Tesla has unveiled its Powerwall 2, a rechargeable energy storage system, in Australia on Thursday.
At an event in Melbourne Lyndon Rive, the cousin of Tesla's founder Elon Musk, unveiled the second version of the company's Powerwall battery with almost twice the capacity of the original.
The Powerwall 2 will have 13.2 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of storage, compared to the 6.4 kWh of available storage in the original.
The device has been hailed as the future of renewable energy, cutting power bills of owners dramatically by using solar power during the most expensive peak hours and selling excess power back to the grid in off-peak hours.
Natural Solar, the company which installs the devices in Australia, told News Limited that it had already pre-sold 1,000 units at an installation cost of 7,500 U.S. dollars or 10,000 U.S. dollars with solar panels, the same price as the original device.
Nick Pfitzner, the first Australian to install the first Powerwall in 2016, said his power bills had dropped 92 percent since he installed the device.
He said that the savings had exceeded his projections.
"Before I crunched the numbers, I was looking at what would be my return on investment. If it saved me 80% of my power bill, (I thought) it would be pretty good," Pfitzner told Australian consumer group Choice in February.
The savings offered by the new device could surpass those possible with the first Powerwall, with the increased capacity meaning owners will have less reliance on the grid during peak hour and be able to sell more power back to the system when there is less demand.
Natural Solar said that installations of the second device would begin in three to four weeks.
