Redflow better than Tesla's home battery storage
Apr 23, 2016 Trevor LarkumEnergy and Climate Change, Energy Storage, News, Reviews and Comment
Simon Hackett, the executive chairman of Australian battery storage developer Redflow, declares himself to be the number one fan of Tesla electric vehicles in Australia. But he insists that Redflow's battery storage product is better than the Tesla Powerwall.
Redflow threw down the gauntlet to its much-hyped international rival on Wednesday, announcing the release of the ZCell battery storage product, bigger and more expensive than Tesla and other big name products, but one Hackett expects to be a force in the market.
"As Tesla's biggest fan in Australia I've got a view that they've got the best battery technology for cars, but we do a better technology for houses and that's totally cool,"
says Hackett, who has bought Tesla Roadsters and several Model S electric vehicles, has orders in for the Model X and will also be head of the queue for the new "mass market" Model 3.
"I expect Tesla to sell a hell of a lot of Powerwalls and the nice thing is that we have a market here that is going to explode, it's not a matter of them having to lose for us to win or vice versa and you can appreciate as well we make a battery that's a lot more grunt, a lot more capacity," Hackett told RenewEconomy in an interview.
Hackett expects the market for battery storage in Australia to be "huge". This, he says, will be driven by Australia's high grid prices, its big rates of rooftop solar installation, a desire for more grid "independence", and a wish to do something for the environment.
"I'm seeing the same set of signals from human beings that I saw at the start of the internet boom," says Hackett, who made his fortune with his company.
"The batteries have gone from something that people that use to talk about in dark corridors to something that is a dinner table conversation in households.
"Tesla are the catalyst here, not the cause. The cause is that the conditions are right, batteries are … starting to approach the cost where we can have these conversations.
"It's a tipping point in my view , you can see it a year ago you couldn't have this discussion with a random person about batteries, now every second person I talk to engages me about it."
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