Tesla has struck a deal with the state government of South Australia to install 50,000 solar-power systems on homes, at no cost to residents.
This will the world’s largest virtual power plant, slashing household power bills in the process.
South Australia is already home to world’s biggest battery in an Elon Musk-driven project to provide electricity for more than 30,000 homes.
The cost of the project will be financed through the sale of electricity, generated by the panels, in what Mr Weatherill said would be the largest project of its kind.
“My government has already delivered the world’s biggest battery, now we will deliver the world’s largest virtual power plant,” state Premier Jay Weatherill said in a statement.
“We will use people’s homes as a way to generate energy for the South Australian grid, with participating households benefitting with significant savings in their energy bills.”
The project will start with a trial phase and 1,100 houses will get 5KW Telsa Batteries. Following the trail, the system will reach further 24,00 households.
“The biggest saving for consumers is that they don’t have to pay for as much network cost to deliver power to them because they’re generating their own power,” Frontier Economics managing director Danny Price said.
Tesla Said the virtual power plant would have 250 megawatts of solar energy and 650-megawatt hours of battery storage.
“At key moments, the virtual power plant could provide as much capacity as a large gas turbine or coal power plant,” the company added.
Sparcrypt on February 5th, 2018 at 04:42 UTC »
Just to clarify a few misconceptions being thrown around.
All of the houses that have had this done and all that are planned are owned by Housing Trust... so they're government provided and owned housing, not privately owned homes. Those who sign up get cheaper, but not free, power. Current examples seem to be about a reduction of one third.. at no upfront cost this is a pretty good deal, especially as in order to get government housing you are basically broke anyway. Private owners will be able to sign up for the deal if they so choose later on. (Edit: expressions of interest are already open). Nobody is forcing this on anybody and if you prefer you can still pay for and install your own solar panels, which can feed back into the grid to sell power back and provide you with the full benefit. This hasn't changed.. there's just now an option to rent out your solar space in exchange for cheaper power. The government is looking into ways to bring competition to this scheme by opening up the installations to other companies, who can perform the installs and in return have the rights to the sale of all power that is generated. I'm not entirely sure how that works with the discount to power for residents but I imagine that will all be worked out.dontfrowmeaway on February 5th, 2018 at 04:25 UTC »
When did South Australia become newsworthy for something other than wine and serial murders?
Super_chain_xiamen on February 5th, 2018 at 02:50 UTC »
China has been doing this for a while now. Most of their oversea projects are free but you pay back with a 20 year contract over the whatever the revenue the project makes, usually it is about 50/50 profit split.