{"id":71259,"date":"2023-03-20T10:57:21","date_gmt":"2023-03-20T00:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=71259"},"modified":"2024-10-01T13:22:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T03:52:13","slug":"battery-brands-installer-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/battery-brands-installer-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"An Australian Installer’s Take On Home Battery Brands"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Home<\/p>\n

We recently polled installers in the SolarQuotes network to discover their favourite home batteries. Tesla, Sungrow and BYD batteries took the podium.<\/p>\n

This post looks a little deeper into the winning brands from an experienced battery installer’s perspective.<\/p>\n

Tesla<\/h2>\n

Powerwall: the Hoover of home batteries.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a few daily items that adopt a trade name as a generic descriptor. In England, it was Hoover that lent their name to vacuuming your house. In Australia, it was Malleys Esky that became the ubiquitous name for any ice box you travelled with. I’m not making any promises, but household battery storage seems to have adopted a trade name too.<\/p>\n

There are DIY groups for making your own Powerwall, while inverter manufacturer Sofar have decided to wave their red cape at Tesla’s bullish legal department by calling its white stack of batteries a “Powerall”.<\/p>\n

Tesla has a simple home battery solution. There’s one model, it’s shiny white and does what it says on the tin. There’s a nice clean app and if you want more, they can be stacked. From a superficial consumer perspective, they’re an attractive piece of kit.<\/p>\n

\"3

3 stacked Powerwalls<\/p><\/div>\n

Thankfully there’s some substance to Tesla Powerwall<\/a> too. They pack a good amount of storage and surge capacity to back up loads when the grid goes down, as well as compatibility with various VPPs and third-party apps.<\/p>\n

From an installer’s perspective, the Powerwall offers something priceless: a lack of problems.<\/strong> They are straightforward to set up, the gateway offers space for cable, circuit breakers and decent-sized terminations. Legacy solar can be monitored remotely with wireless neurio devices<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of the installers I have spoken to, they say they’ve had a handful of problems, and most of those have been remotely diagnosed by Tesla themselves, who then send their own technicians to make good. It will be interesting when Tesla releases their own solar inverter in Australia.<\/p>\n

The Powerwall’s Achilles Heel<\/h3>\n

AC coupled batteries<\/a> are easy to retrofit because they have their own inverter. But that inverter can count toward the total inverter capacity your Distributed Network Service Provider (DNSP) allows. Why does it matter? You can have all the storage you want, but without surplus solar energy to charge it, the capital and energy invested won’t pay off anytime soon.<\/p>\n

For example, if you have a single-phase house, 5kW of legacy solar system, and a 10kW ceiling imposed by the DNSP<\/a> :<\/p>\n

Scenario 1<\/strong><\/p>\n