A very confident Tesla launches the new Powerwall 2 in Australia
Elon Musk's home battery is returning to Australia for a second round.
The new Powerwall 2 has about double the capacity of Tesla's original Powerwall, and will roll out from April. Vice President for energy products at Tesla Lyndon Rive, who incidentally is Musk's cousin, was in Melbourne Thursday for the launch.
Although the launch of Tesla's original rechargeable lithium-ion battery in early 2016 earned plenty of attention locally, the Tesla executive wouldn't divulge what market share Tesla currently had in Australia's battery market.
"Tesla's approach is simply to make the best product, make it cost effective, make it simple," he said.
Rive said the country was an attractive target, nevertheless: "Why we focused on the Australian [market] is you've got 1.6 million customers already with solar panels," he explained. In 2015, a Tesla spokesperson said Australia had been "prioritised as a market" for the same reason.
Rive emphasised that Telsa's mission is to accelerate the introduction of sustainable energy globally. "Storage is a lot more powerful than just saving energy in the day and using it at night," he added.
In particular, Rive claimed the company could build battery storage capacity in 100 days that would stop a power outage similar to the one South Australia experienced state-wide in September after electricity towers collapsed during a significant storm.
"We had a similar challenge in southern California," he said. "We got 80MW up in 90 days. That's unheard of. You just don't get power plants running up and down that fast."
The creation of Tesla's Gigafactory in Nevada, in particular, has helped the company build that kind of capacity.
"Because of the big factory that we've built that is now operational, that's caused a boost in production and made it cost effective," Rive explained. "Combine that with integrating the inverter with the technology -- it works very efficiently -- which is why we are very confident that this tech can stabilise the grid."
The 14 kWh battery will cost around A$8,000 ($6,012) with a 10-year warranty, a Tesla spokesperson said, along with A$2,000 ($1,503) to install. Notably, the inverter is now built into the battery pack, saving customers from having to purchase additional products.
While there are AC and DC versions of the Powerwall 2, Rive explained only the AC version will sell in Australia for the sake of simplicity.
Topics Sustainability Tesla
Ariel Bogle was an associate editor with Mashable in Australia covering technology. Previously, Ariel was associate editor at Future Tense in Washington DC, an editorial initiative between Slate and New America.
