A presentation by a Tesla USA employee, now circulating on YouTube, has provided substantial new information on the Powerwall 3’s confirmed specs.
My February summary of the Powerwall 3’s expected specs contained several ‘to be confirmed’ speculations.
This blog post confirms that every speculation, besides the cell chemistry, was correct. So let’s start there:
Confirmed: Lithium Iron Phosphate Cells
Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) cells in the Powerwall 3 have finally been confirmed after much speculation.
The new cells are warranted for a capacity retention of 70% at 10-years, but the Tesla presenter said they anticipate real-world performance to be 80-90% after those 10 years.
He also said Tesla has observed:
“battery degradation is more a function of time than use”
If accurate, that’s a great argument for cycling your battery as hard as possible to get the maximum ROI instead of carefully limiting the cycles to reduce wear and tear.
Confirmed: A software update will allow AC coupling
A software update scheduled for April 2024 will introduce AC coupling capabilities to the Powerwall 3, allowing integration with existing solar installations. Without this update, the Powerwall 3 would only be suitable for installation at the same time as a new solar array, DC coupled to the PW3’s integrated solar inverter.
Confirmed: Cheaper DC Expansion Packs
Tesla will be releasing 13.5kWh DC Expansion (DC-X) units, which are expected to be priced around US$1,000 less due to the omission of the solar inverter and site controller electronics. This potentially prices a DC-X at under $9,000 Australian dollarydoos. That’s a beastly $666 per kWh.
The DC-X form factor will be the same as a PW3, with the potential for up to four PW3s and twelve DC-Xs per Gateway. That’s a maximum of 46kW AC and 216 kWh capacity with 16 units on a single gateway. Impressive.
Confirmed: 11.5kW solar inverter output plus 5kW battery charging
The Powerwall 3 can send 11.5 kW of solar to your home and charge the battery at 5kW simultaneously. Great for slurping up 16.5 kW of solar power from big arrays, reducing curtailment.
Powershare: Vehicle-to-Home Integration
Tesla’s Powershare V2H feature currently requires:
- a Cybertruck,
- a special ‘Universal’ Tesla Wall Connector,
- and a special Gateway 3V (V stands for Vehicle).
Tesla said, come June, Powershare will be possible with:
“a regular (V3) Tesla Wall Connector, a Gateway 2, and a Powerwall 2”
If that’s accurate, it implies that with a compatible car, existing Powerwall 2 installations in Australia can have V2H with a Tesla Wall Connector (and permission from your local DNSP).
Update: As Adam in the comments points out, the Tesla presenter also said:
“this is only for cyber trucks right now… I don’t know when the rest of the vehicles are going to get it but they will probably next year sometime”
Anticipated Timelines and Developments
Tesla confirmed this timeline:
- April 2024: Enabling of AC coupling.
- August 2024: Release of DC Expansion units in the US.
- 2025: Enable integration with Powerwall 2 systems.
- 2025: Addition of 3-phase and off-grid capabilities
Conclusion
The Powerwall 3 is a seriously impressive solar battery with:
- 11.5kW of power per PW3
- cheaper 13.5 kWh expansion modules
- an option to AC couple or integrate with Powerwall 2
- native V2H with Tesla EV Chargers
- up to 46 kW of power and 216 kWh of energy storage per Gateway.
Powerwall 3s are expected in Australia in late 2024. Just beware that these are US specifications, and there will be some changes for the Australian market, the most likely being a reduced max power of 10kW to fit with electricity network rules on maximum inverter size.
To get a full overview of what to expect, read my original Powerwall 3 post, which contains all the other Powerwall 3 features we know of and which I’ve updated with this new information.
You can watch the Tesla presentation here. It’s worth it just to hear the shade thrown at both Enphase and Tesla’s USA’s direct sales model…
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Three phase? Let’s go!!
The present conundrum is:
* require three phase to install a lot of solar (my network rules 5kW per phase single phase or 10kW per phase three phase, yours might be different)
* only need a backed up single phase for household loads (EV charge 3 phase non backed up, no other 3ph loads)
* export limited to 5kW per phase (though depending on area, may be up to 10kW, and with new rules to allow network control, perhaps DNSP will let 10kW export as default if they are allowed to throttle export down to zero in over production times)
* with household loads on a single backed up phase (three phase batteries are hard, unusual, uneconomical and unnecessary) this makes the loads out of phase balance so may not be allowed for a 3 phase network connection
I would appreciate everyone’s thoughts 🙂
One other tidbit from the video:
Powershare V2H is apparently coming for Teslas other than cyber truck (assumed model 3/Y)
19:24 “this is only for cyber trucks right now… I don’t know when the rest of the vehicles are going to get it but they will probably next year sometime”
-> as soon as this is released I will replace our current family car with Model Y. Ideally have a PW3 home battery system then have the Powershare V2H Model 3/Y in case of longer term blackouts. Armageddon setup.
Re: ability to have up to 4 PW3’s and up to 12 DC-X: I wonder if that means I can locate one PW3 in the carport physically located 20m from the house, connected to PV panels on the carport roof. And another PW3 on the main house connected to PV panels on the house roof.
i.e. if only one PW3 in carport, then DC cabling between there and PV panels on the house is probably not possible (underground? and requires very long cable length).
Having a second PW3 physically separate from the first might solve the issue of problematic DC cabling between carport and house.
I would not put a PW2 Li-ion Cobalt battery in/on my house (fire risk!), but with the change to LiFePO, that risk would be significantly reduced.
Hi Adam,
With conventional solar, DC string voltages up around 600v make longer runs possible, where voltage drop can prove problematic at mains AC voltage.
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/shed-solar-distance/
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-voltage-rise-drop/
Thanks Anthony for replying,
AC cable is (relatively) cheap (especially if you can get leftovers from work!), is routinely installed underground between buildings and can have RCD protection, but I get your point. In my case, I will have a sub-board in the house hanging off the main board in carport, so will already have an oversized AC cable installed between the two.
I spoke to some solar system designers (engineers) who said that DC cabling between residential buildings in a suburban location was problematic and it might be difficult to find someone to actually install it.
So perhaps I should have emphasised that. I would not want DC cables at up to 600V in my backyard other than underground with appropriate physical protection. Even that seemed to be not likely to happen, according to the advice I received. Happy to be corrected, of course!
The bigger point is that PW3 seems to be solving a lot of issues with home batteries. Having one supplier, Tesla, supply all the hardware so there’s less chance of conflicts, would be great. And not having to be an amateur programmer using Home Assistant, etc. SP Pro’s are great ($$), but no export from the batteries limits their flexibility. Signergy sounds fantastic, but they don’t have the track record the Tesla has.
Fingers crossed that PW3, and possibly sigenergy, are able to solve some of the issues by providing a ‘system’ solution.
p.s. the YouTube video is gone. there may be other copies floating around the internet, but for now I’m glad I watched it today. Thanks for posting it!
Completely useless for me until they support three phase power and a more capable inverter.
It’s like you didn’t read the article.
“2025: Addition of 3-phase and off-grid capabilities”
Of all the current battery/inverter combo’s nothing even comes close to the PW3’s 11.5kW and you can have up to 4 of them.
“The DC-X form factor will be the same as a PW3, with the potential for up to four PW3s and twelve DC-Xs per Gateway. That’s a maximum of 46kW AC and 216 kWh capacity with 16 units on a single gateway. Impressive.”
Fantastic news! I’ll be listening to the presentation inlets watching out for the ebphase comments…
I run a 15kw enphase micro array- does this mean that if I get an expansion module, I get an extra 14.8kwh capacity, but am limited to only 5kw total charge capacity divided over PW2 and expansion pack? This also implies that max output would also be a total of 5kw total?
Love the roof power electronics shade, one of the reasons I’m waiting for PW3 for new largish solar system on 6 roof orientations/shading groups (6 MPPTs is perfect).
Don’t want to deal with 30+ optimisers on roof + elaborate wireless control systems to run them (also on roof!) which will no doubt be the first failure point.
Question: is your take that a single DC expansion module to a single “full” PW3 would charge *each* battery at 5kW simultaneously?
What peak amperage draw and continuous?
48A @ 240V in the USA – likely to be 40 A in Australia
Peak current: 185 Locked Rotor Amps (LRA)
Hard pass on the Tesla as it’s useless to me without 3 phase power. 2025 for that is a bit of a joke tbh. It should be released at the same time.
I’ll look elsewhere instead, maybe SigEnergy.
You know what they say about things that seem to be too good to be true!
Sigenergy is unproven, new to market, and will no doubt have a lot of teething issues at the very start.
Then probably pack up and leave when they realise the Aussie market is too small 🙂
Completely useless in Western Australia.
We have a hard and fast 5kW limit for single phase inverters.
I can get 2550 WHr Lead Acid batteries at Sams Club for 189.00 each. I plan to buy 8 of these at about $1600.00 for the 8. This will give me 22KWh of storage. Just a bit cheaper than the power wall. If I keep the discharge to less than 40%, then these batteries could last a long time.
Thanks for that, very useful. AC coupling presumably means we could put a PW3 into an existing PW2 installation?