Aussie home builder Metricon Homes has teamed up with solar provider CSR Bradford to offer a 5kW ‘Solar ChargePack’ including a Powerwall 2 battery, solar panels and inverter to every new house that the company builds in South Australia. It’s saying the battery and solar setup, at a small additional cost on top of, y’know, an actual house, could make residents up to 90 per cent self-sufficient and save over $2000 in electricity bills per year.
Bradford Solar says that the 10-year savings from a solar setup like its Solar ChargePack are in the region of $20,000 — depending on which state or territory you live in, since those savings are broadly reliant upon energy pricing, the average amount of power used by homes, and the amount of sunlight that each house can draw upon. The Solar ChargePack includes Tesla’s Powerwall 2, which can supply 5kW of continuous power — enough to run two separate 2400W home circuits at full power.
The average SA house pulls 21kWh of energy through the grid per day, and Bradford says that the Powerwall 2 plus solar setup is capable of storing enough power to cover that average home’s evening energy usage. Since the battery tops itself up using solar power or the grid manually, they can keep a house running during a blackout — like the very serious one that South Australia went through in September last year. A single Powerwall 2 contains 14kWh of energy potential.
If you’re planning on building a home in SA already, Bradford and Metricon say that they’re installing the Solar ChargePacks in new builds from now onwards at an introductory cost of $5999 — though as with any Australian propety investment at the momentg, caveat emptor. [Metricon / Bradford Solar]