Powerwall silly question

Hello everyone,

First of all, forgive me for this silly question, but I have been watching a lot of channels/videos about DIY powerwalls from a lot of a well known youtubers (HBpowerwall/JeHu/AverageJoe and the list could go on). From all of them the only one that seems that have applied the powerwall for a real reason or a daily basis reason(ifmakes sense what I'm saying) is HBpowerwall.
The rest of them, seems that are just testingthem or not using them to power anything relevant.

So, interpretinglike this takes me to the "silly question" is really a powerwall worth all the time/resources/money investedjust for partial use like for a garage or something else.

I have been thinking to use a powerwall just for the lights and use the network for the rest of the electrical things. Does this really makes any sense for you?


One last question, how much(kWh)would be necessary to connect a full house vs a partial house(lights and low consumption equipments), like a 3 beds + 3 bathrooms + kitchen + living room + garage.

Thanks for any help/idea or feedback from you that are on the field for a long time.

There's lots of powerwallers that are using them practically. AverageJoe "is" using his practically. He runs a fridge and several other devices from them. He's not running his whole house on battery yet, but he has moved several devices over to it.

Practical application really determines where you live, too. Here in the US, most places will benefit from a powerwall/solar setup. But in some places like Germany where power costs are low, then it's not fully practical to "run" off the powerwall continuously. However, it's great to have it for when the power goes out (some places have cheap power, but have rolling blackouts almost daily)

For me, with power around $0.13/kWh (all fees/taxes inclusive), it would benefit me. Especially if the cells were free, or very cheap.

Jofiferreira,
Welcome!

is really a powerwall worth all the time/resources/money investedjust for partial use like for a garage or something else.

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That is up to the individual user. If you were to account for the time it takes you to do all this, then apply a monetary value to your time the answer is no. I do not see how it could be worth it. Most of us though aren't doing it just to try and save money, we enjoy the process and the challenge so our time does not have a monetary value to it. In terms of out of pocket costs, yes. It can be worth it in the long run.

I have been thinking to use a powerwall just for the lights and use the network for the rest of the electrical things. Does this really makes any sense for you?

Click to expand...

Yes, that can be done, but how depends a lot on where you live, the laws, and so on.

One last question, how much(kWh)would be necessary to connect a full house vs a partial house(lights and low consumption equipments), like a 3 beds + 3 bathrooms + kitchen + living room + garage.

Click to expand...

Be sure to read all the FAQ's. In order to determine the answer to that question youneed a lot more information. You need to know how much you use now, and how much is used in each of those places. A monthly electric bill is a good place to start, but that only tells you one month. What happens in the winter? Does usage go up? and in summer? How much sun do you get? How many solar panels can you install?

And that's just a start. Keep digging, reading, and researching. The question of "is it worth it?" is really "is it worth it to me?". That is the question you will have to answer.

I will probably get a lot of hate for this comment, but it needs to be said. Youtube is a platform for creators to make money. Period. The advertisement before the video, the panhandling for Patreon donations, the endless affiliate links for everything, etc. Jesus "Jehu" A. Garcia is the worst offender, he lives in a rented house and only started Powerwalls because he failed in his camera equipment business and saw how much money EV West was making and wanted to get in on it. He has no electrical background whatsoever and is always scamming people out of their money.

If you want to really learn, treat youtube as entertainment and stick to this forum for actual knowledge.

Do powerwalls make sense? Dunno why people don't calculate vacations, meals, sports, entertainment, housing, cars, etc., but when it comes to solar and energy storage, every penny is pinched. You will never make money on a fancy dinner, but that doesn't mean you have to eat ramen noodles all the time. Food is food. Electricity is electricity. You can choose to get whatever the grid gives you, or you can make your own. No one is here making powerwalls for sale to others. Some are off grid and make them out of necessity. Some make them as a hobby. Whatever the reason, each powerwall is an expression of each person's personality. If you like batteries, want to learn more about them and electricity in general, and want to have some power over your own power use, then whatever you do will be worth it. If you are only doing this to make money, you will probably get bored fast and never get anywhere. The choice is yours.

Its better to have power and not need it,then to need power and not have it. I have a 220 ah lifepo4 house battery and a 65 ah li-ion battery and a smaller 35 ah li-ion battery. and I still think I need more power even though the 35 ah pack is more then sufficient for me.

In the youtube videos you see alot of what goes on to build the packs and testing them. After testing them they usually put them to work but don't show it on video. Build a small battery pack and work your way up to see if its something that is worth your time. Even if you don't use it everyday, maybe someday it might come in handy during a blackout.

If the power grid went down tomorrow it wouldnt affect me one bit, I been 100 percent solar for years.

Hi Jofiferreira,

as the others already stated, there are many people here using their powerwall in production - including me. I power almost the whole house with it from spring to autumn (north of Germany) and -although this wasn't my initial goal- cut down my electricity bill by almost 2/3. My main interest was sustainability and recycling, because I thought there's a massive waste of resources in the battery industry (one of my customers is an electronics recycling company).

Now, my powerwall is up and running for more than 2 years, I have 21kWh from LiIon batteries (almost 3000 cells) and another 22kWh from older LA batteries. For those who are interested: Here're some stats of my grid consumption before using solar power/batteries and now:








my average monthly grid power consumption dropped from 250kWh in 2015 to 110kWh in 2018.

And I didn't notice a blackout last year - until I saw my neighbors discussing on the street (interesting to see what people do without electricity)

Of course, if I consider the time I spent to set everything up, it haven't saved anything. But that's not the point. The point is: I learned a lot, I had a lot of fun, I met many interesting people - and as another goody, I'm using less grid power than before and rescued thousands of LiIon cells from being shreddered before the end of their life .

Concerning youtube: I agree with Dallski to 80%. There're many people trying to earn money through youtube, but if you have a look at Pete's (hbpowerwall) first videos, you'll get a picture how we all approached this topic. And if you watch his later videos, you'll see what it lead him to. Anyhow, I still think youtube is a great resource and I'm very thankful that people take their time to make videos (wish I had more time to do the same).

So, if you're seriously interested in this topic, I have a similar advice as Church1182: Read, learn, ask, try, fail, give up, start again, go your way and see what it leads you to.

Have sun!
Oliver

Re your question "how many kWhrs will I need for my house...", like Church said above, you need to do a power budget and get to understand how much you use & when.
Maybe use a plug in power meter for some/all appliances for a day - especially any refrigerators as they tend to draw a lot.
It can also make a big difference if you review your appliances & think "is it time to upgrade to more efficient ones", eg LED lights, modern inverter fridge, etc.

I use mine to Power the whole house... Perhaps missed that One?


Edit: Corrected bad mobile spelling...

Dallski said:

I will probably get a lot of hate for this comment, but it needs to be said. Youtube is a platform for creators to make money. Period

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couldn't agree more with you about youtube, most of the creators are there only for the money, believe that for them is no longer the freedom of YouTube, but yes the sponsors, views, patreons and all that crap.

But even so, I still think that we can keep learning a few things with them all, ones more than others, but we can. at least I still wanna believe that.

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Jofiferreira said:

Hello everyone,

First of all, forgive me for this silly question, but I have been watching a lot of channels/videos about DIY powerwalls from a lot of a well known youtubers (HBpowerwall/JeHu/AverageJoe and the list could go on). From all of them the only one that seems that have applied the powerwall for a real reason or a daily basis reason(ifmakes sense what I'm saying) is HBpowerwall.
The rest of them, seems that are just testingthem or not using them to power anything relevant.

So, interpretinglike this takes me to the "silly question" is really a powerwall worth all the time/resources/money investedjust for partial use like for a garage or something else.

I have been thinking to use a powerwall just for the lights and use the network for the rest of the electrical things. Does this really makes any sense for you?


One last question, how much(kWh)would be necessary to connect a full house vs a partial house(lights and low consumption equipments), like a 3 beds + 3 bathrooms + kitchen + living room + garage.

Thanks for any help/idea or feedback from you that are on the field for a long time.

Click to expand...

Ok, lets gonna clarify a few things that after I read my post seems to be awkward or a bit confusing.

So, when I said is it worth to build a powerwall? With that I was just putting a point of view not asking if is really worth to do all the process of harvesting, testing, building a powerwall, because if we gonna measure all the time we spent we gonna be surprised with the results(at least I think like that). Like I said, I was just bringing that up, because all the time consuming that takes to build it and after words if it's not to be used, I don't know. That is what took me the that point of view. Sure that, we do built it just for fun or just to see the results, that is why is called hobby, doesn't have be worth, correct?

Also, the I said "One last question, how much(kWh)would be necessary to connect a full house vs a partial house(lights and low consumption equipments), like a 3 beds + 3 bathrooms + kitchen + living room + garage.", with this question I was not expecting you to tell "you gonna need xxxAh", I was just putting it like straight in real life, taking your cases as an example, like a direction to go forward, to start the process.

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Redpacket said:

Re your question "how many kWhrs will I need for my house...", like Church said above, you need to do a power budget and get to understand how much you use & when.
Maybe use a plug in power meter for some/all appliances for a day - especially any refrigerators as they tend to draw a lot.
It can also make a big difference if you review your appliances & think "is it time to upgrade to more efficient ones", eg LED lights, modern inverter fridge, etc.

Click to expand...

Also couldn't agree more with you, that is why all my lights at home are led, all appliances are at least A+. We have "to be green" now more than ever I would say and is not just with Renewable Energy, we have "to be green" with all we can, recycling, helping others(these days, this is a huge lack in all people).

You ask how hard and how much of a returm you get out of it. Of all the hobbies and projects I've done this ia the only one that continues to give back. But don't confuse this to me looking at the return of investment as the reason but more so as a by product. If i was looking as this as a ROI I would have gone the grid tie option where it requires the least cost with highest efficiency. This is nothing more than a hobby that you should enjoy performing. But in general the payback could be from anywhere between two and ten years depending on how frugal you are in sourcing the materials.

There are plenty of examples of folks building their version of the wall. In fact there's a whole section of this forum on their builds
now look at them and say to yourself if you are the type of person that can do it and not give up because it is over your head.

Now on to your question of how much power you need to run those few bedrooms, etc. We can't help there because its too ambiguous. Just take your electric bill and start there. Then buy a kill a watt device and start monitoring your appliances. The first thing you will notice is you start saving because you will immediately turn off stuff or replace things with more efficient equivalent. The key is to conserve energy.

For me, I would say 5kw is a nice start and 10-30kw is a good range to be. A tesla Powerwall 2 is a 14kw system. A typical household in US use roughly 400kw a month so about 14kw a day.

I bit the bullet and bought the SENSE Monitor $299.00 (VERY EASY TO INSTALL) and very easy to use. It also brought a lot of "LIGHT" on my solar system to be, battery POWERWALL (Possible needs vs Reality) and gave me the ability to somewhat make a deep dive of creating a plan of real possible expectations.

https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Energy...733&sr=8-2-spons&keywords=power+monitor&psc=1

I know there are many other cheaper ways of doing this. I was sold on the fact it does slowly learn about loads and can track them. It is not perfect and it is a slow process. Though it does a very good job at simple things like how much energy am i using right now? What was my highest draw all day? Or even this week? It is truly an install and forget about it process. I enjoy picking up my phone and seeing what is happening at home.

Fact is, i will save that $349.00 (also bought the SOLAR MONITOR) in a matter of months. (YES MY FAMILY AND I ARE NOT THE BEST AT SAY TURNING LIGHTS OFF)
NOW WE ARE!!!!!!!!

This device though expensive is forcing me to learn about energy and such. We have electric heat, electric water heater, electric washer and dryer, electric stove, and the Family HOT TUB out back. REALITY and USAGE is a must!!!!