Antinuclear

• Home energy storage costs tumble

Battery installers in Australia have reported more than 100,000 customer inquires this year, although sales of the systems – which are adaptable, stylish, and small compared to the ugly lead acid batteries of the past – number less than 5000 units.

World leaders in battery production include Elon Musk’s Tesla company that produces the popular bar fridge sized ‘Powerwall’ unit, and German firms Sonnen and BMZ.

Leading players offering home battery solutions include ZEN Energy, based at Clovelly Park in Adelaide, with Professor Ross Garnaut as chairman, and Redflow, based in Brisbane, led by SA-based innovator Simon Hackett, as chairman, chief executive and majority shareholder.”

But the biggest indicator that this is a growing, competitive and lucrative market is that major energy providers, AGL and Origin, now offer their own storage battery solutions.

ZEN Founder and Director of Innovation, Richard Turner, said while South Australia was plunged into darkness last week, its customers were completely uninterrupted.

“They were using their electric ovens, watching television, and going about their night like nothing had happened,” Mr Turner said.

“These systems are designed to generate and store ample solar energy during the day to meet their home’s power needs at night and provide backup power during blackouts.”

Mr Turner said while luxury homeowners were among the first adopters of solar energy storage, solutions were now affordable and within everyone’s reach.

With units costing from $10,000-$50,000 that would still seem a stretch but battery converts are growing in numbers.

But those thinking of joining them should know that even with a sophisticated and expensive battery system, it remains very difficult to disconnect permanently from the grid and still have all the comforts and necessities of modern life.

The batteries, with around 12-20 hours of storage, still run down and on cloudy days need to be powered from the grid – if it’s up and running.

Businessman Keith Bladon, from the Adelaide Hills, is among the first South Australians to invest heavily in storage batteries.

The former Canadian who has lived in Adelaide since 1978, says he has been driven to look at energy alternatives because of the “chronic unreliability” of the SA electricity network and the “greed” of power providers.

With a Hybrid Off-Grid power supply of solar panels backed up by an array of five storage batteries, the engineer’s Heathfield home powered on without a flicker during the statewide blackout last week.

Mr Bladon, 63, who lives 18km from the Adelaide CBD, says grid blackouts – they were seven at Heathfield just in the past week – are the reason he has invested in batteries.

“The instability and reliability of the network drove me to look at alternatives but the high cost of electricity is what has made it feasible,” he said.

“The economies are screaming you will be far better off unplugging from the network and doing it yourself — so that’s what I’m doing. But it’s crazy that the public should have to consider making their own power systems.”

Mr Bladon, a true believer in alternative energy who drives a Tesla electric car at a cost of more than $100,000, has five brothers in North America who taunt him they are paying less than 10 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity.

“The baseline here is at 40 cents per kilowatt hour, so South Australians are paying 500 per cent more than world’s best practice,” he added.

“There’s nothing to suggest the price increases will be any less than the last 10 years, which have been four times CPI – it’s out of control. The electricity companies are pricing themselves out of the market.”

Mr Bladon says since the installation of his systems, he only imports power from the grid at his convenience.

“People need to understand that we don’t have a national electricity grid here – what we have is a state monopoly,” he said.

“I sell my electricity to the grid at eight cents per kilowatt hour and they sell it back to me at 40 cents. Where is the other 30 cents going and what value do the retailers actually add?”

Mr Bladon, a customer of Standard Solar in Melbourne an installer for Redflow, has a bank of five BMZ German made lithium-ion rechargeable batteries at a cost of around $7000 each.

Redflow spokesman, John Harris, said most homes would still struggle for a straight financial case for installing a battery but that was changing rapidly – just as it did for the installation of solar panels.

“The price saving was not there for solar panels 10 years ago but people wanted to save the planet and give the one finger salute to power companies who were constantly cranking up prices,” he said.

“We are at the start of that same curve with batteries.”

The Grattan Institute costs the average price in Australia of taking a home 95 per cent off the grid at $37,000, for a 7 kilowatt solar system plus 35 kWh of battery storage. But that almost doubles to $72,000 if the house can’t rely on a centralised network for back-up which is increasingly the case in SA.

Mr Bladon estimates his return on investment will take around 12 years but the consumer advocacy group Choice says it could take up to 24 years to get back money on most units.

Even on the eve of the revolution, batteries are already facing a major competitor that could see them superseded by next-generation 12-kilowatt home generators.

Even at $30,000 each, Keith Bladon is already checking them out so he can finally escape the clutches of the power companies.

“These generators make the same noise as an air conditioner with a jet engine, but no moving parts or costly maintenance, he added.

“The cost of generating electricity is about 20 cents per kilowatt hour. At half price, that is a perfect demonstration there is something seriously wrong with the cost of electricity from the South Australian network.”

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Major producers: Panasonic, Tesla, Samsung, LG, Sonnen and BMZ

Installation Costs: Between $5000 and $20,000 per unit, with a comprehensive
system costing $30,000-plus

Storage Capacity: Between 12 and 30 hours

Battery Life: Between 10 and 15 years

Return on Investment: Between 12 and 24 years

Major downsides: Does not provide the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) most people seek

Environmental impact: Most batteries have few recyclable parts.