Nick Pfitzner is Australia’s first Tesla Powerwall owner. The lithium-ion battery pack allows owners to store energy from their solar panels for use during the night (or non-sunlight hours). The battery pack is designed to work indoors and outdoors as we see in this installation and if your power needs grow in the future, you can also add more Powerwalls thanks to the scalable architecture.
Natural Solar grabs the title of being the first Aussie solar company to install a Powerwall, although there’s plenty of other power providers now offering the solar storage option.
Large parts of Australia are lucky to be bathed in sunlight and more than 1.5 Million homes now have solar panels on their roof. This makes our country one of the best places in the world to take advantage of the technology.
“Since being announced as a Tesla Powerwall installer at the tail end of last year, Natural Solar has received an unprecedented number of enquiries about the Tesla Powerwall, indicating the Australian public is well and truly ready for this new frontier in renewable energy,” says Chris Williams, Managing Director of Natural Solar.
The Pfizner family is based in Sydney’s Hills District and decided to buy a solar and battery solution for their new property to reduce growing power bills and help the environment. This installation includes a 5kWp solar array, the Powerwall, a SolarEdge inverter and monitoring software to see the direct output of energy from the entire system and the Tesla Powerwall.
For those with panels already installed, there is the opportunity for a retro-fit to occur allowing a Tesla Powerwall to be added along with a compatible inverter to an existing solar system.
With every location receiving different amounts of sun per day and every household consuming different amounts of power, calculating the return on investment isn’t easy. Something you shouldn’t do is look at averages, they won’t be close to accurate for you. There are calculators that will let you input your usage and location to help, but this needs to be simplified and improved. It’d be easy for your energy supplier to provide this on your next bill, but they’re hardly going to do so, given you’ll end up buying less power from them. It’s easy to see that as energy usage goes down from Powerwall owners, the service charges for those who still need to be grid connected, will rise.
The Powerwall comes with a 10-year warranty period, and affordability is helped by a number of providers offering payment plans. Internationally we’ve seen companies offer $0 down installations of the solar and battery solutions, but that hasn’t yet reached Australia.
“Installations have been scheduled in each of the major states and territories starting from as early as next week,” commented Mr Williams. “For Natural Solar, as one of the first installers to bring the Tesla Powerwall to mainstream Australia is truly exciting and invigorating, and cements our position as leading experts in renewable energy and battery power. We are delighted to be working with Tesla Energy to drive the growth of battery power in Australia.”
Two days ago, Nick teased the install with a post on Twitter.
Prepare for the future, mortals… pic.twitter.com/q2Xzyfo4lO
— PfitzyShadesOfGrey (@NickPfitzner) January 27, 2016
