Tesla Powerwall delivers 12 hrs of power during SA blackout

Brian Gillespie from Eden Valley in South Australia would have been in darkness like the rest of the state had he not invested in Tesla’s Powerwall battery backup. In the last 24 hours a freak weather event caused devastating state-wide power outages for those reliant on the traditional power grid. Gillespie’s mini power station kept his home power functioning when the rest of the state was offline.

Gillespie was one of the residents in South Australia to have a Tesla Powerwall battery installed by Natural Solar earlier this year. Managing Director of Natural Solar, Chris Williams, says.

“Due to these severe storms and resulting blackouts, Natural Solar has received a huge number of enquiries from customers South-Australia wide, each of them seeking more independence from the grid. In the past 24 hours there has been a 228% increase in enquiries from customers South Australia wanting to know more about battery power, with their locations directly correlating to more severely storm affected areas. This trend has swept across the country with a 148% increase on enquiries Australia wide.”

In the case of Brian Gillespie, Williams says the Powerwall home battery and his backup power allowed the use of stored power from the moment the outage occurred at 2:48pm yesterday to 3:00am this morning when his battery utilised all of the power it had stored. Of course the data tells the real story so here’s the graph that highlights the extra hours of energy Gillespie took advantage of.

The power was restored to Gillespie’s house at 5:00am, meaning the total power outage for his household was just 2 hours. Its at this point that we remember the Powerwall architecture is scale-able which means you can daisy chain up to 9 of them. As the cost curve comes down, additional Powerwalls full of lithium-ion batteries would deliver an even greater redundancy in the event of another freak weather event.

We found four or five electricity pylons near Melrose that collapsed in fierce winds. Today's conditions in Mid North not much better. pic.twitter.com/p6M8pdbNCu

— Tom Fedorowytsch (@tomfed) September 29, 2016

Williams went on to say,

As other states and territories prepare for the massive storm to sweep through their regions over the coming days, we expect to see the influx of residential and commercial interest in battery power continue, with people exploring home battery power storage solutions and backup power.

The brilliant thing about the Tesla Powerwall is the ability for consumers to consider their weather forecasts and any warnings in advance, and purposefully charge their batteries prior to any power outages occurring. For the first time ever, Australians really have the ability to take power into their own hands and have control.

Turns out Gillespie isn’t the only house in SA that still had power during the blackout. a battery backup solution is Simon Hackett which now heads up battery storage company RedFlow has 2x 10kWk ZCell batteries that use Zinc Bromine. Hackett says his family didn’t realise there was a blackout until an hour into the event.

You can read that full story at Renew Economy.