Discover Australian-Made Solar Technologies Taking On The World - And Winning
on solar quotes tv this month it's all australian made from testing aussie solar panels in alice springs to saving you money with clever aussie-made monitoring we also check out the world's biggest portable solar setup as well as inverters and batteries made for australian conditions hello and welcome to solar quotes tv the aussie made edition where the only thing not made in australia is well me in this episode we're looking at an array of solar products oh that's a bad pun being made in australia by australian companies shortly we'll be taking you out to tindo solar's new factory in mawson lake south australia which is currently being commissioned where we'll be talking to owner glenn morelli but first let's take a look at australia's incredible solar history the modern solar panel was effectively invented in australia by a team at the university of new south wales led by a doctor martin greene martin green set up a small research team in sydney in the early 80s with the aim of improving the efficiency of solar cells that team took the efficiency of a solar cell up to 25 percent since the team was founded it has held the solar cell efficiency record for 30 of the last 38 years also in 1983 martin greene personally invented the perk solar cell now this type of solar cell is currently found in 90 of panels produced today the team is currently working on stacking silicon cells on top of each other and they're aiming to get to 40 efficiency at the cell level insane but not only did martin greene do all that with the underlying solar technology his research students went on to found and lead many of the multi-billion dollar solar companies that nailed low-cost solar panel production in china dropping the cost of solar panels over 95 without martin greene and his researchers in sydney we wouldn't have the low-cost high-performance solar today the companies like tindo solar can make for our homes now as i promised let's take a look at tindo's brand new 5 million dollar factory as we chat with glenn morelli hey glenn how are you doing good thank you so why the new factory what was wrong with the old one well a couple of things really we had a lease that was expiring and and needed to move out for one reason and then the opportunity came along to build a new line as well for the manufacturing process the evolution of cells moving from the old type cell technology to the m10 that we've currently taken up so the m10 cell that you're putting in these new solar panels that's a bigger sell yeah it's a little bit bigger and more efficient and then what you're doing about the trend if you like i think it's probably uh permanent that it's hard to find a panel that's not half cut and that's a completely different way of making panels yeah and that's another new feature of our line so we can do half cut sales and that'll be what we'll be rolling off as soon as we're commissioned so how much more throughput will you get in this factory compared to the old one uh in rough numbers this is about treble the throughput from the old plant wow so and that's obviously based on demand from yeah so based on demand uh we're you know since covert we've had uh huge demand there's a real push particularly from community uh for australian mode and speaking about australian made one thing i'm hearing from some installers which i personally disagree with but this is the argument and i'm sure you've heard it a million times those tindo guys they don't make solar panels they assemble solar panels what we say to that is you know if it was that easy we wouldn't have invested about five million dollars in a new line to start with right we've got a lot of high-tech state-of-the-art equipment here to do that process um everything from starting with the cells we've got a laser cut them for the half cut cells lasers light lasers yeah the whole line is automated yep there will be eight people running the line and every one of those people are really qa so there'll be over 20 qa steps in the process managed by eight people running the line so people that think it's easy to make a solar panel guys just come to the factory and see that the effort that these guys put in into commissioning the line into running the line into keeping the qa on the line and i know how hard this stuff is so there's a solar panel shortage well there's a shortage of everything at the moment it seems like that includes solar panels how's that affected tindo uh we've seen a huge spike in inquiry particularly from resellers or wholesale avenues interstate and from our average level inquiry to the last few months so more people are looking to buy us australian-made 100 i think um you know consumer-driven for australian major and covert um higher quality you know that the market's been educated that cheapest isn't necessarily best you know the panel shortage in china is giving that a push along so you're currently commissioning this factory yeah built a huge stock of solar panels behind us to get you through what's the future after that we hope to push into other states and attract more resellers for us and really you know expand rapidly through australia with our brand new line that can make panels you know as good as anybody in the world so thanks for letting us into the factory today mate i know you're busy commissioning a new factory once it's up and running if people actually want to see what's involved in a solar panel can they come and visit 100 we designed the the factory floor to be able to run uh factory tours so people can ring us up book in a time we'll give them a one-on-one guided two or three if you're watching this you're probably a solo nerd i'm a solo nerd and the next manufacturing engineer it's just geek out heaven here come and visit it when it's up and running it's awesome for this month's field test we head all the way up to alice springs to the desert knowledge australia's solar center to find out just how tindo and a bunch of other panels are performing in one of the sunniest places on earth first let's hear from senior project manager paul rodden in alice springs so yeah the disney knowledge australia solar center was originally built in 2008 as a federally funded project designed to demonstrate solar technology and this site was really about bringing the most up-to-date information to the public by making not only the site available to people but the the data that was generated from all the systems available via the a publicly facing website it's all photovoltaics it's a range of different technologies and it's really about demonstrating those different technologies in this environment which is a hot environment with high levels of irradiance a really ideal place in many ways for solar now the oldest panels up in alice are aussie-made bp solar panels made in the now sadly closed bp solar panel factory near the olympic precinct in homebush sydney these beauties with their original inverters are approaching 14 years in the nt heat they're still chugging along admirably pumping out about 87 percent of their original energy output but what about the tindo panels they are kicking ass these tindo panels installed in 2016 are generating more energy per kilowatt installed than the other panels installed that year q cells hanwa or canadian solar the only silicon panels keeping up with tindo are the more expensive sun powers which is impressive as they were installed five years earlier in 2011. the only panels beating tindo as far as i can see are ones i've never heard of solibro thin film panels installed a year later in 2017 but if you want those on your roof bad luck i don't know of anyone that installs solid bro panels in australia so that's great to see australian made panels from 2008 and 2016 surviving and thriving in the aussie outback if they can survive there they should do just fine on your [Music] roof for our installer profile this month we're chatting to melbourne company essential solar about their business and why the inverter of choice for many of their installations is the victorian made mill solar eclipse inverter good day my name is david bruce from essential solar so finn thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about aussie made products for the solar industry today i'd like to talk about the eclipse inverter by mill solar this inverter was designed and developed by a company called mil systems who are based in footscray victoria mil systems business has been to design power electronic product for the australian defense force so they're very much used to designing for harsh environments typically the australian environment can be a lot hotter than it is in europe and especially in china too we love it we believe that there is a long future for this inverter it's a very well designed product it's got this fantastic heatsink on the front which does a couple of things one is it removes the need for a fan so it takes away that noise that we get from fan inverters gives giving us a bit of flexibility to install it in a variety of different places including inside a home but the other thing about having such a good heatsink on there is that it allows the internal components to run at a much lower temperature and increase the reliability i've got a great deal of confidence in this company they know what they're doing we've been installing this code this inverter now for about three years and up until now we haven't had a single product failure which is quite remarkable so here's an interesting question why then doesn't everybody want to buy this inverter the reason for that is because most of the australian industry doesn't offer this inverter for sale and they don't offer it for sale because it doesn't have a great marketing push behind it so our customers aren't aware of it and that can be quite difficult it can be quite difficult going to a customer and explaining to them the benefits of something that they've never heard of so much of the industry prefers not to even bother and just to run with these well-known brands that are out there at essential solar we prefer to actually go out and offer the customer something that we think is right for them and so i will give this to our sales team and we will promote that as being australian made and not because for any charitable reason we don't want to promote mill solar just because they're made in australia we want to promote it because it's a very reliable inverter it's got fantastic support they're here for the long term and the specifications and the performance is just perfect for for australia so when mill solar began the development of this product they wanted to aim at the high end so they aimed at the specifications that you would tend to see from a european inverter fronius and sma and the price reflects that as well it's around about the same price as those european inverters it's a single phase inverter it's got higher input voltage range so it gives us flexibility for design which is fantastic they've set up their manufacturing in footscray and they've done that deliberately so that they can support the australian market not just this year not just for the next few years but to do this for the long term and i think that's a very exciting thing and a very important thing for the solar industry in this country for this month solar tech we're focusing on 5b maverick the flagship solar product the sydney tech innovator 5b and specifically we're looking at how sa water in south australia is using the world leading technology to power its happy valley water treatment plant which supplies 40 of adelaide's drinking water hello i'm nicola murphy and i'd like to tell you about the solar installation that we've built at the happy valley reservoir where we've installed a very interesting system called the 5b maverick the panels on that system are just the same as the 367 000 panels we've installed across the whole of the state but they're mounted a little bit differently on a redeployable system so the uh the maverick or the 5b maverick system 5b are an australian manufacturer so they've designed that racking system here in australia so those panels are fully movable we were able to bring in the panels that had been previously mounted onto a racking system bring them on the back of a truck and roll them out in a day so that system at happy valley is around 30 000 panels this currently is the world's largest installation of this type of racking system and generates just about 16 000 megawatt hours of energy generation per annum and that's more than double than that plant at happy valley actually uses which is great because we can export any excess generation that we make there to the grid or we can store it on some of the batteries that we've got on that site we've installed around 33 sites across the state from small rooftop systems up to really massive solar farms and they're pretty impressive because you stand at one end of the paddock or you can see our row upon row upon row of solar panels and so that would take us up to a 32 megawatt system the challenge to keep our massive 86 million a year electricity bill as low and as stable as possible doesn't stop and so we will continue to find new and innovative ways to supply that electricity to ourselves and export any excess now to our man ned who has the job of checking the hundreds of reviews that come through our website every week this month ned is looking at a review for australian battery manufacturer power plus energy ned where the hell are you this week mate [Music] bloody beautiful good day everyone this is ned here for my australian made review of the month with an australian-made beer an australian-made hat and the reviews are about an australian-made battery it's from gareth and it goes like this superb stand-alone system great performance on my off-grid home i've had three power plus echo batteries and 5.5 lg neon panels running on victron's easy solar for four months now it's great to have an australian made energy product that's self-managing simple to install and performs as expected no issues at all and it's all remotely monitored by victron's vrm so after i saw this review it was written back in 2020 i contacted gareth and he let me know there were some small issues but both the manufacturer of the batteries and the company that installed it i've come back out and fixed everything up posthaste it just goes to show that customer service is invaluable gareth gave that five stars again that's the power plus battery installed by solarwise in new south wales the website for powerplus is powerplusenergy.com if you want to check it out and there you go there's my australian made review of the month i'll see you guys next time if you want to keep ned busy please go to solarquotes.com and leave us a review for your installation or for any solar product you've used for ask finn this month i'm going to answer a question that i get asked all the time i'm buying a solar system i'm getting consumption monitoring anyway should i go the extra mile and get a premium solar analytics package which is software made in australia in redfern sydney by the company solar analytics now if you want to add solar analytics to your system it's quite a big ask at the moment because it's up to 600 bucks added to the cost of the solar system and if you've already got good monitoring why would you want solar analytics on top i'll give you two good reasons number one solar analytics have spent years perfecting the algorithms that tell you if your solar system is running properly they'll give you a percentage figure and it will spot stuff that's going wrong with your system before almost anyone else knows about it i'll give you an example i've got a friend they had a fronia system on their roof they had solar analytics and solar analytics started pinging them it said there's a problem with the system it's running at about 85 and it seems to be getting worse we called up the installer the installer was a good guy who was referred through solar quotes he came straight round he had a look one of the mc4 connectors had a problem with it and it was melting so that could have been quite nasty if it hadn't been picked up on so solar analytics can spot issues early the other thing that's just come out i've been asking them to do for ages they've got a thing called plan optimizer now this is getting more and more important as the electricity tariffs become more complicated we're getting demand tariff we're getting time of use tariffs we're getting solar sponge tariffs what solar analytics can do now is it can look at your actual energy data and it can compare that with all the electricity plans in australia and can say hey this is absolutely the cheapest plan for you based on the actual amount of electricity you import and export and they did a survey of a bunch of customers and the average person was saving 400 bucks a year and there's another thing about solar analytics that's making it even more compelling depending on what inverter you've got you don't even have to buy the expensive solar analytics hardware anymore you can actually just buy the software which is a lot cheaper and they're slowly integrating with all the big inverter manufacturers they've already got there with sungrow they've got that with fronius and it's confidential but i'm pretty confident there's other big inverter manufacturers that are going to be getting on board soon so should you buy solar analytics if you've already got monitoring i reckon yes many installers disagree with me but i've got it on two of my systems and it's been invaluable i love it you don't look at it every day in fact you don't look at it at all after a while but that's not why you buy it you buy it because it sends you an email saying hey there's a problem with your system or hey you could be on a cheaper electricity plan hey just got back from queensland well i'm glad we got enough subscribers to be able to afford to pay that ticket i bought you some nice darling downs bread for you what's special about this darling downs bread that's australian made and so therefore it's the best okay so you just came from tindo solar yep i'm at it's about 12km everyone uh-huh so you'll agree australian maid is the best australian bear uh afahee that's japanese it's brewed and made in australia that beer is about as japanese as a leaked and solar panel so this episode ronald as you know is all about australian made that's right what do you think about australian made it's great we make lots of things in australia we export them overseas we feed many people in other countries who don't have enough room to grow their own food where the world's second maybe exporter of beef we're the third largest exporter of wheat all these exports supporting everyday australians uh giving them work livelihoods income it's great so the more stuff we make in australia more stuff we can export more neat stuff we can get from overseas so how important is it when you're buying solar to insist on as much as possible being australian made it's not important i mean if you want an australian-made solar panel yes insist on that but there's if you don't want an australian-made solar panel there's no particular need to insist on one but you put putting money into the local economy well yeah but we export goods from a to overseas and then we import goods from overseas including solar panels and if we didn't import anything we couldn't export anything so a lot of people get very upset when i say it doesn't matter if you buy products from overseas they have a strong gut reaction that oh no no it's bad for australia's economy it's bad for our industries to buy overseas products so i will explain why it's not a problem by uh getting you to pretend to be a foreign country so i bought you this nice hat duncan we'll say you come from stalingrad so i will get a solar panel for you to sell to me hello comrade hello i see i see your country produces beautiful solar panels can i have one please show me the money oh okay well i can give you australian dollars is that okay no it's money oh cool 35 it's only a small panel ten dollars a while you're on cool yay thank you now what are you gonna do with those australian dollars in stalinland i will buy vodka okay but does the bottle oh affect australian dollars no so what are you going to do with them i am going to change them yeah and who are you going to change them with bank of stalingrad right and what does the bank do with them i've never thought about this ah right so banks just a middleman you give them the australian dollars they give you the rubles and then those dollars will be given to sell to a russian who wants to buy australian goods so turn your hat around sideways i know you russians are masochists you'd like some delicious vegemite wouldn't you the only thing that tastes versatile vodka than borscht yes only 35 oh you get delicious vegemite for and we get our australian dollars back circular trade so every dollar which goes overseas is a dollar that comes back to australia i see what you did there i've honestly never thought about it like that yeah if you are tindo it's definitely good if you buy australian made solar panels since they're the only game in town if you want reliable ones with a track record so what you say to the uh many commenters we get mostly on facebook and say i'm not buying that chinese yeah well you shouldn't buy chinese if you buy chinese quality so there you have it international economics 101 thanks to mr ronald brackles so there you have it solar quotes tv episode 11 the australia-made edition with ronald brackles who's a lot more australian than me born in the uk to a south african dad in a finnish moment now living in australia so if you want to buy australian made that's great go for it if you want to buy australian made solar you've got a great choice now you've got panels made in australia you've got inverters made in australia you've got analytics programmed in australia you can even get racking made in australia you can get most of the solar system from components that are made in australia and if you want to pay a bit more for australian more power to you i absolutely encourage that but it's not that simple as ronald said if you haven't got the budget for australian because it is generally a little more expensive don't stress you can still get really good gear from overseas and it doesn't make that much difference on a macro economic level was that right ronald that's right so don't stress the most important thing is in my opinion and i hope ronald agrees is that if you own a roof you stick solar on it so you can renewably power your home and you can contribute to australia being an absolute world leader in rooftop solar we've just gone through a few days where a hundred percent of demand was covered by solar that's amazing we're leading the world in terms of gigawatt scale grids long may it continue whether it's australian made chinese made korean made now obviously there's a lot more stuff made in australia that's solar related that we can cover in one episode so if we've missed anything that's made in australia that's a particular favorite of yours let us know in the comments and we may be able to look at it in the future so thanks for watching i can't believe this is the 11th episode we started back in january we're not going to see you again before christmas [Music] you
2021-12-13 22:45
