This is the second time this exact situation has occurred through Inner West Community Energy. No doubt it won’t be the last.
When commercial lawyer Phillip Cornwell first went solar, he bought a modest system of eight panels encouraged by the then fabulous 60 cents/kilowatt-hour feed-in tariff that Premier Nathan Rees introduced 10 years ago to drive the solar industry in NSW.
A government promoting solar! It’s been a while.
So Phillip was certainly a solar early-adopter. And he’s still at it, because now he’s bought a Tesla Model 3 electric car, and when he confirmed the order earlier this year he realised he needed to increase his solar generation so the car could be 100% renewable-energy powered. His first solar PV array only generates about 3 kilowatt-hours a day.
“I knew that the Tesla, to charge it, would need more than that, and also I just wanted to send a signal to the world that solar is the future,” Phillip told us.A cycling mate of Phillip’s had bought a solar + battery system through Inner West Community Energy, so Phillip contacted us for guidance on equipment design and getting a good installer, the sort of support we offer every day. Even though he and his wife Cecilia live in Mosman, which is not quite the Inner West, we were happy to help.
The second PV array is now up and running, generating a peak of 5.1 kilowatts from sixteen 320watt REC panels through 16 optimisers to a Solaredge inverter.
“The thing I really like about it,” Phillip says, “is that I can set the Tesla to charge at 10.30 in the morning and the solar from the new system covers the charging of the Tesla perfectly. You can see consumption and generation on the phone app and there’s almost no red, red being power coming in. It’s only red if a cloud passes over the sun.”
While the payback for his new solar array was very attractive, it’s the environmental benefits of going solar that really motivated Phillip. “My priority was very much on the environmental side,” he says. “Joining the movement and using less coal. Being more sustainable.”
Now Phillip and Cecilia have an electric car and two solar PV systems to run it. Just as with his decision to go solar 10 years ago, with his decision to buy the Tesla he wanted to send a message to the world. “I love the cut-through thinking of Elon Musk,” Phillip says, “he wasn’t going to muck around with a hybrid. He just went straight to pure electric.
“And as you can see it’s a beautiful vehicle. It’s a totally new experience to drive. It’s wonderful to drive. It was partly just the magic of it.”
Gavin Gilchrist 0407 663 125