Which battery is best for Aussie conditions? ARENA aim to tell you…
Just when you thought the news in battery storage was over following Tesla’s launch of the Powerwall, comes this little news gem.
Renewable energy consulting firm IT Power have been granted $450,000 from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) — remember them? — to conduct special independent tests to confirm the efficiency of eight different types of battery storage. [Read more…]
Will the Tesla Battery lead to a stampede of people leaving the grid? Photo: Tesla
[Update: Since I wrote this post (on the day the Powerwall was announced) Tesla have added some technical details that open up the possibility of installing the Powerwall for a much lower price than this blog post estimates. But – and it’s a big but – the cheaper installation will not allow you to go off grid. More details on the alternative install option here]
So Tesla has just announced a 10kWh home battery pack that costs US$3,500 (AUD$4,500) . The Tesla PowerWall will mount unobtrusively on the wall of your home and store your solar energy, so you can use it at night or when the grid goes down.
Lots of twitterers are proclaiming that Renewable Energy utopia has arrived. You’d be forgiven from thinking that, thanks to Tesla founder Elon Musk, all we have to do to divorce the grid is shell out three and a half grand.
Look – I don’t want to piss on anyone’s parade. This announcement is massive in lots of ways which I’ll get to soon. But you won’t be able to go off grid for that kind of money (yet).
Here’s what Aussie homeowners should know about the Telsa Powerwall [Read more…]
ARENA – the gift that keeps on giving.
Remember ARENA? The plucky Australian Renewable Energy Agency that has helped many renewable energy ventures and research with seed funding and other support? The ongoing benefits of ARENA include not only financial support but also because their involvement has helped pave the way for research and development in partnership with the private sector.
Wait. Ongoing? Didn’t ARENA get axed by the feds in their anti-renewables Budget cuts zeal a while back?
Well no. At least not yet. For ARENA, to quote an oft-used phrase, is the gift that keeps on giving.
Though the agency has, as you’ve probably heard, been axed by the federal government as part of its thinly-disguised ideological campaign against renewables, it still refuses to roll over and die. [Read more…]
SA takes the medal for most solar systems per household.
The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show one in five households use some form of solar energy. The figures back anecdotal and other statistical evidence of a massive growth surge for solar that has occurred since the ABS first began publishing statistics on solar energy, back in 2011.
Then the figures were comparatively low with only around five percent of households using solar energy, said the ABS’ Karen Connaughton in a 3/12/2014 press release. However the change in just three years has been dramatic.
“Jump just three years, to 2014, and there are solar panels being used by fourteen per cent of all households.”, she said.
Add to this solar hot water and the numbers of households using solar energy in one form or another has jumped to 20 percent. [Read more…]
Are solar roofs making solar power stations uneconomic?
Utility scale solar, or solar farms, are fields of PV panels which generate electricity that is fed directly into the grid. Currently we don’t have much of this in Australia. Over 99% of our solar capacity is point of use which is mostly on rooftops and the juice it does produce is first used to power the household or business it is on top of and then after that the excess is generally fed into the grid. [Read more…]
God forbid that pesky wind and solar breaches 20% !
The dust continues to swirl on one of the most divisive energy issues in recent years — the government’s attempted slashing of the RET to the so-called “real 20 percent”. We’ll discuss this but really, is this the debate we should be having in this day and age? We’re going to focus on the bigger picture, the debate we should be having: the one on the real benefits of going solar.
This week saw a political sleight-of-hand that we’ve come to expect from the seat polishers in Canberra. Under the guise of “adjusting” the Rudd government’s 20 percent of renewables by 2020, the government has put together a policy that will divide the nation. The so-called “real 20 percent” effectively slashes the RET for large-scale developers by one-third. For sure it will have “real” problems for many solar providers, with many seeing it as an underhand attempt to push through legislation that will cripple the renewable energy industry. [Read more…]
Rising electricity costs are driving more people to consider solar.
An Ernst and Young utilities survey report released this week has highlighted the battle ordinary Australians are having with their rising electricity bills. The study also found over 90 percent of those surveyed would like to switch to solar power. [Read more…]
A field near Canberra, yesterday.
We had a mini solar energy revolution in Australia this week: the opening of Australia’s largest solar farm at Royalla, near Canberra.
Funded by Spanish renewable energy giant Fotowatio Renewable Ventures, the 20 megawatt solar farm is monstrous by Australian standards. Comprised of 83,000 solar panels — which will be enough to power 4,500 homes — the farm is a major step forward in the ACT government’s plan to source 90 percent (yes you read right) of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. [Read more…]
Is it a bird, is it a plane? No it’s a miner who loves publicity.
So Big Clive Palmer is suddenly a renewable energy hero? And wants to be revered as the saviour of the clean energy sector? According to some press coverage, the Queensland fossil fuel mining superstar has single handedly changed the climate change debate in our country.
Not for me. Let’s be very careful before we anoint The Big Fella. [Read more…]
These mirrors at CSIRO in Newcastle can focus the sun to create superheated steam. That is the same pressure and temperature of steam that a coal or nuclear fired power plant creates. Amazing. Picture credit: CSIRO
Further evidence emerged this week from the CSIRO of the value of the embattled Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to the nation. ARENA, you may well recall, is at the centre of the current government’s ideological campaign against renewable energy with its very existence now in doubt through savage proposed budget cuts.
The breakthrough was the successful heating of steam to a supercritical temperature using solar energy. Supercritical steam is very high temperature and high pressure steam, that is needed to run electricity generating turbines efficiently. Essentially this means that we can now use the sun to drive conventional electricity turbines, like those found in a coal fired or even nuclear power station. This development has the potential to be a “gamechanger” in the way we generate electricity, according to the CSIRO. [Read more…]
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