Posts By Ronald Brakels, Author & Fact-Checker At SolarQuotes

SVTC Solar Scorecard: A Great Idea Badly Executed

January 4, 2017 2018-05-09T08:30:15 by 5 Comments
svtc logo and pollution

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition should be a really useful tool for solar buyers. Unfortunately it isn’t.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, or SVTC to its friends, is an organisation that has been working hard for over 32 years to protect this life encrusted blob of nickel and iron spinning in space that we call Earth.

SVTC campaigns to promote both safe environmental practices and ethical behavior in high tech industries.  Each year since 2009 they have released a report called the SVTC Solar Scorecard that ranks solar panel manufacturers on both their environmental sustainability and ethical behavior. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Solar and the Environment Tagged With:

2016 The Good News: CO2 Emissions Level Off, Cost Of Solar Falls

December 30, 2016 2024-01-25T15:49:51 by 4 Comments

solar worker waving goodbye to 2016

It has become fashionable to refer to 2016 as a horrible year. An annus horribilis.

If your personal annus has been horribilis, then you have my condolences. But I think, for most of the world’s population, it has actually been a pretty good year. An annus prettigoodis if you will. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

NSW Feed In Tariff Changes – Channel 9 Adds To The Confusion

December 28, 2016 2017-04-18T15:07:57 by 15 Comments

Last night Channel Nine News in Sydney ran a short segment on how NSW’s high gross solar feed-in tariffs are ending in a few days time.

Many of the details in this segment were not correct. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Electricity Prices Tagged With: , ,

Is The Powerwall 2 A Good Investment?

December 21, 2016 2024-02-22T15:06:52 by 85 Comments
powerwall 2 and piggy bank

Will a grid connected Powerwall 2 beat a term deposit as an investment?

Update: read about the impending arrival of the Powerwall 3 in Australia

Tesla has announced the impending arrival of the Powerwall 2 at a promised price point that, on the surface, looks very compelling: $10,150 fully installed1, or  23c per warranted kWh.

It seems particularly impressive when you consider that in Sydney and Perth, time-of-use tariffs can go to 50c per kWh during peak periods.

That’s 23c for electricity from a battery vs. 50c for grid electricity. Surely that makes the Powerwall 2 a no-brainer investment for people on such a tariff?

I decided to look a little deeper into the economics of using Australia’s cheapest battery2, on Australia’s highest grid tariffs.  Unfortunately I found that high peak rates are not nearly as good for the economics of the Powerwall 2 as they seem.

Read on to discover why. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Battery Storage Tagged With: , ,

How many solar panels should you install with a Powerwall 2?

December 14, 2016 2024-01-25T07:16:23 by 83 Comments
powerwall and solar mix up

Installing more rooftop solar is a better investment than a Powerwall 2, so always rack up as much solar on your roof as you reasonably can first. Unlike this guy.

The Tesla Powerwall 2 is going to be big.  Really big.  I mean that literally and not figuratively.  It’s going to be big as in 13.5 kilowatt-hours of storage big.  From the point of view of most Australian households that is huge.

This large capacity presents households with two main problems:

  1.  It is more than the average Australian household uses at night.
  2. Those that do use that much electricity overnight may not have a rooftop solar system large enough to fully charge it.

So if the average Australian home buys a Powerwall 2 they will use it at less than its full capacity. As Tesla’s warranty is fixed at a maximum of 10 years, this increases the cost of each warranted kilowatt-hour substantially.

The obvious solutions are:

  1. Don’t install a Powerwall 2 unless your household regularly uses 12+ kilowatt-hours of electricity overnight.
  2. Don’t install a Powerwall 2 unless your solar system normally produces enough surplus electricity to fully charge it on a mostly clear day.  Normally this will require at least 5 kilowatts of solar panels.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Battery Storage Tagged With: , ,

Should you go off grid with a Powerwall 2?

December 9, 2016 2017-05-13T16:26:56 by 25 Comments

 

bloke with powerwall 2 cutting the wires to his house

Thinking of getting a Powerwall 2 and taking yourself off grid? Then you need to read this first.

 

Note from Finn:

Since this post was published Tesla have canned the DC Powerwall 2 in Australia. We will now only be able to get an AC Powerwall 2. A regular AC coupled battery is no good for off grid because it can’t talk to the solar inverter to balance energy demand and supply. So if you live in Australia and want to go off grid do not use a Powerwall 2.

 

 

A long time ago, back in the days before we knew how lame the original Powerwall was compared to its hype or how good the Powerwall 2’s hype is compared to the original Powerwall, I wrote about whether or not my parents in sub-tropical Queensland could save money by going off-grid using lead-acid battery storage.

My conclusion was they could not save money even under almost ideal circumstances.  The benefit of staying on-grid and receiving even a low feed-in tariff for surplus solar electricity was too great to make saying sayonara to the grid connection wire worthwhile. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Battery Storage Tagged With: , ,

Cost Of Powerwall 2 Drops 9% Overnight

December 7, 2016 2018-05-09T09:09:48 by 25 Comments
powerwall 2

The Tesla Powerwall 2 is now $800 cheaper in Australia.

Tesla appears to be unsure about how much to charge Australians for the Powerwall 2.

Or maybe they are sure, but confused about how the Australian dollarydoo works.

Perhaps they’ve been confusing it with the New Zealand doubloon or the Fijian guilder?

I know I often do.

"Crikey! 900 Dollarydoos to the New Zealand doubloon and 6 centaroos to the Fijian guilder!"

“Crikey! 900 dollarydoos to the New Zealand doubloon and 6 centaroos to the Fijian guilder!”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Battery Storage Tagged With: ,

Unwitting Warranties: A Ticking Time Bomb For The Battery Industry

November 30, 2016 2016-12-19T16:05:13 by 13 Comments
dodgy battery sales guy

As soon as a battery manufacturer says this, your battery magically gets a 20 year warranty in Australia. No matter what the warranty document says.

The other day a salesperson give me the rundown on a home battery system he had on display.  While it wasn’t cheap, it certainly appeared to be a very impressive piece of technology.  The salesperson clearly had a lot of confidence in it because, even though its written warranty was only for 10 years, he very generously doubled that to a 20 year warranty without batting an eyelid.

Ben Affleck had his eyes batted for two hours a day in preparation for this role.

Ben Affleck would bat his eyelids for two hours a day in preparation for this role.

We weren’t related, so nepotism wasn’t the reason for his generosity.  And it wasn’t because I saved his life in Nam…bour.  (That sugar cane train could be really dangerous.)  We weren’t old schoolmates, and as hard as it may be to believe, he wasn’t taken in by my charm and good looks.

No, the reason why he gave me a 20 year warranty was simply because he didn’t realize he was giving one.  Or possibly, he did realize he was giving one and really hates his company.

He gave me a 20 year warranty when he told me the battery system had a design life of 20 years.  According to Australian Consumer Law, if a salesperson makes a statement that a reasonable person would conclude to mean that a product can be expected to last for 20 years, then that counts as a 20 year warranty.  It doesn’t matter that this warranty was given verbally or that it is twice as long as its written warranty, legally it still counts. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Battery Storage Tagged With:

Solar Rebate Ending?

November 29, 2016 2017-09-20T11:17:10 by 8 Comments

dont-panic

Have you heard the news?  The solar rebate is ending!  It’s all over the internet.  Or at least all over the parts of the internet that run ads from shonky solar companies.  According to them, if you don’t rush out right now to get rooftop solar installed before the first of January you’ll end up paying a fortune for it!  If you don’t buy now, the price of a typical 5 kilowatt rooftop solar system will rise by…

…just a second… let me work it out…

Around $263 which is about a 4% increase. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Solar Panels Tagged With: ,

Energex Tries To Stop Tide Of Batteries With Bonkers Tariff 31 and 33 Rule

November 23, 2016 2024-01-25T13:39:05 by 9 Comments

king energex on a throne

Cnut from Energex1 tries to stop batteries.

Energex is the state government owned network operator for all of Queensland.  They receive electricity from the high voltage transmission lines that Powerlink manages and distribute it to the state’s homes and businesses. They also kindly distribute it things that aren’t homes or business, including my cousin’s non-profit Fight Club Community Center2. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Battery Storage Tagged With: , ,
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