Solar rooftops and Tesla Powerwalls will power the new Tesla Town in Melbourne, Australia. Many of us expected some pretty big things from Solar City and from the development of the Tesla Powerwall and it seems like a planned community in Australia is going to be the first to really put the Powerwall to widespread use.
The Yarrabend community, a suburb of Melbourne, will utilize solar roofs and Tesla Powerwalls to provide and store energy for the homes, businesses, fitness centers, and other buildings in the community.
By combining two of the biggest ideas to come from Elon Musk (Tesla Energy) recently, this “Tesla Town” will not only meet their own energy needs, but will also feature charging stations for electric vehicles so that residents can charge their cars free of charge.
The Powerwall will be one of the more important features of each residence for the planned community, which will include upscale individual homes as well as apartment complexes and townhouses. By utilizing solar roofing and Tesla Powerwalls they are essentially going to be a net-zero energy town.
The Powerwall can store and distribute the power needed to run each residence and do so at a high-efficiency level. Plus, by using Powerwall systems, even homes connected to the grid are protected from power outages because they can serve as a battery backup to power your entire home.
“The new 16.46 hectare suburb, which will be called YarraBend for its 300 metres of Yarra River frontage, will include around 2,500 new dwellings – a mix of free standing houses, townhouses and apartments with three to five bedrooms, ranging in price from $1.48 million to $2.1 million.” ~ The Sydney Morning Herald
Aside from being a net-zero community, there are other benefits they are hoping to reach with this “Tesla Town”, including an expected 43% reduction in water usage and an 80% reduction in landfill contribution. They aim to make as little impact on the environment as possible while still being a suburb of a major city and while utilizing cutting edge technology, many of which are easy to transition to your own off-grid lifestyle. Towns like these are great because the lessons learned in their construction and implementation of their systems allow other off-grid individuals and families to apply them or adapt certain portions to improve their own homes and communities.
They are planning on housing for 2,500 residents and the design and construction is being done by Glenvill Homes with the sale of the first homes having started in August of 2016. Being a suburb of a major metropolitan area, they are also planning a wide variety of other features and services for the residents of Yarrabend.
From a tech concierge to health and wellness centers and even various shops and cultural centers, they are taking off-grid style living to a more luxurious and upscale level. They are planning top notch restaurants and art districts that will focus on local artists. They also have plans for schools, integrated horticulture zones, and walkways and bike paths take priority over roads all in an effort to help connect residents to nature and to create a community that is more efficient in almost every possible way. Even the appliances and residential designs are intended to reduce energy consumption and overall waste.
The individual houses won’t come cheap, costing anywhere from $1.48 million and $2.1 million dollars, but they will incorporate technology and design features that will allow people to live off-grid while still living near a metropolitan area and being highly connected to the latest technology. They even have an app for residents that will supply them with public transportation schedules, community events, and more. Plans also include shopping areas, parks, multi-sport fields, golf, and essentially all the other conveniences you’d expect from an upscale community, but with the benefits of being off-grid (essentially) and a drastic reduction in environmental impact.
This is the first “Tesla Town”, and the way things are growing in the sustainable energy sector, it isn’t likely to be the last. It is almost certain that we will see similar communities aimed at various lifestyle choices, pop up across the globe.
While the Yarrabend community is aimed at a more affluent resident, many of the key elements that make these homes and apartments so efficient and off-grid capable, are not going to be so exclusive, in large part because the innovator behind the major features, Elon Musk, actually hopes that his company can provide the same technology for a much wider consumer audience.
So, even though Yarrabend may not appeal to everyone, it will certainly demonstrate that there is no limit to off-grid communities and that certain stereotypes couldn’t be further from the truth. As these amazing advances become more widely available and as they become cheaper to produce, many of them could become mainstays for anyone who wants to engage in off-grid living, and that can only be of benefit to all of us, and to the planet as a whole.
Yarrabend “Tesla Town” is truly the future.
Be patient, prices will come down as the technology develops. Just like the Tesla Model S was around $100k, the Tesla Town house pricing is going to be expensive in the beginning, but prices will come down over time just like they did for the newest Tesla electric car. Seeing how successful Elon Musk has been in his pricing models, and the $35k price of the newer Tesla Model 3, you can probably expect the prices to be in reach for a completely off grid home in a few years.
In the meantime, we can look at this and realize that we are headed in the right direction.
Sustainable energy is at the core of the sustainability movement.
This has the makings of truly being the future of housing in the world. Self sufficient homes which produce their own energy. Extra energy can be pumped back into the grid.
This is truly sustainable.
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