After the battery was installed at their home two weeks ago, Michael and Monica Morse are the first people in the Central West to embrace a Tesla Powerwall.
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The battery has the potential to save almost $600 on power bills, which is one of the reasons Mr Morse was keen on having a Tesla Powerwall installed at his home.
“When you were at your mother’s knees, she talked about death and taxes being the only certainty in life. The next certainty in life is your power bill will go up and it goes up in big chunks,” he said.
“We like certainty in our lives and that’s why we like the Powerwall battery.”
The Tesla Powerwall provides more capability and flexibility than wet cell car batteries because they can draw more power capacity.
The battery sources its power from solar panels.
“We have 18 solar panels on the roof. The panels feed the house first, then the battery second and the grid third,” Mr Morse said.
“When we run our lights and fridge in the house, it takes it from, like I said, the solar panels first, the battery second and the grid third. That means it can reduce our power bills to almost nothing.”
The battery has the ability to store 13.5 kilowatts of power and can run the house’s power, for a certain amount of time, if the main circuit switch is not on.
Rural Green Energy director Darryl Leahey said saving money with the Tesla Powerwall depends on scaling.
“The bill would go from $700 to $100 per quarter,” he said.
“We know on the first of July that power bills went up in excess of 20 per cent. Having energy from the sun and storing it in the battery is price that doesn’t become relevant anymore because you’re producing your own energy.
“The payment periods with the rising energy prices are running from four to six years. If you look at the return in investment, you’re getting a 20 to 30 per cent return in year one.”
While the battery saves money on power bills, it is also environmentally friendly.
“We should be encouraging more people in Bathurst to use solar panels because they are environmentally friendly to use,” Ms Morse said.
In April, Tesla launched an electric car recharge station at the historic Abercrombie House and announced its intentions to install a supercharger station at Bathurst.