Batteries are, as we all know, recyclable – but some recycle better than others. Lead-acid batteries? The process is easy, familiar and cheap enough to leave a decent margin, so Australia has some local recycling plants.

But the future isn’t lead acid, is it? [Read more…]

Image: Tesla

Long ago, when the internet was made of nothing but stone knives and bearskins, it sounded like this, and looked rubbish: [Read more…]

Energy Australia will give you a ‘free’ solar power system + Tesla Powerwall. All you have to do is buy your energy from them for 7 years. Is that a good deal?

TLDR: You’ll save more money if you go to the effort of buying your own, bigger solar power system rather than surrendering your roof’s profits to Energy Australia. [Read more…]

The new NSW solar & battery calculator is so misleading it’s not funny.

The NSW Government’s Solar Battery Calculator is up and running. 

This would only be a good thing if it was up and running out the door, never to be seen again.

It had one job to do — inform NSW families if a home battery makes financial sense for them — and it fails miserably.  Worse, it fails in exactly the wrong direction. [Read more…]

A happy family with their 4.8 kWh of Enphase AC batteries. These 4 batteries will cost about $10,000 installed and store about $1.44 of solar electricity.

Guess what! You can now read another tax-payer funded document that does more harm than good. 

The NSW Government has published the NSW Home Solar Battery Guide 2020.  It’s supposed to help the people of NSW and Australia decide if getting batteries is right for them.

I have read the report and have concluded that it is insane. [Read more…]

Honey, I shrunk the battery market

When I was a kid, the past wrote checks for the future reality couldn’t cash.  I never got a flying car, let alone a jetpack, and a picture book I had promised me the 2020 Olympics would be on the moon.  Well, it’s 2020 now and we don’t even have an Olympics, let alone a moon colony to hold it in. [Read more…]

There is a middle ground between home and utility-scale batteries: the community battery. New research shows community batteries bring more benefit than individually owned energy storage systems.

The ACT government reckons there’s a gap between the household battery and grid-scale batteries: community batteries, either owned by or at least serving the needs of collectives of households. [Read more…]

The SA Government commissioned a calculator for their home battery scheme. It shows that, for most homes, even subsidised solar batteries don’t add up yet. So they buried it on their website.

Finally, after one and a half years, the South Australian Home Battery scheme has added a battery calculator to their site. [Read more…]

A battery and a sponge. See what I did there?

Update 9th April 2020:  South Australia Power Networks has informed us the Solar Sponge tariff is available now for people with smart meters, but very few electricity retailers are offering it.¹  It was to become standard on the 1st of July, but this may be delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

In October 2019 South Australia Power Networks (SAPN) announced they would introduce a new “Solar Sponge” tariff promising electricity in the middle of the day at one quarter their usual rate.  As a result, some people have claimed this will let a battery pay for itself, even if the home doesn’t have solar panels.  Are they nuts? Not completely. [Read more…]

The Tesla VPP in South Australia networks thousands of residential Powerwall batteries to work together, support the grid and make money. How did it go in its first 12 months? Pretty good.

South Australia’s Virtual Power Plant isn’t just delivering electricity to consumers in that state – it’s also proven successful at helping the SA grid respond to grid-scale events. And that grid-response is a profitable sideline for the VPP. [Read more…]