There’s been plenty of talk about how Australian solar households are warming to the idea of battery storage, but little concrete data to back this up. Until now.
A new report from solar analysts, SunWiz, has revealed almost 21,000 behind the meter energy storage systems were installed in Australia in 2017, a three-fold increase on the year before.
On top of that, the report finds that 12 per cent of the 172,000 new solar systems installed in the booming 2017 market included a battery, up from six per cent in 2016.
But what does this trebling of battery storage uptake mean? Is it a sign that batteries now make economic sense to the average Australian household?
Well, it’s complicated.
If your metric is return on investment (ROI), there are a lot of variables that you need to weigh up – and they change from home to home, and state to state, and even from one distribution company to another. And we look into all that in-depth below.
But for those not banking on ROI – and plenty of consumers are not (think cars, couches, TVs) – then it’s pretty straight forward.
“With energy prices rising this year, Australians are embracing the idea of being able to control their energy consumption and costs,” said SunWiz founder and managing director, Warwick Johnston.
And battery storage can certainly do that, as long as you can afford to install it in the first place. ‘
As the SunWiz report shows – and the charts below illustrate – a Sydney household that invests in solar PV and a Tesla Powerwall 2 can achieve a $1,931 reduction (or 72 per cent) reduction in their annual power bills.
For those who can’t afford the up-front cost, there are deals like sonnenFlat – where households can install a 10kWh battery by German manufacturer sonnen at no up-front cost, instead paying a fixed monthly fee of $30, $40 or $50, depending on the system size and energy usage.
According to sonnen, this deal has already been popular in Australia – popular enough that the company is building a manufacturing plant here.
Recent Comments