Solar Battery for Australia

“Queensland Installs Australia’s First Powerwall Battery for Solar Trial”

Queensland, region with one of the highest rates of household solar panel systems in the world, is taking a step further with the solar battery storage system from Tesla. Powerwall boasts up to seven hours of power for appliances such as television and air-conditioning. However, despite the environmental benefits of this clean energy, the high cost structure of the technology remains to be a problem that needs to be addressed. It is expected to take 17 to 26 years, or $10,000 to $17,300, per household to “recover an investment” from implementing the Powerwall system.

Queensland should definitely be applauded for their past efforts and for their continuing efforts to apply clean energy in terms of solar power. I think that it is “sustainable” in the sense that the available abundance of sunlight is not going to waste – rather it is being “recycled” to provide homes with electricity.

Despite the good intention and the good cause for Queensland’s action, one obvious hurdle that I, too, thought about was the expensive cost of this new technology. A 17 to 26 years of investment recovery time does not seem very appealing in terms of the financials – perhaps to the point that it is too early to implement this technology. The only rational explanation behind this long-term investment would be that Queensland has a very large amount of budget allocated to the development of clean energy. Only with a large enough amount would the government be able to weigh in the sustainability benefits over the financial reasoning. If this is not the case, I cannot help but to think about Tesla’s $5B Gigafactory set to be completed in 2020. Looking at the speed of technologies being introduced and innovated, four years time seems like a lot of time for Tesla to improve its products. Upon the completion of this Gigafactory, wouldn’t it make more sense for Queensland to invest a larger amount of money towards their solar power system? I acknowledge the fact that money isn’t the key driver and having additional solar power system for four years would have significant benefits to the environment but Queensland is only running a trial for one year which urges me to become more skeptical of their plan.

I hope that Queensland keeps encouraging neighbours around the world in terms of solar power system. While they may encounter numerous obstacles, in terms of tactics and skepticism, their push and demonstration of positive results will aid them to normalize clean energy implementations.

Article: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/18/queensland-installs-australias-first-powerwall-battery-for-solar-trial