A boost from batteries

New frontier in Asia: A file image of employees of a solar farm company taking notes between panels at the farm in Nakorn Ratchasima province, Thailand. Advances in solar energy and batteries offer oppurtunities for Malaysian businesses. 

New technology could well make solar energy more practical in a host of applications

IT’S ALWAYS exciting reading about Tesla’s Elon Musk talking about some new technology that could change the world.

Ever since Apple’s Steve Jobs passed away, Musk has capably filled his shoes as the world’s leading tech visionary.

In May, he gave a riveting speech about how solar energy could be the means to combat rising emissions and climate change.

His idea of harnessing energy from the sun, which he calls a “handy fusion reactor in the sky”, is hardly anything new or revolutionary.

Solar panels on residential rooftops have been around for a long time already and are not uncommon in urban and upscale neighbourhoods in Malaysia.

These, however, are usually for heating the water supply and other peripheral things around the house. At the Cyberjaya level the same approach has been applied to the new Cyberjaya Mosque, the first mosque awarded the Green Building Index’s Platinum Rating in Malaysia, and possibly the world’s first to be equipped with a building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system to harvest solar energy. The solar panels act as roof coverings as well as generate renewable energy for the building.

Such solar panels are not meant to power essential equipment simply because there is no practical storage capability. Until now, that is. Enter Tesla’s Powerwall, a wall-mounted lithium ion battery for homes that comes in a 7kWh and a 10kWh version costing US$3,000 (RM12,300) and US$3,500, respectively.

SolarCity, a major player in the solar panel industry, believes that in the near future, most rooftop solar panel systems won’t just generate electricity but will store it too.

“Within five years, around that time frame, every solar system we deploy will have a storage system tied to it,” SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive says. “I think that’s going to be the big game changer.”

Theoretically, if you have a solar panel and storage system, you could actually disconnect your home from the power grid entirely and survive on solar energy. If enough homes do this, the world could finally move away from its heavy dependence on fossil fuels.

In some US states, it’s actually possible to sell back excess electricity generated by solar panels. This doesn’t happen often, again, because of the lack of storage capabilities. But with the emergence of heavy-duty batteries like the Powerwall, this could fundamentally change this situation. Households could start selling back electricity in a big way.

The notion of selling energy back to electric companies like Tenaga Nasional Bhd is a novel one.

It is certainly not common yet. But perhaps it could be if home batteries become more commonplace and people are able to store excess electricity.

Cost is going to be an issue though. It’s been estimated that to generate enough power for a whole house, it would cost over US$10,000 for the batteries alone. Then there is the cost of the DC-to-AC power inverter and installation that will raise the price tag. Beyond the early adopters, there might not be that many households willing to invest such huge upfront costs to have such a system.

As exciting as Musk’s vision of ridding the world of fossil fuels may be, the concept of home batteries do have its doubters, who say that coal-fired power plants won’t be going away anytime soon. It’s worth noting that the US currently gets only about 1% of its power from solar panels. So perhaps the sceptics may have a point.

Harvard Professor Daniel Nocera, the inventor of artificial photosynthesis, says that the US has already invested too much into the electricity grid to abandon it easily. “In the United States, the economics don’t make sense,” he told the Washington Post.

Professor Severin Borenstein of the University of California, Berkeley, is also doubtful about the impact of home batteries in the short run. “I don’t think it’s going to get used at a very high scale right now,” he says. “There are a lot of people who will do things as a novelty or as an early adopter.”

But like all things technology, its price will surely drop over time.

“We expect costs to decline further as manufacturing scales, and over the next five to 10 years, these cost reductions will make it feasible to deploy the battery by default with all of our solar power systems,” says SolarCity’s Rive.

It’s worth noting that Tesla is open-sourcing its battery technology in the hope that many other companies will hop onto the home battery bandwagon and thus generate economies of scale for this technology. Perhaps some enterprising and innovative industrialist in Malaysia should consider making full use of Tesla’s open-source technology.

Musk’s vision of replacing fossil fuel with home batteries is perhaps even more audacious than anything Steve Jobs could have dreamed up. But it’s not wishful thinking. The technology is actually already there, just not the economics for it.

Replacing the electrical grid is not something that is going to happen anytime soon. Nor will it happen in the medium term. But there’s a good chance that it will do in the long run. And that’s a good thing. The world will eventually run out of fossil fuels. Besides, we have to take care of this planet. It’s the only one we’ve got.