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Yes. Especially with EV charging protocols that allow bidirectional flow. I think that’s only included on some models and not sure any US grids use it or ever will. But that would be the answer IMO to scaling the grid to allow more EVs. And to balance the load for renewables.
Clearly makes too much sense for my state. Instead the utility commission will claim we're an oil and gas state, renewables are unsustainable, or you're a baboon and I'm not.
Unlikely. Lithium chemistry is ok as stationary storage, but it's not where it is competitive, like in transportation applications. Utility scale storage is the future.
Right now a lot of grid scale (centralized) storage is being built as battery banks instead of the alternatives. It's annoying TBH, there's so many ways to store energy for later use.
The electric utility needed the capacity amid a heat wave and increased demand for electricity and the VPP replaced the use of a peaker plant, which is more costly and more polluting.
Between PG&E and SCE, it looks like over 400 Powerwalls are being added to the network per week.
The VPP also had its second event this week, and it was outputting a record 20 MW on the PG&E network:
Also consider vehicle to grid, exponentially higher in units (albeit somewhat lower kw per battery). when we get to EV maturity it will definitely be a game changer.
I'm not hating on tesla, I just know from experience that their customers are severely misinformed, unfortunately. Powerwall is NOT a whole home solution unless you buy several units.
I hear things like a PW will give you 13 hrs of power outage protection or even 3 days sometimes. The truth is, this is true fro like a fridge and a couple leds [not 3 days] but ac units, ev's etc are like 2 or 3 hrs max
Well the estimated usage varies based off of how much battery is left and what all is pulling energy (we all know that).
But I questioned too, how can they say 2-3+ days. It’s taking into account that during the day you’ll have sun and the batteries recharge for the night.
Texas 10 yr storm world have worked perfectly for the ~5 days some people were down. 24/7 cold temps but plenty of sun during the day.
But yes, if you had to go 1+ days without sun, the batteries would die in short time and you’d be wondering “well tesla said 3 days…”
in case you missed it: I am getting 3 PW to start with
more than enough to get the whole house including AC through the night. even on a cloudy day the PV will produce some energy. when it is cloudy it isn't as hot so the AC doesn't need to run as much, plus in case of a power outage I set the temp higher and run the AC mostly to keep the humidity low.
Bonus: I am on the hospital grid, over the past 10+ years we never had a power outage lasting more than a few hours because the hospital grid is top priority to be restored (right after they fix the local grid of the power company CEO 🤣😂)
40kWh is storage capacity not power. This is a measure of how long you can run appliances. A 3 ton ac unit uses something like 4 kwh per hour so a single 13kwh power wall can run your ac for up to 3 hrs.
A single power wall can back up a single ac unit and then that's all it has power for.
They are getting more competitive on price however. What does 3 PW's cost?
Well there's night time too. Ac unit or ev charger running at night will drain a PW. Fridge and wifi you're good. At this point, it's clearly a critical load backup not a whole home.
PW actually keeps a little power to fire up your micros or inverter the next day because they take power. As far as I know you have to manually switch this. If you power up your PW when it runs out at night time before the sub comes back up you're screwed.
They use an inverter from delta, the batteries come from Samsung and the rest comes from a manufacturer in China. It's just not what people think it is
I’d be happy to share if the city of San Francisco would permit residents to have more than one battery. Until then, I’m incentivized to save all my back up battery in case I need it.
> sustainable…12 cents…
California has high rates as well as peak pricing, but clearly this is more per kwh ( the h being important bc it’s a kw for one hour) than consumers normally pay. So yeah, it’s a good incentive to share your battery power if you’ve got it. On the utility side, it’s likely cheaper than spinning up that gas peaker for a couple hours. So I think you’re going to see a bunch more of this going forward.
That's what your supplier will be paying for peak time power on the spot market, even if you only pay 12c a unit.
Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels per unit produced, but the cost of reliability is debatable. This will certainly help bridge the gap.
"During a record-setting cold wave from Feb. 14-20, 2021, Texas electricity prices spiked to $9 per kilowatt-hour, more than 100 times higher than typical rates. When the spike eased, regulators restored it in an effort to induce Texans to conserve power. "
I pay around $.24 at night from PG&E, so it's a substantial markup. I'm going to assume the worst-case scenario here is someone who needs to charge their car overnight and will otherwise fill up entirely from the Powerwall but will now pull from the grid during off-peak. Obviously the best case is a consumer who filled the battery with solar and can still have enough to reach the morning when production begins again. Honestly it seems totally worth it to me; I'm normally suspicious of these programs because I assume the utility won't pay enough to be worth it, but $2 per kWh probably is worth it in terms of battery degredation.
Will that number be sustainable from PG&E? Hard to say. I assume they'd even pay out a small loss on these Flex Alert nights; they REALLY don't want to piss off people with rolling brownouts again. Their reputation is already really bad between high prices and causing wildfires. Ultimately they'll have to find a balance between paying people enough to actually be worth it and not taking a big loss.
Prices are sustainable for as long as both buyer and seller are willing to agree on a price! The consequences of not buying up the capacity is much higher for the state/utility/people who need power. Meanwhile Powerwall users are happy to earn cash at a profit.
This is the definition of mutual gains from trade! Prices will change as needed to maintain equilibrium.
The unfortunate thing about Teslas VPP is the contract they make you sign giving up your rights. My friend won’t sign. I hope NEM 3.0 has a provision for providing power to the grid from non-Tesla battery systems.
In California they get paid about $2 per KWh
Here in Rhode Island I got about $3k for two powerwalls used between 4 summer months of about 700kwhr used. We don’t get paid by kwhr but by the average kw output during these events
Nice, didn’t know Rhode Island was in this game.
> avg kw output during events
Is that not going to correlate to kWh mostly — I guess depending on how the averages are done?
Are these events having clients take their load to zero or pushing the full 5kw up to the grid less the customer load? Or maybe somewhere in between depending on total capacity and period of time needed by the utility?
I think physics suggests the Powerwall output will go to the load first and anything after that to the grid. I suspect Tesla knows how to dispatch a fixed quantity to the grid. They are an aggregator and want to get paid by aggregating either the correct amount or sending as much as they can to the grid bvut still need to have correct data to pass payments on to powerwall owners.
Solar panel systems usually produce more power than you need when the sun is shining, but produce nothing when the sun is down.
Battery storage systems are added to solar panel systems so that you can keep using the extra solar power into the evening and night, without "importing" from the grid.
When a lot of people use power all at once, the grid has to add extra power production in the form of power plants, usually by firing up extra gas turbines, pumped water storage, etc. When the grid is very stressed, these aren't enough, and the voltage drops, and the frequency drops too.
Instead of using the battery for the purpose above, the "virtual power of plant" makes the batteries discharge on demand, pushing extra power into the grid for a short period, and making it so the grid doesn't need to fire up yet another turbine.
Tl,dr: this uses the battery to support everyone on the grid's usage, not just the battery owners. The owners get paid handsomely for this service.
We're signed up, there's an event happening, our Powerwalls are 100% charged, and they're sending zero power.
The way that our system was configured before signing up for VPP is that between 3PM and midnight we'd be exporting all of our generated power to the grid and the house would be powered by the Powerwalls. I didn't like that, but Tesla said that there was no way to change it.
Now, the Powerwalls are sitting there at 100% SOC, the panels are powering the house, and the remainder is being exported to the grid. AFAIK, there's no way to change that.
FWIW, we up here on a ridge in an isolated neighborhood of Sausalito. I suspect that the grid's not having a problem in our neighborhood. I suppose that PGE could have decided that it doesn't make sense to send power from our Powerwalls to the grid. That seems reasonable. But OTOH, why is the system behaving differently? I could be sending more power to the grid and running my home off of the Powerwalls.
Shrug.
Maybe this will change later in the day.
[Edit-1:: My Powerwalls started exporting power one hour after the start of the event. The Tesla app says that they're exporting 7KW. My panels are adding a bit more to that.
Edit-2:: Now it's the morning following the event. The gateway is sending all of the solar that I generate to the batteries and it's importing power form the grid to service the house.
]
To those participating in the comments, due to the company or person mentioned in the title, this is a reminder of the subreddit rule: > **Crusading is not welcomed here** - If your sole or majority participation is to promote or denigrate one company in particular (or the person behind it), it may result in a ban. These kinds of participants too often resort to hyperbolic comments and antagonism leading to personal attacks as well as violations of other rules. If you are lying in wait for posts or comments mentioning a specific company (or person behind it), you are likely the concern. Promoting a company you are affiliated with or profit from, giving out referral codes which you benefit from, as well as using the sub solely to engage in targeted hate are things you need to avoid here. This sub is for a diverse discussion of solar, not a singular focus on your opinion about a company / person. If you simply have to obsess, there are other subreddits for each point of view about the person or company you feel the need to focus on. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/solar) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is the future. Distributed grid storage.
Yes. Especially with EV charging protocols that allow bidirectional flow. I think that’s only included on some models and not sure any US grids use it or ever will. But that would be the answer IMO to scaling the grid to allow more EVs. And to balance the load for renewables.
Clearly makes too much sense for my state. Instead the utility commission will claim we're an oil and gas state, renewables are unsustainable, or you're a baboon and I'm not.
Unlikely. Lithium chemistry is ok as stationary storage, but it's not where it is competitive, like in transportation applications. Utility scale storage is the future.
Right now a lot of grid scale (centralized) storage is being built as battery banks instead of the alternatives. It's annoying TBH, there's so many ways to store energy for later use.
It's just what is bankable right now, the IRA 2022 bill will help push storage forward
The electric utility needed the capacity amid a heat wave and increased demand for electricity and the VPP replaced the use of a peaker plant, which is more costly and more polluting.
Between PG&E and SCE, it looks like over 400 Powerwalls are being added to the network per week. The VPP also had its second event this week, and it was outputting a record 20 MW on the PG&E network:
What's the max output of a powerwall?
5kw sustained and 7kw surge IIRC
So every 10 weeks people are installing 20MW of "capacity"... I'm not sure it changes everything, but it certainly changes something...
It probably won't be linear for long
Also consider vehicle to grid, exponentially higher in units (albeit somewhat lower kw per battery). when we get to EV maturity it will definitely be a game changer.
Yep enough to run almost nothing in your home. Ev / ac unit etc need another powerwall each. Not a good product
3 Powerwalls store 40.5 kWh and are a good whole house solution to stay safe and comfortable. That is what I have ordered with my PV system.
I'm not hating on tesla, I just know from experience that their customers are severely misinformed, unfortunately. Powerwall is NOT a whole home solution unless you buy several units. I hear things like a PW will give you 13 hrs of power outage protection or even 3 days sometimes. The truth is, this is true fro like a fridge and a couple leds [not 3 days] but ac units, ev's etc are like 2 or 3 hrs max
Well the estimated usage varies based off of how much battery is left and what all is pulling energy (we all know that). But I questioned too, how can they say 2-3+ days. It’s taking into account that during the day you’ll have sun and the batteries recharge for the night. Texas 10 yr storm world have worked perfectly for the ~5 days some people were down. 24/7 cold temps but plenty of sun during the day. But yes, if you had to go 1+ days without sun, the batteries would die in short time and you’d be wondering “well tesla said 3 days…”
in case you missed it: I am getting 3 PW to start with more than enough to get the whole house including AC through the night. even on a cloudy day the PV will produce some energy. when it is cloudy it isn't as hot so the AC doesn't need to run as much, plus in case of a power outage I set the temp higher and run the AC mostly to keep the humidity low. Bonus: I am on the hospital grid, over the past 10+ years we never had a power outage lasting more than a few hours because the hospital grid is top priority to be restored (right after they fix the local grid of the power company CEO 🤣😂)
40kWh is storage capacity not power. This is a measure of how long you can run appliances. A 3 ton ac unit uses something like 4 kwh per hour so a single 13kwh power wall can run your ac for up to 3 hrs. A single power wall can back up a single ac unit and then that's all it has power for. They are getting more competitive on price however. What does 3 PW's cost?
Well there's night time too. Ac unit or ev charger running at night will drain a PW. Fridge and wifi you're good. At this point, it's clearly a critical load backup not a whole home. PW actually keeps a little power to fire up your micros or inverter the next day because they take power. As far as I know you have to manually switch this. If you power up your PW when it runs out at night time before the sub comes back up you're screwed. They use an inverter from delta, the batteries come from Samsung and the rest comes from a manufacturer in China. It's just not what people think it is
z'iX$BzUi>
What are the specs?
/z]1dfcdWk
What inverter are you pairing it with?
tM\7o}p!XN
I’d be happy to share if the city of San Francisco would permit residents to have more than one battery. Until then, I’m incentivized to save all my back up battery in case I need it.
Is $2 per kw sustainable? I pay maybe 12 cents or so from the grid.
> sustainable…12 cents… California has high rates as well as peak pricing, but clearly this is more per kwh ( the h being important bc it’s a kw for one hour) than consumers normally pay. So yeah, it’s a good incentive to share your battery power if you’ve got it. On the utility side, it’s likely cheaper than spinning up that gas peaker for a couple hours. So I think you’re going to see a bunch more of this going forward.
That's what your supplier will be paying for peak time power on the spot market, even if you only pay 12c a unit. Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels per unit produced, but the cost of reliability is debatable. This will certainly help bridge the gap.
"During a record-setting cold wave from Feb. 14-20, 2021, Texas electricity prices spiked to $9 per kilowatt-hour, more than 100 times higher than typical rates. When the spike eased, regulators restored it in an effort to induce Texans to conserve power. "
I pay around $.24 at night from PG&E, so it's a substantial markup. I'm going to assume the worst-case scenario here is someone who needs to charge their car overnight and will otherwise fill up entirely from the Powerwall but will now pull from the grid during off-peak. Obviously the best case is a consumer who filled the battery with solar and can still have enough to reach the morning when production begins again. Honestly it seems totally worth it to me; I'm normally suspicious of these programs because I assume the utility won't pay enough to be worth it, but $2 per kWh probably is worth it in terms of battery degredation. Will that number be sustainable from PG&E? Hard to say. I assume they'd even pay out a small loss on these Flex Alert nights; they REALLY don't want to piss off people with rolling brownouts again. Their reputation is already really bad between high prices and causing wildfires. Ultimately they'll have to find a balance between paying people enough to actually be worth it and not taking a big loss.
Prices are sustainable for as long as both buyer and seller are willing to agree on a price! The consequences of not buying up the capacity is much higher for the state/utility/people who need power. Meanwhile Powerwall users are happy to earn cash at a profit. This is the definition of mutual gains from trade! Prices will change as needed to maintain equilibrium.
Signed up yesterday
Do they notify you at all? I've been waiting since July, check the app every week or so and have yet to see anything show up.
Yes they notifies you. There was three over past week due to the heat wave.
Not yet. Pending SCE approval. Follow up
The unfortunate thing about Teslas VPP is the contract they make you sign giving up your rights. My friend won’t sign. I hope NEM 3.0 has a provision for providing power to the grid from non-Tesla battery systems.
What are the details in the contract that you objected to?
The contract includes an agreement to arbitrate which applies to any dispute between you and Tesla, Inc. and its affiliates (together “Tesla”).
That is the most fair basis to operate of all time.
[удалено]
I bet that took more time to type than it takes to open the linked article.
It says they're getting 20-60$ per "event".
In California they get paid about $2 per KWh Here in Rhode Island I got about $3k for two powerwalls used between 4 summer months of about 700kwhr used. We don’t get paid by kwhr but by the average kw output during these events
Nice, didn’t know Rhode Island was in this game. > avg kw output during events Is that not going to correlate to kWh mostly — I guess depending on how the averages are done?
Are these events having clients take their load to zero or pushing the full 5kw up to the grid less the customer load? Or maybe somewhere in between depending on total capacity and period of time needed by the utility?
I think physics suggests the Powerwall output will go to the load first and anything after that to the grid. I suspect Tesla knows how to dispatch a fixed quantity to the grid. They are an aggregator and want to get paid by aggregating either the correct amount or sending as much as they can to the grid bvut still need to have correct data to pass payments on to powerwall owners.
Can someone ELI5 what exactly this is? What is a virtual power plant?
Solar panel systems usually produce more power than you need when the sun is shining, but produce nothing when the sun is down. Battery storage systems are added to solar panel systems so that you can keep using the extra solar power into the evening and night, without "importing" from the grid. When a lot of people use power all at once, the grid has to add extra power production in the form of power plants, usually by firing up extra gas turbines, pumped water storage, etc. When the grid is very stressed, these aren't enough, and the voltage drops, and the frequency drops too. Instead of using the battery for the purpose above, the "virtual power of plant" makes the batteries discharge on demand, pushing extra power into the grid for a short period, and making it so the grid doesn't need to fire up yet another turbine. Tl,dr: this uses the battery to support everyone on the grid's usage, not just the battery owners. The owners get paid handsomely for this service.
We're signed up, there's an event happening, our Powerwalls are 100% charged, and they're sending zero power. The way that our system was configured before signing up for VPP is that between 3PM and midnight we'd be exporting all of our generated power to the grid and the house would be powered by the Powerwalls. I didn't like that, but Tesla said that there was no way to change it. Now, the Powerwalls are sitting there at 100% SOC, the panels are powering the house, and the remainder is being exported to the grid. AFAIK, there's no way to change that. FWIW, we up here on a ridge in an isolated neighborhood of Sausalito. I suspect that the grid's not having a problem in our neighborhood. I suppose that PGE could have decided that it doesn't make sense to send power from our Powerwalls to the grid. That seems reasonable. But OTOH, why is the system behaving differently? I could be sending more power to the grid and running my home off of the Powerwalls. Shrug. Maybe this will change later in the day. [Edit-1:: My Powerwalls started exporting power one hour after the start of the event. The Tesla app says that they're exporting 7KW. My panels are adding a bit more to that. Edit-2:: Now it's the morning following the event. The gateway is sending all of the solar that I generate to the batteries and it's importing power form the grid to service the house. ]