About 50,000 homes in South Australia are to receive solar panels and Tesla Inc batteries, the state government announced yesterday, in a landmark plan to turn houses into a giant, interconnected power plant.
South Australia is already home to world’s biggest battery in an Elon Musk-driven project to provide electricity for more than 30,000 homes.
The state government has since been looking for more ways — particularly through renewables — to address its energy woes after an “unprecedented” storm caused a state-wide blackout in 2016.
Under a new plan unveiled yesterday, a network of solar panels linked to rechargeable batteries would be provided free to households and financed by the sale of excess electricity generated by the network, the government said.
“My government has already delivered the world’s biggest battery, now we will deliver the world’s largest virtual power plant,” state Premier Jay Weatherill said in a statement. “We will use people’s homes as a way to generate energy for the South Australian grid, with participating households benefiting with significant savings in their energy bills.”
A trial phase is to begin with 1,100 public housing properties, each supplied with a 5 kilowatt solar panel system Tesla battery.
Following the trial, the systems are to be installed at an additional 24,000 public housing properties before the scheme is opened up to other South Australians over the next four years.
The government is also set to look for an energy retailer to deliver the program to add more competition to the market.
The rollout is to be supported by the state government through a A$2 million (US$1.6 million) grant and a A$30 million loan from a taxpayer renewable technology fund.
The virtual power plant would have 250 megawatts of solar energy and 650 megawatt hours of battery storage, a Tesla statement said.
“At key moments, the virtual power plant could provide as much capacity as a large gas turbine or coal power plant,” it added.
Australia is one of the world’s largest producers of coal and gas, but the South Australian blackout raised questions about its energy security.
Several aging coal-fired power plants have closed, while strong demand for gas exports and a rise in onshore gas drilling bans have fueled concerns of a looming domestic energy shortage.
More than 60 percent of electricity generation in Australia is from coal, with 14 percent from renewables, government data published in 2016 showed.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group