[... continued]

Really?Really?

Can someone explain how storing energy from a solar system in a battery and using it in the home to peak times to avoid peak charges (effectively avoiding the purchase of energy) creates a power quality risk? The solar industry is one of the most regulated in the country and I am all for standards and accreditation, don’t get me wrong. Anything we sell or install should be the epitome of quality and safety lest we do ourselves a disservice, but lets not confuse a device that alleviates network load and consumer costs with something that simply threatens the status quo.

Now to be fair, SA Power Networks do talk about an interim process and pending modification of the Small Embedded Generator request process to take into account storage. So the ruling doesn’t say you cant do it, but by default it certainly discourage’s it for pretty much every single South Australian.

We urgently need standards and regulations developed which allow storage on networks and encourage innovation and reduced demand, not policies that block them and dis-empower consumer choice. Let’s hope the modifications to their rules take a much more adaptive and progressive approach.

You can read the relevant SA Power Networks Industry News here.

heres the thing, how ould the power company know if you are  storing energy from a solar system in a battery and using it in the home to peak times to avoid peak charges

Not all are as backward as SA, it seems.

Energy storage – a saviour for networks or a Trojan horse?

By Giles Parkinson on 4 November 2013

Australian network operators are turning increasingly to the use of battery storage to solve their problems with network management, particularly in grid demand. But just as storage looms as a potential glue to keep the networks together, it could just as easily offer the technology and the means to break them apart.

Australian power industry investor Tag Pacific predicts storage has the potential to become a major disruptive technology for the conventional power business – at the same time offering networks a unique opportunity to stabilise their grid management, but also offering customers the opportunity to leave the grid altogether.

Tag Pacific chairman Nathan Wise says the disruption from storage will come because it will challenge the traditional model of centralised generation and transmission over great distances.

The move towards decentralised power generation (such as solar) is changing the relationship with the grid. He says that while storage is needed by the network operators to manage those changes, and new technologies such as electric vehicles, it will will also give clients the option of taking themselves off the grid altogether, presenting a new problem for networks

Tag Pacific builds power systems for the mining and petroleum sector, as well as desigining and building solar installations for residential, industrial and commercial clients, and supplying components. It also installs trigeneration systems and back-up power systems in the CBD and clients such as Sydney Airport.

Tag Pacific, through its MPower subsidiary, is currently running a two-year pilot project for Victorian electricity distributor SP Ausnet, looking at how energy storage systems can address demand problems when the peaks exceed network capacity.

The trial is monitoring power demands within individual households and how the use of stored power during peak-load periods can reduce demand on the network and avoid peak tariff rates, cutting costs for householders.

Wise says MPower is developing the “smarts and controls” that sit around the battery bank and which interact with the grid and the solar systems. The system monitors power demands in individual households and stores power for use in peak-load periods, reducing the demand on the network and energy costs for the householder.

The systems incorporate rooftop solar PV, advanced lithium ion batteries, bi-directional inverters and programmable controllers capable of being monitored and controlled remotely.

Utilities are clearly interested in looking at how energy storage can be used within the networks. Energex, Augrid and others are all undergoing trials and pilot projects to look at the potential to use the technology to boost the reliability of networks, particularly in regional areas, and avoid costly upgrades, and to manage the high penetrations of solar, including in metropolitan areas. They are also looking at electric vehicles, and the role of their batteries – both charging and potential discharging –will also have an impact on grid management.

However, while utilities will use storage as a key element of grid management, Wise says there is also potential for battery storage to be used to take homes, and even businesses and communities  - off the grid.

“You can see how this could be quite disruptive,” he says. It will come down to cost, and where the value of storage can be found and exploited – for either the consumer or the operator.

The company is already seeing the economics of storage work in remote areas where the cost of a network connection is very high. “What will be very interesting to see is as the cost of battery falls, whether that impacts on decisions by households and communities to make that move.”

MPower recently won two awards for community storage and control systems in remote communities in WA, and for off-grid renewable energy storage systems for three communities in the Northern Territory.

The WA system – which also addressed issues of periods of rapid weather change – enabled more renewable energy to be used in isolated electricity networks, particularly in the Pilbara region. The Northern territory system allowed for a significant reduction in the use of diesel.

“We are positioning ourselves at the leading edge of the energy storage and power convergence trend in Australia, which these initiatives show has particular relevance for remote communities and individual households.”

Tag Pacific also provides technologies to the solar industry, and Wise says that while the technology is growing in viability, even as most subsidies are removed, it not yet at a “tipping point.” But Wise says that is not because the economics don’t work, it’s more of a lack of knowledge.

[continued ...]

ian wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2013 at 2:39am:

My guess: installing batteries would require approval. That would be hard to hide.

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Nov 4^th, 2013 at 2:17pm:


Still TROLLING with ad homs and insults.

Is that all you were taught in your youth.......!!!!!

You must be a sad little miserable person...!!!!!!

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Nov 4^th, 2013 at 2:17pm:


DRAH - Consider this a warning.

[... continued]

Q. What role do you foresee energy storage to play in the near future?

A. The price of storage has been reducing, so at the moment we think it’s on the cusp of being a financially viable alternative to traditional network solutions. With the cost of energy storage falling, it will become more and more viable. Energy storage has three key roles:
1 - It provides an option value, in the sense that it provides an alternative to make a large network investment die by providing an option to incrementally roll out batteries annually to keep up with low growth. Particularly when you look at the future there are a lot of uncertainties into what the demand growth on the networks are going to be. There’s some forecasts that would expect demand growth to be falling into the future so battery storage essentially would be able to buy you time rather than making a big investment today on the assumption that growth with continue.
2 - It technically provides the capability to reduce peak demand and it certainly provides the capability to improve network reliability. The solution we are rolling out provides customers with an uninterruptible power supply into their home. Something the customer is looking for, and certainly a key service for some of the business customers we are talking to.
3 - It provides the facility to firm up the output from intermittent generation such as solar and wind and buffers the network from rapid change such as when clouds pass over.

So we see multiple roles for energy storage. We see it will become a significant change in the whole infrastructure of the energy industry. And some of that storage will be owned by customers. As we see that storage prices reduce, some customers will go ahead and install it themselves. So we see a combination of utility owned and managed storage and customer owned and managed storage which is going to be a key part of the industry in the future.

It’s a game changer and when we think about energy storage we also think about Electric Vehicles which is another element of energy storage. While it has had a slow start we are starting to see in some parts of the world EVs getting some traction. Again, if you look at it in 5 to 10 years, having EVs and the storage element that they add into the network, will add another factor that could be advantageous, if it’s done properly.