Distributed Storage

In yet another renewable energy related election commitment, South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill has pledged to offer loans to 10,000 households to install rooftop solar and battery storage, which will be made available interest-free for the first seven years.

Australia is on the cusp of a residential battery storage boom. The Climate Council published the forecast last week in its Fully Charged: Renewables and Storage Powering Australia report. BNEF confirms with pv magazine Australia that as a result of the rapid growth, Australia is alongside Germany as the fastest growing market for residential battery storage.

German battery and solar energy company sonnen will move its Australian headquarters from Sydney to Adelaide where it will also establish a manufacturing hub.

Despite hitting a record 1.17 GW of new grid-scale storage capacity in 2017, growth was a mere 4.6% on 2016 having surged 61% the year prior. Industry’s reliance on policy support means foundations for growth remain uneven, report finds. Average costs, however, fell by 24% last year.

Gavin Merchant from SolarEdge Australia and New Zealand speaks to pv magazine Australia about the growing acceptance of module-level power electronics across all solar market segments. The rise of storage is also bringing new opportunities.

The proposed 50,000 home virtual power plant launched by the South Australian state government, in partnership with Tesla, is a big deal. But it does beg a number of questions as to how it will be realized and what the implications of the project could be.

South Australia could play host to the world’s largest deployment of residential solar+storage in the form of a virtual power plant. The scheme, announced by SA Premier Jay Weatherill on the election campaign trail, could see 250 MW of rooftop PV and 650 MWh of battery storage added to 50,000 homes over 4.5 years.

Issuing a call for action, a report commissioned by the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies outlines Australia’s opportunity to expand along the estimated $2 trillion lithium chain in the next two years.

The Austrian inverter specialist is launching a new version of its Energy Package upgraded with storage units from LG Chem.

The head of the Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo), Eduardo Bitran says that Tesla may partner with local lithium producer SQM in the construction of a factory. The Chilean government and SQM have recently settled a dispute that began in 2014.