A panel of Australian solar industry veterans yesterday discussed the current state of play with regard to home battery storage in Australia.
The discussion was part of the launch event for SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock’s new book – The Good Solar Guide: 7 Steps To Tiny Bills For Australian Homeowners, which also includes information on solar battery systems.
Participating in the panel were:
- Jenny Paradiso – co-founder and managing director of Suntrix
- Adrian Ferraretto – previous owner of SolarShop and Tindo Solar
- Richard Turner – founder of Zen Energy
- Finn Peacock – founder and head honcho of SolarQuotes
Here’s how the discussion unfolded (if you don’t wish to watch the video, a summary of the major points is below)
Solar Only Or Solar + Storage?
The discussion kicked off with the question, “should a homeowner wanting to save money buy solar or solar + battery”
Finn Peacock was of the opinion that given solar-only payback can be as little as three years and solar + battery as much as twelve, its wiser to go for solar only and opt for a larger system until such time that battery systems have dropped further in price.
Richard Turner said solar-only was a “no-brainer” and said installing a battery system at the moment would result in a much longer payback period, particularly if finance is involved.
Adrian Ferraretto also backed the solar-only approach at this stage and said there was little sense in spending up to $14,000 on a battery system to store $3 worth of electricity.
Jenny Paradiso said Suntrix talks more people out of batteries than into them – and for the latter group, these are people who aren’t concerned with return on investment, but are more interested in blackout protection or “sticking it to the man”.
The general view was it’s still a couple of/few years before batteries reach the tipping point of mass adoption. Adrian Ferraretto commented that batteries are currently an emotional product rather than a financial or environmental product.
SA Government Battery Scheme
The next question was, “is the SA Government’s $100 million scheme to give 40,000 households a $2,500 battery rebate a good idea?”
Finn Peacock believes it’s not a good idea as he isn’t sure if it will be popular. The scheme will be means tested and if the rebates are targeted towards low-income households, he couldn’t see many people being in a position to splash out the cash required to cover the unsubsidised portion of a battery system.
Jenny Paradiso likes the idea, but said it was important for the Government to get the details right; including how the initiative would fit in with other Virtual Power Plant projects proposed or under way in South Australia.
Adrian Ferraretto stated while it’s good to have incentives, he believed rebates are value-distorting and tend to encourage the purchase of cheap and nasty products. He feels a better idea would be to reward battery owners with something along the lines of special feed in tariffs.
Richard Turner said it was a good incentive for early adopters who can afford the difference, but if it’s going to be means tested and favour low-income households, such a scheme needs to be paired up with appropriate finance and quality control mechanisms.
Priorities – Residential Or Utility Scale Solar?
The next question was “should our priority be residential or utility scale batteries?”
Jenny Paradiso said both are needed as the combination of the two will give the best result.
Finn Peacock felt given public funds are limited, priority should go to utility scale at this stage as this would be more useful in the bigger energy picture for applications such as grid stability services. However, he sees value in offering incentives when the cost of residential batteries decreases.
Adrian Ferraretto didn’t like the “winner take all” result from utility scale battery support and would rather see residential storage rebates, which would help small businesses servicing the home solar market flourish and expand, with the money staying here.
Solar Batteries And Energy Efficiency
The final question was “will solar batteries kill old fashioned energy efficiency?
Finn Peacock says he’s already seeing it in solar, where people are opting for larger systems instead of improving energy efficiency within their homes.
Jenny Paradiso stated she has seen the same trend and incidences of solar owners being puzzled by their electricity bills, not realising they were using more electricity – so education was important. However, the advent of new models such as peer to peer trading may get people thinking more about energy efficiency.
Adrian Ferraretto was of the opinion that with solar now so cheap, saving energy is less important – and households will be looking to install even more solar panels as electric cars come into play.
Richard Turner looked at it from a utility scale perspective, stating demand management will still be important.
After the set questions, a couple of questions were taken from the audience in relation to battery ready systems and the issue of adding more panels/a battery to systems on higher legacy feed in tariffs.
The launch event was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia, a fitting venue given the Gallery has a battery system that was installed by Zen Energy last year. The demonstration system was designed to help manage the gallery’s demand profile. Richard Turner said the system was performing well and while originally it was forecast to have a 6 year payback, it looks like it will be 4 – but he stressed that system works differently to a conventional home solar battery system.
Attended by close to 100 people including solar installers, owners, trade body and manufacturing representatives, the event was formally opened by South Australia’s Minister for Environment and Water, David Speirs.
The Good Solar Guide is now available in paperback or for the Kindle – learn more about the book, purchase the guide or download a free chapter here.
About Michael Bloch
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It’s always been easy for academia to ignore ~ or swamp ~ the on-site suck-it-and-see realities. And let’s never forget solar power in Oz (and I was there) started life as a means of INDEPENDENCE and concomitantly for economic reasons. (ie ~ creating an AFFORDABLE home out in the bush miles from the grid).
For all the la-de-da boutique motivators, those should STILL be the reasons for installing solar-power. Environmental considerations are of parallel but secondary reasons.
On that score, the ONLY rational approach is to go stand-alone solar and reduction of energy-use as a matter of small-footprint principles. And that approach dictates the use of the most simple, proven and AFFORDABLE storage system available. There are options, but to date the most appropriate way of ticking all the boxes is the SELF-installation of lead/acid batteries. Not only has the technology improved enormously in recent times, but the prices have dropped dramatically.
A couple of days ago I bought some 140ah VRLA AGM Deep-Cycle batteries for $225 each (that’s 1.7 kW of storage for $225 ~ or $132 per kW) ~ along with a three-year warranty. (and picked them up from the vendor’s house in case something cropped up. (Try getting a Tesla etal vendor to be half that confident! … and all that’s assuming you can get delivery in this life-time to begin with!
I installed them myself in half an hour ~ including making the connectors from a length of real copper! ….. And even assuming they die immediately after the warranty expires, and need replacing twice in the 10-year warranty-period offered by ‘power-walls’, I’d STILL be so far ahead of the game you’d need a telescope to see me, financially and otherwise. (And wouldn’t need a bloody forklift to shift them!)
For my money, only a …..er, can I say ‘NITwit’?, would spend as much money as some people spend in raising their family for a coupla-three years to buy an unproven product that, IF all goes well, enslaves them even more to a ‘system’ over which they have absolutely no control.
Very good response. One question- what would the usable amount of power from that battery be? Assuming your 3.33yr life expectancy what level of discharge would be sustainable? 30% 50%
Hi Ray. The manufacturer recommends capacity should be kept at about 60%-70% (which is pretty-well the common-sense) parameter. But we all know that most of the stuff to do with solar systems can only be discussed in general terms anyway. (There is a suggestion that every so often it’s wise to run them down to perhaps 20% to avoid a ‘memory-effect’ developing.
For me, the main thing (apart from an enforceable warranty) is the options provided.. ie. determining your usage and sizing the battery-bank to suit; if you install a few more than you need (at the right price) depletion of capacity might reduce, say, 15%, so the entire bank is maintained at, practically ‘float’ levels. Personally, I wouldn’t run anything more than lights, TV, computers, security-cameras etc. off a battery-bank anyway. Anything that chews up large amounts of power (microwave/washing-machine/power-tools etc.) I’d be running off a demand-start or remote-start generator. (Plenty on the market these days, fairly cheap but should last forever because of the minimal usage.)
Moreover ~ and keeping in mind the ‘generality’ thing, I’d be expecting MUCH more than 3.33 years from a decent set of batteries. Years hands-on experience has me expecting a good 5+ years from properly-handled batteries ~ and more than that comes as no surprise. More recently I bought a set six 2nd-hand ‘Vision’ 200 ah batteries (Telecom stand-by, dirt cheap) of which the first to die lasted eight years…..One reason was probably my tiny usage. (Biggest consumer was a small fridge running at about 60-watts on a 15-minute ON/OFF cycle ~ after I removed the thermostat… Later I got a freezer, and added a couple of ~ again dirt cheap these days ~ panels. You realise not all your production/consumption needs to go via the batteries. (I prefer several smaller circuits all running off their own inverter. And/or there are quite a few things that can run directly off a 12-volt circuit BEFORE the generated power gets to the batteries.
Sorry if I go on a bit, but I’ve been into that sort of lifestyle for longer than a lot of plastic-era people have been on the planet, and it’s why I make comments like the one above.
Jackson
I hope your installation skills are better than your understanding of power and energy. A battery stores ENERGY in kWh, not kW. Your 1.7kWh battery seems good for delivering 1.7kW of POWER for one hour.
EM
ps.
Incidentally, this off-the-cuff comment:- that my “1.7kWh battery seems good for delivering 1.7kW of POWER for one hour” is quite wide of the mark as well.
It depends entirely upon the ‘rate’ of use.
Over 20 hours it’ll deliver more ‘kW’ than at the 10-hour rate…. and even less at a ‘5-hour’ rate….and in a linear progression 0 kw at a 0-hour rate.
…..after which it gets interesting…..
The point is still that STORED ‘energy’ (as undefined) doesn’t relate to time-factors.
In South Oz, a 10kW total inverter system is all that is allowed. If a battery was required to be fitted later it would not be approved as the battery inverter would take the whole system over 10kW.
In a nutshell, maximising the size of a solar system to 10kW would stop battery installation no matter how cheap they become.
Dave Wilson, That only applies if you are installing a Tesla or Enphase battery which have their own inverter inside the battery. If you use a hybrid inverter which can do both jobs (inverting dc to ac and charge/discharge a battery you could still have 10 kW of solar panels and batteries. (Most hybrid inverters though do limit the range of compatible batteries. Alternatively there are devices that allow you to connect almost any battery via a non inverter connection device,which currently cost about $1000 each.
How aout setting up TWO independent systems (one non-grid) ~ and not telling anyone about the second?
Personally I don’t see why anyone would WANT to stay connected to the grid these days. No matter how it’s churned you’re paying an ever-increasing amount of money for something you don’t need.
In any case, as I’ve said previously: any home (as distinct from a car-dealership or small factory, etc.) that requires more than 10kW should be accommodating 43 kids.
Jackson there is no sleight of hand necessary in having multiple generation systems one location (one On Grid) and one or more Stand Alone for example. It is perfectly acceptable and accords with all Australian States and CER
/STC rules and regulations. We do it regularly providing a separate Stand Alone system to supply discrete loads sub-circuits totally separate from the grid managed sub-circuits. This is a very efficient Stand Alone PV solution design strategy and particularly useful for pumps, machines, and large load circuits.
Lawrence Coomber
For me batteries are still the ultimate goal, yes we have reduced our electricity bill to $50 a quarter with solar panels, but we plan to by an electric car in the future when we have warn out the already efficient hybrid. To come home and plug it in, and run the house is what I want for the future.
There is also an environmental cost or foot print of maintaining the existing grid. Deforestation for single species plantation telegraph poles has a cost on biodiversity and habitat and ultimately humans that is never factored into anything. And given the environmental hunger of a 50 year power station to run, support, and maintain it, the costs are through the roof compared to batteries and solar footprint. Telegraph poles have a human toll as well, as I’m sure plenty of parents have weeped for loosing a child wrapped around a pole in car over the years, plus the visual pollution suburbs have with lines criss crossing the neighbourhood. Suburbs full of batteries and solar capturing surfaces is my utopia.
DOH!…….I assumed that by now everybody and their dog (providing the dog could read Finn & Young Ron’s handwriting) understands the fundamentals.
However, since we’re nitpicking, I might suggest that the battery STORES POTENTIAL energy which we count in Watts. Said battery can store the stipulated 1,700 Watts (aka 1.7 kW) for as many hours ~ or days; or years ~ as required if said energy/Watts are being STORED. (For the benefit of the slow, that means NOT BEING USED by the hour or any other chosen measurement. eg horsepower: ask Young Ron.)
And FYI, my installation skills have been acquired over about 37 years in ways and situations YOU couldn’t imagine. At a rough guess I’d say probably more than 500 installations completed and/or participated in, with not a single mishap. (except for one bloke who fell out of a tree, but that was his own fault: reckoned he was an expert tree-climber and wouldn’t wear a harness..)
Momentarily more interesting is how your most instructive tutorial came to be posted 12 minutes BEFORE my comment.
Jackson
WRONG. The watt (W) is a measure of POWER (energy transfer ‘speed’): J/s (Joule/second).
Energy itself (or potential energy if you insist) is measured in Joule or conveniently in kWh (which is just 3.6 MJ). YOU SIMPLY CANNOT SAY A BATTERY STORES 1700 W! It can only store ENERGY (in J or Wh), which it can release as POWER.
FWIW, horsepower is also a measure of POWER. One horsepower is simply 746 W, ie 746 Joules of energy released per second.
You wont say a battery stores 1hp of energy, which would make as little sense as saying it stores 746W! (It may be able to store enough energy that it can release 1hp of POWER for say 3 hours, in which case you could say it stores 3 horsepower-hour of ENERGY).
I don’t doubt your installation skills. Before you accuse me of nitpicking, why don’t you check these facts with another expert.
“Expert: a has-been drip under pressure.” Remember when the expert consensus was that the earth was flat? Or that the stars were holes in the sky through which the light of heaven shone?.
And therein lies the rub: The ‘consensus’ view depends upon agreement: eg 2+2=4. But non-acceptance (often as a matter of semantics) isn’t necessarily “WRONG”.
The actual manufacturer of the batteries I bought doesn’t accept the consensus view pushed by you that his batteries store kWh. He designed the batteries to STORE AHs ……it says so right there on the batteries.It also clearly says that said AHs are stored at a POTENTIAL called ‘Volts’ ~ 12 of them.
And I’m prepared to believe him because my solar panels produce Watts ( says so right there on the label), and when I use the AHs STORED in the battery my light-globe consumes Watts ~ which is stipulated on the light-globe. And I know for how long I can run the globe because I remember from my primary-school days that W=VxA. (give or take depending on other factors)…
Moreover, I don’t appreciate being told “YOU SIMPLY CANNOT SAY A BATTERY STORES
1700 W! It can only store ENERGY (in J or Wh)”
The fact is that I CAN say so. Quite reasonably, too. If I store $100 in Australian currency in the bank, I expect to get AU$100 back ~ regardless of how the bank has churned and rejigged it in transit and/or spouted “expert” (financial) gobbledegook.. In other words:- “shit in shit out” as someone was heard to decree.
And what’s more if I want to express my STORED AHs as ‘horsepower’ I’m free say that, too so long as my meaning is conveyed. I’m confident that people reading the blog had NO difficulty understanding my meaning.
The points are these:-
1……..Although you disdainfully shrug off my emphasis on “POTENTIAL” (vis-a-vis the STORAGE of energy), DO try to remember that there IS no POWER unless ‘energy’ is in transit. Potential (ie ‘stored’) energy only exists in theory. A BILLION tons of water in a dam doesn’t amount to a single “kWh” ~ until the cocks are opened and the potential realised.
2…….. If it works don’t knock it: over the decades I’ve made many systems work, so obviously I’ve got the basics right ~ even allowing for a casualness in terminology.
3……..Your comment: ” why don’t you check these facts with another expert” suggests you consider yourself an expert; ie. a Loyal Defender of Expert Consensus.
And as such you no doubt immovably defend the consensual
proposition (above) that 2+2=4?
Would you then insist that ” YOU SIMPLY CANNOT SAY” 2+2 = 3 (or 0.44475kWh/whatever?)
And can you show us the mathematics that disprove the proposition?
….or would you accept the assertion if you understood my meaning: that 2+2= one fewer than 5 bananas?
Hi Jason. Two quickies.
1… In the day people on solar systems ( always a long way from anywhere ~ schools, work, shopping etc.) would carry a battery or two in the boot and charge them off the car while doing the rounds. THEN they’d come home and plug the house into the car!….Funny how things go round. (or sometimes ‘pear-shaped’!)
2….Re. the (mostly treated pine) power-poles used these days —–> It was discovered a good few years ago that the CCA chemicals leached out of the post and into the ground over time. It’s a good timber preservative, but has been barred from children’s playgrounds and other immediately risky places. Gawd knows what it’s doing to the broader environment . Shades of asbestos, perhaps?
Jackson: Your battery manufacturer is perfectly right. It is now very clear you are the problem though – You bend the facts till they match your understanding of maths or science.
Consensus has no place when it comes to cold facts. Esp not your type of consensus… I’m afraid 2+2 is in fact 4 no matter how many times you convince yourself it may just be something else because of your disdain for someone showing out the truth.
What do you think your battery manufacturer says when quoting Ah (note it’s not AH)???
As you rightly said, A x V = W (at least if its DC), therefore Ah x V = Wh, not W. Ah is just a more specific way of showing a battery’s ENERGY capacity (the specific voltage needs to be shown at the same time to give it perspective). So for instance, an 18V battery with 5Ah capacity of a typical cordless drill stores 90Wh of ENERGY. It does not STORE 90W, not is it necessarily limited to only 90W of output……
Do yourself a favour: Phone your favourite TESLA dealer and ask him the nominal energy capacity of one of their cars, say a Model S P100D. Unless his understanding is at bad as yours, he’ll tell you it’s 100kWh of storage, not 100kW. The car can certainly consume / the battery can certainly provide the ENERGY at more than 100kW POWER (for short bursts at least) but the energy capacity of the battery, or what the battery can store (nominally) is 100kWh,
Secondly, phone your electricity provider: Ask if your consumption (what you pay them for every month) is in kW or in kWh? I can only assume you think one electric unit is equal to 1kW…..
As you said, the world is in fact round even if it feels nothing but flat to people ignoring basic science.
You’re not discussing ‘basic science’ (concepts) . You’re quibbling over semantics ~ and not very convincingly, either. Try defining “ENERGY” (sic). Unless it is in motion it has NO meaning other than being used as a tag for POTENTIAL to do work. The words you’re quibbling over refer to work BEING done. If there is no work BEING done there is NO “energy”. … and the terminology used is irrelevant ~ except to convey a message.
(eg:- if I discharge 1000 ‘watts’ in one second would you call that the transmission 1/3600th of a kWh or 1kWs. (or ‘83.33333 amps-per-second@12 volts’. The point is that UNLESS and UNTIL mass is in motion there is nothing but POTENTIAL to do work, and the time-specification is superfluous. A bullet is just a bullet ~ containing the POTENTIAL to provide muzzle-energy BUT ONLY when and while it is moving, usually (though NOT necessarily) measured in ‘foot-per-second’. It could just as legitimately be measured (by agreement) in ergs or glombels.
…and on and on. It was the ‘basic scientists’ who insisted the world was flat and could ONLY be accounted for on that basis. Galileo was sent off to the Inquisition for questioning the convention.
But the final word rests with Einstein:- E=mc2. Take out the c and the ONLY E you have left is ‘potential’ ~ which cannot be measured in terms of time-units. (as in kiloWatt HOURS).
That’s my say. I begrudge wasting my time on rusted-on concepts, which if unchallenged would have us still swinging around in the treetops because that’s the proven scientific methodology.
I presume you’re also one of those people who insist the sun rises in the east, aren’t you?
Hi EM,
What an amusing conversation. I think Jackson is playing with you, talking about the sun rising, Einstein and a drip under pressure.
Hi Jackson,
The energy capacity of a battery is generally measured in kWh. The SI unit is Joules but kWh is convenient for electrical power systems.
Another way of looking at this is the batteries stored energy can delivery power (kW) over a period of time (hours).
For example a 10kWh battery could do any of the following:
– Run a 0.1kW load for 100 hours (light bulb)
– Run a 1kW load for 10 hours (TV)
– Run a 10kW load for 1 hour (big air conditioner)
– Run a 100kW load for 6 minutes (the International Space Station)
Of course the battery may not have the physical ability to deliver the large power requirements of the bottom two examples.But this would be due to limits in the battery design.
Thanks Tony
There’s nothing that shows the ignorance of this person more clearly than his later statement ‘if I discharge 1000 ‘watts’ in one second…’. I did not even need bother reading further. It’s like saying ‘if i cover 100 m/s in one second’.
I have a good friend who is a private pilot. One day after he had been out in his plane, out of curiosity I asked him how far he had flown that day. He answered ‘180 knots’…. I looked at him curiously, waiting for a potential correction, then eventually said that I assumed he meant 180 miles. No, he repeated ‘180 knots’. I tried in vain to explain to him that one cannot fly 180 knots ‘far’ but he insisted ‘that is just how I talk’. Nothing could convince him how wrong he was (sounds like someone in this forum), but on that day at least I decided I’m never going flying with my friend if he cannot understand the difference between distance (analogous to energy here) and speed (power analogy).
hehehehe,,,, Now you’ve got the local magpies so confused they’re WALKING everywhere. —> The point: If it works don’t fix it! I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you’re chatting up girls!
Taken your bat-and-ball and gone home?