Australia to pilot new power plan
One of the largest solar companies in the world has chosen Australia as the proving ground for a new model of power production that promises to give householders more control – and cut bills.‘What do you do when the sun doesn’t shine?’ It’s been one of the criticisms levelled at the solar panels that are now
so common on residential and commercial roofs across Australia.
Australia has the world’s greatest penetration of solar photovoltaic panels. By the end of 2013, more than 3,000 megawatts of small-scale solar was installed across 1.1 million households, with the average system now 3.9 kilowatts in size.
Now Sunpower Corporation – which builds solar panels but also large-scale solar plants – has flagged that it will be using Australia as a global testing ground for
a new model for providing electricity.
An announcement on a pilot project in Victoria, focused on the economics of storing domestically produced solar power, is expected in the next two months.
For years, it’s been keenly understood that the next big thing – the Holy Grail if you like for solar – would be the ability to store energy generated from solar panels for later use at a reasonable cost.
At the moment, domestic solar PV generators can be supplying power into the grid but only getting paid 8 cents kw/hour during daylight hours, and then be charged as much as 30 cents kw/hour if they use electricity in the early evening peak. Solar storage gets around this problem.
For consumers it could mean being able to manipulate power use – and cut bills by avoiding expensive peak electricity times. While Sunpower operates in 10 countries across the globe, president Tom Werner has told the ABC News that his company has chosen Australia as the country to prove up the economics of power generation from many small-scale sources.
“Australia has a great solar resource,” says Werner. “We see penetration rates in Australia that are higher than other parts of the world,
