Updated: Ranking the best battery storage options for households in Australia

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It’s been a busy 4 weeks in the Australian battery storage market since we launched our comparison table. We’ve been updating it constantly – you can find it here.

Products added:

Leclanche Apollion Cube – A German made, $9200 6.7kWh battery boasting 5,000 cycles @ 80% DoD

Lechlanche TI-Box, A 3.2kW battery with promising an incredible 15,000 cycles @ 95% DoD. It costs an eye-watering $15,000. It can fully charge/discharged in under an hour and is designed to be worked really hard in applications where it will be discharged fully multiple times per day.

Pylontech Extra2000 batteries that are proving popular with some of our clients due to their modularity ($2,000 per 2.4kWh). Note these batteries are the same ones used in the Alpha-ESS STORION S5 which is also listed in our table.

We also added the 360Storage AIO all in one unit, their budget ‘ONE’ battery+ inverter package and the BYD all in one unit.

Two products updated

The Redflow ZBM-2 has been re-imagined as the “Z-cell” battery for residential usage, and the Magellan RES-1 has been replaced by the Magellan HESS, which offers much improved specs over the RES-1.

Products we wanted to add but could not

We really wanted to add the Sonnen batteries – but are still waiting on them to provide pricing.
We are also waiting on ZEN to provide specs and pricing for their soon to be released Freedom Power Bank V2.0.
Finally – Ecoult advised us that they are not ready to provide any specs or pricing on a residential Ultra Battery.

Warranted kWh and cost per warranted kWh

As warranty documents for products such as the Powerwall and the LG Resu were released it became clear that the nominal storage of the batteries combined with cycle-life specs often substantially over represents how much energy the battery will deliver over its warranted lifespan.

We believe that the only numbers you should trust are the ones that the manufacturers will warrant. So we have added ‘warranted kWh’ to the table.

In fact we soon realised that we needed to add two rows for warranted kWh. The first one assumes you will discharge your battery once per 24h, which is the most common scenario for large (6kWh+) batteries in a residential setting.

But we also appreciate that there are lots of use cases for batteries that involve charging and discharging multiple times per day. Perhaps you need to chop usage peaks or fill gaps in solar generation. Or charge up at night on off peak tariffs. So we included a row that assumes the battery is worked as hard as the warranty will allow over its warranted lifetime.

We the used these two ‘warranted kWh’ rows to calculate a cost per warranted kWh for 1 cycle per day and multiple cycles per day.  As you can see from the table cost per kWh is highly dependent on how you cycle the battery.

Detailed notes on how these new rows were calculated are below the table.

Which are the lowest cost per kWh?

Enphase and Sunverge stand out at low cost/kWh (including inverter) for multiple cycles per day with Magellan close behind.

LG and Z-Cell are neck and neck for cost per kWh (battery only).

Sunverge looks to be the cheapest for an all-in-one unit – based on daily cycling.

Comments

3 responses to “Updated: Ranking the best battery storage options for households in Australia”

  1. Jennifer Gow Avatar
    Jennifer Gow

    Where is the table?

  2. Phil Avatar
    Phil

    DEMAND REDUCTION vs STORAGE

    It’s interesting looking at the numbers for all of these batteries in Australia in an on grid situation as an addition to your home loan at say 5% interest rate . And then add the payback of the capital cost which enables you to refinance again to replace the system at end of life. Or draw down on your home loan if you have this option

    Based on a single Z-Cell , which we know is approx $18k installed that’s $1800 per annum to replace at the end of warranty – 10 years. To be generous lets make it 15 years lifespan ,that’s $1200 per annum or 4.615 Megawatts at 26c per kwh incl gst just on the interest of the loan at 5%.

    There may a cheaper option in the future with cheaper batteries or replacing part of the flow battery but you still have to finance and pay back the upfront costs today at today’s finance rates

    The savings are likely to be far greater for some If that same amount of money were invested into brand new energy efficient appliances for the home such as an Inverter fridge , better insulation , induction cooktop , all LED lighting , high EER inverter reverse cycle air conditioner , new low power LED tv screen and solar hot water system with no loss of amenity. Unless your into high end designer appliances $18k can buy a lot.

    And there is a zero chance of the energy supply authority making charging your batteries off peak through the night from the grid illegal , as Energex just tried to do
    You have more control by reducing demand.

    And now your DEMAND has probably halved or more , more options open up to you such as smaller and more affordable battery / inverters and even off grid options.

    The consumption versus storage paths depend on many lifestyle factors. However i WOULD recommend all consumers “crunch the numbers” for both the reduced demand through new appliances and battery storage options. Certainly until battery prices are about half of what they are now

  3. Cormac Farrell Avatar
    Cormac Farrell

    The article is missing a link to the table. I assume it is this one: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/battery-storage/comparison-table/

Get up to 3 quotes from pre-vetted solar (and battery) installers.