-1558412819
Top electrical usages for American residences are:
air-conditioning: 19%
lighting: 13% (pre LED)
water heating: 9% (if electric vs natural gas)
refrigeration: 8%
tv + connected devices: 7%
space heating: 6% (if electric vs natural gas)
clothes dryers: 4% (if electric vs natural gas)
PC equipment: 3%
furnace fans + equipment: 3%
cooking: 2% (if electric vs natural gas)
dishwashers: 2%
freezers: 2%
clothes washers: 1%
Other uses (small electric devices, heating elements, and motors not listed above): 22%

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

https://electrek.co/2017/02/17/tesla-powerwall-2-gigafactory/#more-37511

Tesla Powerwall 2 now ready to ship after strong pre-orders, early Gigafactory battery production went to Powerpacks

When unveiling its second generation home energy storage system, Powerwall 2, last October, Tesla announced that production would start at the Gigafactory in December 2016 for the first deliveries in the US in January 2017. Other markets were set to follow soon after. Tesla later updated its delivery estimate to February in the US.

We can now report that Powerwall 2 production is about to ramp up after early battery production at the Gigafactory was dedicated to Powerpack projects.

The architectures of the Powerpack and Powerwall are very similar. They use the same battery modules and “pods”, but whereas the Powerwall is equipped with a single pod, the Powerpack can be equipped with up to 16.

It allows Tesla to have the exact same battery cell and battery module manufacturing processes for both products up to the actual battery pack – that’s where the batteries become a Powerwall or Powerpack.

It offers a lot of advantages in term of production efficiency, but it also means that both products share the supply of battery cells and modules, and if there’s a supply constraint, one of the two products will suffer for it.

Here are the pod design and the pods inside Powerpack and Powerwall:









Considering Tesla and Panasonic’s new 2170 li-ion battery cell produced at the Gigafactory is what enabled the second generation of Tesla’s new stationary battery packs, Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2, the products are highly dependent on its production, which only started in volume last month.

Sources familiar with Tesla’s energy storage business told Electrek that the pipeline of Powerpack 2 projects took up the early battery production. Last year, Tesla Energy consultants gave the opportunity to clients to get their projects deployed sooner with the Powerpack 1 or wait for the end of the year to get Powerpack 2.

Several of them opted for the latter and additionally, Tesla had short deadlines on very large projects, like the one on the island of Kauai and the one with Southern California Edison.

The early production of Tesla’s new 2170 battery cells and the production of battery modules and pods at the Gigafactory were dedicated to the Powerpacks for those projects, but we are told that the bottleneck is behind them and that Powerwall 2 production is starting for deliveries in the next few weeks.

t will still take some time for Tesla to work through its backlog. When Tesla released the first Powerwall in 2015, it received over 38,000 reservations within days, but at that time, what Tesla was calling a “reservation” was merely potential customers signing up to get updates on availability.

For Powerwall 2, Tesla has been taking actual orders with a $500 deposit for the $5,500 device (before installation). Without sharing actual numbers, a source familiar with the matter told Electrek that the new backlog is “similar in size” to the first generation backlog despite the new reservation process demanding a bigger commitment.

In term of battery pack units, it will eclipse Powerpack deployment, but not in term of total energy capacity since a relatively small 22-Powerpack project, like the one we reported on yesterday with PG&E in California, is the equivalent of over 150 Powerwalls.

While things have been ramping up nicely for Tesla Energy’s commercial and utility business, it looks like things are about to get just as interesting in its residential business in the coming weeks.

If you hold a reservation for the Powerwall 2 and you get more details about deliveries in the coming days or weeks, feel free to let me know via Twitter or email (contact info on profile page)