The Guardian reports:

The timing was rich with symbolism. As intense heatwaves pummelled Europe and Asia, and oil markets around the world leapt and sputtered, the two big chimneys of one of Australia’s largest power stations were being demolished. Meanwhile, the Australian energy minister was holding a media conference to hail a fall of up to 10% in the benchmark electricity price in parts of the country.

Quietly, and with surprisingly little fanfare from the rest of the world, Australia is pioneering a revolution in home renewables and battery use, proving what is possible with the right policies. The country was already one of the global leaders in domestic solar power, with panels on one in three homes. It also remains, however, a major contributor to the climate crisis through its vast fossil fuel exports. But it is batteries that are giving Australia a new burst of speed.

Nearly 60% of the household-scale battery capacity installed across almost 200 other countries this financial year will be in the southern continent, according to a recent analysis. Since July, about 415,000 have been connected – roughly one unit for every 25 Australian homes.

Industrial-scale batteries are being built nearly as quickly, with Australia (population: 27 million) trailing only China (1.4 billion) and the US (350 million) in new capacity after connections more than doubled last year. The increase in battery usage big and small is starting to bring down the cost of electricity from the nation’s spindly power grid, which includes more than 40,000km (24,850 miles) of transmission lines and cables between tropical far-north Queensland and the southern island state of Tasmania.

“It’s amazing,” says Tristan Edis, the author of the analysis and a director with the consultancy Green Energy Markets. “It shows again that if you go big with a technology, and you kick it off big from the start, you can make a really significant difference. If you’re a battery manufacturer focused on residential right now you really must be focused on Australia.”

Batteries counter the long-used arguments against renewables – that they are unpredictable and intermittent and therefore put extra burdens on a national grid which must have an expensive backup power source such as gas in place. Instead, batteries mean solar power can be stored and used when it is needed.

From early on in the renewable revolution, batteries were envisaged as a critical part of the puzzle. Homes would be able to install panels on their roofs to capture and convert solar energy, and batteries in their homes to store the energy and use it when they needed it. But while solar panel prices fell rapidly a few years ago, it is only in recent years that batteries have become similarly available and affordable. The US-Iran war and subsequent rise in energy prices has highlighted the advantages of renewable technologies like this, and the number of installations around the world has moved from a trickle a few years ago (Arsenal football ground being an unlikely pioneer) to a growing tide. China is far ahead, spending more on it than every other country combined. But among the rest, Australia has jumped the pack. [Continue reading…]