New level of transparency reveals battery, inverter, cabling, spacing, and hardware costs
Building operators curious about all of the costs associated with behind-the-meter energy storage systems now have an additional layer of price transparency, thanks to the new Tesla Energy Powerpack pricing calculator.
Tesla points out that the world consumes 20 trillion kWh of energy every year, enough to power a single family home for 1.8 billion years or to launch a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket 17 million times. Tesla believes wide-scale use of battery storage will help utilities, businesses, and consumers rely less on fossil fuels and more of renewable energy sources–the sooner energy storage is installed, the sooner traditional, high-emitting power generation resources can be retired. For homeowners, a Powerpack can also mean an increased use of solar power generation (in a way, skirting interconnection issues), load shifting for financial savings, and back-up power during grid outages.
The Powerpack calculator lets you price systems sized from 2 Powerpacks (50 kW, 200 kWh) up to 54 Powerpacks (2,500 kW, 5,400 kWh). And you can order online. For the larger system, the batteries would run $2.5 million, the inverters $650k, and the cabling and siting hardware $29k. Total spacing needs clocks in at 1,033 SF. Installation services are, however, not included.
UtilityDive’s analysis of the move by Tesla Energy to publish individual pricing line-items points out that this helps move energy storage even further into the mainstream. The transparency also addresses claims from competitors like Sonnen and JuiceBox Energy that some system cost quotes include components that other quotes do not.
For building operators particularly curious about energy storage, we recommend a quick read of our analysis on whether or not your building shares a twin peak with the grid.
