The Great Power Swap: Transitioning to Batteries
15 August 2023
As explained in our last article – the cost of consuming an additional electron from the grid is now the same if not more expensive than consuming it from solar energy and solar energy stored in a battery.
With this new information safely tucked away in your brain, the next logical question you might ask is when should I consider making the switch to batteries? Well, that is a great question and there are a few very common situations that arise where you find yourself in a position to make an economic choice.
Let’s take a look at a few;
1
Are you negotiating your electricity contract with an energy retailer or broker?
2
Are you trying to manage reliability issues with your point of connection to the grid?
3
Are you contemplating adding more equipment to automate your factory, adding a new production line or a new shift to ramp up output?
4
Are you trying to maintain your existing solar system or negotiate a better rate for your exported solar electricity?
5
Are you planning to add a significant number of EV chargers to your parking facility?
In each of these circumstances, every additional electron consumed from the grid is already more expensive than consuming it from a battery storage system charged by a co-located solar system.
Let’s walk through an example
A small to medium size business is considering adding new automation equipment to lower its production costs however, more energy is required to power this new equipment.
Option A
They can choose to upgrade their existing 15-year-old grid connection from 500kW to 700kW based on the advice of the automation equipment provider. After talking to an accredited service provider (ASP) they are informed of the costs of that decision ~ $442k
Option B
They can install 270kW of solar and 240kWh of batteries which can provide the surplus energy needed using stored energy ~ $346k after applicable subsidies.
The graph below shows the costs of installing a new connection to the grid for a factory, and then compares it to the equivalent amount of energy required to run the new loads in a staggered shift.
So if you are a business that is faced with a similar scenario or if you’re in the market to ask yourself the questions above, this is an ideal time to investigate how much cheaper this can be for your business and how these solutions can be procured and financed.
If that’s not convincing enough, the graph below shows the cumulative savings and costs over time using the grid compared to using the grid, solar and batteries together. We even modelled what it would be if you financed the solar but paid for the batteries, which is the ideal case. This can be applied to embedded networks, EV charging stations, farms, industrial precincts or even airports, all of which have expensive connections to the grid.
The time to make the switch is now!
Schedule a one-on-one consultation with Prateek if you would like to see the model behind this graph and we would be happy to take you through the finer details.
Prateek is a renewable energy executive that brings a decade of experience from across the energy value chain and is passionate about helping customers solve problems.