Commercial Solar and Batteries
Commercial
Commercial solar can be rolled out to any business or building with sufficient roof space. Paybacks for self consumption are generally within 2 to 4 years in particular for small scale systems taking advantage of the STC government rebate up to 100kW of solar PV panels.
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Self consumption of solar PV without batteries generally reduces carbon emissions by 30% to 40%, although some buildings with seven day, and a daytime consumption that tracks in line with solar generation can achieve higher usage without a battery.
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Apartments
Element47 offers turnkey solutions to Strata Councils which distribute the installed solar PV generation equitably to all owners based upon the near real time consumption in 5 minute intervals in line with the variation of usage and generation.
In most cases, solar PV can be retrofitted to any Strata complex and paybacks are from 2 to 4 years. In new apartments, this can easily be installed when constructed.
Retail
Shopping Centres are ideal for rooftop solar and carpark solar PV which is cost effective to retrofit. Most Shopping Centres have access to low unbundled tariffs and have embedded networks whereby solar can be installed to reduce the building's carbon emissions and increase profit on the sale of lower cost renewable energy to tenants.
Industrial & Mines
Industrial Solar systems generally start at 30kW and 100kW of PV panels to gain the maximum STC's for a grid connected system in Western Australia (WA) on the Western Power and Horizon Power networks.
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Larger systems attract Large Scale Technology Certificates (LGC's). While systems greater the 100kW of PV panels attract LGC's, we expect these to trend towards zero value over the next few years as the Australian Governments large-scale renewable energy target of LRET target of 33,000 gigawatt hours of additional renewable electricity generation was met on a rolling 12-month basis at the end of January 2021. As the annual target will remain at 33,000 gigawatt hours until the scheme ends in 2030, the value of future LGC's will be near zero unless the Australian Federal Government increases the target to enable the country to continue rapidly towards a zero carbon economy.
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Mines are being challenged to take up sciences based net zero targets to ensure that their commodities can be sold into global markets. Transitioning mines from carbon intensive grid sources of electricity or self generation from onsite microgrid diesel or gas fired generators to initially more efficient batteries and then adding in solar and wind if applicable on sites are key to reducing fossil fuel consumption.
Mines are being challenged to transition their vehicle fleets. The most energy efficient methodology to do this is to electrify vehicles and manufacturers are starting to manufacture fully electric vehicles now which run at 80% efficiency compared to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and diesel internal combustion engine vehicles which run at only 30% to 35% efficiency. If your companies considering hydrogen vehicles, consider the CAPEX investment needs to be 3 times larger to accommodate for all of the wasted electricity to generate hydrogen. Efficiency dividends which are important to mine operators can be managed by swappable battery packs at loading and break points.
Flexibility & VPP Grid Services
Modern advanced solar and battery inverters can be connected to the internet and aggregated together to act as virtual power plants or VPP's.
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Virtual power plants can help you use your solar and battery assets with other distributed renewable energy generation to bid into energy markets and help us move towards 100% carbon natural grids.
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VPP's can access energy markets and bid into FCAS and wholesale energy markets.
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Grids require flexibility services now to support the grid to manage voltage and grid demand to support the energy transition to 100% renewable energy.