They’re projecting at least 5,000 cycles and a price that would make storing cost $0.06.kWh and expect to be at 10,000 cycles soon. That drops cost to $0.03/kWh.

Longer term they are projecting 20,000 cycles which would make storage $0.015/kWh – dirt cheap.

We’ll see if they can pull it off….

Now as far as I’m aware these newer battery systems are not yet readily available for homes in Australia at the moment, but people are working on this as there is quite a large market in Australia for them, starting with off grid applications. And there are plenty of businesses currently installing modern battery packs as part of an uninteruptable power supply system. Obviously, connecting them to solar PV on the roof is a logical step.

Aquion is looking at remote health clinics as its first customers. Those clinics need a way to keep medicines cold and solar plus storage is a good solution for them. They have a need which allows them to look at more expensive options.

If there is a lot of off the grid in AU I’ll get that info to Aquion in the even they might not have considered looking there for a market that might be willing to pay ‘early adapter’ prices.

We have a large ready made market for battery storage in off grid farms, communities, and mines which currently depend on diesel generation at night. As storage technology is supplied to them costs will come down and increasing numbers of grid connected people will purchase energy storage. Getting some storage along with a PV system might become pretty standard. We may even end up with electricity distributers fighting to keep solar feed in tariffs so people will stay on the grid, which would be mildly amusing.

Storage at the grid level rather than home level makes more use of the batteries. Putting the batteries in individual homes lets consumers move electricity from more expensive to less expensive times which allows the utility duck expensive high peak demand problems. But the batteries are not available for the more frequent need of smoothing, dealing with shorter term supply/demand problems.

Does it all come down to retail customers being more able to recover the battery cost because of the very high rates they can pay during peak hours?

Perhaps it’s simply a test. It would save the utilities some real estate costs to spread the batteries around various homes. And perhaps they are considering renting back the batteries for grid storage. Let customers furnish space and capex money.

Their batteries should be much cheaper than lithium-ion batteries and independent testing of their prototype reported more than 5,000 cycles with little decrease in performance.
These batteries aren’t as lightweight and compact as lithium-ion batteries so aren’t as usable in EVs, but should be fine for stationary storage such as homes/businesses/large battery banks.
(SMUD may not have considered them, but when/if they come to market they’re going to get a lot of consideration.)

There are other promising technologies that aren’t as close to being proven. One that is very interesting is MIT’s liquid metal battery. It uses very cheap materials which should last a long time. They have prototype batteries working but I’ve heard nothing about how close they might be to production.

If this battery pans out it might be a game changer. It could make storage so cheap that we’d quickly move to a wind/solar/storage grid. It’s not a battery we would expect to see used in households because of the temperatures at which it operates, but certainly at the grid level.

But in New South Wales at the moment I think new point of use residential solar may get nothing or next to nothing for electrcity they export to the grid. That is definitely unfair. As for whether or not it is criminal, well it may violate consumer protection laws, but I have no idea if that is actually the case.

I am all for making our grid more resilient.

Fortunately, here we have a one-year settlement period so that you get that low fit rate only for the surplus you fed back over your yearly consumption.