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Questions about Round Trip efficiency and Powerwall Overhead

3.9K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  rgmichel  
@SolarUser i can confirm that the powerwalls use energy and there is an inefficiency to cycling them. I am a bit of a data nerd but my only data on this is from the Tesla app which I don’t think is precise. Here are a few thoughts from my 2 powerwalls, installed 3.5 years ago, which means they are not exactly what is being produced today.

If I leave them at 100% backup and don't cycle them, they use about 0.5 kwh per day.

If i cycle them down to 20% and back to 100%, the cost roughly doubles to 1 kwh per day. That is consistent with your calc of 383 kwh/year.

Do you really have your energy usage honed to feel the effects of 1 kwh/day?

I am curious your use-case for the powerwalls? I initially used mine to be self powered every day, but abandoned that because although it was fun, it doesnt work every day (because of low solar production some days), and in the end I judged it to be pointless. Now my reasoning for the powerwalls:
  • So that solar production is maintained if there is a grid outage during the day.
  • As a backup to a grid outage any time the grid is down.
  • To stay off the grid during peak TOU rate period if I am out of banked kwh with my electric utility (sometimes at end of winter)