
Labor offers solar panels and Tesla batteries for 50,000 South Australia homes - fmihaila
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/feb/04/labor-offers-solar-panels-and-tesla-batteries-for-50000-south-australia-homes
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Arbalest
This reminds me of a scheme that power retailers attempted a couple of years
ago. It was essentially the same thing, they put solar panels on your roof,
and they pay you a royalty. I don't think it was a particularly popular
scheme. Solar panels were coming more and more into reach of the households
budget, that it didn't need to be funded externally. Low royalty fees, and
then having to provide access probably killed it in the end.

This time however, it is government, and Housing Trust means it is essentially
a captive market. A market who definitely cannot afford solar panels
themselves. Maybe by not having a big profit motive this will be more
successful? Time is yet to tell.

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ggm
The discussions on specialist sites like reneweconomy are mentioning that the
Tesla powerwall is able to operate as an 'islanded' powersource across
blackout. So as well as forming a distributed generator capable of supplying
FCAS and power, I think it also has good behaviours under blackout: the homes
which are enabled don't represent surge load on the public power net when the
circuit is re-established, so the engineering of turning power back on is
easier. Once the distribution network is back, the Tesla units can re-
synchronize to the supply frequency, and get back online.

Also, since the battery has maintained you as an isolated power source, your
solar cells can continue to run. In other situations, your solar cannot power
your house if you lose grid. So although people think PV makes them resilient
under grid loss, thats not how they operate in practice for safety reasons.

The economics of this move feel right: people who cannot self fund into
reliable or cheaper power are going to be enabled to benefit, albiet at
reduced benefit (no income stream as private owners have) but for a huge
community benefit: lots of distributed power, able to make the overall network
more resilient.

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discordance
Why is so much solar and Tesla related stuff happening in South Australia
lately?

~~~
aesthethiccs
South Australia has one of the highest prices in australia
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-17/curious-adelaide-
the-p...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-17/curious-adelaide-the-problem-
of-power/9158240)

The opposition federally has been attacking renewable energy in south
australia over the failures caused by storms and gas generators.
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/josh-frydenberg-jay-
we...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/josh-frydenberg-jay-weatherill-
verbal-biff/8359056)

so the state put a tender to all battery makers to help the state start with
startup times to get the gas generators online and help with the extreme
prices in high demand times [http://theconversation.com/a-month-in-teslas-sa-
battery-is-s...](http://theconversation.com/a-month-in-teslas-sa-battery-is-
surpassing-expectations-89770)

the battery project has been very successful, and now fuelled with revenge and
fear of losing state power the state leader is pushing even harder for battery
and solar tech in residential areas to stop the cost growth, this will also
help alot of renters, and he is directing this as mistrust from the
incompetent federal leadership which is primarily funded by the coal industry.
[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2018/feb/01/coal-...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2018/feb/01/coal-lobby-ads-biggest-third-party-political-expenditure-in-
australia)

South Australia mostly dislikes federal politicians considering they
constantly ignore the state and then with AEMO and energy markets just
basically cut power to the state and charge them through the nose because they
aren't the useful state.

