Lucid as a Powerwall alternative.

[Boomer AZ]

I‘m in a unique, and great, position. I have solar and powerwalls. With my present rate plan, for 21 hours per weekday and on the weekends, I pay only 5.6 cents per kWh. I sell solar power at a flat 10.4 cents per kWh. My peak hours are 3 hours per day at 27 cents per kWh and a $16 per highest kWh of peak usage demand charge. My business proposition is simple, sell everything you can from your solar panels, but make sure, using the PWs, that you never ever buy any power during peak hours. The PWs let me use my present rate plan to save big on what I buy. So, great cost avoidance benefit versus other much higher flat rate power plans. Remember, you cannot charge your PWs off grid power, only off solar.

The Lucid at best would be an alternative for a home generator. It may be limited by its max continuous power output.

 

[GEWC]

As BoomerAZ mentioned...when I called Tesla and inquired about purchasing two more Powerwalls...they informed me that they were only supplying PWs to people installing Tesla Solar.

And that is only NEW installs. Their system is so messed up. They don't care if they screw over existing customers at all.

 

[borski]

Peak rates here in the summer reach $0.56, for what it's worth.

 

[Tim-in-CA]

I‘m in a unique, and great, position. I have solar and powerwalls. With my present rate plan, for 21 hours per weekday and on the weekends, I pay only 5.6 cents per kWh. I sell solar power at a flat 10.4 cents per kWh. My peak hours are 3 hours per day at 27 cents per kWh and a $16 per highest kWh of peak usage demand charge. My business proposition is simple, sell everything you can from your solar panels, but make sure, using the PWs, that you never ever buy any power during peak hours. The PWs let me use my present rate plan to save big on what I buy. So, great cost avoidance benefit versus other much higher flat rate power plans. Remember, you cannot charge your PWs off grid power, only off solar.

The Lucid at best would be an alternative for a home generator. It may be limited by its max continuous power output.

Grid charging has changed with the latest PW FW and app. In So Cal (SCE) I can grid charge if I want which will be beneficial in the winter as PV cannot cover 100% of my usage for Dec and Jan. But ULTIMATELY, PWs are not a money maker and simply give more "freedom" from the grid and backup when/if there is an outage. And if you are to believe the news stories, outages will be MUCH more frequent this summer. People without solar also typically do not realize that even if you have Solar and the sun shining, when the grid is down, so is your PV system (for safety reasons).

 

[borski]

Grid charging has changed with the latest PW FW and app. In So Cal (SCE) I can grid charge if I want which will be beneficial in the winter as PV cannot cover 100% of my usage for Dec and Jan. But ULTIMATELY, PWs are not a money maker and simply give more "freedom" from the grid and backup when/if there is an outage. And if you are to believe the news stories, outages will be MUCH more frequent this summer. People without solar also typically do not realize that even if you have Solar and the sun shining, when the grid is down, so is your PV system (for safety reasons).

Yup. Be careful though - if you took the federal tax credit, you may run afoul of tax rules if you grid-charge.

 

[Tim-in-CA]

Yup. Be careful though - if you took the federal tax credit, you may run afoul of tax rules if you grid-charge.

Thanks ... I'll be on the lookout for the IRS black helicopters.

 

[Sandvinsd]

Peak rates here in the summer reach $0.56, for what it's worth.

We have you beat. It’s $0.65 in San Diego

 

[digiboxer]

If you run say 10kWh in and out of your powerwall per day as an arbitrage play, you could make $0.32/kWh or about $3.20 per day at the height of summer. Say 1/4 of that in the winter or an average of $1.60 per day gain. At roughly $9000 cost per powerwall, it would take 5625 cycles (days) or 15 years to pay it off, ignoring the time value of money. Seems like most of the value of a powerwall would be as a home backup rather than as a tool for arbitrage, unless I've made an error in assumptions.

Are there tax incentives involved? That would change the IRR if a big number came back to you in the first year...I'm new to this stuff and have a Generac to protect against storm outages

 

[Paladin732]

Are there tax incentives involved? That would change the IRR if a big number came back to you in the first year...I'm new to this stuff and have a Generac to protect against storm outages

If you install with solar you get the federal rebate.

Let me put it this way though: we are looking at solar for my in laws with $700 electric bills (60kw/day in Bay Area) and every solar company we spoke to (aside from Tesla…) tried to talk us out of batteries unless we said we wanted it for whole home backup. They all say you will be disappointed if you use them just for time shifting, not enough gain.

 

[Boomer AZ]

Agreed, not a business case just for time shifting.

Just learned that my local power company is offering up to $3500 rebate on new battery installations. Combined with fed and state incentives, starting to look more attractive.