Saw a Honda project car that had solar cells in its entire roof. It just looked like a fancy paint job.
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It’ll be great when all buildings are painted in PV paint and every parking spot is a automatic charging bay. It won’t matter where you park. In the future it’ll be like living in the future!
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Except here in Oz we like to crowd out our cities with Skyscrapers for Mates so all you’ll have is dark windy corridors. Lots of Helipads for Mates though. Also, it’s too ■■■■■■■ late.
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Maybe they should put up small wind turbines then?
Too unattractive, ruins the view
“In the future, fun is fun!”
Werewolf’s mate is on QandA tonight
I wish, marvellous what leaving out a little word like up can do to a sentence.
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The new SA Premier has already sacked Tesla and has obviously been reading what Trip, sorfo and Wolfy have to say.
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Was going to put panels and batteries on the housing commission houses, to lower their bill and provide feedback energy to the grid.
Working poor, such and such.
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Is it just or has the effectiveness off the big battery, and it’s impact on SA’s grid been grossly under reported?
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Yep. Nothing to see. Big expensive battery that can only power 10 homes for 15 minutes.
Murdoch.con.au has a great little article on rooftop solar today. Headline attacks it as “making power bills more expensive” without providing any evidence. It then goes on to describe how the same report that supposedly makes this claim actually makes the opposite claim in that it and energy efficient appliances will reduce power bills.
Oh, and don’t miss the daily character assasination edition about Elon Musk.
Victoria building a Tesla battery plant now with federal and state government funding 
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They are building two. One with Tesla batteries and one with someone else.
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You’re back! Good to see you posting.
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From the renew economy site:
Neoen starts work on next Tesla big battery project in Victoria
By Giles Parkinson on 21 March 2018
French renewable energy developer Neoen, the owner and operator of the Tesla big battery in South Australia, has begun work on the Bulgana green power hub in Victoria, again combining a major wind farm with battery storage.
The $350 million project will include a 194MW wind farm and a 20MW/34MWh battery storage facility using Tesla lithium-ion Powerpacks, and is being described as the first agribusiness partnership of its kind in the world .
The facility will provide 100 per cent renewables to what will be the largest greenhouse in Australia, to be built by Nectar Farms.
The greenhouse was going to be built in Asia because of high energy prices in Australia, but Nectar Farms changed its mind after being shown how electrifying the heating process, and using renewables and storage, could slash costs.
The $565 million project – for both the renewable energy hub and the greenhouse/glasshouse – would not have been built in Australia otherwise.
Nectar Farms will take around 15 per cent of the output from the Bulgana green hub, while the rest is put into the main grid. The Victoria government has signed a 15 year power purchase agreement for part of that output.
The project is located on the land of an old gold mine in Stawell in regional Victoria, and is being funded by equity from Neoen, as well as long term debt from KfW IPEX-Bank, French financial services group Societe Generale and Korean government-owned financial institution Korea Development Bank (KDB)
Franck Woitiez, the head of Neoen Australia, said the successful financial close is yet another significant milestone for the company, which is also about to complete three solar farms totaling 115MW in western NSW.
“We are excited to finally break ground on the Bulgana Green Power Hub and look forward to delivering affordable and sustainable energy to the State of Victoria,” he said in a statement.
“Our teams have worked tirelessly to reach financial close for the project, which will not only create a substantial number of jobs but also stimulate healthy economic activity in the local region, specifically in Western Victoria and Stawell.”
Stephen Sasse, the head of Nectar Farms, said the new $215 million glasshouse facility is strategically located close to the major distribution centres and wholesale markets.
“More importantly, the energy solution we have built with Neoen is a world-first for the horticulture industry, and we hope to see it replicated elsewhere in Australia.”
The project is Neoen’s biggest single-stage project in Australia – the 315MW Hornsdale wind farm was built in three stages, and the Tesla big battery, known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve, added later.
The wind farm will feature turbines from Siemens-Gamesa, with full construction to begin in April and the wind farm targeted for delivery in August 2019.
The 30-hectare Nectar Farms greenhouse should be completed around the same time.
The wind farm will create 120 jobs in construction and 5 jobs once the facility is operational. The glasshouse will create around 300 jobs during construction and 270 full time direct and 151 indirect ongoing jobs for the life of the asset.
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Victoria to turn to Tesla battery power in time for next summer
By Adam Carey21 March 2018 — 5:12pm
Two large lithium-ion batteries will be built and connected to the grid in regional Victoria this year, giving the state’s west a significant renewable energy boost in time for next summer.
The batteries, which will store solar and wind-generated energy, will be built near Ballarat and Kerang and will have a combined generation capacity of 55 MW and a combined energy storage of 80 megawatt-hours – giving them more than half the power of South Australia’s gigantic 100MW Tesla battery.
The batteries will be built in the state’s west, which is identified as having a vulnerable energy transmission network.
The Turnbull government has committed up to $25 million to what will be the first installation of large-scale, grid-connected batteries in Victoria.
It follows a missed attempt by the Andrews government last year to switch on two, large-scale batteries by January 1 to help compensate for the closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station.
Instead, it will team up with the Turnbull government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency and contribute $25 million of its own to the $50 million project.
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said the batteries would push down energy prices and improve reliability in Victoria.
“They will not only allow currently unused renewable energy to be stored instead of wasted, but also inject electricity into the grid at times of peak demand in an area known for transmission congestion,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“Together, they will help lower power prices and stabilise the grid.”
The two batteries will feed solar and wind-generated energy into the grid in western Victoria, easing the load on the constrained transmission network in that part of the state.
The Kerang-based battery will be supplied by Tesla and connected to the Gannawarra solar farm, Victoria’s biggest, in the state’s north-west.
It will demonstrate how an existing solar farm can be retrofitted with battery storage.
The Ballarat-based battery will be supplied by Fluence and built at a nearby terminal station in Warrenheip.
It will be big enough to power 20,000 households for an hour during peak demand periods.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s chief executive, Ivor Frischknecht, said the batteries would facilitate Victoria’s transition to renewable energy.
The state has set renewable energy targets of 25 per cent by 2020 and 40 per cent by 2025.
Mr Frydenberg said storage had been the missing piece of the energy jigsaw for some time.
Batteries can store renewable energy and dispatch it when it is needed, delivering solar power at night and wind energy when there is no wind.
The announcement follows the release this week of a report by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which confirmed that the national energy market is steadily moving away from coal as its primary energy source and towards natural gas and wind.
An analysis of the national energy market reveals it has retired 5199 megawatts of baseload generation in the past decade and replaced it with 6584 megawatts of other, mostly renewable, sources.
“The [national energy market] is now facing an unprecedented replacement of its generation fleet,” AEMO’s report says.
“Evidence of this radical transformation can be seen in the change in the portfolio of supply resources … over the last decade, with a shift away from coal generation to natural gas and wind as fuel sources.”
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Another article from the same site. Very exciting stuff!!
Tesla and Fluence are to build two new big battery storage installations in Victoria after the Australian Renewable Energy Agency contributed an extra $25 million to support Victorian government funding and get the two projects over the line.
Tesla will build a 25MW/50MWh battery to be co-located near the 60MW Gannawarra solar farm near Kerang, while Fluence will build a 30MW/30 MWh grid-connected battery at the Ballarat terminal station.
It is the third major Tesla big battery project in Australian, following the already completed Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia that was switched on in December, and the 20MW/34MWh project that will be built next to the Bulgana wind farm near Horsham in Victoria.
It is the first big battery storage project in Australia for Fluence, a joint venture between Siemens and AES created to compete with Tesla, although the company has numerous other projects around the world, including a 100MW/400MWh project in Long Beach, California.
The two projects come from a Victorian government initiative and tender launched early last year that attracted more than 100 proposals. The result was supposed to have been announced in August last year and the project brought on-line over summer.
But repeated blockages – believed to be about the funding model and technical issues including network connection agreements – delayed the announcement. ARENA has now agreed to match the Victorian government’s $25 million funding offer.
ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht said that this announcement placed Australia as a world-leader in battery storage, following grid-scale batteries in South Australia, which include the 100MW/129MWh Tesla big battery and the ARENA-funded 30MW/8MWh battery being built near the Wattle Point wind farm.
“ARENA is excited to be demonstrating the capabilities that these new batteries will provide in securing reliable electricity for western Victoria and to facilitate the Victoria’s transition to renewable energy,” he said in a statement.
“Battery storage will play a crucial role in the future energy mix, alongside other forms of storage and in conjunction with variable renewables and demand management.”
Both batteries – which will be operated by EnergyAustralia under long-term off take agreements – will help demonstrate how large-scale batteries can provide different benefits to the electricity system, including improving grid stability and power quality, and integrating variable renewable energy.
Construction on both projects is due to commence this month, with both batteries to be commissioned in time for the summer peak in 2018/19.
The Tesla battery will be owned by Edify Energy and its partners Wirsol, who are building the Ganawarra solar farm, and will also demonstrate how a solar farm can be retrofitted with battery storage.
It will be the first combined solar-battery storage facility in Victoria, and one of the biggest in the world. Australia’s first – the Lakeland facility in north Queensland – was opened last month.
“We are very proud to have designed and delivered the first combined utility-scale solar and storage facility in Victoria,” Edify Energy CEO John Cole said in a statement. “It is unprecedented in Australia at this scale and is among the largest in the world.
“The team has worked tirelessly to overcome many regulatory, technical and commercial challenges and create a very cool project – one that can deploy solar power at night.
“Without a doubt, as the cost of battery storage falls, we see solar and storage becoming a ‘category killer’ in the energy sector and accelerating Australia’s transition to a clean energy future.”
The Fluence battery will be built by a consortium led by Spotless Sustainability Services, and owned by the local grid operator, Ausnet.
Victoria energy, environment and climate change minister Lily D’Ambrosio said the battery storage projects would be a key to helping the state transition to an affordable, reliable and clean energy system. It has a 40 per cent renewable energy target by 2025.
“We said we would deliver this for Victoria, and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” D’Ambrosio said.
“We are continuing to modernise our electricity grid, strengthen our energy security and deliver real action on climate change.”
Federal environment minister Josh Frydenberg has repeatedly downplayed the 100MW/129MWh Tesla battery in South Australia as too small to make much of a difference, a theme taken up with gusto by Coalition colleagues.
See our story: Conservatives go completely nuts over battery storage.
But Frydenberg said on Thursday the two new batteries in Victoria (despite being less than half the size of the South Australia big battery) will help lower prices and stabilise the grid.
“They will not only allow currently unused renewable energy to be stored instead of wasted, but also inject electricity into the grid at times of peak demand in an area known for transmission congestion,” he said in a statement.
“Together, they will help lower power prices and stabilise the grid.”
Frydenberg said storage was the “missing piece” of the energy puzzle, and it was Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who put it at the top of the agenda.
“Whether it’s Snowy 2.0 in New South Wales and Victoria, the Battery of the Nation projects in Tasmania or various initiatives, including a 30MW battery (Wattle Point) in South Australia, we are expanding, exploring and funding energy storage right across the country.
“These two large-scale, grid-connected batteries in Victoria are yet another investment that will help deliver more affordable and reliable energy for Australian households and businesses as we transition to a lower emissions future.”
Frydenberg made no mention of the Tesla big battery in Jamestown, the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery and Australia’s first grid-scale battery storage, which has been operating since December 1 last year, and has played a crucial role in moderating price spikes over the summer.
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There’s another 100% privately financed grid scale battery to be built with the Ouyen solar farm this year too. This will end up the standard. Private finance and battery joined to new projects. Lot of complaining nong’s voices receding into the distance.