How Australia and Tesla are shining a light on renewable energy
A project announced by the Prime Minister of the Government of South Australia, Jay Weatherill, could be the future of electricity generation. Enernet is an agreement with Tesla to provide solar roofs and accumulator batteries to no less that 50,000 homes, creating the largest virtual power plant in the world.
The idea is to install the company’s tiles or solar panels, along with Powerwall batteries, free of charge in exchange for the generated energy, which would be sold back at low cost. South Australia is characterized by single-family residences with a roof available for the installation of generation infrastructure, and the project would be the equivalent of building a 250 MW power plant with a storage capacity of 650 MW, and will mean savings of around 30% to energy users. The idea is to begin tests in 1,100 publicly owned homes for low-income families, later extending the program to 24,000 existing public housing units (the region has a large amount of publicly owned housing, facilitating decision-making) and eventually it will be offered to all residents in the region, with plans to reach 50,000 homes over a period of four years. With this number of batteries committed for the coming years to the Australian project, Tesla will have to scale up production at its gigafactories, meaning that in the short term it may be difficult to…
