Tesla Powerwalls Installed: No More Blackouts!

My free Powerwalls from the Tesla referral program have finally been installed! So, how did the installation go, what does the system consist of, how does it work, what problems did I run into, and are these things useful? Let's find out! Thanks to everyone who used my referral code and made this video possible. Though, for the record, I was under no obligation from Tesla to make this video or say nice things about them.
This video was entirely unscripted, so I'm sure I missed some details.
Resources:
Spending a month off-grid with Powerwalls: • Can Tesla Powerwalls P...
My Tesla solar install video (2019): • Tesla Installs More So...
My original solar install video (2013): • Residential Solar Inst...
Ben's Powerwall video on then economics of time-based control: • Tune Your Tesla Powerw...
EV & Tesla related shirts can be found on my Teespring store: teespring.com/stores/squidrag...
Drop me a line on Twitter if you have any questions or whatever: / ptpetra
If you're buying a new Tesla (S, X, 3, or Y) or ordering Tesla solar, feel free to use my referral code & receive 1000 miles of free Supercharging or a $100 award after activation of your solar array: ts.la/alex4511
Music: www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic
Disclosure: The creator of this video is a Tesla owner, received the two Powerwalls featured for free as a reward for participating in Tesla's referral program, and is long $TSLA.

[@edison1]

Everyone in Puerto Rico needs to see this

[@cjadventures8840]

Edison Espinosa yeah smart, people who loose power frequently would use power walls as a given

[@c.e.robinson1100]

***OMG*** It only took 100 videos and hours of wasted time to FINALLY get the answer I needed @ 6:21 THANKS ALAN !! GREAT VIDEO. Tesla would not even answer questions about power modes. It's almost like they don't want the power company to know you can go OFF GRID... 3 weeks to install !!!

[@happyraccoon4791]

Around Jan 1 the Tesla guy came out and now, Jan 18 we have all the permits and soonish they will install our system, supposedly the first home in Amador County CA with a glass roof and two powerwalls etc.

[@cjadventures8840]

Happy Raccoon nice

[@happyraccoon4791]

Well, April 1. Today Tesla tries to Repair Their Wiring Error🤔. They are not specific on issue. But there are only Two plugs in a glass panel. It was supposed to up and running before now and no, this has Nothing to do with Corona. But I did have Corona in Yosemite 🤔😳👻. The Place was EMPTY on March 20. Had a Corona. Made a video to prove it.

[@KJSvitko]

Tesla Powerwall is a much better option than a gasoline or natural gas powered generator for back up power.

[@nathanweiser6998]

65 hertz is crazy! Hopefully they will lower the limit on the high capacity soc to something more in line with a system now based on the individual setup. Or allow to not charge to capacity as to not hit that limit. I am on the list for powerwall install here in a month or so.

[@4literv6]

Great video I learned quite a bit about the powerwalls. Thank you for sharing this!

[@scratchymaster]

What an awesome video! I need to rewatch this 2or3 times.

[@thomasjacques5286]

This is why I'm using a local authorized installer here in St Louis. Tesla is not known for customer service. We are adding 2 maybe 3 PW2s to my Enphase PV system with IQ8A micro inverters which is why I'm not going with PW3s.

[@macgreiner]

Jealous. Congrats Alex. A lot of singular units. Looking forward to a totally integrated control/switching/comms unit.

[@rokibler]

Wow. Thanks for a great video on this topic. Lots of good details on how the powerwalls work. We have a small solar system (3.6 kW), but because we live in Maryland, we have net metering so it’s hard to make a case for needing a powerwall. We have very few power outages anymore since the power company came though and butchered all the trees that could fall on the lines.

[@AlexVenz]

We have net metering in CA as well, but utilities have been playing games with rate schedules in an attempt to reduce the effectiveness of solar offsets. Southern California Edison's latest change will nearly cut our solar generation credit in half by getting rid of the shoulder rate and dropping the whole day to 14¢/kWh, except for the 39¢/kWh peak period from 4:00pm-9:00pm, and increasing the daily service fee to 40¢. Like I said in the video, it all depends on the specific situation you're in.

[@michaelrbodner]

I haven’t received mine yet and last update is that they’re now on hold. Looks like you have a great setup!!

[@AlexVenz]

Thanks! I've heard from a few others recently that Tesla may be temporarily halting the rollout of Powerwall awards again... which sucks, but I suspect the referral program cost them a lot of Powerwalls.

[@michaelrbodner]

Alex Venz yeah that’s exactly what they told me. That was for Q4 2019 though, so I’m waiting for an update on that.

[@tjam4229]

Damn, that looks like a commercial property electrical set-up! Congrats 👍 I’m jealous!

[@dryii]

13:58 I, too, ran into this and switched over to Eaton UPS's. They are the best option I could find to work within the constraints and they work wonderfully. 14:50 Dang, didn't know this was even possible. :( Glad they worked with you.

[@AlexVenz]

It still took weeks of back and forth to make it happen and I think the main factor which caused them to go along with reducing the max frequency was the fact that it caused my air conditioners not to work.

[@kardy12]

Great video, very informative!

[@dporrasxtremeLS3]

Great install by outstanding electricians. I do electrical projects on many applications. This to me looks like exposed plumbing on a custom home. It should have been done with the sheetrock taken out, wired in the walls, then covered over with quality plywood finished and then painted. This would get rid of the exposed plumbing.

[@JRo250]

Congrats on the Powerwalls. I wanted to buy a couple of them a few years ago but they weren't available. I ended up buying a different inverter and now I'm glad I did. I have full control of every parameter in the system and even access to their API and settings control. I used that to write an app that does the "smart" functions by only charging from solar, reserving power for outages, blending or 'load shaving' higher loads, etc. The last part of the project will be to control how much the Tesla charger draws so I can modulate that vs solar production or inverter battery SoC and not import anything from the grid.

[@zuldanfpv4634]

JRoque250 May I asked what make/model inverter you bought?

[@JRo250]

@@zuldanfpv4634 Schneider XW+6848. Have one and will be getting a second unit shortly. I run my panels using Enphase microinverters in a hybrid, AC-coupled configuration.

[@TRYtoHELPyou]

very good coverage. sounds like you were ... freqing out big time.

[@Plexipal]

Powerwall time. Finally

[@deltacx1059]

Where I'm at the power gets shut off for 1 of 2 things, major maintenance or when crap hits the fan

[@mychannelsucks2]

Nice

[@JesusMartinez-cu7ys]

You got big bucks

[@Dexter55999]

Mine should be installed by May.

[@juancarlosulloam.4348]

no structural preparation on walls? are this batteries safe?

[@DavidBajayo]

I read that when there is a blackout and the grid goes out , the panels stop working even from charging the wall. That would be useless in Florida after a hurricane, when the grid can be down for weeks.

[@AlexVenz]

Not sure where you found that information, but it's incorrect. I recently spent a little over a month disconnected from grid power to simulate a long duration grid outage: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gnfJqaFoYs6Gfc0

[@ystebadvonschlegel3295]

David - you are describing what happens to solar power if you don’t have a battery. Without a battery the solar system will shut down because it can’t reliably provide enough power to the home (cloud comes across and suddenly you don’t have enough power to run things and brownout occurs) and because it can’t backfeed for safety reasons. With a battery system the whole thing just shuts off from the grid and both the solar panels and the battery continue to work and power your home.

[@ojasray1]

How do you find out what Hertz the powerwall were kicked onto? or simply, how did you figure out that the hertz at 65 was what caused all your issues?

[@AlexVenz]

Many tools can be used to measure AC frequency (some multimeters, oscilloscopes, even the Kill-A-Watt can provide realtime AC frequency). I was able to verify that the elevated AC frequency was the source of my issues by fully charging the Powerwalls, disconnecting the house from the grid, which activated backup mode, and the high state of charge immediately resulted in elevated AC frequency to suppress the solar inverters. Already having made a list of devices that weren't working correctly, I checked to make sure devices still weren't working, then applied a load to the Powerwalls to intentionally discharge them (charging a car was my typical choice, but the oven was another option). Once the Powerwall state of charge fell below around 97%, I watched the AC frequency slowly drop back to normal, discontinued the loading of the Powerwalls, and retested all of the devices on my list.

[@dtemp132]

Oh man there must be a better way to tell the solar inverters to shut down than bumping the AC frequency, like a I2C bus or something. I'm curious how well all of this stuff would work without any internet connection. The primary benefit of this system for me would be in an extended grid-down scenario like major natural disaster, when you couldn't even count on the cellular connection. Do you know if the system would function indefinitely without any internet? I know you did a video where you went a month on battery power, and I had this same question :)

[@AlexVenz]

While I don't disagree that there may be better ways of suppressing solar inverters, getting the inverter manufacturers onboard and working out legacy compatibility would make things a bit of a mess. There are hardware approaches Tesla could take as part of a Powerwall installation (like gateway controlled disconnects), but it would add cost and complexity. The last I heard from Tesla about the system operating without an internet connection is that they've patched the software issue that was causing Powerwalls to shut down when internet connectivity wasn't present for a certain period. So, Powerwalls should be all good on that front now.

[@evlnte]

I’ve put my Tesla order on hold because Tesla says they only offer one brand of solar panels now: QCell. And those are a middle-of-the-road in quality and efficiency. Is it true that we, the customer, have no choice? Did you have options? Now I’m seriously considering other providers because Tesla’s engineer was so rude about my question. Why should I be limited to the crappiest panels if I’m willing to pay more for high-grade panels?

[@AlexVenz]

With Tesla, you're paying for a packaged product that hits a price point and the parts are purchased in bulk--they aren't doing custom systems. Our choice as consumers is to go elsewhere if we don't like the product being offered. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@bostjantrancar9605]

👍😎🖖

[@flipperbear9]

Don't upset Tesla. In my experience, they are pretty distrustful of problems that you have. Since I ran out of warranty with my Model 3 Performance they don't want to listen to me. Especially about FSD pre-purchase issues.

[@tangenttrout]

How did the big AV snow effect your panels? Did you need to clear them?

[@AlexVenz]

I was out of town for both of those storms, but could tell from app data that the panels were completely covered for a few days (zero solar production). Though, the batteries held up pretty well since nobody was home and grid power didn't go down. There was still snow on the West array for a few days after I came back following the December snow storm, but the larger South array was clear.

[@sfcgoofy1982]

Is the frequency issue something that needs to be addressed as a new powerwalls owner as mine are getting installed Monday!

[@AlexVenz]

You'll probably have to experiment with it to see what Tesla's current default configuration is and whether it causes problems for devices in your house.

[@ek9772]

Nice presentation 👍 Did I understand correctly? The Powerwall will interfere with either a feed in tariff or net metering scheme when it shuts down the inverter. Is there a way of working around this issue? This should make the solar payback even worse.

[@AlexVenz]

The only time the Powerwalls will shut down solar inverters is when you're grid isolated (grid power outage) and the batteries are nearly full. When the grid is up, solar energy is passed to the grid as usual.

[@ek9772]

Alex Venz thanks. For some reason, I thought he mentioned that when the batteries were full the frequency increased to 65-Hz, and it had the effect of shutting down the inverters and messing up with his refrigerator and other electrical appliances, and as the batteries were depleted the frequency would slowly drop down from 65-Hz until it reached a level where the inverters could turn on again, and this would allow the batteries to fill up again.

[@AlexVenz]

Yes, but that *only* occurs when grid-isolated (backup mode) and the system only hits that maximum frequency value during the initial pull down from 100% SoC when grid-isolated. When the SoC drops to ~97% or below, the system slowly reduces AC frequency back to 60Hz, charges the batteries, then slowly increases the AC frequency as the SoC approaches ~97% in order to disable the solar inverters again, but this time it increases the frequency only as much as is necessary to actually suppress the inverters.

[@ek9772]

Alex Venz thanks. I missed the portion of when in backup mode. The presentation in the video gave the impression that this was occurring all the time until this was corrected by Tesla.

[@marksaake]

How long after your powerwall was installed did you get PTO from the power company? I'm getting mine installed shortly, and they are telling me it is taking 6-8 weeks to get the PTO from PG&E.

[@AlexVenz]

It took 5 weeks from the date the Powerwall installation was completed for SCE to grant PTO.

[@marksaake]

@@AlexVenz Were you able to still use your solar during that time?

[@AlexVenz]

Well, the Powerwalls were off and I already had an active interconnect agreement with SCE for the solar setup, so I left the solar running. I'm not entirely clear on whether that's what I was supposed to do given that the addition of the Powerwalls causes a reworking of said interconnect agreement, but SCE didn't seem to care.

[@marksaake]

@@AlexVenz Ok, I'll be in a similar situation. Just didn't know if you could run the solar without the PW being on (e.g. if the backup gateway got in the way)

[@marksaake]

Thanks for the video. Very insightful. Love the red PW. I think that's the "reward" version, isn't it?

[@felixpacheco4906]

You have the referral for residencial solar panel?

[@AlexVenz]

Yup. Referral link is in the video description--it's good for both the cars and solar.

[@felixpacheco4906]

Alex Venz thank you

[@donc.6353]

I unsure I missed something - but how can you charge your Tesla vehicles from the Powerwalls? Wouldn't it simply suck them down to zero?

[@AlexVenz]

It really depends on your habits and how much energy your cars need on a daily basis. Under normal circumstances, my Model S is charged daily and uses between 8kWh and 15kWh (measured at the wall, losses due to charger efficiency included). That's well within the capacity of the two Powerwalls to absorb so, if I were running off-grid, that car could be charged during the day or night depending on house energy usage, The Model 3 isn't charged daily, but longer charging sessions that would normally exceed the capacity of the Powerwalls can be done during the day, given that my daily solar generation greatly exceeds the capacity of the Powerwalls. Obviously, this approach falls apart if your daily energy needs for the cars exceeds your solar production and/or you're unable to rotate cars for daytime charging.

[@SDGreg]

In theory if you were charging the vehicle's at night and lost grid power you could suck them down to zero. That is a potential issue. One thing that Tesla has looked at is a option with their chargers is that if you lost grid power , you would have a option to automatically shutdown your charger unless you enabled it.

[@SetTheCurve]

I would have liked to instead see total cost after installation. But maybe if I have to ask, I can’t afford it.

[@AlexVenz]

Like I said in the video, the Powerwalls and gateway were received for free as part of the old Tesla referral program and I also received a $1k credit toward installation as part of that. I ended up paying $1500 to cover the rest of installation and $500 for permitting. Current pricing for the Powerwalls is on Tesla's website (I think they're about $6500 each + $1100 for the gateway & other hardware + installation + permitting) and, so long as they're installed with solar or added to an existing solar setup, they're eligible for the Federal ITC.

[@SetTheCurve]

Alex Venz Wow, thanks for that breakdown 👍

[@79bnice]

How many referrals need for a powerwall?.

[@AlexVenz]

The referral program has had multiple rounds over the years and has changed multiple times. I missed out on the signature Powerwall round (I think that was toward the end of 2016), but got these two Powerwalls in later rounds (as I recall, one required a minimum of 4 Model S/X referrals during that period and the other round required at least 5). I don't remember what my combined total for all program periods was... maybe 20? Anyway, these sorts of awards aren't part of the referral program anymore.

[@jonathanweimane6926]

Seems like too many moving parts, no testing / verification that the system is fully operational... 🤦‍♂️ Also you might have damaged your refrigerators.. don't really get it why they need to increase the frequency... it should be a relay/switch or if there is a signal that you can send to the inverter🤦‍♂️

[@AlexVenz]

Using a switch (relay, contactor, whatever) to externally hot break solar inverter DC input would add considerable cost and complexity. The industry has settled on a simple, reliable soft safety switch approach in AC frequency detection. Some of the more sophisticated implementations even throttle inverter AC output as frequency is slowly increased, until shutting down at the fault point. The issue with the Powerwalls is that Tesla hasn't made tuning of the AC frequency ceiling part of the installation/commissioning process, even though they have all of the necessary information about the solar inverters installed at the location to make said adjustments. Once the Powerwalls discharge to 96-97% SoC, they'll only increase AC frequency up to the observed fault point of the solar inverters when necessary--the defined ceiling is only hit when SoC is above 97% and the system is trying to guarantee total inverter suppression for safety reasons. Adjusting AC frequency is a simple and effective way to signal a solar inverter to shut down without needing to develop and implement an industry-wide data communication protocol. Also, the refrigerator is fine--spending maybe an hour and a half spread across 10 tests at 3% above the specified frequency tolerance isn't likely to meaningfully harm a fairly basic 11 year old refrigerator.

[@Woodland_Adventures]

.... giant batteries?

[@AlexVenz]

Yup. Now my house can cause range anxiety, too! 🤣

[@oldsailor9022]

Or you could have great national infrastructure, like we do in Europe. Grandpa talks about blackouts in ww2

[@MattOGormanSmith]

We had a few in the 1970s due to strikes, but they sent us a nice card in advance warning us when, so we could get candles in.

[@garyjjanb]

Very boring time lapse

[@gfl1957]

Tesla Powerwalls are just a ripoff. Better products available for far less $

[@ystebadvonschlegel3295]

Like? (Shopping for these systems right now and getting a headache from all the choices out there). Currently I’m debating Sunny Boy Storage with BYD HV battery vs. Tesla. The Tesla’s look so much better, but I like the “better” battery chemistry in the BYD batteries.