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Nice Video (AU)
Could solar power be about to transform the electricity industry and drive prices down?
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4240286.htm
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Imagine life without that dreaded quarterly power bill. That could be around the corner for people with solar panels. Until now, solar energy couldn't be stored efficiently and people who had it relied on the electricity grid for backup. Now, new battery technology means that could change. Matt Peacock reports.

MATT PEACOCK, REPORTER: It's the power revolution coming to your house soon.

ELON MUSK, CEO, TESLA: We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the Sun. You don't have to do anything; it just works. Shows up every day and produces ridiculous amounts of power.

MATT PEACOCK: Power that's plentiful but could never be effectively stored. A breakthrough in battery technology is about to change that.

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI, BLOOMBERG NEW ENERGY FINANCE: Batteries really signify a complete game-changer. They come in couple with solar PV that really enable consumers now to become their own mini-power stations.

GILES PARKINSON, EDITOR, RENEW ENERGY: It's going to be about as big a change as we've seen in the telecommunications industry with mobile phones.

ELON MUSK: You can actually go, if you want, completely off grid. You can take your solar panels, charge the battery packs and that's all you use.

MATT PEACOCK: This month, PayPal billionaire Elon Musk unveiled Powerwall, a cheap lithium ion battery, soon to be churned out on a massive scale in a giant factory being built in Nevada.

The solar batteries have been developed from the technology that powers this groundbreaking electric car, the Tesla.

HEATH WALKER, COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, TESLA AUSTRALIA: We have been able to take solar to battery, battery to car. And as you can see from the release of the power in the car, accelerating from zero to a hundred in just 3.3 seconds, shows that we've got great release from the lithium ion batteries to power. So, we've now got two batteries on the market, the seven kilowatt-hour and the 10 kilowatt-hour. Seven kilowatt-hour for daily use and 10 kilowatt-hour as a backup.

MATT PEACOCK: Next year, Australia will become Powerwall's prime overseas market, where it's estimated with add-ons it'll retail at about $5,500.

HEATH WALKER: The interest in Australia is mainly due to the high uptake of solar in this country and the opportunity - it makes economic sense to have a home battery.

GILES PARKINSON: It'll happen quicker in Australia than it will happen anywhere else in the world because of the high retail prices. We pay so much just to boil a kettle in the city and now we've got a cheaper way of doing it.

MATT PEACOCK: Imagine low or even no power bills. The new solar battery technology gives consumers control. And that's forcing energy companies to rethink the way they do business.

Up in Northern Australia in the tropics, solar power's a bit of a no-brainer. But it's here in a quiet cul-de-sac in suburban Townsville that the local electricity supplier's been running tests in 10 houses of solar, plus the new revolution, batteries.

For Ergon Energy, it's a case of: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

DEAN CONDEN, INNOVATION ENGINEER, ERGON ENERGY: So at the moment our solar panels are generating power and coming onto the grid. We've also got excess. There's not much load, so the rest of it's going back out to the electricity network on the street.

MATT PEACOCK: That means Barry and Glenys Lowe are now using battery power and selling their surplus back to the grid.

BARRY LOWE: Well since Dean's put the five-kilowatt system in, we haven't paid a power bill.

MATT PEACOCK: Has that surprised you?

BARRY LOWE: It did, it did. And there's been some surplus money out of it.

MATT PEACOCK: In some of Queensland's far-flung rural communities, Ergon is installing localised grids with battery storage to save running transmission lines over vast distances. Similar micro grids are possible in cities.

DEAN CONDEN: Up here in North Queensland, we're subject to things like cyclones, where we can come in and have widespread devastation. The opportunity here we have in this street is that we could potentially test the availability of a micro grid where the mains power went down into the street, then the houses in the street could supply energy and trade energy amongst each other and still stay connected and share their energy.

MATT PEACOCK: The Tesla battery has Australia's top power companies like AGL scrambling to catch up. Three years ago, it bought out Victoria's biggest brown coal generator, Loy Yang, the nation's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. But it also operates the country's largest solar farm at Nyngan. Now, it's begun offering customers solar panels without upfront fees and in a few weeks begins to market its own battery.

MARC ENGLAND, NEW ENERGY, AGL: The typical Australian home runs on a circuit that requires about three kilowatts of power. So our battery will allow Australian consumers to have this battery to run their appliances and their air-conditioning late in the afternoon off the battery power.

GILES PARKINSON: They are recognising that this is going to be the biggest change in their industry in more than a century, so they're trying to engage with the consumer and protect their business.

MATT PEACOCK: Very soon, households, even apartments and rental homes, will be offered bundled plans for their electricity, a mixture of solar, grid and batteries, all tailored for affordable cost and household demand.

GLEN WALDON, ERGON ENERGY: So instead of just buying kilowatt hours, you'll be getting different product wraps and product mixes. So capped price options, somewhat like telco offerings for mobile phone plans'd be the sort of - typical sort of thing you'll start to see.

MATT PEACOCK: With the price of lithium batteries predicted to fall still further, faster, the switch to solar is likely to accelerate.

KOBAD BHAVNAGRI: Solar on people's roofs is an unstoppable force. You have to embrace the new technology, otherwise you will be swept away by it.

LEIGH SALES: Matt Peacock with that report.