RenewEconomy
Japanese electronics giant Panasonic – a partner with Tesla – to announce battery storage rollout with Australian utilities next week.
The rapid roll-out of battery storage products into the Australian electricity market continues apace, with Japanese electronics giant Panasonic to announce its move into Australia next week.
Panasonic is scheduled to announce its Australian plans with “some of” Australia’s leading energy Australian retailers on Tuesday in Sydney. It will likely include its now 6.8kWh PV-battery storage system.
This follows the announcement by Tesla last month of its battery storage product, which has been followed by AGL Energy’s teaming up with AU Optronics to deliver a 7.2kWh system into the Queensland market, Trina’s launch of its battery storage system, and expected rollouts from LG, Zen and other providers.
Panasonic is a partner with Tesla in the massive “giga-factory”, the first large scale battery storage manufacturing plant. It also provides the battery cells for its Tesla Model S electric vehicle.
The Nevada giga-factory is expected to focus on batteries for electric vehicles, but Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk recently said that demand for his company’s Powerwall for households, and its utility-scale Powerpack was so great that the facility could reach capacity just with those orders.
Panasonic, which also makes solar modules, recently announced that it will unveil its new battery storage system at the InterSolar conference in Germany in June.
Panasonic describes the 1.4m x 96.6cm x 27.8cm system as “the perfect complement to existing and new solar systems on residential buildings”.
It says the AC-coupled, single-phase system contains long-established, high-performance lithium-ion batteries from Panasonic and has a storage capacity of 6.8 kWh.
“During development Panasonic has also taken into account the interests of energy suppliers that are developing ever-increasing decentralised energy supply solutions using third party regenerative systems.
“By interconnecting and benefiting from private storage systems energy suppliers can increase the flexibility of their energy supply. Storage units contribute to network stability and allow load management, so that investment in the development of local networks can be reduced.”
Panasonic first entered the residential energy storage in Europe in mid-2012, when it released a 1.35kWh module that was usually sold as a 5.4kWh system (four modules).
It said at the time that the storage system “will also enable households to reduce the dependence on grid power and facilitate the further spread of green energy.”
This article was first published at RenewEconomy.
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 27, 2015 3:40 pm
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Conflict of interest.
Panasonic cells go into the Powerwall.
You are going to be shocked when you discover that Samsung makes the chips for the Apple IPhone and Sony makes the camera sensor.
Lithium cells are a commodity nearing mass production, and the packaging, marketing, battery management and system integration are going to form as big a part of the product. Arguably bigger given the market response to Tesla's entry.
I would be shocked if Samsung made every single chip in any iPhone.
There have been patent infringement claims between Samsung and Apple in courts.
I suppose it might be like GoPro cameras that use a Sony sensor, if Sony decides to launch a rival to GoPro.
It would be awkward but GoPro would probably keep using Sony sensors.
If? You mean the sony AS100V?
Panasonic isn't making every single component of the Tesla powerwall.
The point really is that Tesla needs lots of lithium cells, Panasonic can make them like no one else for now. That isn't going to keep Panasonic out of the game of selling other products with their lithium cells in them.
The interesting part is that unlike Apple, Tesla has said that they will not pursue patent infringement on their products because they want to see the market grow.
#Tesla Motors is joining hands with international energy utility companies to finds suitable markets for its battery products. Read More here : http://bit.ly/1cn5K0C