Solar farming

[harm_less]

Things are progressing fast in this sector. Contact has today announced that it will be installing a 100MW/200MWh Tesla grid scale battery at Glenbrook with another planned at Stratford.

My comment on domestic uptake of storage units (static batteries, EVs/V2G) was in regard to not only distribution of storage but more so in the potential cumulative storage capacity of thousands of home batteries and EVs. Considering we have ~80,000 BEVs and 10s of thousands of home batteries that is potentially >5GWh of connected storage potential spread across the country, so perhaps 1 GWh assuming those EVs and batteries offered only 20% of their capacity serving duty as a VPP (virtual power plant). Not an insignificant buffer capacity for the grid.

Thats awesome news, those Tesla batteries have proven themselves in Australia, looks like Alice springs is now running almost entirely off solar now too with their recent battery thats installed.
They must be tolerating the heat well over there, I guess they have a decent active cooling system installed.

Oh yes good point, V2G has some good potential. The only issues I see is how and when the vehicles are used and charged. If they are out and about at work during the day and only bought home and plugged in at the evening after the sun has gone down then there might not be much benefit.
They can still act as a grid buffer though if left plugged in and you could charge it with electricity during off peak times and use it during peak hours to save costs if nothing else.

The logistics and economic opportunities of V2G are well explained in this interview. Personally we have 2 EVs so the Leaf is intended to be used in a V2H capacity when the technology becomes available and viable in NZ. Considering the price of the Leaf was less than for a Tesla Powerwall battery we figured it was worth taking a punt on it as a home energy storage option, with mobility being an added bonus.