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…

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…

Ducted air conditioning (or heating) is inefficient.

Let me explain, and see what you think. I am not a fan (pun intended) of ducted. It seems to be very inefficient. But only one in five air con sales reps seem to agree with my reasoning. At our previous home, in Saratoga NSW, we had a large (10kW) ducted air con system upstairs, which included all the bedrooms. When we just wanted to cool or heat one room, we tried to close the door of that room. But the door would slam shut and whistle, as the air would try to escape. The ducted air con had one or two outlets in each room’s roof. It had one shared return vent in the hall. Turning on the air con in a single room, the air needed to return to the hall to circulate. Closing the door blocked that path and made the pump work extra hard. The thermostat was also in the hall, as part of the control unit. We could set the target temperature of a room to say 22°C, but the room might cool down to 18° before the hall thermostat would register 22°, with a temperature gradient between the two. The…

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.…

First service call for our Tesla Model Y. Replacing our loaner wheel with a new wheel.

As you can see in our posts from a few weeks ago, we hit a pothole, damaging our left rear wheel. At the time, we only knew that we had a slow leak. We logged the problem in the Tesla app. They arranged for roadside assistance to come to us, in about an hour, to install a loaner wheel, and take ours away to diagnose. Today, Tesla replaced the loan wheel with a new wheel, costing a whopping $1319. I asked them to clean the damaged wheel and put it in the back of the car. In the photos, you can see the buckle and crack. I am wondering if it is fixable. When I booked this service in the app, I also asked them to fix the water in the light bar, and some issues with the steering wheel buttons. They replaced both. I’ll discuss the steering wheel buttons in a separate post. All covered under warranty. I had a bit of trouble figuring out where to leave the car. Several after me also mistakenly parked in front of the waiting lounge, next to a sign that probably shouldn’t be there. One of the…

Surprise picnic. Making use of all the hidey-holes in the Tesla.

Let’s pull over here next to the Yarra River. Would you like a cold drink? I just happen have a powered fridge in the sub trunk of the car. We can sit on the camp chairs from the frunk (front trunk, since there’s no engine). How about a cheese platter and some cherries to go with it? Ok “platter” is a bit of an overstatement, but work with me here. The car also has kitchen utensils and a dining table. We might as well just stay here for lunch now. Charging: All charged up for free from solar at home. There are also destination chargers down the road at the caravan park. Links:

Photo op in Bredbo, before stopping in Cooma to figure out where to camp tonight.

On the way, I used the Tesla’s navigation to search for “campground” and similar. One option was The NRMA park in Jindabyne. I tapped the phone icon, to make a call. Handy to do it all from the car’s controls. Unfortunately, all their powered and unpowered sites were booked for tonight. This looked like a job for WikiCamps. Since Tesla doesn’t support Apple CarPlay, I needed to pull over to use my phone. Whenever parking, I aim to charge, so I don’t lose any time. So, I pulled into the new-ish Tesla Superchargers in Cooma. This is the second site in Cooma, with more chargers and faster speed. But the only service nearby seemed to be KFC (again 🤔). No matter, I just wanted time to access my phone. Snowy River Holiday Park looks great. I rang them, gave them my ETA, entered it into the navigation, added Cooma Coles as the first destination, so I could grab some supplies. Cooma Coles also has Tesla Superchargers, but fewer and a bit slower. It does have Coles and more amenities, so I…

First leg on our 4000km journey: Emerald to Maffra, in Gippsland Victoria.

The tall trees of our Dandenong Ranges gave way to rolling green hills. FSD (Full Self Driving) makes the (non) driving a breeze. One minute I’m singing its praises after it flawlessly indicates and merges into traffic. The next I’m cussing at it for complaining that I was looking at the navigation too long. We stopped in Maffra to grab some lunch, and just made it before small-town-closes-o-clock (2pm), to grab a veg toastie, banana bread and coffee. Next, north, over the alps towards Bright. What are the chances of a sealed road all the way? Charging: We left home with a full tank of solar. At Maffra, we still had 69%, so we didn’t _need_ to charge. But, whenever we’re parked, we aim to plug in. We used the Evie charger conveniently located in the car park behind the barista. It was only 50kW but had fully topped up by the time we were ready to leave. Evie’s “Autocharge” feature is great. You just plug your car in and walk away. The charger system recognises your car, and which…

Lunch stop at Oliver's, just outside Gundagai. I recommend the Oli burger 🍔.

Tesla Model 3 with stripes parked near us. FSD along most of the Hume Highway. It does a great job, and avoids human fatigue. A few complaints, though, including it repeatedly thinking that the speed limit is 100, even when it’s actually 110 (pictured). Occasionally it dropped to 80 or 40, presumably after seeing some random sign off the highway. Pretty good driving efficiency with FSD, too, about 14kWh per 100km. See screenshots. Charging: Tesla Superchargers conveniently located in the car park behind Oliver’s. It’s the first EV charging station I recall noticing, many years ago, long before we went electric. We just park, plug in, walk away. Charging finished just as we finished lunch. Perfect. Takes less than ten seconds of our time. Most Tesla chargers these days are compatible with all EVs. But these at Oliver’s are Tesla only. The general EV chargers have moved next door, to The Dog on the Tuckerbox. It’s now just one unit, with two cables. A few kilometres up the road, in…

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…

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.

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…

What size solar system should I get?

Installing solar is relatively cheap, when you consider that it pays itself off in 3 to 5 years. It will be cheaper overall to install the maximum now, than to try to upsize it in a few years, especially since you will probably only have one chance to get subsidy help. If you have the money or can use one of the government payment schemes, I suggest getting the maximum allowed 10kW system, with slightly more panels (see below). You also need to have enough unshaded roof space to install them. In the southern hemisphere, we aim solar panels to the north for maximum sunlight. A north facing room will produce a high peak of solar power in the middle of the day, when your demand is probably low. So, it’s typically best to place panels on east and west (or north east and north west) facing roofs to skew power to the beginning and end of the day, respectively. On our house, we have all of our panels on a north west facing roof. This skews our production slightly to the end of the day, but…

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…

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…

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.

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.

About $25k for a new BYD Atto 1.

Wow. EVs are now approaching the price of comparative ICE vehicles. Unfortunately, BYD couldn’t get their Atto 1 prepped in time for the show, but they did have the Atto 2 on the floor (pictured). At Everything Electric Melbourne.

Checking out the Farizon electric van, decked out as a camper.

Also the popular BYD Shark electric ute (plus hybrid range extender), and some towing options. At Everything Electric Melbourne.

Nice interior of the Geely EV, at Everything Electric Melbourne.

So many EV options available now.

Dancing, flipping, rolling cat robot at Everything Electric Melbourne was a crowd pleaser.

No litter box!

Nice to see some services (like Goodbye Gas) available to help homes get off has…

…upgrading to electric. Better for health, monthly bills, and clean air. At Everything Electric, Melbourne.

Some of the many scooters, motorbikes and e-bikes at Everything Electric Melbourne.

A couple of electric police cars at Everything Electric Melbourne.

A Tesla Model X and Kia EV6, I think.

Big wheels keep on turnin’, electrically!

Trying out a big rig at Everything Electric show Melbourne

Not all routes are equal.

We took the slightly longer map option to Kurth Kiln National Park, expecting we could take the shorter route home. But, no, some bridges are impassable. We randomly picked this spot for a walk, using the AllTrails app. It allows us to filter difficulty, duration, distance away, elevation, and monitor our walk along the way, even with no Internet connection in the bush. The information boards included the history of charcoal fuel production here, and the hurdles for vehicle drivers to overcome new fuel types, like petrol 😉. FSD (Full Self Driving) took us along the windy country roads without an issue, until the motorbikes behind our car brought out the biker in me. I switched to human driving, to push the bends more than the overly cautious FSD. FSD was also happy to drive back along the narrow dirt roads in the national park, but I switched to manual to minimise the corrugation jitters Then, back to our staycation B&B (which is of course, just our home in Emerald). Our hosts (which…

Another weekend, another botanic gardens.

This used to be a quarry for blue stone. Impressive rehabilitation. Charging: Our EV and trip were 100% solar powered from our roof at home.

Spring has sprung.

Two problems to solve: 1. Big piles of branches from trimmed overgrown hedges (joint effort with neighbour). 2. Freshly weeded garden beds need a lot of mulch. Solution: Max the Mulcher. 2400W Electric RYOBI. Chomps through branches up to 4.5cm diameter. Produced over two cubic meters (2000L) of mulch so far. Meanwhile, Marvin the Mower mowing the neighbour’s front yard. All powered by the excess solar power from our roof. No fumes. Not much noise.

Sneaky lunch at Tram Xpresso, attached to Mount Evelyn Garden Centre.

I’m still getting used to finding trams in weird places. Fortunately, no hook turn here. Charging: Again, the car was powered for free from our home solar.

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.

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.

We had a massive spill of solar energy spill over the past couple of days.

All over our yard, roof and neighbourhood. Fortunately, there seems to be no toxic repercussions. All of the local wildlife seem to be unaffected. Our breathing is fine. We managed to soak a good deal of it up using the solar panels on our roof, and channel it into our car, battery and home, as you can see on the graph showing: Yellow: Solar production Red: Sent to our car, now fully charged. Green: Stored in our house battery, now fully charged, for use tonight. Blue: Used for our home appliances Grey: Exported to the grid, for other homes to use. Cost: $0 (well, actually we’ll get paid something for exports).

Back on home turf, a walk in the Dandenong Ranges. So much green.

Brunch at Olinda Deli. Charging: Free fuel from the sun, pumped into our car from our home solar panels.

Our last piece of Anzac slice lasted until the last day of our road trip.

Range anxiety – averted. Just passed Bendigo, this view over the “valley of a thousand hills” seemed appropriate. Charging: We stopped over an hour ago in Bendigo for coffee and amenities at a Tesla Supercharger. Perfect timing, as usual, so we just unplugged and drove off as soon as we were ready. No need to wait for the charger. And we'll be home in a few hours, where the fuel/solar is free.

As you can probably tell by the first photo of the local hero (Chris) resetting the EV…

…charger, we stayed a lot longer in Glendambo than we had planned. Similar problem, now on our way south from Coober Pedy, as we had a week ago during our trip north. Charging: We filled up this morning at Coober Pedy at the fast charger there. We don’t have quite enough range to make it south to the next fast charger at Spuds Roadhouse, in Pimba. Out Tesla Model Y is just the standard range RWD, not long range. The plan was to stop here for lunch in Glendambo, while the car charged up just a bit using the slow 7kW RAA/Chargefox charger that is here. We arrived, plugged in. The charger showed life. I tapped my RFID card. The charger screen showed that it accepted my card, paused, then showed an error. I tried again and again, still no actual power transferred. I tried using the ChargeFox app, after swapping in a Telstra SIM, since my Belong SIM doesn’t get reception here. Same problem. After about eight attempts, I contacted ChargeFox. Tanya and Jared tried remote resetting and…

Kata Tjuṯa is even more huge than Uluṟu. You

can tell from the relative size of each in the distance from each other. But, of course, Uluṟu is one whole rock. We set up breakfast out of our camp fridge and bags, at Kata Tjuṯa. We didn’t see any of the dingos, warned by the signs. Then a few short walks. One of the other visitors had just driven from WA, and asked where the next petrol station was. I laughed and told him that of all the people he could have asked, I was probably the least suitable, driving an electric car. But I happened to know that there is one back at Yulara, about 40km away. He seemed relieved that was less than the fuel range he had remaining. We discussed the high cost of fuel out here, at around $3 per litre. He asked about our electric car. I mentioned that I’d noticed that the toilet block in the car park had a power point, next to the hand dryer. In an emergency, I could probably use that, powered by the solar on the roof and I think backup diesel generator. But of course, we were fully charged for…

Charging our EV in "the centre of the centre of Australia".

After driving 1500km north along the Stuart Highway, we reached “the centre of the centre of Australia”., with a turn left/west towards Yulara and Uluru. First we stopped at the intersection’s Erldunda Roadhouse, in the town of Ghan (well, that’s all there is in Ghan). We grabbed some lunch, laughed at the banners for sale, and visited the emus. No cell reception for our Belong phone SIMs (which it seems doesn’t quite give us the whole Telstra network), so we made use of the free wifi. Petrol here is about a dollar per litre more expensive (about 50%) 😮. The fast charger is also about 50% more expensive than typical. At the EV charging station, we chatted to Jigar. He bought his EV in Darwin, then later started working at Uluru and I think Alice Springs. This charger is perfectly positioned for EVs passing through. Charging: Erldunda Roadhouse has a DC fast(ish) EV charging station, managed by The NRMA. It has four cables for up to four EVs. The roadhouse is off grid, run by diesel…

So, there we were, cruising along the Stuart Highway, in outback Australia, feeling like…

…pioneers in our electric vehicle. Then we came across true pioneers, driving a solar powered prototype car. They were practicing for the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, which runs from Darwin to Adelaide. They told us that they are only allowed to practice in South Australia, and not in the Northern Territory, so they had to travel south this far for a few weeks, then go all the way back to the start of the race. We ran into a few teams, including support vehicles with a StarLink dish on the roof, along the way, from various countries and universities. It seems that they test during the day, then typically set up camp overnight just off the highway. Big commitment to spend a few weeks in the Australian outback. Thank you for your research and development that filters through to a more sustainable future for transport.

Just south of Port Augusta, we passed another wind and solar farm, generating power for…

…local communities. No noise, smell, or breathing hazards. Of course, it would be great if we could avoid any environmental impact. But this is way better than a giant coal mine and power station, or oil drilling.

We took a slight detour off the Hume Highway at Glenrowan, to stop next to the huge solar…

…farm at Winton. We have previously passed huge open cut coal mines, such as the one at Yallourn. Here are the differences we noticed: 1. The solar farm isn’t a big hole. It’s just a bunch of of posts that can be removed. 2. There’s no particles filling the air, causing respiratory issues. 3. At the coal mine, dozens of huge sprinklers kept pouring litres of water onto the coal face to suppress the dust. 4. There is no ongoing large machinery here, required to dig coal, and haul it. 5. Nothing gets burnt here. There’s no ongoing pollution or greenhouse effect. 6. The solar panels can work in harmony with agriculture. If you look closely at my photos, you can see sheep grazing in the grass around the panels. The panels provide shade that enhances vegetation growth. We didn’t see any sheep on the coal mine, or any living thing, actually 😞. Of course, there is an environmental impact of the solar farm. It took energy to produce the panels, deliver them, and so on. If we had original bush…

Off to Wagga Wagga for a couple of days.

First stop Over the Road Cafe, (which is over the road, and about two minutes from our house). Egg muffin is a great meal to hold in one hand while driving, until the egg yolk spurted down my T-shirt. Sigh. Next stop for a stretch and snack at Lake Nillahcootie. Which has become an unintentional frequent visit for us. The red leaves have all dropped from the trees, since we last photographed here a few weeks back. Charging: All charged up and ready to go, from a combination of rooftop solar, house battery, and mostly renewables in the grid.

Shiny again! First car wash for the new car.

After 4000km in 4 weeks, it was looking a bit dirty. At Magic Hands Car Wash Ferntree Gully. While we waited, brunch at nearby lorna cafe. Charging: Drove home, plugged in. The big nuclear reactor in the sky sent solar rays to our roof, which converted it to electricity, to power our car.

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.

Grid electricity is super expensive tonight.

Why? Ironically, it’s because it’s mainly powered by gas and coal power stations. Gas and coal supplied electricity is very expensive compared to when supplied by renewables. The second factor is that it’s a cold night, so power demand is high for heating. Our entity retailer, Amber Electric, just passes on the wholesale price, which updates every 30 minutes. When renewable supply in the grid is high, we typically pay around 10c per kWh, sometimes less. When there is low renewable supply in the grid, we typically pay 60c per kWh. But tonight: over $10 per kWh! Fortunately, we have a house battery, often referred to as a “solar battery”. This allows us to “fill” up from free solar during the day, or cheap grid (high renewables) at other times. So, we charged up during the day, ready for tonight. We actually had more energy stored than we needed, so the system exported the excess to the grid. This helps the grid, and pays us a whopping $70 for one night. It’s times like this that I wish…

Visitors stayed last night.

We plugged their BYD Atto 3 into our Tesla wall charger. Charged up the car battery from 18% to 100%. Grid electricity was cheap at about 16c per kWh, because there’s over 60% renewable supply. Using Amber Electric. 82% x 60kWh x 11c = $5.41 If you’re interested in switching to Amber, you can use our referral link to get a discount: https://www.amber.com.au/referral/refer-a-friend-discount?couponcode=PGUXRHBG Refuelling a car at home is so cheap, even without solar. We used a dedicated wall charger. But we could have charged the car with just a standard power point and mobile connector. It’s just three times slower

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.

A few random jaunts around the Central Coast to catch up with family.

Ettalong Beach, Terrigal, Woy Woy waterfront. Bringing KFC to lunch in the frunk, to keep the smell out of the cabin. Charging: We managed a couple of chargings at Erina Fair, but topped up at our accommodation, using excess solar, and the cheap off peak night rates.

Stocking up on some groceries in Raymond Terrace, before the final leg of our trip to…

…Seal Rocks. We used the Woolworths app to order ahead for “direct to boot”. Charging: We aim to charge while parked anyway. Raymond Terrace has Tesla Superchargers in the shopping center car park, powered by solar panels that shade the car park. So, it’s the perfect opportunity. In hindsight, I should have parked at the charger, and just wheeled the groceries over, since it took a while for the groceries to appear. After piling the Woollies groceries into the car, we parked at the Supercharger and plugged in, while we walked into the shopping centre to grab a couple of things that Woollies didn’t have. That gave the car time for a top up charge. Shopping done, we took off again – no need to wait until 100%. Once parked between these superchargers, it can be a bit of a stretch to reach the cable from behind the car. And the solar panel roof has gaps, which release targeted rain on you in certain places. Our car’s LFP battery is supposed to do a max of 170kW, but this charger managed…

Coffee stop, just north of Glenrowan, at the BP service centre.

The Tesla/Google navigation only knew the south bound service center here, so the directions tried to send us over the highway 🤪. Thanks to the nearby solar farm that provides the power to the grid that found its way to our car. We overheard someone paying $1100 for fuel, presumably a semi trailer. Wow. 😮 Home baked Anzac slice (thank you Krissy) was the perfect accompaniment for the coffee and thermos of tea. The small birds begged us for crumbs. On towards Wagga. Charging: This is the first public charging for our new car. The Tesla navigation planned to route us through the Superchargers in Wangaratta, but we charged here because we were stopping anyway, for coffee. We aim to charge opportunistically – meaning: charge while we’re stopped anyway to do something else. In hindsight, we probably should have pressed on to Wangaratta for coffee and a charge. This BP charger cost 75c per kWh, which is probably the most expensive we have paid. The Tesla Superchargers, which are faster and…

This morning we set off on our first road trip in our new Tesla Model Y.

Compared to our previous Model 3, we have so much room now. Even the sub trunk has another sub trunk. We’re also taking a couple of suitcases to deliver to a family friend along the way. We still managed to find room for the coffee machine. The autumn trees in our yard turned an ultra red, to send us off. First stop tonight will be near Wagga Wagga, then on towards Cessnock, Seal Rocks, then back to the Central Coast for a few days, before heading home again. Charging: I scheduled the car to top up charge in the early hours this morning, but I neglected to turn off “charge on solar”. It turns out that there’s no solar at night 😉. No problem, I just started the charging this morning when I woke up, so we had 80% by the time we left – more than enough to get us to wherever we end up stopping along the way.