Researchers have proposed that warehouses, commercial areas, shopping centers, and factories’ unoccupied rooftops are a kind of better options for solar and battery power stations.
If successful, such centers could produce 25% of Australia’s power and give a major push to the country’s clean energy efforts.
Commercial businesses could generate solar power during the day, store it in batteries on site and sell it back to the grid during the evening peak.
The idea will help produce electricity in the city and could also reduce transmission losses, according to a paper.
Enough unused commercial and industrial rooftop space
“Our calculations show Australia has enough unused commercial and industrial rooftop space to supply at least 25% of our annual electricity use – five times as much as currently supplied by gas-fired generators,” said researchers from Australia’s Victoria University.
The idea is motivated by the urgent need to expand emission-free electricity to replace coal generation that is scheduled to close over the coming decade, and in a way that presents little or no social and local environmental costs. Such social and local environmental costs are now plainly evident in some farmed wind and solar proposals and with their attendant transmission expansion requirement.
They claimed that Australia is already the world’s top rooftop solar nation, per capita. “But our solar is largely on our houses.”
The country is claimed to have four times as much residential solar as we do on commercial buildings. In Europe, it’s the opposite – there’s 1.5 times as much solar on businesses as on houses. The EU’s new Solar Energy Standard is expected to double rooftop solar capacity in four years, reported The Conversation .
Large new source of cheap, reliable, clean electricity with little downside risk
“In our new discussion paper, we make the case for a massive expansion of battery-backed solar photovoltaic power on Australian business premises. Call it business power,” said researchers.
The idea offers a potentially large new source of cheap, reliable, clean electricity with little downside risk. Rooftop solar produced 70% more electricity in Australia than either hydro generators or solar farms .
The analysis also finds that “Business Power” is likely to be more efficient than the existing certificate scheme (which is in the process of being phased out) in expanding emission-free electricity. Unlike existing policy, Business Power also provides incentives for behind the-meter storage expansion.
Suggested implementation arrangements include establishing a “Business Power Authority” to disburse Business Power floor price payments and to recover the cost of this from consumers via regulated distribution network service providers.
An alternative would be to recover some or all of the policy cost from taxpayers. There is no compelling economic reasoning to prefer one rather than the other, according to the paper .
Encourage the development of large-scale battery-backed rooftop PV
Discussed in the paper, the “Business Power” policy considers the merit of encouraging the development of large-scale battery-backed rooftop PV, capable of behind-the-meter trading in the electricity wholesale market, in supplying electricity to the grid.
“Suitably developed, this resource might be expected to supply at least a quarter of the electrical energy consumed in Australia each year, and much of that supply will occur when the sun is not shining.”
The proposal that is assessed here involves floor prices for electricity that is fed into the grid at certain times of the day from rooftop solar PV and from behind-the-meter batteries.
Such a combination is likely to result in more electricity supplied to the grid before 11am and after 2pm, more electricity storage from rooftop PV between 11am and 2pm and more electricity supply to the grid between 6pm and 9pm, when the stored electricity is discharged to the grid, according to the paper .
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