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Post by Feng on Sept 22, 2015 11:55:43 GMT 11
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Post by Phoebe on Sept 22, 2015 12:36:39 GMT 11
I might, but I believe it has to be undercover which is a bit awkward! My inverters do get splashed when it rains.
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Post by jacky on Sept 22, 2015 13:02:10 GMT 11
I think powerwall can be installed both indoors and outdoors. From www.teslamotors.com/en_AU/powerwall, "Contained within Powerwall's outdoor-rated enclosure is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, a liquid thermal management system, a battery management system and a smart DC-DC converter for controlling power flow."
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EVtricity
Half Charge
Posts: 66
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
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Post by EVtricity on Sept 22, 2015 21:34:49 GMT 11
I'm very keen to put a Powerwall in. I have a spare input on an SMA Tripower solar inverter that is capable of handling the DC output range of the Powerwall so no extra inverter required for me - just the Powerwall and some sort of net meter to tell it when I'm importing or exporting power.
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Post by gabzimiev on Sept 23, 2015 10:17:37 GMT 11
I'm still waiting to see what the network operators allow. I don't think the current rules allow for what tesla marketing is selling.
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Post by empowerrepower on Sept 23, 2015 16:41:06 GMT 11
There are a number of other home battery systems on the Australian market, such as BYD, but it seems that the Tesla one has the highest profile. I've also met two Model S owners who already have their names down on the waiting list, so possibly a bit of brand loyalty there.
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Post by caroline on Oct 4, 2015 15:28:58 GMT 11
Registered :-)
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Post by markrmarkr on Dec 30, 2015 16:27:22 GMT 11
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reecho
EV Enthusiast
Posts: 39
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Post by reecho on Dec 30, 2015 21:31:09 GMT 11
If you have existing PV, forget about adding a Powerwall. Only Fronius Primo Hybrid and Solaredge are supported.
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Post by Phoebe on Dec 30, 2015 22:30:37 GMT 11
If you have existing PV, forget about adding a Powerwall. Only Fronius Primo Hybrid and Solaredge are supported. Yep, I've run onto these sorts of problems
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EVtricity
Half Charge
Posts: 66
LEAF OWNER?: Yes
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Post by EVtricity on Jan 19, 2016 10:29:51 GMT 11
If you have existing PV, forget about adding a Powerwall. Only Fronius Primo Hybrid and Solaredge are supported. SMA have just announced their Sunny Boy Storage product that will support the high voltage Tesla Powerwall and can be retrofitted to existing PV systems. It's AC coupled as well so can support more options for grid-connected battery backup than the DC coupled solution from Solaredge.
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Post by tomkauf on Jan 7, 2020 16:32:12 GMT 11
Old thread I know, but wondering how many Leaf owners have a Powerwall (or some sort of Home Battery)?
We have a Powerwall 2, and love it. But 13.5kWh is not nearly enough to charge the 30kWh Leaf overnight. Thinking of getting a 2nd Powerwall, but getting 1 was already expensive.
When we charge the Leaf overnight, we pull a lot from the grid, unless we happen to be home during the day and use the Solar Panel production. And we hate using from the grid if we avoid it.
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Post by coulomb on Jan 7, 2020 20:19:50 GMT 11
Old thread I know, but wondering how many Leaf owners have a Powerwall (or some sort of Home Battery)? I have a home made LFP battery. 16 kWh when new, about 10 kWh now. It's enough to run the house overnight nearly all the time. Yeah, but it's a bit inefficient charging one battery from another. I set my 2012 (24 kWh) to charge from 8:20am to 3:10pm, when I have most solar. Occasionally I'll charge it overnight, but then I'll set my system to use grid power. I charge at 10 A (AC) most of the time, occasionally switching down to 8 or 6 A, or up to 12 A, depending on solar conditions and whether I'm in a hurry. If I need a quick boost, I'll stop by a fast charger on the way. I drove my wife to a medical facility today, near the city, and parked at King George Square car park (EVs get half price parking, and AC charging for free). It's about 25 km to the city from home; in the hour I was parked there, I didn't even make back the energy used to get there. AC charging is so slow on the early models with 3.3 kW on-board charger.
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Post by tomkauf on Jan 7, 2020 22:29:39 GMT 11
I have a home made LFP battery. 16 kWh when new, about 10 kWh now. It's enough to run the house overnight nearly all the time. Sound good, that's an excellent size (even if it is down to 10kWh). If we don't use the oven or dishwasher, we have about 50% battery left in the morning. Stove is gas, so that's not an issue. Yeah, but it's a bit inefficient charging one battery from another. I set my 2012 (24 kWh) to charge from 8:20am to 3:10pm, when I have most solar. Occasionally I'll charge it overnight, but then I'll set my system to use grid power. I charge at 10 A (AC) most of the time, occasionally switching down to 8 or 6 A, or up to 12 A, depending on solar conditions and whether I'm in a hurry. Ah ok, I didn't know that was a lot less efficient, thanks for the info! It depends if we need the car in the morning. If we don't, we definitely use the solar to charge. But maybe a Tariff 33 would be an option as well for us, instead of more battery storage. Our EVolution EVSE can also be changed between 6, 10 and 15 Amps, which is very useful. Yeah, fast chargers have come in handy a few times for us. Just for a few minutes of top-up. The free charging at Shopping Centers ist great - I haven't gone into the inner city yet, but Toombul, Carindale, Chermside etc. 3.3kW onboard charger for our 30kWh Leaf unfortunately as well (all Japanese models only have 3.3kW).
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Post by rusdy on Jan 8, 2020 13:10:17 GMT 11
Old thread I know, but wondering how many Leaf owners have a Powerwall (or some sort of Home Battery)? We have a Powerwall 2, and love it. But 13.5kWh is not nearly enough to charge the 30kWh Leaf overnight. Thinking of getting a 2nd Powerwall, but getting 1 was already expensive. When we charge the Leaf overnight, we pull a lot from the grid, unless we happen to be home during the day and use the Solar Panel production. And we hate using from the grid if we avoid it. For me, the trick is to charge everyday. Daily 6 ~ 8kWh fits nicely with my PW2 instead of bi-nightly at 15kWh. To be honest, my decrepit Leaf gen-1 battery can't cope more than 10kWh anyway . My solar production is always excess in summer, and seriously wanting in winter (shaded by neighbour's tree on winter), so I import lots from the grid in winter. Not so much due to the Leaf, but due to the reverse cycle air-con. I have almost ALL electric home (except water heating, don't have the budget to change that yet). Cooking is all done by induction stove-top. Seriously, ditch your gas cooking. It's not worth it. Induction is waaay better and cleaner for your kitchen (and the health of the globe).
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Post by EVangelist on Jan 8, 2020 14:28:51 GMT 11
Old thread I know, but wondering how many Leaf owners have a Powerwall (or some sort of Home Battery)? We have a Powerwall 2, and love it. But 13.5kWh is not nearly enough to charge the 30kWh Leaf overnight. Thinking of getting a 2nd Powerwall, but getting 1 was already expensive. When we charge the Leaf overnight, we pull a lot from the grid, unless we happen to be home during the day and use the Solar Panel production. And we hate using from the grid if we avoid it. I got solar + PW2 installed May last year. Totally love it! The economics for the battery were marginal (my entire system has ~10 year payback) but the sense of independence and big reduction in grid use is worth it in my view. Only 18% of our entire consumption over the last 6 months has come from the grid, and less than 10% of that grid use has been at peak times because the battery carries us through most times. The economics, however, of a second battery would be a lot worse than the economics of the first. Law of diminishing returns and all that. The economics of adding more solar panels (if you have empty roofspace) is much better due to the income earned from additional grid export. Particularly if you get onto a grid rateplan with 20c+ feed-in tariff. In any event, being a 100% Green Power customer means that any grid draw is not a source of guilt. And having the PW2 data has enabled me to model what the effect would be of having bigger battery, more solar panels etc. Bottom line is that a single house can never go off-grid with more than 99.99% reliability without an insane number of batteries (5 or more) or incredibly smart demand management and load shifting, so it’s just not worth it in my view. You can try setting “Advanced Time-Based Control” on PW2 to intelligently manage when the house draws grid power instead of drawing on PW2. There are two modes: “Balanced” which will try to optimise when your house draws from the grid and when it draws from PW2 to minimise costs, generally meaning you’ll draw from the grid during offpeak and shoulder times, and from the battery at peak times and at night. The other mode is “Cost Saving” which will use the grid at offpeak times to charge the battery so that it is fully charged by the morning, maximising use of PW2 at peak and shoulder times. The AI which does this is opaque, so people have reported varying results and some idiosyncrasies with it. For example, one thing it does (which is counterintuitive) is send more excess solar to the grid rather than charge the battery, even when the battery is not even close to full. The logic being, the money you earn from export is economically more beneficial than saving that electricity to use later, presumably on the assumption that the battery is already full enough to get you through the night. I remain unconvinced it works well, and have left my PW2 in “Self consumption” mode.
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Post by Phoebe on Jan 8, 2020 14:45:06 GMT 11
I have a LG battery but I never charge my LEAF overnight so how much grid used is not an issue.
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Post by rusdy on Jan 8, 2020 17:19:37 GMT 11
... The AI which does this is opaque, so people have reported varying results and some idiosyncrasies with it. For example, one thing it does (which is counterintuitive) is send more excess solar to the grid rather than charge the battery, even when the battery is not even close to full. The logic being, the money you earn from export is economically more beneficial than saving that electricity to use later, presumably on the assumption that the battery is already full enough to get you through the night. I remain unconvinced it works well, and have left my PW2 in “Self consumption” mode. I had this issue as well in 2018. I thought they've fixed it? Typical Tesla: It's getting better everyday though. I've found the 'AI' is getting better compared to first time I had it. Last time I had this idiosyncrasies, I managed to circumvent this by forcing the 'shoulder period' to minimal as possible. Detailed blurbs, click here. In summary (I've just realised I was rambling too much): " I recommend to use 'TBC Cost Saving' mode with a wee bit of shoulder period (just enough to activate 'charge from off-peak grid mode')."
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Post by johnmath on Jan 8, 2020 17:40:10 GMT 11
Bottom line is that a single house can never go off-grid with more than 99.99% reliability without an insane number of batteries (5 or more) or incredibly smart demand management and load shifting, so it’s just not worth it in my view. We are off-grid with 45kWh of lead/carbon batteries which should be outperformed by 3 Tesla Walls because lead batteries can't be regularly deep discharged (below 50%). The last time the generator backup was run was June 2019. The usual indicator that the local mains supply is that after 30 minutes or so the mobile GSM network and internet go down. Our Leaf is charged off the system and averages 50km per day, or around 7kWh for the car daily, and around 8kWh for the house. It seems that when designing solar systems only half of the design equation is considered, namely "how many panels / batteries are needed for the existing consumption" and the other half of the design equation "how much energy is really needed without loss of services" is ignored. Over a couple of years after installing our first solar array I reduced our consumption at the previous gas / electric house in the city from 12kWh per day to 4kWh per day without losing any modern convenience or energy driven device, simply by getting rid of phantom and zombie power consuming devices, replacing inefficient appliances with efficient ones, and considering energy consumption when designing systems like networks, communications, security, irrigation, etc. In our current house we have several pumps and use use some electric cooking and hot water and run some guest accomodation, hence the higher consumption. Yes, we do load manage - charge the car when the sun is shining, etc. I don't lie in bed playing with the power system on my phone, nor do I want to. Our power system was designed to be as 'dumb' as possible with the minimum number of points of failure and failure modes. Of course being off-grid does change what is important, namely reliability and max energy in winter when it is most needed.
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Post by EVangelist on Jan 8, 2020 18:13:29 GMT 11
We are off-grid with 45kWh of lead/carbon batteries which should be outperformed by 3 Tesla Walls because lead batteries can't be regularly deep discharged (below 50%). The last time the generator backup was run was June 2019. I should have been less generalist... what I should have said was that for my house, energy consumption profile, solar array size, etc, that to go off grid with 99.99% uptime would require 5+ batteries. Obviously that will vary for other houses and situations depending on all those parameters.
Prior to going solar our average daily consumption was 28 kWh/day over a full year. By making our house more energy efficient in 2019, it is now down to 20 kW/h per day (5 person household). So nearly 30% reduction - more than I was trying to achieve (20%).
Given our solar array is relatively small (5.8 kW - the most we could squeeze on our roof using the highest efficiency panels available) then this reduction was important in order to keep our solar "head above water". Over the past 6 months we have generated 21% more solar power than we have consumed. Adding Tesla Model 3 (since late Dec) will narrow that gap quite a bit but we still should be in front - just.
That means grid draw is all but inevitable. The smaller the gap between total production and total consumption, the more difficult it is to bend the statistics in your favour and use batteries to fully go off-grid. Going 100% Green Power for the grid draw is the next best thing.
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Post by tomkauf on Jan 9, 2020 13:51:09 GMT 11
For me, the trick is to charge everyday. Daily 6 ~ 8kWh fits nicely with my PW2 instead of bi-nightly at 15kWh. To be honest, my decrepit Leaf gen-1 battery can't cope more than 10kWh anyway . My solar production is always excess in summer, and seriously wanting in winter (shaded by neighbour's tree on winter), so I import lots from the grid in winter. Not so much due to the Leaf, but due to the reverse cycle air-con. I have almost ALL electric home (except water heating, don't have the budget to change that yet). Cooking is all done by induction stove-top. Seriously, ditch your gas cooking. It's not worth it. Induction is waaay better and cleaner for your kitchen (and the health of the globe). Agreed. We charge about 20kWh (out of 30kWh battery) every workday, but definitely try to do it during the day when we can. Yeah, we're lucky that our 2015 Leaf manages ok with our high usage. Sounds good. We're lucky that we have very few trees blocking our 6.6kW of panels (with 5kW Inverter), producing 45kWh on a good day. All electric is great, but our house was recently built, so changing out the gas cooktop won't happen any time soon.
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Post by tomkauf on Jan 9, 2020 14:08:38 GMT 11
I got solar + PW2 installed May last year. Totally love it! The economics for the battery were marginal (my entire system has ~10 year payback) but the sense of independence and big reduction in grid use is worth it in my view. Only 18% of our entire consumption over the last 6 months has come from the grid, and less than 10% of that grid use has been at peak times because the battery carries us through most times. The economics, however, of a second battery would be a lot worse than the economics of the first. Law of diminishing returns and all that. The economics of adding more solar panels (if you have empty roofspace) is much better due to the income earned from additional grid export. Particularly if you get onto a grid rateplan with 20c+ feed-in tariff. In any event, being a 100% Green Power customer means that any grid draw is not a source of guilt. And having the PW2 data has enabled me to model what the effect would be of having bigger battery, more solar panels etc. Bottom line is that a single house can never go off-grid with more than 99.99% reliability without an insane number of batteries (5 or more) or incredibly smart demand management and load shifting, so it’s just not worth it in my view. You can try setting “Advanced Time-Based Control” on PW2 to intelligently manage when the house draws grid power instead of drawing on PW2. There are two modes: “Balanced” which will try to optimise when your house draws from the grid and when it draws from PW2 to minimise costs, generally meaning you’ll draw from the grid during offpeak and shoulder times, and from the battery at peak times and at night. The other mode is “Cost Saving” which will use the grid at offpeak times to charge the battery so that it is fully charged by the morning, maximising use of PW2 at peak and shoulder times. The AI which does this is opaque, so people have reported varying results and some idiosyncrasies with it. For example, one thing it does (which is counterintuitive) is send more excess solar to the grid rather than charge the battery, even when the battery is not even close to full. The logic being, the money you earn from export is economically more beneficial than saving that electricity to use later, presumably on the assumption that the battery is already full enough to get you through the night. I remain unconvinced it works well, and have left my PW2 in “Self consumption” mode. We love it as well, brings a lot of enjoyment! Yeah, 10 years repayment for us as well unfortunately. The solar was 3-4 years, so that's far more profitable. We had basically 0% grid usage, until we got the Leaf. Now it is definitely worse, but still reasonable (a few hours between PW2 running out and sun rising). Very true, I'll have to see what the return would be on a 2nd battery. We do have more roof-space on a separate area of the roof. Not sure how that would work, but the electricians can work that out. We had 44c feed-in years ago in Townsville (North QLD), but when we moved down here, 16.1c is the best we could find these days. We can be 100% green power with one PW2, as long as we charge the Leaf during the day, and the sun shines. So that definitely won't be the case if there is a storm. And we can't charge during the day if we have work early the next day. Good idea regarding Advanced Time-Based Control. We're not on a Time-of-use plan at the moment, since we only use grid power at night. But I'll see how the rates per kWh are (feed-in vs offpeak/shoulder rate). Because like you said, it's counter-intuitive if the PW2 feeds into the grid when the usage later on will cost more.
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Post by tomkauf on Jan 9, 2020 14:12:14 GMT 11
I have a LG battery but I never charge my LEAF overnight so how much grid used is not an issue. Sounds good. When we have a midday start at work, that's also doable. But not when it is an 8am shift start.
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Post by rusdy on Jan 9, 2020 15:57:39 GMT 11
.... We charge about 20kWh (out of 30kWh battery) every workday... Wow! you commute a long way! You must've paid heaps in petrol prior Leaf!
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Post by tomkauf on Jan 9, 2020 16:19:48 GMT 11
Wow! you commute a long way! You must've paid heaps in petrol prior Leaf! Yeah, about 50km each way for my partner. That alone doesn't use 20kWh, but separate trips when she goes to the supermarket etc. That's the downside of living in the 'countryside' - nothing is very close by. Fuel was about $5k a year in our '08 Subaru Liberty GT. Getting about 8km/kWh at the moment without Aircon (a high percentage highway). Although we only just worked out how to reset that value, so it still fluctuates. Was 7.4 when we got the Leaf, and slowly went up to 7.6. So we're doing better than the previous owner.
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Post by EVangelist on Jan 9, 2020 21:35:51 GMT 11
We're not on a Time-of-use plan at the moment, since we only use grid power at night. But I'll see how the rates per kWh are (feed-in vs offpeak/shoulder rate). With a battery you should probably get yourself on to a ToU plan, since the battery should get you through most peak periods then you get cheap off-peak power to charge your LEAF overnight. I can appreciate the sentiment of wanting to minimise grid use, but any grid that is used should be time-shifted to off-peak. I have downloaded my daily PW2 stats since 1 July so that I can do exact comparisons of what different grid rateplans would have cost me, since I have a record of how much power I used every 5 minutes, how much solar was generated, exported, etc. In my case, I compared a dozen rateplans from 5 different suppliers (in all cases including 100% Green Power and daily connection charges), and the worst ones were often “general” (non-TOU) plans. For the 6 months Jul-Dec, the general tariff from Powershop was the worst and would have cost me $301. The best was Origin Solar Optimiser with 21c feed-in tariff, for which the 6 month cost would have been $91.
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Post by tomkauf on Jan 10, 2020 0:58:47 GMT 11
With a battery you should probably get yourself on to a ToU plan, since the battery should get you through most peak periods then you get cheap off-peak power to charge your LEAF overnight. I can appreciate the sentiment of wanting to minimise grid use, but any grid that is used should be time-shifted to off-peak. I'll call up our provider and make the change when I can. I think we didn't bother originally, because we never used power from the grid. The PW2 only got to about 50% overnight, and solar charged it during the solar. That changed a few weeks ago when our Leaf arrived. What do you use to do your calculations? I used this online spreadsheet a lot, but the different usage patterns are only an estimate of what ours are: www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/solar-pv-battery-storage-sizing-payback-calculatorI'd like to use our actual figures to calculate the return. I used this page to compare Plans: wattever.com.au/But again, it's only an estimate. We were hoping to go with Origin, but mid last year they dropped their 20c feed-in tarif (unless people bought a solar system through them). So Energy Australia was the next best with 16.1c. But again, our usage has changed due to the Leaf, so I'll look into it some more.
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Post by brunohill on Jan 10, 2020 1:10:43 GMT 11
Why does everything have to make economic sense? That is why we are not doing anything about climate change because it does not make economic sense at the moment and by the time it does it will be too late. If you lost the electricity grid for a couple of months (say there was a bush fire or something) that extra Powerwall would be priceless.
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Post by tomkauf on Jan 10, 2020 1:31:02 GMT 11
Why does everything have to make economic sense? That is why we are not doing anything about climate change because it does not make economic sense at the moment and by the time it does it will be too late. If you lost the electricity grid for a couple of months (say there was a bush fire or something) that extra Powerwall would be priceless. Very true! That's why I'm still leaning towards getting another one. It needs to get some regular use (not be totally for a once-in-a-blue-moon situation), but it'll easily meet that criteria. Technically, 2x PW2 < 30kWh Leaf, so still not quite enough for 0-100% charge. But that wouldn't occur often.
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Post by EVangelist on Jan 10, 2020 9:04:33 GMT 11
I'll call up our provider and make the change when I can. I think we didn't bother originally, because we never used power from the grid. The PW2 only got to about 50% overnight, and solar charged it during the solar. That changed a few weeks ago when our Leaf arrived. What do you use to do your calculations? I used this online spreadsheet a lot, but the different usage patterns are only an estimate of what ours are: www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/solar-pv-battery-storage-sizing-payback-calculatorI'd like to use our actual figures to calculate the return. I used this page to compare Plans: wattever.com.au/But again, it's only an estimate. We were hoping to go with Origin, but mid last year they dropped their 20c feed-in tarif (unless people bought a solar system through them). So Energy Australia was the next best with 16.1c. But again, our usage has changed due to the Leaf, so I'll look into it some more. I created my own s/sheet to do the calculations, using the actual consumption data from PW2. Doing it was a lot more complicated than I initially expected, since all the power flows in and out need to be properly accounted for and mapped to the correct tariff at the time it happened, which depends on the time of day and the day of week. But I’m a bit of a spreadsheet jockey / data guy so I wasn’t going to give up. Also I wanted to set up the spreadsheet so that I could, for example, make my solar array bigger or battery bigger (or smaller) to do “what if” calculations. That turned out to be really hard, since the power flows have to be modified and will go to different places depending on what the scenario is and what has happened up to that point in time (e.g. is the battery full or empty yet?), but I got there in the end. Doing that enabled me to calculate exactly the payback time for my solar array by itself (i.e. change battery size to 0), and the payback for the battery itself, and the whole system together. The payback time varied quite a bit depending on the underlying grid rateplan, so it’s not a fixed number. I’m in NSW, and Origin Solar Optimiser produced the lowest cost based on my specific install and usage history. It has a 21c FIT for arrays 10kW or less. Doubling the battery size had the amazing effect of increasing my 6-month power bill from $91 (1 battery) to $96 (2 batteries) under Origin Solar Optimiser. It’s counter-intuitive, but a bigger battery resulted in significantly less grid export (425 kWh less, losing $89 of FIT), which was not offset by the lower grid costs (371 kWh more, most of which was at the offpeak rate). It’s an inversion which can occur if the FIT is higher than the offpeak grid rate, which it is on this plan.
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