Similar to the rebate that Duke Energy is offering locally here in North Carolina to its customers for the installation of solar energy, the Southern Australian government has just announced a $70M subsidy for residential battery systems. Currently, batteries are by far the most expensive aspect of a solar energy system but are not necessary components unless your goal is to be completely off-grid or have sustainable backup power during power outages. Adding batteries to a solar energy system can tack on an additional $10,000 or more, but this subsidy would offer up to $6,000 back to homeowners; making batteries a more realistic option.
The goal of the battery subsidy is to provide 40,000 households with energy storage systems to reduce peak hour energy usage. Removing this large of a load from the grid will drastically reduce demand of traditional energy power plants thus lowering the cost of energy for every customer.
For traditional energy sources, such as coal fired power plants, it is very costly to ramp up production to meet peak demands. Unexpected peak demands are worse in that, in some cases, it may take hours for a plant to drastically increase production to meet an unplanned, sudden demand. Unexpected peak demands can cause blackouts (loss of power) and brownouts (low voltage) in the event that the power plant cannot meet the sudden increase in load.
Hopefully we can expect more clean energy incentives such as this in the US as we see the positive implications they have had in other progressive countries.
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