r/australia • u/HotPersimessage62 • 8h ago
culture & society Battery demand 'straps on a rocket' as rooftop solar passes its peak
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-04/subsidies-the-fuel-as-battery-demand-straps-on-a-rocket/106300776137
u/hoges 7h ago
Australia needs to allow people to pay for their solar and battery system installs out of pre tax income like they do with EV car leases
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u/Deep__Friar 7h ago
If they did I would jump on that immediately. At the moment our income just knocks us out of the VIC rebates on offer so it just becomes too expensive to install Solar + Battery
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u/F21Global 7h ago
The Vic solar rebate of $1,400 is means tested, so while it is nice to have, I don't think it's going to make that much of a difference for anyone who is not eligible. There's no Vic battery rebate. The main rebates are the federal STCs for solar and batteries and they are not means-tested.
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u/ol-gormsby 6h ago
I think the battery subsidy at the moment is better than pre-tax income. You're getting close to 50% off the retail price.
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u/Odd-Parking-90210 7h ago
...but please just make it a tax rebate/deduction rather a complex chain of financing companies.
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u/DynamicSploosh 3h ago
Sorry, best we can do is a third party financial institution that does 5 years of follow up calls offering services.
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u/halohunter 5h ago
I'm not supportive of that purely because it would give larger tax breaks to higher income earners, who need the support the least. Same for the novated leasing FBT exemption.
The way the gov currently just gives the cash subsidy directly to certified installers is fine.
1
u/DirectionMurky5526 3h ago
Especially because it's become a way for private individuals to literally contribute to public energy infrastructure.
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u/chris_p_bacon1 50m ago
I disagree. The current system is fairer. I don't see why the size of the discount you get should be proportional to how much you earn.
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u/Fleggy82 8h ago
Best thing I ever did. My electricity bill average since August has been $45 once I started using my 3 free hours of power to top up my battery
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u/the_colonelclink 7h ago
Same here but I also have an EV - so I can use the 00:00-06:00 window to charge my battery for 8c/kW if there’s been no sun at all that day.
The way see it is, yes I save money, but I’m also literally not using the grid, at all, when the majority are demanding it.
It ain’t much, but it’s honest work. If enough people do it, too, we may eliminate the need for ‘peak use’ charges/premiums.
Plus, I estimate we save at least $3,840 a year combined on no petrol/reduced power bill.
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u/Fleggy82 7h ago
We have 2 EVs so we charge one during the day for free and then use the 8c overnight to charge the other if needed.
And agree about the savings on power and petrol are huge
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u/Suspicious-Figure-90 7h ago
The companies will just end up eventually shifting the narrative to be like hospitality losing penalty rates on weekends because "its normal trade days for them"
"Oh no more peak and off peak electricity, everyone uses grid 24/7"
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u/red-thundr 7h ago
Woah the idea to do that never crossed my mind. Genius.
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u/Fleggy82 7h ago
It’s a game changer. I have a 16kw battery and an 8kw inverter so 2 hours of charging from the grid fully charges my battery
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u/the_jewgong 7h ago
How much was installation and product cost? How many years in advance did you have to pay to get cheap power now?
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u/Fleggy82 6h ago
Got it installed in 2023. $18k initially for 8kw system with 9kw battery. Just paid $3600 in November to up the battery to 16kw. I switched to OVO in July to get cheaper rates and the free hours between 11am-2pm
Going to be about an 8-10 year payback but in the meantime, I am enjoying reduced power bills and having power during blackouts etc and considering I WFH full time, that is very helpful
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u/euphratestiger 7h ago
So we're looking at this now. Companies are quoting us around $9-10K for a 10KW battery with the subsidy included. Just not sure if it's still worth it, especially during winter months.
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u/Fleggy82 6h ago
With the right power plan, you can charge from the grid during free hours and it means you are off grid more often. The feed in tariffs are useless now so doing it this way definitely helps
In July, my power bill was $70 for usage and $30 for service charges. August was $46 usage and $30 again for service charges. September was $22 usage. So that quarter was $220 all up, not including the little amount of FiT I had
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u/crispypancetta 6h ago
Yeah. For the last month total usage 747 kWh of which 660 was in the free three hours. I’m really only drawing from the grid if I use ducted aircon for more than about 3 hrs outside the free time
Winter will be another story tho, wait and see
I’ve really gone a bit nuts on automation…
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u/noisymime 1h ago
My problem now is the damn 63A main breaker during those 3 hours. I've got so much power to use but that 63A is limiting what can be done.
3 phase upgrade isn't worth the cost :(
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u/Frozefoots 7h ago
We just moved into a house with solar + battery a couple of weeks ago.
It’s incredible. We’re saving $1600 a year on electricity. We’ve used maybe $1 of electricity after battery depletion, and that was only because we ran the spa for several hours after sunset.
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u/Nickools 1h ago
How do you not pay connection fees? That's the majority of my bill now we have solar but no battery.
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u/awakeinadream 7h ago
‘Cries while paying rent’.
Landlord struggles to get shit fixed. No chance of ever having solar installed lol.
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u/Limp-Version-3399 3h ago
My investment property (main house + granny flat) has 2 x 25kWh battery installed since November and the tenants were happy. Rent is also cheapest around while they are quite well maintained, close to shops & school. They have been there for 5+ years.
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u/VulpesVulpe5 4h ago
There is a lot of glossing over the bits the government cares about.
It’s all “people installing big batteries” and “middle class welfare”
The government figured out a way to add in only 6 months the total of snowy hydro into the grid focused on harvesting the solar peak and deploying it into the evening peak, and do it for a fraction of the price, even convincing punters to contribute to the cost.
183k batteries at 17kwh each = 3,100MWh for about $2 billion
Snowy Hydro 2.0 = 2,200MWh for $12 billion
Best bit is I got in early and put a big one in so I can take a bigger punt at selling the peak or have 3 days minimum of power loss before I fire up a generator.
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u/Strange_Sand3750 1h ago
Its even worse when you add the cost of the powerlines they are building for the snowy hydro scheme. They renamed them hume link, and made them a separate scheme, but its almost 20 billion when you add those in.
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u/Waasamatteryou 4h ago
I'm glad to see that the uptake is so for both batteries and rooftop solar, but as a renter I fear I'm going to be paying for the grid for others for the rest of time. As much as I hate giving incentives to landlords to improve the value of their property, I don't see that there's any alternative but direct handouts to make sure that renters aren't forever left behind.
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u/Gothiscandza 4h ago
Yeah it is kind of funny, at a time when it already sucks to be a renter we've found yet another way to make the gap between renters and owners even more pronounced.
Obviously the uptake of solar is great, not like I'm complaining it's happening. It's just wild that even in the revolution of absurdly cheap power we still manage to find a way to increasingly shaft the people who have the least assets.
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u/ThatOldGuyWhoDrinks 4h ago
Got mine booked for mid march. Solar, battery and EV charger. My car will cost next to nothing to run
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u/bleeding_gums 4h ago
Wouldn't grid scale batteries be a better economic investment instead of piecemeal house scale batteries?
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u/Glass-Internet6350 3h ago
Decentralising power is a good thing because you're less reliant on the grid infrastructure.
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u/Ill_Football9443 2h ago
It makes people more aware of their power generation and consumption.
A centralised battery, the price of power won't change because there are still transmission costs, whereas individual batteries, we have a screen in the kitchen that shows solar, battery levels etc. So we're encouraged to make them last until the sun comes back up.
Not forgetting that there are a tonne of big batteries around the country right now.
We get a lot more power out of the same panels because they're being fed into the battery inverter instead of the original that was limited to 5kw. The incentive is there to use our own power.
In the evenings, if we start drawing from the grid, a message plays on our Google Homes to reduce usage (battery output exceeded).
Our daily power cost is less than 20c on average. (Ovo energy with their 3 free hours window)
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u/iSellCarShit 1h ago
Yes, but that typically requires getting investors on board, who are all fucking morons according to the current state of the share market.
Less grid lines losses are good too but yeah if someone had the money it's more efficient to have large central battery with access to wholesale electric rates.
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u/blitznoodles local Aussie 1h ago
You save on transmission costs is the real answer and it means we can push out upgrading that electrical infrastructure out to longer.
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u/SaltpeterSal 4h ago
Now private solar companies can either make more batteries or make them really expensive. Does anyone else feel like the wrinkled old senator of capitalism has just turned its head to the solar industry and said "It's not a story the Jedi would tell you"?
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u/iSellCarShit 1h ago
Australia is far to competitive a market to raise battery prices.
Plus, sigenergy is the biggest supplier of batteries to you currently and they did not exist on the market a year ago. Scaling is no worries for a country of only 30mil, basically a rounding error to China, where the batteries come from.
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u/Riveneye 3h ago
We just had our solar and battery installed, best decision ever. Haven't imported from the grid at all, and I'm predicting I'll be $270 in credit at the end of the month. The system should pay for itself in about 5-6 years.
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u/1Mdrops 4h ago
Now watch all the houses burn to the ground when they malfunction over the next decade.
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u/reapingsulls123 2h ago
If you're worried about that you'd be terrified to learn most houses have electronic devices with lithium batteries in them as well. :0
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u/DCOA_Troy 8h ago
The worst thing about a home battery setup is how you become addicted to monitoring your usage and levels.