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Tesla PowerWall is a good deal if you don't mind a 25-year payback

So says consumer mag Choice. Elon Musk says version 2 will do better

It's got a ten-year warranty and an unknown battery life, but the Tesla PowerWall will pay for itself, eventually.

That's the conclusion of the Australian Consumers' Association, which crunched the numbers here.

The Choice article takes a few different use-cases: a household with existing solar panels, and various grid-connect scenarios. It comes up with a best-case payback of 10.4 years out to more than 24 years, depending on how savvy the customer is about using their solar power.

The best way to use the PowerWall, Choice reckons, is to use all its available power, every day (which is less, The Register notes, than a full discharge if you want your batteries to survive).

Using a grid-connected system to feed power back and get a feed-in tariff turns out to be the worst scenario: “Tapping into your own solar power as much as possible, rather than feeding it back into the grid with a measly feed-in tariff, will decrease your payback time”, Choice notes.

It should be noted that in spite of the prices quoted by Tesla – US$3,000 for the 7 kWh version in America – Australians can't buy it as a naked product from Tesla. By the time PowerWall has landed here and trickled through the wholesale channel, installing the batteries with a “suitable” inverter will set you back at least AU$12,000.

Patient renewable enthusiasts might do just as well to wait. In a Q&A in Paris on January 29 posted to YouTube, Elon Musk promised the waiting world that the PowerWall will get version 2 soon.

Around nine minutes into the video, here's what Musk said:

“We have a lot of trials under way right now around the world. We're expecting to come up with a version two … of the PowerWall probably around July/August this year, which will see a further step-change in capabilities.”

Which should delight early “version one” owners. ®

Youtube Video

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