Colormaker commissions new Revolve® battery

On Wednesday 11 October, Northern Beaches’ sustainable paint and ink manufacturer Colormaker Industries took another step forward in commissioning their new 144 kWh ReVolve® battery. This battery is groundbreaking technology, made from nine second-life Nissan Leaf EV batteries.

Two years in the making, this was a major milestone on Colormaker’s pathway to Net Zero. The following Thursday and Friday mornings, Colormaker’s morning paint production was completed entirely with electricity produced the day before by their solar array and stored in the ReVolve® overnight. 

This followed just two weeks after Colormaker passed the milestone of saving 600 tonnes of greenhouse gases through the electricity produced from its 100-kW solar array, installed four years earlier. Since then, despite first the Black Summer bushfires and three successive years of La Niña rainfall, Colormaker’s solar array has pumped out clean electricity every day.

The array was designed to produce twice as much electricity as the business used, but once they became a solar electricity generator, Colormaker also became a lot more conscious of their own use. A new compressor was the biggest factor in getting overall electricity usage down by 23% across the entire site, making them much more energy efficient.

“Having such a huge energy surplus has been a great enabler for Colormaker” said MD, David Stuart. “We produce 2.2 times as much electricity as we use, but until recently, we’ve only been 65% self-sufficient. Since our small battery was installed, for every kWh that we’ve taken from the grid, we’ve put 5 kWh back in. The battery and solar has also enabled us to reduce Demand, a measure of strain on the grid, by 85%.” said Stuart.

“The ReVolve® battery will assist us in eliminating buying any power during the evening peak, thus taking more strain off the grid, whilst also improving our self-sufficiency. The first battery moved us in that direction, so we’re very confident of big things from the new ReVolve®,” Stuart said.

The solar installation proved to be a jumping off point for Colormaker. They also have three EVs (electric vehicles) for deliveries and staff commutes, an electric forklift (no LPG on site), the energy efficient air compressor, the small battery, a mega shredder to give cardboard a second life as packing material, and a new reverse cycle air conditioner in their carbon abatement assets.

The ReVolve® storage units are “end of life” batteries from Nissan LEAFs, a new Australian designed and built technology from Relectrify – a Melbourne-based innovation company engineering the future of battery energy storage. So, this powerful evolution marks one small step for Colormaker and Relectrify, one giant leap for the Northern Beaches and Australia. 

Once finally approved, the ReVolve® battery on Colormaker’s Brookvale site will be the first in the world to be fully certified, commissioned and operating commercially, in this case, as a solar sponge.

David Stuart concluded, “We’re still struggling to comprehend the enormity of what we’ve achieved. Just imagine what could happen if this technology was deployed not at one small business, but across thousands of businesses and communities across our wide brown land and indeed our South Pacific neighbours. This is the future that we want, that we deserve and, given our abundant sunshine, that we have an obligation to demonstrate to the rest of the world.”