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Adding a second battery — Tesla finally makes it possible
When Lightning Energy installed our Powerwall 2 back in December 2023 https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Anc2vKKqZ/ it was great. Paired with our 13 kW Enphase/Jinko solar system and 10 kW inverter, it's been handling our fully electrified home in Emerald pretty well — five reverse-cycle ACs, heat pump hot water, EV charging, and grid outages lasting up to nine days. But as we've added more loads, I've been thinking about expanding battery storage. There was a problem, though. The Powerwall 2 is no longer CEC-approved for new installations in Australia. Tesla stopped taking orders for it in late 2024/early 2025, and as of January 2026 it's no longer on the Clean Energy Council approved list. So you can't add a second one. And until very recently, the Powerwall 3 — Tesla's current model — was completely incompatible with the Powerwall 2. They couldn't talk to each other. That meant anyone with a Powerwall 2 who wanted more storage faced a painful choice: rip out the existing battery and…
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Heat pump testing — how fast does it heat?
In my December post about our heat pump installation, I mentioned that one of the reasons I chose Emerald was the integrated app. It shows the tank capacity, water temperature, outdoor temperature, and lets me turn it on and off or activate Boost Mode remotely. I've since used it to answer a question: how long does it actually take to heat the water, and does outdoor temperature make a difference? Over the past couple of months, I've been taking semi-random screenshots of the Emerald app at intervals through the day, tracking the water temperature as it heats from "Low" (around 25–30°C) up to the 60°C target. I did this on 11 different days, with outdoor temperatures ranging from about 14°C to 32°C. I then used AI (Claude, by Anthropic) to read all 87 screenshots, extract the data, and plot it on a chart. The chart shows each day's heating curve overlaid, with the lines colour-coded by outdoor temperature — red for hot days, blue for cool days. We might expect to see the warmer days…
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Goodbye gas! I finally organised disconnecting the ducted gas heating at our home.
If only we could see the burnt gas pouring into the air, all the time, and not just when the condensation highlights it (as in the photos). Pumping carcinogens and greenhouse gases into the air that we breathe. It’s nuts. It was costing us up to $528 per month to run the heating in winter. Our replacement air conditioning will be closer to free, thanks to our solar and battery. We recently also replaced our gas hot water with a heat pump. See my post about that, here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17xtnGjv2E/ Our one remaining gas appliance is our stove top. Once that’s gone, we will save $35 per month just for the connection fee. And no more gas! We’re replacing the gas heating with some split air conditioners. Read about our replacement system here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18cxsd3qG7/ Follow Tesla Tripping to stay tuned. For those who might say “what about in a blackout”? Note the power point connection on the old gas heating. Our old gas hot water heat pump had one too.…
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What to ask for, in a battery installation?
I suggest getting your installer to agree in writing that your battery installation will include: 1. Remote control via an app and/or website to monitor your battery and house power. 2. During a grid outage, the battery should provide backup for everything you need. 3. During a grid outage, solar continues to provide power. 4. The ability to curtail export of power to the grid when pricing is negative. 5. Compatibility with Amber Electric, if you might want to use them as your energy retailer. Let’s look at each in detail: 1. Using an app or website, you can: 1. Monitor power in and out of your battery, house and grid connection, instantaneous, daily and historical. 2. At any time, set your battery to a minimum charge percentage. 2. In the event of a grid outage: 1. The battery will switch over automatically. The installer should test it and show you. 2. The battery will power all of your home, up to the battery’s maximum power (which should be at least 5kW). 3. If you have three…
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What do all the electricity measurements mean?
1. Australian household electricity runs at about 240V “volts”. All your power points and devices are 240V. This is basically a measure of the force used to push the electricity. 2. The “current” is basically the throughput of electricity, measured in Amps. It varies for different devices. A modern LED light bulb uses less than 0.1A (Amps). A toaster or heater will use around 8A. The typical maximum allowed by a standard power point is 10A. 3. The total power of the electricity is measured in watts. We multiply the volts by the amps (voltage x current) to get the watts. For example, if your appliance uses 5A at 240V, then that’s 5 x 240 = 1,200 W, which is 1.2kW (kilowatts). A light bulb uses less than 0.1kW. 4. The total energy used by a device is calculated as the power x time. For example, if you use an appliance running at 1.2kW for 10 hours, then it uses 1.2 x 10 = 12kWh (kilowatt hours). A light bulb could run for days on the same 12kWh. 5. When you use electricity from the…
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While driving in our town of Emerald to get some Emerald Thai for dinner, I did a double…
…take when I saw a Savic Motorcycles sign, randomly on the footpath. It turns out that they were running test rides today “winding through the beautiful Dandenong Ranges”. What a great idea! Test drives at dealerships and even EV shows tend to be within urban sprawls, which doesn’t offer much of a driving or riding experience. We’ve seen Savic at a few EV shows, including the recent Everything Electric in Melbourne (pictured). I wish I had known it was on, and that we weren’t recovering from a cold right now. Hopefully next time. Savic is an Australian company building electric motorcycles.
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Home Battery Introduction
Are you considering a battery for your house? Here is a basic introduction, based on our experience. I hope it’s helpful. Please comment about any errors, omissions or questions. 1. Why is there more talk lately about getting a battery for your house? 1. As of July 1 this year, the federal government will pay for 30% of your home battery purchase. This makes it 30% cheaper to buy one. 2. What’s the purpose of a house battery? 1. A battery provides power to your house, as electricity. 2. It can power anything in your home that runs from electricity, including your fridge, lights, power points, TV. 3. It can keep your house appliances running when there is a grid outage (a “blackout”). 4. If you have solar panels, a battery can store the excess power generated during the day, so you can use it at night to avoid paying for electricity. This is why it is often called a “solar battery”. 5. You can also charge a battery from the grid when electricity is cheap, and use it when electricity is…
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A few neighbours and friends have asked us lately for advice about solar panels, house…
…battery, EVs etc. Here’s our real life experience, starting a series of posts on different topics. We installed solar and battery when we moved into our house (Emerald, Victoria) about two years ago. We already had an EV (electric car). This week, we finally got around to replacing our gas hot water with an electric heat pump. Next month we’re replacing our gas ducted heating with a multi head split air conditioning system. Overall, our solar and battery provide more electricity than we use. We’re also connected to the electricity grid so we can import when we need more, or export when we have a surplus. We aim to produce all the power that we need. On the rare times that we import electricity from the grid, our retailer bills us. More often, we export our surplus electricity to the grid, for which they give us a credit. Overall, we have more credit than debits, so we don’t have to pay anything. All this depends on your electricity plan, which I’ll discuss in a separate post. The…
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Heat pump installation
We finally got around to installing a hot water heat pump, to replace our gas hot water system. We were paying about $40 per month for our instant gas hot water (plus $40 connection fee). Now we’re paying nothing, because the heat pump is just using our excess solar power. Without solar, I estimate it would be costing us $8 per month to power it from the electricity grid. There are a few incentive schemes around to replace gas (or other old inefficient systems) with a heat pump. An installer will factor these into their quote. The subsidies can be significant. In our case, the total price was $4480, but it was reduced to $1650 for us to pay, after subsidies were subtracted. A hot water heat pump uses the same principle as an air conditioner (which is also a heat pump). It “pumps” heat from one side to the other. In this case, it pumps heat from the outside air into the tank of water. The basic physics is that when you compress air in a confined space, it gets hot, and when you expand…
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Final day at Everything Electric Melbourne, starting and ending with Jack Scarlett.
Test drives, a panel talk about road tripping, EV conversions, and a flux capacitor, some of the highlights.
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Some random shots from Everything Electric Melbourne today.
After a few years in Sydney, this is their first showing in Melbourne. It’s noticeably smaller, but understandable for the first appearance. Interesting panel talks. Informative staff at product booths. Huge variety of test drives available, including self driving Tesla cars. A few food truck offerings. They need more undercover seating (from sun or rain). We recommend the falafel wraps.
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Our home Powerwall battery is one of a million deployed so far.
The Tesla app celebrated by listing the stats of our install, and the fleet as a whole. Our battery has saved us (and our neighbours via extension cords) from 13 days of blackouts, without any noisy smelly generator, or trips to refill it with petrol. Our solar system has generated 16MWh of energy so far, used by our house appliances, home battery, our car and exports to the grid. At an average ball park price of say 15c per kWh, that’s $2400 worth of electricity, with no ongoing running cost.
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After two years in the Dandenong Ranges, we finally visited the Dandenong Ranges Botanic…
…Garden. Amazing to see in Spring. It’s a huge place. I think we covered only 20% of it. Parking seems to be extremely limited and unmarked, in a dirt section across the road, which led to highly questionable parking. Charging: Today’s trip was partly due to a frequent oddity of owning an EV. We had an excess of fuel. It feels like a shame not to use it, for free. The solar production from our roof fully powered our EV, home and house battery, and it wasn’t worth exporting any to the grid (negative feed in tariff). Fortunately, as you can see from the graph, the Amber app shut down our solar production while we were away, after our home battery was fully charged. All automated, so we didn’t have to do anything.
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In life you need goals. Today’s goal was to find a cafe we hadn’t yet tried 😉, in our…
…home of the Dandenong Ranges. Ripe Cafe in Sassafras was a great find. Guacamole (avo toast) topped with thin sliced potato crisps, and zucchini slice. Lots of cyclists out today, including this giant Saint Bernard. The local park has interesting seating, or perhaps a one turn swing set 😳. I checked in on our parked car from the Tesla app, after some dodgy parking in front of us. We love driving through the fern trees and tall timbers of the Dandenong Ranges. Beautiful all year ‘round. Charging: While we were away from home, the sun had fully charged our home battery. We returned, plugged in, and filled up the car with the remaining free energy of the day.
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This is probably the busiest we’ve seen our town of Emerald, Victoria. T
he Lost Woods Market draws a huge crowd. It’s a beautiful stroll through the tall trees, past numerous stalls and food outlets, with Puffing Billy Railway choo-chooing past every now and then. It’s a magical place. We parked up the other end of town, starting off with brunch at Over the Road Cafe, then walked through the jammed main road to the markets. The generators of many stalls lined the back path, filling the air with slight fumes and noise. It’s a shame they don’t have grid power. We hoped to see some stalls powered by V2L EVs, as we’ve noticed at some other markets, but none here. Charging: While we were away from home, the sun charged up our home battery. When we returned, it switched over to start solar charging our car. Win win.
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We arrived back home, in Emerald Victoria. Autumn is still in full swing. 🍂
Charging: We charged up for just a few minutes in Yea earlier, since we could fill up cheaper at home. But when we arrived home, our area had a grid outage. Our house PowerWall battery kept our appliances going until the grid was restored. In an alignment of failures, our solar system also stopped producing electricity 😩. So, we can’t charge up the house or car battery from the available sun. We’ve raised a fault with our installer, Lightning Energy, who can hopefully find out what’s going on with our Enphase system. It’s not the first failure. In the mean time, the grid has reconnected, and we’ve charged up during the cheap power times in the day, when renewables are mostly powering the grid.
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Back in January, we took the plunge and ordered a new Tesla Model Y “Juniper” launch…
…edition. “Ultra Red”, white interior, 20” wheels (which was the only option for the launch edition). We chose the same battery and drive as our Model 3: RWD (rear wheel drive), LFP battery (no nickel or cobalt), 0 to 100km/h in 5.9s. The main reason for the upgrade is for the greater ease of getting in and out of the car, which has been increasingly painful on Fran’s arthritic hips. As those of you who follow our Tesla Tripping blog will know, we have looked at and test driven quite a lot of other options. The best contender was the XPeng G6. In the end we stuck with the Tesla Model Y because of the huge storage space, driving performance and the tech. The Tesla app has guided us through the whole process up to now, with registration, trade-in, insurance. Today is delivery day. The final `Start` button is still disabled in the app. I’m guessing it will enable at exactly 3pm, when we’re at Tesla Mulgrave. We are trading in our Tesla Model 3, after driving 91,000 km in 2.7 years (plus…
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Feb 1: Test drive of a Kia EV6.
Forgive the dust in the photos. Highlights, comparing to Tesla Model Y: - Good acceleration. Handles okay. - More physical buttons (good or bad, depending on preference). - Manual, not auto, adjusting steering column. - Much less storage. - Smaller main screen. Blind spot camera is on an additional smaller screen, behind the steering wheel … in a blind spot! At least, I couldn’t get a good view of it, which defeats the purpose. - HUD (heads up display) was a new discovery for me. It’s terrific to see your speed within the field of view of the windscreen. - 240V V2L outlet in the car, which is great. Apple Car Play. Missing in a Tesla.
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Our first (and only) test drive of the new Tesla Model Y “Juniper”, at Tesla Mulgrave.
We only had 25 minutes in the car, which isn’t much to fully test it. Not enough time to drive to some winding country roads, but we did manage to find a tightly curved on-ramp to a highway. Driving at speed around it, we definitely noticed more body roll compared to our sportier Model 3. This did freak out my passengers. They also found the acceleration more noticeable in the back seat, which seems to tilt down. Tim described the acceleration as prolapsing his sphincter. The Model Y absorbs bumps much better, finding a good median between sport and comfort. This new model has the same acceleration as our Model 3, 0 to 100km/h in 6s., one second faster than the previous Model Y. This is the RWD (rear wheel drive) model, standard range, not the AWD long range. We prefer the RWD because it has an LFP battery, which has no nickel or cobalt, and a longer life span. It’s also cheaper. But slower acceleration and less range. We booked the test drive online, following the instructions to…
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The NRMA Airlie Beach Holiday Park is a shining light.
EV destination chargers at each of the new cabins. Fast chargers out front for the public. Efficient electric hot water heat pumps. On site cafe and coffee. E-bikes. Walk to nearby Coles and shopping center. This is the future. Well done, The NRMA! Missing our own EV right now, still parked back in Melbourne airport.
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We took another test drive of an XPENG G6, this time from a new dealership in Berwick…
…Victoria, which is closer to us. Nice interior, comfy seats, great tech. The handling wasn’t bad on some windy roads, but not as sporty as the Tesla Model Y. Disappointing storage. The auto driving hesitated quite a bit around bends. The lack of full stop on one pedal driving is annoying, but they will reportedly solve that in a few weeks via an OTA (over the air) software update. The G6 includes auto parking and lane change, which costs extra in a Tesla. It has vehicle to load, but it requires some adapter plug into the external charge port, which wasn’t available. We had a chance to play with Apple CarPlay, which is great to have. But the XPeng doesn't seem to support pinch and zoom in Apple Maps, which makes it very limited. Acceleration was terrible (doesn’t move for a second), until I turned in “launch mode”. I couldn’t figure out how to enable launch mode and regenerative braking (x-pedal) at the same time, which was annoying. Later that day, we happened to watch a YouTube…
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The Xpeng G6 is a strong competition against the Tesla Model Y.
We viewed both at The Everything Electric Show (Fully Charged Show) in Sydney. A few weeks earlier, we took a G6 for a test drive at the XPENG Port Melbourne showroom (also pictured). The Xpeng G6 and Tesla Model Y both have great tech, great efficiency, ventilated and heated front seats. The G6 doesn’t have frunk storage, has small subtrunk storage, smaller boot, no glovebox, but has a bit more rear passenger room and probably more comfy seats. It has Apple Maps and Vehicle to Load (V2L). It is $10k cheaper, but requires paid regular servicing and and has longer warranty. It includes auto lane change (extra purchase on the Tesla). The Tesla has faster acceleration, sportier handling, one pedal driving comes to a full stop without the brake, and has more fast charging options. It has a screen for rear passengers and powered rear seat folding. It has much more storage overall, including huge sub trunk, boot and frunk. It has a better sound system, even though it has slightly less…
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Ioniq 5 test drive. Sporty handling and acceleration.
Nice interior. More physical buttons than Tesla (which may be good or bad). Felt smaller on the inside. At slightly higher cost than a Tesla Model Y, it seemed to be less value.
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Continuing our look at EV options.
The Hyundai Kona. Good price. Small. But they somehow manage to fit it a spare wheel. We didn’t test drive it.
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Cooling off at the beach under Seaford Pier.
Dinner: Chicken and mango salad, brought from home. Charging: Driving on sunshine, as usual. Apart from charging the car, our home solar system also stored the excess solar power in our home battery, which exported to the grid during peak demand, using the Amber Electric app automation. Nice!
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It’s been wild 36 hours here in the Dandenong Ranges. Y
esterday afternoon, the power went out in our town of Emerald. We heard it was due to a fire somewhere. We sent out a few texts to our neighbours to offer our battery backup power. We ran our heavy duty extension lead over the fence and set up a power board on the front porch for phone charging. A few hours later, the grid was back up and running. But, the pending storm warnings made us cautious. Sure enough, an hour or so later, the storm hit. Heavy rain, pounding hail and strong wind. Marvin the robot mower happily sits charging out in the rain. But I didn’t fancy the chances of his camera eyes surviving the hail stones. I used the iPhone app remote control to drive it under our pergola, while the ice golf balls bounced on the lawn. Sure enough, the grid connection died again during the night, probably due to storm damage to power lines and other infrastructure. In the morning our neighbour reconnected to our power supply. We inspected the hail stones that had formed a layer on our…
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Friday night, pizza and movie at home.
Pick up from Lauritos Pizza, in Emerald, in the Tesla, transporting it in the “frunk” (front trunk) to keep the takeaway smell out of the cabin. Charging: The solar panels on our roof at home topped up the car to 100%, and the home Powerwall battery, ran our home appliances and exported a bit to the grid.
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Many electric vehicles at the Off-Grid Living Festival this weekend, in the Border…
…Regional Electrification Events area. New cars from Tesla, MG, Hyundai and others. Test drives on site. We spotted a few converted cars including a VW Beatle and a Mini. A Zero motorcycle. Dozens of electric mowers from small to huge. The place of huge!
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Double the EVs and double the ice creams.
This time I took a large container to Bam Bam Italian to buy four double scoop ice creams for us and our guests. The car kept the temperature at a chilly 15°C while Kyla accepted the challenge to scoop two spheres into each cone. Tomorrow, we’re off to Emu Plains Markets. Charging: Our guests arrived in their BYD Atto 3 just in time to get the few scraps of solar power from our wall charger. Then we paused the charging until after the peak demand period, resuming after 10pm, mostly from our Tesla Powerwall battery.
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I tried out another “EV”, kind of – an Electric Vegetation cutter 😉. Okay, th
at’s a bit of a stretch. It’s an electric hedge trimmer. Emerald has so much vegetation, and our place is no exception. Hundreds of meters of hedges. The RYOBI electric hedge cutter is fairly quiet, instantly turns on and off, and is fueled for free by the sun via our roof solar panels. While cutting, it did occur to me that using a petrol powered hedge trimmer would be a much less pleasant experience. Much louder, with fumes in my face, heat and higher fire risk. I’d be dependant on an external fuel supplier to truck in petrol from hundreds of kilometers away, and I’d have to drive to a petrol station to get it. When the battery goes flat on this electric model, I just plug it in and walk away to do something else. It will take an hour or more to recharge, but I don’t have to do anything. Plugging in the battery takes a few seconds. If I really wanted to keep going immediately, I could swap with another charged battery, but I like the forced break 😉. I am aware that lithium ion…
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It’s been nine days of grid power outage here in Emerald Victoria. T
he community has pulled together to share resources. Today I received an SMS from Ben to ask if he could charge at our place. I assumed it was another neighbour asking if they could plug their phone or laptop in to the power board we laid out in the porch. We were the only house in the street to still have power after the storm hit, thanks to our Tesla Powerwall battery. It’s been charging up each day from solar panels on the roof. But Ben was actually after a place to charge his EV. I had forgotten about our listing on PlugShare during all of the neighbourhood blackout dramas. I said yes, no problem. Today he had driven from his home in Packenham east to Sale, then back west and up the hills to Emerald, and has a few more nearby drives to do before returning home. The navigation said he would get home with 8% charge, but that wasn’t accounting for extra stops. So, he wanted to play it safe. Charging: He plugged in here for about ten minutes, drawing a max power of about 7.2kW from…
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We’re are back home in Emerald and have power!
The grid is still out, and is expected to be down until mid next week. But our house is getting power from solar and our Tesla Powerwall battery. Driving back home (after our road trip to NSW), we could see why Emerald is still in the dark. Many power lines (and phone/broadband lines) are still down. Emerald featured in the first story on last night’s (Friday) ABC news: https://iview.abc.net.au/show/abc-news-vic At least one of our neighbours is running a fuel generator. Another has a couple of solar panels hooked up to a car battery for night lights and a 12V car fridge. Schools are effectively closed. The local petrol station had one pump going, with a long queue. We have offered our neighbours electricity from our solar/battery power. One family had no power for three days, but now we have connected some extension cords over the fence. History: The grid died on Tuesday 14th. We were away road tripping in NSW. Our Tesla Powerwall battery continued to provide backup power to our…
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Well, that’s not good. The Tesla Powerwall at home has just gone flat (zero percent…
…charge) at about 5pm today. Our new home town of Emerald is one of many affected by the grid outage in Victoria, after a wild storm hit on Tuesday afternoon. A couple of months ago, we had Lightning Energy install solar and a Powerwall battery at our new home. In a grid outage, the solar array is supposed to keep the house electricity going, recharge the battery each day, and keep the fridge cold. But the solar production stopped working when the grid outage started. Something is wrong with the installation. See the lead up story in our previous post: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=439045192389797&id=100088529584679 The battery has slowly depleted, until it hit zero percent two days later (this afternoon). I contacted the installer, Lightning Energy, a couple of days ago to hopefully fix it before the fridge died. No answer from service. So, I SMSed Andrew, who works for them and lives locally. He kindly offered to pop in on his way home to take a look. Here’s hoping we…
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Wow, what a wild weather ride in Victoria yesterday.
We’re still in NSW, but the Weather app summarised the weather at home in Emerald as “Fire Weather” 😮. The heat was followed by a heavy storm that knocked down many trees and power lines. In the middle of the day, wholesale electricity prices peaked at a hundred times the norm at nearly $20 per kWh (normally under 20c per kWh). I checked our home remotely using the Tesla app. It was exporting power from our battery (and solar) to help keep the grid supply going, whilst paying us about $100 per hour for the supply! Our battery has continued to supply power to our home during the blackout. We messaged some of our neighbours an invitation to come over and plug in any needed devices (such as phones or a portable fridge). A few of them also checked on our house for us. Great neighbours and community ☺️. We might need to also offer them showers because those with on demand gas hot water often need electricity to light them. All the petrol stations in the area are also closed. We hope to be…
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Tesla battery and wall charger installation.
The team from Lightning Energy installed the undercover pieces today, while it’s raining, and deferring to tomorrow the installation on the roof of the solar panels, if the sun comes out. We had originally scheduled this installation for December 11 and 12, but rain on December 11 saw it canceled. We had this Tesla wall charger at our last house in Saratoga NSW, a year ago. The new owners there didn’t have an EV, so we modified the contract for us to remove the EV charger. It has sat in storage until the removalists delivered our belongings here a few days ago. It wasn’t really practical for us to bring the Tesla “Powerwall” battery with us from the old house, so we bought a new one for this house. It costs about $15k, which is a lot. There are cheaper battery options, but we know the Powerwall has a large capacity compared to cheaper batteries, and works well with the app, scheduling, blackouts, etc. We have heard from a few people in Emerald and the Yarra Ranges in general that…
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Our first delivery to our new house – a congrats savoury box from The Hamper Emporium…
…from Mortgage Choice in Tumbi Umbi. Thank you John and Amanda. What a nice surprise 😋 . John sorted out the loan for our previous house in Saratoga NSW, and now this one in Emerald Victoria. It’s been a long road, figuratively and literally. We packed up and left our old home on December 1 last year. We’ve been road tripping most of the time since then, and hope to finally move into our new home in a couple of weeks. We didn’t intend to take that long to find a new house. Our “pre approved” home loan with ING turned out to require additional financial info, which was difficult to do while we were on the road. I recall voicing our frustrations over the phone while driving through some country road out the back of nowhere. In any case, that pre approval expired after six months and banks started limiting new pre approvals to just three months. I’m not sure how they expected buyers to find a home in such a short time. In the end, we tried to get a loan through Suncorp, due to their good…
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Today we drove out through the towns of Woodend and Kyneton, Victoria.
Beautiful towns, even on a cold windy day. We’re still looking for a possible new home. We looked at one house at Kyneton Bushland Resort. Another house had 14kW of solar panels, a Tesla Powerwall house battery and a Tesla EV charger. Lunch at Home Grown on Piper was delicious. We bumped into the owners of a blue Tesla Model Y with the licence plate BEM3UP (“beam me up”) at one of the houses and at the Kyneton charger. Of course we discussed Star Trek 🖖. Also had a brief chat with Tony, on a ride on his electric Harley Davison LiveWire, with his other biker mates. Charging: Kyneton and Woodend each have a 50kWh DC fast charger by Evie Networks. Disappointingly only one at each location, which can create queuing. We were only plugged in for a few minutes while using the adjacent toilet, so we were finished anyway when the next person arrived. We’ve been trying out the beta version of Evie’s new app, which is improving. But this one seemed to lack a “Stop Charging” button, so I…
Formerly: Tesla Tripping
Come along on our EV road trips around Australia and Europe, and follow as we progressively electrify our home in Emerald, Victoria.
Join us on the road. We set off in late 2022 and drove eastern Australia in our Tesla Model 3 — Sydney, Dubbo, Armidale, Brisbane, Cape Tribulation, then down through Queensland and back. We've since upgraded to a Model Y.
We've kept exploring — Uluru, the Snowy Mountains and Gippsland, and a longer run through Europe in 2024. There's plenty more on the map, so come along for the next leg.
At home in Emerald, in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges, we're progressively electrifying everything: rooftop solar, a home battery, a hot water heat pump, air conditioned heating and cooling, and EV charging straight from the sun. We're going fully electric, off the gas.
Got questions, or insights of your own? We'd love to hear them — please drop a comment on any post.