Australia battery storage comparison table – July update 

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Here’s a summary of new batteries and new energy storage systems that have been announced in Australia in June and July 2016. The specs and prices, if released, are available on our constantly updated comparison table here.

Tesla Powerwall

Tesla have changed the Powerwall warranty to offer unlimited cycles and 10 years. Which is great.  But they only warrant ‘normal degradation’. So we don’t know how to calculate warranted kWh for this because we don’t know what ‘normal degradation’ means. We’ve asked Tesla directly but had no response yet.

Redflow/Z-Cell

The Redflow ZBM-2 has been swapped for Z-cell. The Z-cell price is higher than the ZBM-2, due to the fancy new case. All other specifications are the same.

Zen Energy

Zen’s new Freedom Energy Banks’ pricing has been announced, and they are much cheaper than they used to be. 12.8kWh nominal for $19,750 fully installed. $21,750 for 16kWh and $23,750 for 19.2kWh. With 5kW of grunt, (upgradeable to 7.5kW on the biggest unit) and full backup, they look like really nice systems for big energy users.

The price per warranted kWh would be very competitive if it wasn’t for a 5 year control system warranty. If Zen could warrant the control system for 10 years, like the batteries, they’d have a very competitive cost per warranted kWh, considering you get full backup, installation and all the control gear included.

GCL E-KwBe

Chinese made, one of the cheapest options on the market. Most installers I’ve talked to are rightly or wrongly fairly wary about installing them, due to the low price.  GCL seem to have a tough task ahead of them. They need to convince installers that the quality/reliability is there.

Mercedes-Benz energy storage

The priceing is still to be announced, but is expected to be firmly at the premium end of the market with its sleek, cast aluminium enclosure. All the specs we could dig out of Daimler are in the table.

Akasol NeeoQube

German made, very expensive, 7,000 cycles at 90% DoD, which is very impressive.

Hybrid “Home” Plus

Unique lead crystal technology. Has inherently safe chemistry compared to li-ion. Has a pretty low cycle life (2,400 cycles). It’s an all-in-one unit.

GridEdge Quantum

Sodium Nickel Chloride technology – which Grid Edge claim is inherently safer than lithium ion. Boasts a very impressive operating temp range (-20°C to 60°C) compared to every other battery tech. Is expensive though, at $20,000 for a nominal 9.6kWh all in one unit.

Sonnenbatterie

Another premium end of the market entrant. Boasts an insane cycle life and DoD (10,000 cycles at 100% DoD is claimed). Very narrow operating temp range (5 deg C to 40 deg C). Warranty is 10 years or 10,000 cycles whichever comes first, which means you’ll want to cycle it multiple times per day.

Downside is the power output – scales in increments of 0.5kW per 2kWh module from a base of 1.5kW to a max of 3kW single phase, 3.3kW three phase. You’d think at the price point they’d be able to offer a higher power output.

It’s also an all in one unit.

ABB React

From the billion dollar ABB, who have a huge inverter business. The price, off-grid capability, single/three phase compatibility and warranty are all yet to be announced.

Maximum amount of storage is only 6kWh, which seems very low. All in one unit.

Ampetus Energy Pod

Great power output, but a cycle life of only 2,000 cycles at 98% DoD. All in one unit.

Fusion Power Systems Titan-3

Uses Aquion batteries, all in one unit, pretty expensive, good IP rating (IP 56).

LG Chem

LG have just released a teaser of their new battery packs, but we don’t have enough specs to put them in the table. We expect pricing to be available by the end of August. Word on the street is that they are going to be very competitively priced.

Finn Peacock is head of Solar Quotes.

 

Comments

12 responses to “Australia battery storage comparison table – July update ”

  1. Paul Szuster Avatar

    What price installed are you getting for the GCL Finn?

    1. Finn Peacock Avatar

      Retail for the 5.6kWh GCL is about $4,500 including GST. I’ve been told fully installed with a GoodWe inverter consumers are looking at around $7,500. Obviously that’s without any panels.

  2. Finn Peacock Avatar

    And I completely forgot to mention – there is now a ‘export to Excel’ button so you can export all the numbers to a spreadsheet and do your own calcs. Handy if you don’t agree with how we calculate the ‘warranted kWh’.

  3. A Wall Avatar
    A Wall

    What about Enphase?

    1. Finn Peacock Avatar

      Enphase AC battery has been on the table for about 6 months:

      https://www.solarquotes.com.au/battery-storage/comparison-table/

      This is a list of batteries that have been added to the table in the last 2 months.

  4. Craig Palatchie Avatar
    Craig Palatchie

    Any news on the aquion battery

    1. Miles Harding Avatar
      Miles Harding

      On sale now: http://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/aquion-saltwater-batteries-australia. (comments seem more relevant to li-fe-po4 than na-cl)
      Also reported in RenewEconomy (somewhere), a huge aquion battery installed in a house.

      I have been neutrally impressed with this battery. It has good environmental and cost properties – not prohibitively expensive, but low efficiency, power and energy density, so the battery will be huge compared to either led acid or lithium chemistries.

      Because this battery doesn’t contain rare or environmentally harmful components, I would expect that it has a bright future as this century progresses.

  5. Mike Dill Avatar
    Mike Dill

    Finn, thanks for putting this information together. I am still on the grid, and I get a slight return from my solar array, I do have a time-of-use rate that I need to remain aware of in my energy use, but I have reduced that usage. Personally, my cost threshold is about $0.20/kWh stored and delivered. My ballpark guess is that ends up at about $500/kWh installed capacity. I do not see that yet, but will continue watching.

  6. Miles Harding Avatar
    Miles Harding

    Hi Finn,

    While hunting aquion battery data, I encoutered this:
    https://www.ecoelectric.com.au/shop/lg-resu-10h-battery-system.html

    LG RESU battery,
    10kwh total – 8.5kwh usable, 7000 cycles, 10 years
    350-450Volt inverter voltage. 3.5kw
    < $10K
    Nice to see a retailer brave enough to show their prices.

    Not 1,609,344 kms away from the powerwall.

  7. James Fisher Avatar
    James Fisher

    Is there a standard definition for roundtrip efficiency? I would have thought it should be a simple power out divided by power in *100 with a nominal 3 hour charge/discharge period.

    Tesla claims 92% which if you read this excellent article appears to be optimisitic http://www.catalyticengineering.com/top-ten-facts-about-teslas-350kwh-powerwall-battery/. Others claim 98% which appears to be gross misrepresentation. I would love to see some real world test data.

    This efficiency might not worry a person charging via their own PV panels but if you are paying 30c+/kWh from the grid round trip efficiency will certainly hit the economics.

  8. ae911 Avatar
    ae911

    Are Imergy vanadium batteries available in Australia and at what price? UNNSW invented it nearly 30 years ago and would have been cheap by now but again we will be buying from foreign companies.

  9. Kenshō Avatar
    Kenshō

    The argument Tesla is making the price of cars and batteries as cheap as possible, as soon as possible, no longer stands.

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