Pfitzy
George Gregan (70)
I wonder how soon, and by how much, things like the powerwall will come down in price. I remember even only (five years say) a short time ago I idly pondered making my own solar panels, plenty of tutorials back then how to do it, vacuum your own weather protection, source the individual cells and solder them together etc etc.
you simply would not bother just these few years later, the prices have come down so dramatically it is not worth your time (and get a better result commercially anyway). Such is the speed of change.
Agreed, and with guys like Redflow stepping into the market, along with Panasonic, Enphase, and a few others, the competitiveness is only going to make it better and better for the consumer.
I've no doubt that my Powerwall will be a dinosaur by 2020, and I'll probably be in a position to replace or add to it a couple of years after. But for right now, early adopters like me in this case, and the publicity generated by people like Musk are where it starts.
There is going to be a breath-holding period while all the techies* come up to speed with this as well, and the guys doing mine learned a lot on Day 0, and continue to get feedback from me on some things they consider witchcraft moving forward.
* EDIT: by that I mean the solar installers who were used to just banging an inverter on a wall, panels on the roof, and twisting a few wires together. Now you've got to deal with firmware, wifi config, battery module integration, the works.
The lead sparky on the job reckoned I should go into consulting.