The winners and losers in Tesla’s battery plan for the home

[Charlie00]

It's going to take quite a while for them to get the legislation through and everything sorted, and their prices are not very attractive, but at least it's a first step. Hopefully Eskom takes this up as well, otherwise it will take forever for each municipality to go through the same process.

and its going to take long getting all the meters replaced with ones that can do it...

 

[RoosTa]

Think of this in terms of financing a car.

Lets say its R200 k for the full solution, panels, batteries, inverters. You get 10 years usage out of it (at least)
You wont pay a cent for electricity and you have no downtime. Plus if you have a smart meter you could even get money back from excess production.

I financed a R200 K car for R3k a month.... period is 5 years. Between the electricity saving and excess production this is starting to become a viable option.

Well for 200k personal loan finance with no deposit, you're looking at R4.3k pm, but then you could potentially save that money for the next 5 years and replace the old ones interest free.

It would probably be best if you took that money from your bond though.

 

[Nerfherder]

Well for 200k personal loan finance with no deposit, you're looking at R4.3k pm, but then you could potentially save that money for the next 5 years and replace the old ones interest free.

It would probably be best if you took that money from your bond though.

Depends in your interest rate because I'm paying R3000 per month for just over 180k

 

[quovadis]

So my house will need at least two, maybe three of the 10KWh units.
Or 3 of the 7KWh units if I go by the average.

So I am looking at R100,000 to R105,000 just for the batteries.

The 10kw units are for backup usage and the 7kw units are for daily cycle - they are marketed as separate usage scenarios. The voltage range is also different at 350-450vdc so there is some benefit compared to traditional battery banks usually specified by installers in SA. The warranty I think is also advantageous. The key question is what will the landed cost be of these units once in SA and I reckon it'll probably be closer to double the US price due to duties, shipping and local distributor markups.

 

[Mortymoose]

Would be nice, assuming SARS sees this as a battery.

It would be even better of Elon came home and built a factory here......

 

[vaakseun]

It would be even better of Elon came home and built a factory here......

Hahaha.. hell no...

Elon Musk is a smart man.

 

[vaakseun]

Unless of course you meant Nam not SA.

 

[atomcrusher]

From the article

Based on a recent Origin Energy invoice, an average four-person household uses between 20.9kWh and 21.6kWh of electricity per day.

I would guess that the above is fairly accurate. There are only two of us in our household and we consume on average 13 kWh per day. I record the reading on our pre-paid meter every a.m.

When we bought the house and moved in, the first thing we did was to change the fitted 4-plate electric cooker hob to a LPG unit

Our geyser is controlled by a Geyserwise unit, and we only shower, not bath. We do use a dishwasher to clean dishes, pots, pans. We also have a washing machine, plus tumble drier, the latter only used when it's raining and we can't hang the washing on the outside line

 

[scimux]

In the other thread about this it was stated the 30% only applies to lead acid car batteries, not these Li-Ion batteries. These have 15% import tax.

As of recently the duties tax on lithium batteries have been reduced to 0% (from 10%).
Source: http://www.sars.gov.za/Legal/Second...-Amendments/Pages/Tariff-Amendments-2015.aspx
Highlighted: "​Part 1 of Schedule No. 1 - Reduction in the rate of customs duty on lithium batteries classifiable in tariff subheading 8506.50.25 from 10% to "free" - ITAC Report 493"

 

[scimux]

And batteries only last a few years.

I believe that the Powerwall warranty is valid for 10 years. The Powerwall probably has a finely tuned BMS in place to give you in excess of 10 years service.

I remember reading that some the high cycle lithium batteries can provide a cycle life of 17000 cycles at 30% DOD (i.e. decades of battery life - 17000/365 days in a year).
LTO cells can do 20000 cycles (theoretical 50+ years) with a BMS operating from 5% to 75% (DOD) of each cells voltage.

Point being, Lithium batteries don't need to be replaced every 2-3 years like SLA ones.

 

[itareanlnotani]

I wrote up some info here -

http://goingsolar.co.za/2015/05/03/teslas-powerwall/

The daily cycle batteries are Lithium nickel-manganese-cobalt / LiNiMnCoO2 / NMC

To quote Elon Musk -
"But we expect it to be something that’s in the kind of 5,000 cycle range capability, whereas the high-energy pack is more like around the maybe depending upon on how it’s used anywhere from 1,000 cycles to 1,500 cycles. And they have comparable calendar lives, and for the high energy one, it’s important to appreciate that this actually has a lot of interest from utilities "

 

[Charlie00]

Source?

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/141380-what-you-can-expect-to-pay-for-tesla-powerwall-in-south-africa.html

 

[satanboy]

Came here thinking rpm was giving one away in a competition.