How quickly will households pick up battery storage?

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May 21, 2015 11:27 am

RenewEconomy
As a follow up to our story on Wednesday on the potential of household adoption of battery storage – Morgan Stanley sees 2.4 million Australian homes with battery storage – we thought we would provide a few more graphs about how quickly that might be adopted.

This graph above shows the impact in terms of reduced demand from the grid, in various states, as households move to adopt battery storage.
Morgan Stanley says that it is not yet forecasting customer losses – as opposed to demand losses – for the utilities (e.g. from customers cutting off from the grid), but it does see lower gross margins per customer as energy usage per customer declines.
The cost, it notes, could be just below $400 a customer for Origin Energy and AGL Energy, as lower usage charges overwhelm gains from saved feed in tariff payments and energy costs. One key uncertainty in our earnings impact estimates is the impact of future network tariff increases and tariff structures.

As mentioned above, Morgan Stanley is discounting mass grid defections, at least with the Tesla PowerWall, because it would probably not be economic. Although it will feasible, and if it does happen, then it will happen first in Queensland because fewer batteries are needed.”

“Our channel checks think that mass grid shedding is unlikely to occur in the medium term, primarily because the solar and battery systems will not ensure the 99.9% availability of power currently provided by the grid,” the analysts write.
“Put simply, it’s thought that household solar and battery systems won’t have enough juice to make it all the way through the winter (especially in Victoria). Also, there are a large number of households with insufficient rooftop, capital or interest, e.g. apartment dwellers and renters.
“Looking at 10 years of consumption patterns from AEMO metering data and continuity of solar production from the Bureau of Meteorology, we conclude that cutting off will first be technically feasible in Queensland (e.g. 2x7kWh batteries paired with a 5kW solar PV system), followed by South Australia. Victorian consumers, with their cold, dark winters, may struggle to get there even with 3x7kWh batteries).
This article was first published at RenewEconomy.

Giles Parkinson

Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of One Step Off The Grid, and also edits and founded Renew Economy and The Driven. He has been a journalist for 35 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.

This post was published on May 21, 2015 11:27 am

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View Comments

Hayden says:

May 21, 2015 at 3:18 pm

I believe that I am the first person in Auz to put myself on the waiting list for a powerwall system from Tesla, which I did, about two weeks ago in their Sydney office.

nakedChimp says:

May 21, 2015 at 8:30 pm

hehehe :-)

Jacob says:

May 22, 2015 at 1:34 pm

A lot of Aussies think that cost of making electricity from rooftop solar panels is only 6c/kwh.
(because that is how much the grid pays them for said electrons)
So a lot of them will go off grid thinking that they will save money by doing so.

john says:

May 23, 2015 at 5:25 am

From a not very good rooftop setup half east half north some shading
Historical cost of 5 kw system $8k output yearly 7960 kwh.
Same system north facing 8500 kwh output.
In both cases some days output in middle of winter and rain output 4 kwh as against cool clear days with wind leading up to summer 35 kwh per day.
So storage or augmented supply is needed.
My feelings is work out using 350 days as excess for storage so there are 15 to 16 days when storage or backup is needed.
This puts the capital into $15 to $20k area for the supply of household and when excess is available it would have to be either dumped or exported I think export is better.
Using 5500 as yearly demand for 2 person house that is 15 kwh a day.
With 8000 kwh output yearly
So rough figures between 16 to 22 cents per kwh over 15 years using the two capital costs and 6 cents as export