Energy Storage & Solar Batteries
About Solar Batteries
With electricity prices continuing to rise and homeowners becoming more conscious of running costs, the uptake of battery storage systems in Australia is expected to quickly grow into a billion-dollar-a-year market.
To find out the wealth of benefits solar batteries can bring to both your home and the grid as a whole, read on.
Benefits of Solar Batteries for the Home
Significant Electricity Savings
Investing in a solar battery system for your home can help you save more money on your electricity bills, compared to just installing solar alone. Rather than exporting your excess solar energy to the grid for a small feed-in tariff (across Australia the average is around 9 cents per unit), your solar battery will store any excess electricity, allowing you to use it later in the evening, when your solar PV system is not generating any electricity. This will greatly decrease the amount of electricity you’re required to buy from the grid at full price (around 25 to 26 cents per unit), resulting in significant savings.
Energy Independence
Installing a battery bank at your home or business lessens the amount of energy you’ll need to buy from the grid. This decreases your reliance on the grid and major energy retailers, giving you more energy independence.
Energy Arbitrage
If your home is on a Time of Use Tariff, installing a solar battery means you can benefit from energy arbitrage. By charging your battery bank during off-peak rates and using your own stored electricity during peak rates, you’ll end up pocketing the difference and saving a lot of money on your electricity bills. Energy arbitrage can be accomplished with or without a solar PV system.
Backup Power in Case of Grid Outages
In some cases, it’s possible to install your home battery storage system to provide your home with backup power. This gives you the convenience and flexibility of always having electricity, regardless of what’s happening on the grid.
State of the Art Technology
Installing a battery bank means your home will be able to take advantage of future regulatory changes which will allow households, small businesses, and community groups to trade rooftop solar generated electricity between each other. Investing in a battery will allow you to store your excess solar electricity, and selling it to neighbours for more than the gazetted feed-in tariff rate, effective bypassing major energy retailers.
Tesla Power Wall 2
A Revolutionary Battery For Home and Business
Powerwall 2 is designed to store any excess solar energy your PV system produces. This allows owners to power their home or business with free solar energy during the day or night, and can provide seamless and reliable power in the event of a blackout.
Powerwall 2 also requires no maintenance and comes with a 10-year warranty.
The Tesla Powerwall 2 will also be able to be used for:
- Energy arbitrage
- Peak shaving
- Backup power
How is Powerwall 2 Different?
Powerwall 2 offers 13.5kWh of usable capacity, and comes with an in-built inverter. This allows Powerwall 2 to convert DC power to AC power internally, getting rid of the need for an extra hybrid inverter. This will result in lower installation costs and a much easier installation process.
Safety and battery life is maximised thanks to the liquid thermal controls and touch safety technology.
Users can seamlessly monitor and automatically manage your Powerwall, solar panels, Model S or X with the Tesla App.
With over-the-air software updates, Powerwall 2 will continue to improve and adapt to your lifestyle.
BYD HVM B-Box
The BYD Battery Premium storage system is based on lithium iron phosphate, which is one of the most reliable storage technologies available. The battery has a modular structure and can be expanded in steps of 2.76 kWh for the HVM, giving you the option for your storage to be expanded on at a later date.
BYD or Build Your Dreams( I kid you not.) are one of the largest battery manufacturers world wide You can knock the name but not the product, after all Warren Buffett owns 24% of the company and he knows a thing or 2 about investing in winners. The BYD HVM range is modular so expansion in the future is possible and it means your not locked into buying 10 or 14kW units when that much is not required.
They couple beautifully with Fronius Gen24 Hybrid inverters which also means that a larger PV system is possible as the Hybrid inverter can take both DC from solar panels and Dc from the lithium battery.
One Battery-Box Premium HVM is composed of 3 to 8 HVM battery modules that are connected in series to achieve a usable capacity of 8.3 to 22.1 kWh.
Technical Specifications
Tesla PW2
| Technology | Wall mounted, rechargeable lithium ion battery with liquid thermal control. |
| Model | 14 kWh |
| Warranty | 10 years |
| Power | 7kW peak / 5kW continuous |
| Usable Capacity | 13.5kWh |
| Supported Applications | Solar self-consumption Time of use load shifting Backup Off grid |
| Scalable | Up to 9 Powerwalls |
| Operating Temperature | -20°C to 50°C |
| Enclosure | Floor or wall mounted Indoor or outdoor |
| Installation | Requires installation by a trained electrician |
| Weight | 264.4 lbs / 110 kg |
| Dimensions | 1150 mm x 755 mm x 155 mm |
Technical Specifications
BYD Battery-Box Premium HVM
| Round trip efficiency | ≥96% |
| Battery Cell Technology | Lithium Iron Phosphate (cobalt-free) |
| Useable battery capacity | 8.3kWh – 22.1kWh |
| Ambient temperature range | 5C to 40C |
| Warranty | 10 years |
| Dimension (W x H x D) (HVM 11.0) |
1,178mm x 585mm x 298mm |
| Weight (HVM 11.0) |
167kg (38kg per battery module) |
| Communication | CAN/RS485 |
| Enclosure Protection Rating | 1P55 (Indoor and Outdoor) |
| Communication | RS485 |
Benefits of Solar Batteries for the Grid
Reduced Pressure on Electricity Networks
By installing a home battery and taking pressure off the grid, your home is helping contribute to the longer life of local infrastructure and resources. This lessens the frequency of costly network upgrades, which end up being paid for by all grid users.
Mitigating Power Intermittency Caused by Solar PV
While solar PV systems produce electricity steadily and predictably throughout the day when the sun is shining, if there is cloud cover or any sort of climate disruption, solar electricity output for an entire region can fluctuate unpredictably, requiring other generation plants (typically coal and gas) to be brought quickly online to meet demands.
This can cause a lot of stress and strain for the grid. Common adoption of home battery storage systems would mitigate the impact of this problem, using the stored electricity of their own batteries, rather than the grid, to make up for any power shortages. Widespread uptake of batteries could also help to manage unintended voltage level fluctuations, helping current grid infrastructure have a longer life.
State of the Art Technology
Installing a battery bank means your home will be able to take advantage of future regulatory changes which will allow households, small businesses, and community groups to trade rooftop solar generated electricity between each other. Investing in a battery will allow you to store your excess solar electricity, and selling it to neighbours for more than the gazetted feed-in tariff rate, effective bypassing major energy retailers.
