Tesla Powerwall: Elon Musk Shares Incredible Solar Stats from Puerto Rico
The Powerwall is powering an energy revolution.
Tesla Powerwall is helping to harness a new generation of renewable energy. On Friday, CEO Elon Musk shared statistics from Twitter user Israel Melendez, whose solar setup in Manatí, Puerto Rico, has already taken his house, office and workshop completely off-grid — even with energy to spare.
Melendez shared screenshots from the Tesla app for the Powerwall, a battery the company sells that stores solar energy for use around the clock. He has 55 standard 220-watt panels set up to form a 12-kilowatt array, paired with three Powerwall 2 batteries that store around 14 kilowatt-hours each. This setup is enough to achieve full energy independence: in one day his roof generated 68 kilowatt-hours, while he only used 25.8 kilowatt-hours resulting in 42 kilowatt-hours of surplus energy. By his calculations, that’s enough to power a Tesla Model 3 for 175 miles with 56 percent battery:
The $6,600 second-generation Powerwall started deliveries last year, as a key component of Musk’s green energy future. In his October 2016 “house of the future” demonstration, the Powerwall 2 paired with a Tesla Model 3 in the garage and a Tesla Solar Roof to provide a complete solution, but Melendez’ setup shows how buyers don’t need to spend the estimated $21.85 per square foot on Tesla’s own solar roof solution to go off-grid with the Powerwall.
Melendez noted that the app made him realize how much his coffee maker and microwave oven use in energy. It’s a similar experience to Amanda Tobler, one of the first buyers of the Tesla Solar Roof in San Jose, California, who told Inverse this month that she “just [has] a new level of awareness” about how much her oven and dryer consume on a regular basis.
The Powerwall 2 is about to power even larger projects. Fresh from building a 129 megawatt-hour battery installation in South Australia, Tesla has received confirmation that the newly-elected state government will pursue plans to fit 50,000 homes with Powerwall 2 batteries and solar panels, producing 250 megawatts of power in the world’s largest virtual power plant.
