Tesla Powerwall 2 Vs. LG Chem, PIKA, Tabuchi & Sonnen

hey it's daryl from civic energy today i want to talk about batteries and compare the tesla powerwall 2 to 4 of its closest competitors there are a few comparison videos out there on youtube but i reviewed them and noticed that they were all done by companies that have never installed a wall and are not tesla powerwell certified so i thought it was time for a deep dive tesla's four closest competitors are the lg chem resu-10 sonnen pika also known as generac and tabuchi let's dive right in [Music] i'm going to compare the four other battery systems to a dual tesla powerwall 2 ac coupled to a 10 kilowatt solar edge inverter this is the most common system size that we install here at pacific energy let's review the lg chem first all in all i like the lg chem residue 10 because it's compatible with the solar edge and they actually manufacture their own battery the specs look pretty good and i have to say as an installer the installation is fairly easy and straightforward let's compare it to the tesla powerwall there are a lot of details here so i have homogenized the data and created a side-by-side comparison chart let's compare everything including what's not on the spec sheets the first item of comparison is architecture battery systems are either ac coupled or dc coupled each architecture has advantages and disadvantages dc coupling is slightly more efficient at charging the batteries and it's simpler but simpler isn't always better as you will soon see dc coupled systems use a single inverter for both battery power inversion and pv power inversion dc power from the pv modules is fed into the inverter and the inverter either sends that energy to your house or charges the battery at night the same inverter takes the dc power out of the battery to power your home ac coupled systems on the other hand use multiple inverters one or more pv inverters take power from your roof and send ac power to your house first the leftover power is used to charge the battery an ac battery such as the tesla powerwall has an additional built-in inverter which takes that which takes that excess power and uses it to charge the battery you lose a tiny amount of efficiency because there is an extra inversion step but you gain more important advantages like design flexibility scalability and the ability to power more of your home from solar and battery sources which reduces your chance of having to buy power from the utility take a look at this diagram if you have a dual lg chem resutan system connected to a 7.6 kilowatt storage inverter and the house wants 10 kilowatts at night when no solar power is available this is what would happen the house would take 6.6 kilowatts from the two batteries and the other 3.4 kilowatts from the electric company even though you have a 7.6 kilowatt inverter both batteries together are only capable of providing 6.6 kilowatts of power this is less than ideal and you will end up buying additional power from the electric company but in the example dual powerwall system you would not have to purchase any power in the same nighttime scenario this is because each power wall has its own five kilowatt inverter power output is not limited by a single dc coupled inverter therefore reducing the chances of you having to buy additional power the advantages of ac coupling become even more apparent during the day with the dc coupled lg chem system if the house wants 20 kilowatts in the middle of a sunny day this is what would happen the house would take 7.6 kilowatts from the pv inverter and nothing from the battery because the battery doesn't have a dedicated inverter there is only a single inverter for both pv on the roof and the battery the other 12.4 kilowatts would have to come from the grid again causing you to buy electricity let's see what happens when the house wants 20 kilowatts in the middle of the day from the dual power wall system 10 kilowatts comes from the pv inverter and 10 kilowatts comes from the two power walls since it is ac coupled and each power wall has its own built-in 5 kilowatt inverter an additional 10 kilowatts can be pulled out of the batteries this gives the powerwall and ac coupled systems in general a critical advantage over dc coupled systems at least when it comes to reaching your maximum self-powered rate let's move on to the next time of comparison dc optimizers both batteries can have these along with the panel level monitoring that comes with them this is because they are both compatible with solaredge optimizers are installed under each solar module much like a micro inverter this allows for pv level monitoring shade and panel mismatch mitigation this way if shade is covering one module in a 15 module string only the shaded module will be affected with a standard string inverter the entire string of 15 modules would be affected tv level monitoring is vital to both the long-term health of the solar system and the ability to find possible issues in the future without needing a technician to come to your house to troubleshoot and track down faulty modules or strings if you suspect there is an issue you can easily find out very easily you can log into the solaredge monitoring portal and see for yourself non-functional pv modules or optimizers are easy to pick out there is a lot more you can do with solar edge monitoring but i will do a deep dive on solar pv inverters in a separate video click the big red subscribe button if you want to be informed when that video is released as long as the lg chem battery is paired with a solaredge storage inverter you will get a dc optimized system kudos to lg on this one it is also possible to pair an lg chem battery with an sma inverter which can use tygo optimizers this level of integration quite isn't as good as solar edge but it is many orders of magnitude better than not having them at all of course micro inverters accomplish this but this is an older topology that we no longer support i will go into our reasoning on that in a future video because pv level monitoring is so important we don't consider any battery or pv systems where this is not possible tesla lg and sonan have this capability but pica and tabuchi do not next up is usable stored power the total amount of power you can store and use from the battery is measured in kilowatt hours one kilowatt of energy is the ability to use one kilowatt also known as a thousand watts for one hour this would be the same as using 500 watts for two hours or 2000 watts for 30 minutes two powerwalls have a combined 27 kilowatt hours of usable power whereas two of the lg chems have only 18.6 kilowatt hours that's 31 percent less energy than the power walls next is price per kilowatt hour while two power walls typically cost four thousand dollars more than two lg chem residue tens and we're talking about the final installed price here the cost per kilowatt hour is less on the power walls typically around 852 dollars per kilowatt hour in hawaii and you're getting a lot more than just kilowatt hours after the power walls as you can see by my comparison chart the lg chem battery requires a separate electrical panel of dedicated backup loads here's a photo of a single lg chem residue 10 installation we did on maui back when we were vetting several different battery systems as you can see there isn't a lot of equipment and the simplicity of the installation is very attractive to installers however the backup load panel is only possible if the customer's subpanel is located in the garage or on the outside of the house the thing is we've found that most homes in hawaii don't have the subpanel in a convenient location it's often located in the middle of the house sometimes in the living room or even a bathroom in those cases it just isn't feasible to create a backup loads panel and if that's the case most installers will usually either add a dedicated 20 amp outlet next to the inverter or they don't do the backup at all if you're going to be spending money on batteries you should really have backup power it just doesn't make sense to do it without it here is a photo of a single power wall installation we did in kula on a cottage with the tesla powerwall the entire subpanel is backed up so we don't have to create a dedicated load center instead we install a transfer switch near the meter so the sub panel location is not an issue tesla's transfer switch is called the gateway and rightly so most of tesla's magic is actually in the gateway this device stands between your home's electrical system and the meter it monitors the grid at all times like a sentinel if the grid ever goes out of spec meaning the frequency isn't right or the voltage is too high or too low it instantly disconnects your home from the grid and allows you to continue drawing power from the solar inverter and the power walls this saves your appliances from high voltage conditions and brownouts the gateway has built-in ethernet wi-fi and cellular internet connectivity so you can always monitor your system in the event of an outage instead of being limited to your backup panel you can go into your subpanel and pick and choose which circuits you want to be available if you have only a single power wall you should turn off any breakers over 30 amps for two or more power walls most people don't have breakers over 60 amps but usually i recommend to turn off any dual pole that's 240 volt breakers at least at night this will ensure that your fridge lights and outlets will continue to function all night once morning comes a solar pv inverter will charge the battery back up next up is the monitoring app this is one category where the lg chem battery is very close to the user friendliness and beauty of the tesla app this is because the monitoring is done from the solaredge website or the solaredge mobile app even though it's not quite as good as a tesla app it's close enough for me to call this one a draw here's a screenshot of the solaredge app and here's a screenshot of the power flow screen in tesla's app i'll review all the functionality of both apps in another video the maximum number of lg chem batteries per pv inverter is two you can have multiple inverters but only one inverter can be used to charge both batteries and provide backup power you're also limited on compatible inverters you have a solar edge 7.6 kilowatt storage inverter fronius hunwi and the sma sunnyboy storage inverter unfortunately solar edge does not have a 10 kilowatt dc coupled inverter that would work with the lg battery the tesla powerwalls on the other hand are compatible with 99 of the existing grid tie pv inverters both lg chem and powerwall can be mounted indoors or outdoors while the lg battery isn't ugly i'd say it's just okay i've yet to find any awesome looking lg installs but it is better looking than both pika and the debuchy offerings the power wall however is by far the coolest looking battery plus it can be mounted in a variety of ways indoors or outdoors but i recommend to install it in a garage or carport whenever possible the power wall is rated for outdoors and can be rained on but it's a good idea to keep it out of direct sunlight for extended periods if you don't have a garage or carport the north side of your house or other shaded area would work power walls can be mounted on a wall like a piece of art or on the ground against the wall to use a small amount of space as possible here's a triple powerwall system mounted up high on a wall and here's another one here is a dual powerwall mounted system all electrical conduit hidden inside the wall it is possible to stack them in groups of three on the ground here's a compact triple ground mounted system yes that's three power walls in a very small space here are four power wells mounted on the ground we left enough expansion rooms so the owner could add two more power walls in the future lastly here is a typical dual power wall system mounted on the outside of a house with a 10 kilowatt solar edge inverter next up is thermal management this is the battery's ability to keep itself from overheating and causing premature failure the lg chem residue 10h is kept cool by a giant heatsink on the back of the inverter it is passively cooled by the ambient air temperature no fans are needed which does make it silent this however does make a rather large gap between the wall and the battery which does look a bit odd at side angles in contrast the power wall has an active liquid cooled thermal management system if it gets too warm a pump will cycle the coolant through the battery cells and radiator a fan will blow air through that radiator transporting the cooler fluid to the battery cells this is by far the best cooling system of any battery on the market the power wall is able to actively keep itself in the goldilocks zone of battery temperatures i suspect this is in large part how tesla is able to provide the only 10-year unlimited cycle warranty on the market which brings me to warranty every single other manufacturer has tricks or limits on the number of cycles or total kilowatt hour throughput before the warranty is exhausted this means that even though most of the other manufacturers have a 10-year warranty if the battery is being used for the purposes of increasing your self-consumption rate the warranty could expire before the 10 years is up but if your batteries are only used for the purposes of backup then this wouldn't be an issue next up is software updates after installing an lg chem battery if you need a firmware update down the road to fix a bug it requires the installer to come to your house and spend time performing the service most companies will charge a fee for this service conversely tesla power walls keep themselves up to date with the latest software automatically no appointments needed powerwalls will continue to receive free software updates for as long as it's connected to the internet tesla doesn't just fix bugs either they're constantly adding new features and improving existing features like tesla lg chem is the only other one of the competitors that manufactures its own batteries this means they only have to deal with lg when it comes to warranties all of the others don't manufacture their own batteries this is a far more important thing than you would think i have spoken with a couple of friends in the industry who have had some failed lg chem resu 10 batteries unfortunately their process was less than stellar it is not an easy process and they seem to always look for a way out you're gonna have to pay to ship the battery back to them which is usually six to eight hundred dollars from hawaii and your system will be down while they try to figure out if you void the warranty or not the average downtime was two and a half to three years months in hawaii this is because of the time it takes to ship by boat both ways also if you have a dual lg chem residue 10 battery system and the first one is the one that failed the second battery will not function because that is a separate product that requires the first one to function after installing several hundred power walls we've had a few failed power levels fortunately the rma process was extremely easy it usually went something like this we got an email from tesla that says hey your customer so and so with two powerwalls has one of those powerwalls not performing to our standards it is the one with this serial number blah blah blah we are shipping your replacement when you receive it please swap it out and let us know when the old one is ready for pickup and we'll send a driver to get it tesla doesn't want to receive the old one to ship out the replacement they ship it right away this is called advanced shipping i don't know of any other company that does this the customer didn't pay any shipping and the customer had zero downtime instead of months in the worst case scenario if we had to contact tesla to tell them we had a failed power wall they shipped out the replacement and we received it in three weeks but the customer wasn't totally down because their system continued to function with only a single power wall if the customer had only a single power wall the pv inverter would continue to power their daytime loads keeping their electric bill at bay in summary i like the resu-10 because of its simplicity however the limited mounting options and the dedicated loads panel issue makes this a limited use case scenario the tesla powerwall is the clear winner on this one this concludes my tesla powerwall comparison with the lg cameras u10 i will go through the next three batteries much faster now that you understand the comparison items the next battery i would like to compare to the tesla powerwall is the pika pika was recently purchased by generac which i think is a good thing the specs are pretty good but it's also a dc coupled system but you can get to an up to an 11.4 kilowatt inverter which really helps but it still can't match the specs or kilowatt hour pricing of a dual powerwall system it also requires a dedicated backup load panel which is often not feasible the online monitoring system is not that easy to use and they don't have an app you do get a lot of neat geeky historical data but it's difficult to figure out what's happening in real time there is a small lcd screen on the inverter itself that can tell you what's going on but you have to be standing right in front of the inverter to see that just not nearly as slick as the tesla app i'll give the pikett software a c plus grade next is aesthetics i would say it's okay while the pike inverter can be installed outdoors the battery is indoor only and must be touching the ground so mounting options are limited my biggest concern with the pika is the fact that they don't manufacture or warranty the battery cells so if you have a problem with one or more of them you or your installer has to contact panasonic and deal with the return process chances are they're going to do whatever they can to try to get out of that warranty often what happens is there's a lot of finger pointing toward each other kind of like when you own a windows pc computer like a dell and you call up dell and say uh something's wrong with this and they say call microsoft and then you call microsoft and they say oh it's your computer you should call dell that's not a fun situation to be in however there is one good thing about the pike battery cells and that's that they are field replaceable you could also purchase extra sales to keep handy just in case one dies and a technician can come to your house and swap it out in a few minutes although the pica doesn't come close to the maximum of 135 kilowatt hours of a maxed out 10 power wall system 68 kilowatt hours is more than most homes will ever need but you will still be limited to a single 11.4 kilowatt inverter for backup power so for scalability it's not bad it is possible to install multiple pi converters to increase the total amount of battery storage but you still can only use one inverter for backup and the installation is not straightforward and it's a little funky and complicated but it is doable in summary the pika specs look good on paper but it doesn't match the power wall in a single category the power wall doesn't just win it crushes the pica the next two battery systems that we're going to look at we have never installed and don't have first-hand experience with them so we can only compare the published specs we did investigate both systems early on let's start with sonan first are the positives for sonan the sonar battery has pretty good specs and it is ac coupled giving you a fairly good maximum output power during the day and night it also uses a whole house transfer switch similar to the tesla gateway bypassing the backup center loads issue it also has very good aesthetics it's rather large at least the new model is but it is pleasant to look at it will also keep itself up to date with the latest software and now for the negatives it has a much higher price per kilowatt hour the monitoring app is not terrible but it's okay it can be located indoors and it must be mounted on the ground the scalability information on the company website was not clear on this but it led me to believe that you could not scale beyond 30 kilowatt hours on the residential product i hope this isn't true i did try to call sony to get clarity but i was unable to talk with anyone if you know for sure either way please leave a comment down below lastly sonan doesn't manufacture the battery cells if you have a problem with one or more of the cells you or your installer has to contact panasonic and deal with the return process remember the dell computer analogy yeah nobody wants that in summary the sony is a compelling product and it matches the power wall in four categories if the power wall didn't exist sonnen would be at the top of my list but unfortunately for sonin the power wall does exist and it wins in the other 12 categories now it's time to move on to tabuchi don't worry this will be quick here's a screenshot of my tabuchi vs tesla powerwall comparison chart you will notice that there isn't a single bit of green in the tabuchi column it doesn't come close in any category i really don't have anything positive to say about it well let's see it's dc coupled the specs aren't good it's very expensive for kilowatt hour and they don't manufacture their own battery cells oh that reminds me of one good thing the sony battery cells they use are super high quality there i said it the battery enclosures are indoor floor mount only and they are not pretty here is a photo of the tabuchi brochure the two little battery boxes on wheels look weird the photo doesn't show any conduit which is unrealistic most people install their battery systems after the house is built so you're gonna have conduit the system behind me was built without conduit but this is not a standard install this is a this was just luck that we had an open space behind the wall that we could reach here is a photo of a real installation with dual inverters this is one of the few that i could find online and i can see why there is one other battery i get asked about a lot it's called the blue ion it's also dc coupled and has all the same downsides that come with this architecture but most importantly it's not on the hawaiian electric approved equipment list so you can't use it in grid tie applications in hawaii in summary the tesla powerwall is the best choice hands down some of the things that really stand out to me is the fact that it's compatible with the solaredge dc optimized solution i really think that tesla and solaredge is just a match made in heaven plus the aesthetics mounting options scalability the specs the price per kilowatt hour of storage and the warranty are all better than the competitors this probably makes you wonder why some solar salesmen trash talk the power walls it's simple a salesman only wants to sell you what they have for example if you try to buy a corvette at a ford dealership the salem the salesman is going to trash talk the corvette and tell you how great the ford mustang is so the solar salesman that don't have access to the power wall will trash talk it because they can't sell it to you this is because tesla is very selective on who they allow to become a tesla powerwall certified installer they choose only the best installers with top customer satisfaction ratings so if you need or want batteries with solar pv systems be sure to contact a tesla powerwall certified installer so that completes my tesla powerwall comparison video if you found my battery comparison video useful please hit the thumbs up icon it really helps us out even better subscribe to my channel so you don't miss out on my next deep dive on pv modules if you have a question or anything to add please leave a comment below thanks for watching

Channel: Maui Solar PV - Pacific Energy

Views: 284,354

Rating: 4.9069376 out of 5

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Id: 5SQbJ4PbT-k

Length: 23min 34sec (1414 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Nooblade]

I was looking for a comparison of Tesla Powerwall vs the competitions and this one is perfect imo.

A good way for investors to know more about the Energy business and Tesla positioning.

[u/PetetheJuggler]

The thumbnail looks like it could be a parody of this video.