Australia’s largest electric utility starts selling the Tesla Powerwall

Australia has the world’s highest per capita penetration of rooftop solar technology with 15% of households using solar for a total of 1.5 million households across the country. Electricity prices, which are among the highest in the world, and abundant sunlight contribute to making Australia an excellent market for solar energy and emerging home energy storage products.

Now those households will be able to combine their solar installations with Tesla’s home battery pack: the Powerwall. Origin, the largest electric utility in Australia, announced that it started to officially offer the Powerwall to its customers today.

Origin has 4.2 millions grid customers nationally and more than 400,000 solar customers, according to The Australian. The company will sell the Powerwall combined with a solar installation including Trina solar panels and a SolarEdge inverter starting from $16,500 AUD ($12,000 USD).

Households equipped with the system will be able to use solar power even when the sun is down, further reducing their use of the electric grid, and also have access to energy in case of a power outage.

Although Origin started selling the Powerwall today, the company said installations will only start in February. Tesla recently moved its production of energy storage products to its Gigafactory in order to accelerate output in early 2016. Along with Origin, electric utilities in the Netherlands and Vermont are set to receive the first Powerwalls in early 2016.

Sydney-based solar installer Natural Solar also announced a partnership with Tesla today to offer the Powerwall to its customers in Australia. The company said in a press release that it received a lot of inquiries about the Powerwall since Tesla launched it stationary energy storage product line earlier this year.