How far in the future for what?
PW3 are available to order now.
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Discussion: Powerwall 3 [Speculation / Discussion etc]
- Thread starter n.one.one
- Start date
PW3 are available to order now.
I know I can get PW3's now. The discussion was about a new updated PW3. While I don't need the features they were talking about you never know what other enhancements that will be incorporated.
If the next new thing starts shipping the day after I get mine installed, I'd be bummed. If it starts shipping 6mos after I get mine installed I wouldn't be as bummed. Especially since the one that gets installed will be with me for the rest of my life.
Powerwall 3 is a new product. It's way too early to be thinking about waiting for the next one.
Ulmo
Active Member
2? I have 2 PW2's as well as 5.6kW nominal solar since 2017 (some stats at Solar, Battery, Home and Grid PowerFlow until they disabled LAN access), and for me, that's a woefully undersized system (i.e., it does not cover 100% of my usage on a cold dark winter day for no electric cars, much less adding EVs to the equation).
I like 50% or above in summer and 80% to 90% in winter. According to studies, under 50% and over 80% seem to "damage" the longevity of the battery, so I avoid going below 50% or above 80%, but quite frankly, 80% seems like leaving too much battery capacity on the table so to speak in winter.
That way when the power goes out, I have at least half of my battery capacity available for actual backup use. I live in Theftofornia, so most of our electric utility money has been stolen for illegal aliens (through rate discount programs), churches (that organize the illegal aliens coming here to get more contributions), regulators that pocket huge taxes, corrupt utility executives, and corrupt officials, rather than maintaining or undergrounding our power lines. As a result, the same system and same lines which used to be nearly perfect when I was a kid running for decades without even a single glitch now glitches or goes down several times per month due to lack of maintenance. All the tree cutting has seemed to increase the number of times the electricity goes out, not decrease it. Our undergrounding tax funds were never used to underground our lines, but they raise our rates to chop down our trees and leave the ugly falling apart lines in the sky ruining our view.
All that to say, our electric utility is not what it was. Your experience where you are could be way different than ours, as a result. Soooo, I'd rather keep my battery above 50% all the time in summer and above 80% to 90% in winter, so that when the utility power goes out, I still have my home electricity up and running. I also have solar. Unfortunately at the time of purchase, I was "frugal" and selected undersized solar and undersized PowerWall sizing, getting half a summer daily amount of use without EVs (less in winter or with EVs). With conversion of several appliances and cars to electric, that means it's fast becoming quarter sized of what our usual use is, if not a lot less. I should have gotten the entire roof covered with solar, and I'm still trying to get permission to put a checkerboard of solar on the rest of the quarter acre we have here to pull in even more. Rather than two PW2's, we should have gotten six, or at least four.
All this to say, I can never hope to cost shift our usage with the undersized solar and undersized batteries we have. The most I can hope for is using it as backup during the many power outages. Letting solar charge a small portion of the capacity up in the day and then letting it drain a small portion of the capacity in the evening seems like good use in summer, but in winter, I raise the minimum backup a lot more, and there's very little load shifting going on, nothing worth making any money off of, which is a fool's errand with the way the rates are set up anyway.
Also, you need to factor in other concerns:
- Does your area experience power outages ever? If never, then you have less need of backup.
- Did you size your battery and solar at 20% or 200% of your usual darkest coldest winter use? If so, then this should be factored in that calculation. For any particular season, whatever % more you have excess of energy from your solar and your battery for the entire 24 hour period is something you can lower the amount of backup reserve, and still be able to keep your energy on during a power outage, if you get enough power outages to let this be a concern.
- How important is continuous electricity to you? How important is electricity to you? If you run always-on computer servers or have a tenant that lives on a breathing air machine that has no battery backup system or requires an elevator to get to and from necessary parts of the house, then never letting power go out is primary goal number one, and you should increase your battery backup reserve % quite generously. If you are willing to put skiing clothes on, turn the heaters off, stop washing clothes, leave the cars unplugged, and turn off every other high user of electricity (pools? etc.) every time the power goes out and turn your usage down to 5% of your usual, then perhaps having a less generous backup % is acceptable to you. If you like lighting candles and have good fire insurance and lots of firemen nearby that actually like to put out fires without letting your house burn down that aren't busy during any power outage (which would be a wrong assumption in most areas) and you don't own any valuables, then perhaps you can turn backup battery % all the way down to 10% and not worry about that feature, and play with fire to light your way (or go to bed early and twist and turn in bed). But if you notice your battery staying at 10% too often since you don't get much solar input, you should try to keep your average battery charge around 50% throughout the day, so I'd really recommend bumping it up 5% more every day until the average is around 50%, just for battery longevity. The various usage preferences in the settings and weather will wildly change this behavior, so I have learned to continuously monitor this and adjust it whenever conditions or settings change.
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Ulmo
Active Member
I agree. PW3 inverter stats seem almost unbelievably better for a major product from a large manufacturer (almost double the LRA start and more than double the inverter continuous power rating of PW2 and this neat two foot flood resistance feature, plus multiple solar MPP inputs). The maximum "up to 4 units" is very disappointing compared to PW2's "up to 10 units", meaning PW3s are a bummer for anyone with the money to get more, and push them into more elaborate systems (either two PW3 arrays with the implied complications (which I don't know), or perhaps PW2 if those are still available (which I also don't know)), however, quite frankly, almost no one can afford more than 4 PW's, so there are a lot of people that can afford PW3 as is and not be worried about that. The amount of power (kWh) is essentially the same as PW2, so unchanged there. This is all Tesla has changed in seven (7) years, so I don't expect a quick update to this any time soon; I think 2031 is the soonest we can expect new features. They may have some new revisions that fix electronics bugs, so I wouldn't rush to be first in my country to get one, but it's not like they're just churning out new PW versions. No way! If I had the $, I'd be very happy to purchase anything that would competently work on my home system now, and stop worrying about having to turn off appliances every time there's a bit of cold, rain, wind, heat, mismanaged powerlines, or rotten pole replacement, so my existing 2 PW2's don't run out before the outages or glitches are done. If that was 4 more PW3's and I get to add more solar to the MPP inputs and put all those in backup series with my existing PW2's and solar, then so be it. I'd even be willing to accept expanding my PW2 array even with their inferior inverter stats, if I could afford it, since I'd be increasing my inverter stats for the whole array by leaps and bounds in addition to the much wanted energy capacity. So, no, I would not wait for the next great PowerWall version to come out. Not by a long shot. That won't happen before you're a decade older, probably.
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CrazyRabbit
Active Member
It really isn't a bummer. Each of those 4 PW3s can have 3 battery expansion modules added to them. So you get a total system capacity of 46kW, 216kWh, and 24 MPPT channels. So 60% more storage than a fully built out PW2 system.
Exactly. The inverter sizing in the PW3 makes a whole lot more sense once you understand that it supports battery expansion connected to that inverter. At first glance the Power to Energy ratio seems off.
Ulmo
Active Member
ACarneiro
Active Member
It's still early in the specification clarification stage, but the limit of 4 may be for each set of batteries+main unit.
Tesla will let me configure 5 Powerwalls with solar
Or buy 6 (with price tracking full units):
Edit: and to Mike's point:
4 units nearly saturate a 200A service
200*240 = 48kw / 11.5 kW = 4.17
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Is your service a split 400A type service? I could see it being reasonable to have 3x PW3 on each leg of that 400A service but I would be surprised if they are going to allow all 6 to be on the same Gateway.
As stated above there are DC expansions in the roadmap, but timing isn't well known.
My house is 400A with two main panel, but those quantities were just me messing with the configurator which doesn't have any service size selection.
I am considering adding Powerwalls and solar when getting the Powershare installation. House needs reconfiguration to make it convenient.
Yea, I was just doing the same and it allowed me to select up to 10 PW3. This is certainly more at one site than I thought were allowed.
I told it that I used about $600 worth of power per month. That sounds crazy but with the PG&E rate increases it really isn't all that far out.
Interesting, I told them $1000 with 7000 sqft of roof and still only got 5.
Might be local power company limit...
SteveO332
Member
I received my first selling event with my 4 x PW3. 150 amp service. It seems like my powerwall discharging (combined) caps at a rate of 17-18 kW.
Specs show a max discharge rate of 11.5 kW each, shouldn't it be capable of discharging faster? Or am I limited by my 150 amp service?
Specs show a max discharge rate of 11.5 kW each, shouldn't it be capable of discharging faster? Or am I limited by my 150 amp service?
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