Australia will be the first to receive Tesla’s new house-powering battery

In its press release, Tesla describes the 7kWh Powerwall battery as “a compelling option for Australian residential solar users, due to the unique structure of retail electricity and the feed-in-tariff solar pricing options across the country”.

The clean-tech giant announced yesterday it will launch its high profile Powerwall units in North America, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Austria by the end of 2015. The battery storage device however could be used in a home without solar PV.

Modi will address a Renewable Energy Roundtable with United States Department of Commerce and Stanford University on 26 September, the prime minister’s office said in a statement on Sunday.

Tesla says it’s more cost effective for Australians to consume their own solar power than to sell it back to the utility. Powerpack groups together offer powerful 100 kWh battery blocks ranging from 500 kWh to 10 MWh, reported CNET. “Our goal is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy”, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said back in May. Besides energy storage, it has a set of extra features, which allow owners to adjust the operational specifications as they find fit and according to their needs. Tesla’s high-tech battery will enable homes with solar panels to store energy from sunlight during the day, which can then be utilized during peak hours when rates are high. These moves are anticompetitive and are a kneejerk reaction to the supposed threat of Powerwall and BES more generally. But battery energy storage systems are not at all a threat to the nation’s established power generation infrastructure. In conjunction with rooftop solar, Powerwall will reduce any given house’s reliance on grid power, especially during peak periods.

The Powerwall aims to fix that by keeping generated power at the home rather than selling it off to the grid.

Energy companies will have to adapt to a country where partly decentralised power production and completely decentralised power storage is commonplace.

The standard model being plugged by Tesla – for the average household – is the 7kWh Powerwall. “Whereas in most of the USA you just have a meter that’s ticking over”.

Maybe when that happens, the extortionate fixed prices to stay connected to the grid might go down.