Tesla Powerwall regains certification, after brief stint in regulatory limbo

Tesla’s Powerwall has been reinstated to the Clean Energy Council’s list of battery energy storage systems accredited for installation in Australia, after a brief stint in regulatory limbo.

The CEC website shows that the popular 13.5kWh Tesla home battery re-gained its accreditation – as did its inverter – on August 23, valid until the same date in 2025.

August 23 is the same date that One Step Off The Grid reported that the US-based giant had sent out an alert warning Australian installers that the CEC certification for its Powerwall inverter had temporarily expired.

“AS 4777.2.2020 certification for Tesla Powerwall will expire as of COB 22nd August 2022,” says an email notification shared with One Step Off The Grid. “We are working closely with the CEC to get this rectified ASAP.

“Please check with your local DNSPs for compliance on any upcoming or planned installations. We apologise for any inconvenience and will keep you updated as we progress working with the CEC.”

Presumably, this back-dating of certification ensures that any Powerwalls installed during the short period that it had lapsed are not adversely affected in any way.

As One Step reported at the time, neither Tesla nor the CEC were able to provide any details on why the Powerwall wound up falling off the list of approved inverters, but both assured the problem would be easily and quickly rectified.

Industry had previously flagged concerns about “bottlenecks and possible delays for re-listing products with the CEC” following last year’s introduction of new inverter requirements.

The new standard AS/NZS 4777.2:2020 came into effect in December 2021, making it mandatory for all new inverters connecting to the national grid to have an undervoltage disturbance ride-through capability, to ensure household energy systems don’t ‘trip’ or disconnect when there are voltage disturbances on the network.

As the CEC itself conceded mid-way through 2021, 95% of then CEC-listed inverters were expected to be affected by the changes to the standard, representing just over 1200 model numbers.

This led to concerns that not all the affected models would be able to get their certification updated in time – a process that requires applications, a lot of paperwork, and highly specialised lab testing.

“I think it’ll take the CEC about 10 weeks or so to cover all these products,” said James Sturch, the technical director RoW (rest of world) at SolarEdge, back in May of last year.

“Then the labs might not have the capacity, they might have a 10-20 week lead time. There are only about 20 labs globally that can do this.”

The CEC’s Thornton had also agreed that there was a potential for bottlenecks across the entire process and said this was why it had been “actively communicating” the importance of prioritising the process to industry for months ahead of the change.