Panasonic this week announced plans to trial battery technology in solar installed homes.
The trial was made possible following an agreement between Panasonic, ActewAGL, Red Energy and Ergon Energy.
The trial was launched at an event attended by NSW Minister for Industry, Resources and Energy, Anthony Roberts and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) CEO, Ivor Frischknecht who explained how storage is set to change the entire energy landscape.
"Currently, solar panels generate electricity during the day, but most people aren’t home to use it, so it gets fed into the grid. It doesn’t earn the homeowner much and sometimes it creates problems for the networks," he explained.
"In the new model, excess energy is stored in the battery rather than fed into the grid. When you come home to use energy – usually at peak periods – the solar energy is there in your house ready to use. This saves money and prevents the grid from overloading.
"If batteries are cheap enough, this value proposition will ensure that most homes will have solar and storage within a few years. But distributed batteries can do even more providing backup power for computers, lighting and life support systems.
"Using storage to trade energy will effectively allow user demand to more closely follow energy supply. That is valuable for thermal power stations, so they don’t constantly need to be ramped up and down. Plus, it is critical to intermittent renewable energy such as solar and wind, which isn’t always available."
Put simply, the cheaper solar and storage get, the faster the transition to renewables will be. Frischknecht said some electricity networks are complaining that solar is reducing their revenue without reducing their costs.
"Revenue is based on the number of electrons they sell, while cost is driven by peak demand, which in residential areas usually occurs as solar output is dropping in the late afternoon or evening," he said.
"Battery storage will allow households to make a real contribution to reducing peak demand. I expect tariffs will be restructured over coming years to encourage consumers to do exactly that.
"Network storage, whether distributed or more centralised, will allow energy companies to defer or avoid upgrading networks resulting in lower bills for end users."
ARENA has $2.5 billion to invest in projects that will reduce the cost and increase the use of renewable energy in Australia.
Frischknecht said it is still early days for energy storage, 99 per cent of which is provided by pumped hydro.
"But pumped hydro isn’t convenient to install at premises behind the meter so batteries are a key enabler to allowing storage to take off," he said.
"Today, the fact that we have Red Energy (Snowy Hydro), AGL and Ergon Energy partnering with Panasonic says a lot about our rapidly changing electricity markets.
"There is clearly a need for energy companies and industry bodies and government to work together to drive and manage this change."