← Back to context

Comment by Jedd

6 months ago

I'm in NSW - curious on what you got, what subsidy/ies you were able to obtain.

I'd previously looked into this and it sounded like a package was required - PVC + battery - whereas I've already got 10kW inverter + 12kW panels, and basically just want something around that size (40kWh).

Street pricing seemed to be around the $9k installed per 10kWh, so a) your subsidy options sounds spectacular - around 60% discount? - and b) payback for me would probably be around 8 years.

But if I switch vendors (Amber I think is what one of my friends is on) I can engage in something analogous to wholesale market activity, 10m bidding / sales, rapidly decrease the projected lifetime of my battery, but potentially be $-positive even through the winter months.

But all that feels like something the power companies here in AU are going to try to try to undercut / tax.

14 comments

Jedd

Reply
discordance  6 months ago

5 x SigEnergy SigenStor Bat 8.0 (8kWh/battery) + 12kW inverter (Sigenstor EC) on single phase. The SRES battery rebate (https://cer.gov.au/batteries) was ~30%. Total was a bit under $15k. I already have 16.6kW of panels on the roof from 5 years ago.

There are two providers (Globird and Ovo) I have been researching that provide 2-3 free hours of electricity per day between 11-2pm. That + solar would easily fill the batteries, so that power bill might drop even more.

You should get some quotes from battery/solar installers (no doubt you have heard of solarquotes.com.au). Prices have dropped a lot this year.

  • Jedd  6 months ago

    Excellent info - thank you.

    Yes, I've been through solarquotes.com.au a few times but haven't looked in earnest for some time. This is encouraging information.

    I know my usage can easily be 15-20kWh in a day, and I can get a week of overcast though it's not common.

    The 'free' electricity offers presumably are in return for a guarantee to feed-in to them outside sunlight peak, I suppose?

    I assume the power providers have come up with ToU and FiT tariffs based on a LOT of data, so we here with our spreadsheets and one or two datapoints aren't likely to come out far ahead, but it sounds like break-even within a few years is feasible.

    • discordance  6 months ago

      They don't require that we feed in at any specific time, but they do price their peak rates quite high so you have to ensure you have enough storage to not consume at those times.

      No doubt their models and prices will be updated once more large homes BESS are installed.

nl  6 months ago

I have a relative with a 30kWh battery on Amber. They spent AU$10k for it after subsidies.

They don't expect to ever pay for electricity again - instead their biggest problem with Amber is what to do when they are overproducing. They got charged $2.50 the other day when they didn't curtail production and had to dump power into the grid!

slaw  6 months ago

15Kwh Lifepo4 48V 300Ah is less than $2k USD. You are overpaying a lot for installation.

  • XorNot  6 months ago

    You need inverters to run them, and you can't just put more battery on one inverter. The price is about 1:1 now for battery and inverter costs when I looked into it last.