9 ms·

In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

362 points by speckx 2mo ago

thelastgallon 2mo ago
Use EVs as energy storage. Millions of EVs form an energy reservoir. 20% of solar is curtailed now and q lot more in future, instead charge EVs. Pay the EV owners because they are creating a storage layer with their capital and power prices go negative hundreds of millions of times every year. No need of home batteries.
- ghostly_s 2mo ago
  1. A couple orders of magnitude more people own homes than EVs; 2. EVs already are used as energy storage, but the thing about EVs is people want to use that energy to yknow, drive them.
  - thelastgallon 2mo ago
    That's why paying EV owners is th right incentive. All new cars will be EVs. In 20 years, all cars are EVs.
  - Lio 2mo ago
    Could it be that most people drive shorter journeys than the capacity of their cars with occasional long journeys? I know that my next will need enough range for one particular journey to a relative's house but I only do that journey once or twice a year at most. I could easily reuse the "spare" capacity the rest of the time and I'm going to lease the car so long term battery health won't be an issue. To honest I think plugin storage to go along with plug in solar will be a game changer.
- jmyeet 2mo ago
  The issue here is that EVs tend to be charged when the sun is down. When sun is up you tend to be at work or driving. The surplus power is coming from solar.
  - thelastgallon 2mo ago
    EVs are parked 95% of the time. If it's parked, it can be charged. Work places also have electricity.
    - KaiserPro 2mo ago
      but you're assuming that work provides parking. Its not a given, plus whats in it for the drivers? plug my car in, it might be full, it might be empty, either way its racking up the charge cycles for no direct benefit for me. Batteries on a house makes a better sell for customers, and also targets the problem of both over supply and over consumption at source.
      - organsnyder 2mo ago
        Workplaces (and other locations) could offer free/reduced-cost charging, with the caveat that V2L is required. They could guarantee that the vehicle will be at a certain charge level at a designated time, and that the vehicle will never go below a threshold (in case an unanticipated trip is required).
    - cube00 2mo ago
      >Work places also have electricity. Only households can access the free electricity window. If you're not on a free plan you can get reduced rates during the solar peak window but business accounts aren't allowed to access those either.
    - Danox 2mo ago
      The boss may get a free charge, but no one else will…
  - bad_haircut72 2mo ago
    surely its possible to invent a "plug in road" system, then cars could charge (at least on highways etc) even when driving. I had this thought ages back when EVs first came out, to tackle the problem of long charge times when doing cross country road trips.
- toasty228 2mo ago
  When I looked into it it didn't make sense to use an EV as a solar battery, the chemistry isn't made for high cycle counts compared to regular home/solar batteries.
  - dyauspitr 2mo ago
    You looked wrong. These batteries can do 100,000 charge-discharge cycles while retaining 80% of their capacity.
    - willismichael 2mo ago
      It really depends on the battery chemistry of the specific EV, how many watts you charge at, and deep cycle vs. shallow cycle. Not all EV batteries will hold up to that many charge-discharge cycles. Even at that, 100,000 cycles is an exaggeration. From what I can tell, you can expect up to 3000 cycles from Nickel Manganese Cobalt batteries before they hit 80% of original capacity. Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries can last for 10,000 cycles before dropping to 80% of original capacity. https://bslbatt.com/blogs/lfp-vs-nmc-lithium-battery-comparison/ https://bslbatt.com/blogs/lfp-vs-nmc-lithium-battery-compari...
    - toasty228 2mo ago
      Hm sorry but no, feel free to read the specs of any manufacturer, they're rated for a few thousands cycles at best, usually under 5k, closer to 2k Even lifepo4 home storage batteries designed for frequent cycling are rated for ~10k cycles. As far as I can tell there are literally no battery chemistry that can survive 100k cycles and retain 80% capacity
      - dyauspitr 2mo ago
        Yeah, I have no idea where I came up with that from. It’s completely wrong.
        toasty228 2mo ago
        You might have read 100 000 miles? They do last a long time when used for their purpose (driving), statistically you'll get a gas engine failure earlier than a battery failure. But they're not made for at home day to day energy storage
- rswail 2mo ago
  In Australia people do both. We don't have V2G yet, but EVs plugged in at home overnight with L1 charging can get charged by the home battery that was charged up during the day by the PV on the roof. The solar PV and now storage rollouts in Australia have been one of the best government investments in public infrastructure in my lifetime here. The more we electrify, the less reliant we are on the crude -> foreign refineries -> imported/distributed fuel risk. Harvesting solar power is an awesome thing to do both at home and utility level. PV and wind utility installations are being built with storage co-located, there are companies building synthetic condensers to maintain the grid stability and the job of frequency support is now done mostly by batteries, not gas. We need to make electricity basically "too cheap to meter" and electrify our primary industries, mining and agriculture.
- Wacari 2mo ago
  Agreed. V2G is actually one of the best DER strats out there. The EVs are already purchased, the batteries and PCS are already configured for bidirectional flow in most brands. Coordination/visibility problem remains at Dx level, but actually worth the investment.
  - stubish 2mo ago
    Unfortunately most of the EVs already purchased don't have the electronics to support V2G. Newer Leafs and a couple of other brands do, but I think most models in most markets cannot support V2G.
- Tepix 2mo ago
  Volkswagen will limit your car to 100kWh of charging your home. That's not a whole lot.
  - jeeeb 2mo ago
    It’s not really clear what you mean. 100kWh is more than the entire battery capacity of the EV.
    - inemesitaffia 2mo ago
      Maybe lifetime?
black_puppydog 2mo ago
As ever, Volts did a really good episode on this: https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as Worth a listen, both to learn about how ridiculous the US situation is, and just how good the "news" of abundant solar is.
- Wacari 2mo ago
  David Roberts does not have an EE degree and misunderstands anything related to power system operations. Great for positive vibes and LCOE parading tho.
  - red-iron-pine 2mo ago
    elaborate
    - sanderjd 2mo ago
      I'm way less skeptical of Roberts than the parent commenter appears to be, but IMO he is more of a policy person than an engineering person. I still find the podcast very useful, with this lens in mind. There are other podcasts that get deeper into the engineering substance, and it's totally ok for different things to have different emphases.
  - dataengineer56 2mo ago
    What does "LCOE" stand for?
    - stoneman24 2mo ago
      Perhaps Low Cost Of Electricity?
      - cinntaile 2mo ago
        Your sibling comment is right. It stands for Levelized Cost Of Electricity.
kleiba2 2mo ago
> The government has moved to make use of this surplus solar energy, including by offering free power in the early afternoon to homeowners in Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia, regardless of whether they have solar panels on their roof or not. The goal is to spur more consumers to run appliances or charge electric vehicles during this window. Taking the term "1st world problems" to new heights!
- cube00 2mo ago
  You pay a higher daily supply charge and more per kWh outside this window so it's more like free (conditions apply) The supply charge is 6% higher for the Solar Sharer plan, while the peak rate is 92% higher. Solar Sharer’s peak rate is almost double the flat rate. The off-peak rate is 17% lower than the flat rate. https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-sharer-plans-compared/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-sharer-plans-compa...
  - stubish 2mo ago
    It is free if you can afford a suitably sized battery. Everyone else should stick to the existing plans. Fuzzy area in the middle for slightly undersized battery owners.
  - hahahaa 2mo ago
    Free as in kids eat free
- wongarsu 2mo ago
  Some of that will be electricity usage that otherwise wouldn't happen, but a lot of it will be shifting load from times where electricity is carbon-intensive to produce to times where there is a surplus that would otherwise go to waste
- Wacari 2mo ago
  cause they have massive operational issues induced by effectively must-run oversupply that has increased costs for both ratepayers (and sometimes shifted to the taxpayer to hide costs). And then try to fix those problems with populist TOU rate magic (they won't be fixed), and bills continue to rise!! But hey, LMPs are down LOLOLOLOL
Wacari 2mo ago
so in other words, heavily subsidize another technology (introducing cost shifts onto non-adopters, typically poorer people) to try and solve operational problems directly caused by oversubsidizing rooftop solar (another regressive cost-shift and extremely inefficient cost allocation relative to tx-connected solar) by bringing down wholesale prices (already a minority of the utility bill). Fixed costs, the majority of the utility bill, continue to increase. But hey, LMPs (something residential tarriffs are not as exposed to) are lower!!! LMFAO
- rswail 2mo ago
  Wholesale power is ~37% of the customer bills. The other costs are the "poles and wires" distribution network and the HV transmission network. The government is also building out the transmission network to various renewable energy zones, which has the added benefit of making the transmission network more resilient. With large coal plants, the network was only one interconnector failure from blacking out a state (as happened to South Australia). Now there is a much better network of interconnected transmission across the entire east and south coast of Australia, covering something like 80% of the population. The government just bailed out an aluminium smelter that was going to close because of the increased cost of power because it was relying on an old coal plant. Now that will be replaced with renewables. So we get the benefit of the continued operation of the smelter, as well as the build out of replacement generation for the old coal plants at EOL that will be closed by 2030.
  - Wacari1 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - skew-aberration 2mo ago
    I think you could use more citations. The South Australia blackout was not caused by coal or renewables or lack of interconnectors. If there had been zero interconnects (the local grid was self-sufficient) it wouldn't have happened! The primary cause of the extended blackout was simply a lack of readiness/contingency planning/compliance particularly at several large windfarms. See wiki article. Coal is generally cheaper for baseload power like an aluminum smelter, even though solar is cheaper during the day. Firming with wind/battery is not yet competitive but is getting very close and is at the point where building new coal power plants is not viable. Refer to gencost report. However, replacing such a large load with brand new renewable capacity is almost certainly more expensive than simply continuing to burn coal, particularly when factoring in the grid upgrades required to make such a transition.
Apreche 2mo ago
[dead]
AnotherGoodName 2mo ago
It started with a solar boom, many small home scale solar roofs popping up everywhere. Australia has a free trade agreement with much of the world, including China, and solar panels have literally dropped to 1/50th of the price they were in 1990 ($10/W to $0.2/W today). A shout out to the work that was done to establish dynamic grid pricing too. Anyway that caused power prices to reliably go negative during the day as the solar boom led to too much energy being produced. So everyone started buying batteries (you can even get live feed in/out pricing as a consumer). In fact the government even today will pay you a $3000 subsidy to go install a battery. This is in a country where people can buy cheap batteries with no tariffs (free trade's amazing, seriously!). So everyone who could started doing it. For those in apartments etc. that couldn't easily install solar and batteries they won too since the entire power grid is now half the price. Another consequence of all this, aside from the cheap power prices during a datacenter boom and Hormuz blockade is that fossil fuel usage is plummeting. Particularly gas https://ieefa.org/resources/slump-eastern-australia-gas-demand-shows-no-signs-easing https://ieefa.org/resources/slump-eastern-australia-gas-dema... . No need for a gas peak power plant when the grid is packed with batteries. Which is helpful since one of the main issues with the current blockade is a lack of gas globally.
- pnw 2mo ago
  If you read the article, most of the decline in gas consumption in Australia is from changes in industrial usage. Residential demand is only down by 6% and part of that is likely due to the effective ban on gas in new residential construction which started in 2023 in Victoria. Prior to 2023 residential gas usage was increasing.
  - testing22321 2mo ago
    Australia never had much residential gas usage. Mr he very vast majority of residential homes don’t even have gas. No need for a furnace.
    - dalyons 2mo ago
      Pretty much every house in Victoria had gas, and gas furnaces, winter is cold enough
plantain 2mo ago
The program has so far spent $2.5bn, and installed 11GWh. That's just the cost of the subsidy (~30% discount), not the cost of what home owners tipped in. Utility scale batteries are now at ~$66m/GWh, or about ~$726m equivalent. It does not make sense for everyone to be doing a bespoke installation inside their own home. It is ridiculously inefficient. We are a society. We don't build our own roads, water, grid, schools, hospitals. Why have we suddenly decided to DIY our own redundant power sources? (A: failure of governance)
- ericmay 2mo ago
  > Why have we suddenly decided to DIY our own redundant power sources? Because government is failing to address these issues? Back in Trumpistan we had some storms roll through my area the other day. Power has been out for some (not me, thankfully) for a couple of days in a major metro. It was a bad storm and I do not fault the crews who are doing hard work out there repairing everything and it takes time. But what the hell are you supposed to do when the power goes out and it takes a few days to get turned back on? Well, spend $10,000 - $20,000 and install your own backup power. Is it inefficient? Sure! Does that matter? Absolutely not.
  - ch4s3 2mo ago
    This isn't a federal government issue in the US. Local and state governments dropped the ball here. No one wants to pay what it costs to bury power lines in most locales, and we have a ton of byzantine regulations that make it slow and expensive to add generation capacity.
  - jebarker 2mo ago
    Yep. Here in Colorado I installed two powerwalls moderately subsidized by the electricity company. It’s not going to save me meaningful amounts of money even in the long term and I would much rather see energy issues solved at a societal level. But our electricity provider is just unable to reliably keep the lights on through winter and wildfire season, I.e. most of the year. Since installing the batteries a couple years ago our home has stayed warm and lit through two multi-day outages when neighbors have had to go stay in a hotel.
surfmike 2mo ago
California is also adding a lot of battery storage… but why are electricity prices falling in Australia and not in CA? Are they outpacing us?
- zipy124 2mo ago
  "Energy Minister Chris Bowen said that Australia now has more home batteries than the United States, which has a population 12 times larger." Yes.
- Wacari1 2mo ago
  [dead]
- runsonrum 2mo ago
  I wouldn't say they are falling. The pricing is just being distributed differently to make it look like you can beat the system. For my specific plan, the daily rate (supply charge) has gone up from $1.13 to $1.80. That is a price regardless of any usage. This varies depending on what you select for your usage rates. So if you happen to get a lower per kWh rate, then your supply rate goes up. Time of use also is manipulative. If you have a variable rate (time of use) then your peak time is much higher than your off peak which is higher still if you were on a fixed rate plan. If you select a plan that has 3 "free" hours then the peak time is rediculous priced. So to sum up.. You have to have a very good understanding of how you use your power. Home battery systems, and solar to some extent, are essentially 'pre-pay' schemes. A shift of where your money goes. At least for the next 7 to 10 years which is a rough payback period for solar/battery. I would also like to mention, when Australia introduced the solar panel schemes, the retailers were paying 60c/kWh for infeed, now they are paying 1 to 2c. The high infeed allowed a home owner to offset their bills by infeeding while at work, sometimes even generate a credit just from solar. Certainly not these days. So what would be the next shift after they get everyone on home battery systems.
- ZeroGravitas 2mo ago
  California has the lowest wholesale cost in the US and were predicted to fall by 30% this summer against an 8% drop for the whole country. Lots of other stuff affects end-user prices though.
testing22321 2mo ago
I put 7.3kw of panels on our roof for $0 of our money thanks to a $5k rebate and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.2Mwh of power a calendar year, which would cost $1000 if we had to pay for it. So for 8 years we pay the loan instead of for the power, then we get -25 years of $1000 a year in our pockets. The price of power is also pre approved to increase a minimum of 5% a year every year here, so the savings will be more than that. Right now we get a 1:1 credit for anything we put into the grid. If and when that changes I’ll get a battery. The kicker? We’re in Canada in a tight valley where it snows a ton. If it works here…
- throwaway2037 2mo ago
  I think it would be less click-baity to re-write your first sentence as: "I put 7.3kw of panels on our roof for a $8k interest free loan and a $5k rebate." > The price of power is also pre approved to increase a minimum of 5% a year every year here, so the savings will be more than that. That 5% growth rate sounds economically unsustainable. Power prices in rich, highly-developed countries in the last 50 years surely have grown much slower than 5% per year.
  - testing22321 2mo ago
    Our local power utility has realized they’re waaay behind on maintenance. This year power went up 7% in town and 16% for those out of town. Both going up 8% next year.
greenleafone7 2mo ago
This whole thing started because of some power pylons got destroyed and electricity was not restored for about a year right?
- rswail 2mo ago
  Not quite. It was already starting, but the Federal government at the time was very anti RE. South Australia had a single interconnect to the rest of the Australian Energy Market that covers the states except for WA and Northern Territory. There was a big storm that took out an interstate interconnect and the voltage spike caused all the other generators to disconnect to protect themselves. Then Elon promised to build utility storage in 6 months or the state would get it for free. That was the Hornsby battery which is mainly used for Frequency services (basically when supply/demand fluctuates, it keeps things stable). That used to be done by gas plants, but the battery saved a large chunk of its cost in the first year by being able to switch on much faster.
  - discordance 2mo ago
    >That was the Hornsby battery Hornsdale - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve
    - rswail 2mo ago
      Was going on memory and didn't want to google. :)
skew-aberration 2mo ago
The subsidy was closer to 70%, and in my case I was paid the equivalent of about 10 years of free electricity for a battery with a 10-year warranty. In total somewhere around 5-7 billion AUD was paid out (not yet public) - the wholesale market for comparison is around $16B AUD annually. Personally, I would have preferred it was used to build grid scale storage instead of funneling tax money to the relatively wealthy (myself included). Given the extreme volatility of power prices, a figure such as '47% decline' should be taken with a grain of salt - but power prices are certainly a bit lower than last year.
- tialaramex 2mo ago
  > Personally, I would have preferred it was used to build grid scale storage instead of funneling tax money to the relatively wealthy (myself included). I am generally sympathetic to this POV but I think for solar and batteries actually I end up leaning the other way. Solar PV scales appropriately for home owners unlike wind or indeed any conventional generation and both solar and batteries change how their owners feel about this so that you end up with people who have "skin in the game" in a way they didn't have when it was a BESS install six miles away they saw on TV once and have never thought about since.
  - skew-aberration 2mo ago
    As I said in another comment, > For 2N government dollars, the program gets 3N home battery. Grid is 2x more efficient by their own accounting. Therefore, we could have gotten 4N grid storage. This is not comparable to the home solar programs - which I understand to 'enticed' more private investment. Simply buying votes and lying to the public. I feel for the renters who paid their taxes and never saw a cent. I'd rather the 50% of Australians who don't own the home they live in had skin in the game! But I do love my 42kwhr battery
    - munksbeer 2mo ago
      I thought the point of this article was they are benefiting from reduced grid costs?
collinmcnulty 2mo ago
I've long thought that any country should buy solar panels from any other country that's crazy enough to sell them to you at a subsidized price. It's not like buying oil; once you have the panels, that energy independence belongs to you.
- pocksuppet 2mo ago
  How many solar panels did you buy?
  - iAMkenough 2mo ago
    Probably depends on what country they live in and whether their government is spending billions of their taxpayer dollars to simply not build renewable energy projects and invest additional billions on top of that in new oil, gas and coal instead.
  - collinmcnulty 2mo ago
    11, and I wish I'd bought 15
    - philjohn 2mo ago
      I bought 32 and wished I got another 6 for the south west aspect of the house ... but still, producing 11mWh a year in the UK on an east/west aspect, electricity bill for the year (even with all cars in the household being EV's) is negative. Battery makes the difference - load shifting is doing the heavy lifting in the winter.
      - quickthrowman 2mo ago
        I hope you’re generating more than 11 milliwatt-hours per year, guessing you meant MWh :) 32*250*1400=11,200,000 watt hours, which makes more sense ;)
        philjohn 2mo ago
epistasis 2mo ago
This is exactly what utility propaganda and PUC manipulation in the US has successfully stopped from happening. From NEM3 in California, to charging a high fixed fee for being on the grid in other areas of the country, utilities have manipulated rules at every step to prevent a future that has cheaper electricity for rate payers. They come up with rather fantastic propaganda about how ratepayers with solar are burdens on the grid, or concentrated in high-income areas, to try to hide the reality of what's possible with highly distributed electricity generation. And the media in the US have been very willing accomplices in perpetuating this as well. I have not figured out why its so different between Australia and the US, but it does seem that Australia has a far greater free-market bent when it comes to these things than the US. It's why solar is 4-6x cheaper to install than in the US.
- jandrese 2mo ago
  What is even more amazing is how many of Australia's politicians have been in the pocket of coal barons and yet they put up barely any struggle against solar adoption. Compare that to places like California where they've been fighting tooth and nail against green power.
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    > they put up barely any struggle against solar adoption They put up plenty. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629617300877 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22146... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2024/oct/01/amid-australias-chaotic-climate-politics-the-rooftop-solar-boom-is-an-unlikely-triumph https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2024/o... As with climate change, there comes a point where the propaganda just stops working becuase it's impossible to contest.
    - epistasis 2mo ago
      What's funny is that Australian-born Rupert Murdoch has been far more effective in the US than in Australia on this front. The propaganda is still going really strong in the US. Talk to the population and 1/3 to 1/2 will happily tell you that EVs have fully failed and are being abandoned and will never gain traction in the future. And solar? Lol. Even the people who are saving money with it tend to refuse to talk about it due to the cognitive dissonance.
m101 2mo ago
Is the only reason that a behind the meter subsidy is more efficient because it reduces the upfront for an equivalent kWh storage (with the consumer footing the difference)? I would have thought few, larger, batteries at local substations was more efficient otherwise.
- dhx 2mo ago
  Distribution infrastructure capacity is a current and ongoing concern for summer peak loads (every house turning on air conditioners at once) even with the large government subsidies that have existed for residential solar panels, residential batteries, reverse cycle heat pump cooling/heating and insulation. The cost to rebuild every distribution substation, change every pole-top transformer and rewire suburbs would be much higher if these subsidies never existed. For most of Australia's population you can look up an annual report that each transmission and distribution operator is required to publish annually for their predicted demand on substations, transmission lines and distribution lines. For example in Victoria this report is the TCPR, an example available at [1]. For many distribution substations, the 10th percentile maximum demand is predicted to occur in the early 2030's, meaning that at least transformers at substations would need upgrading, or the substation rebuilt or expanded. The reasons include higher density development in urban areas, electric vehicle charging and for winter, electrification of gas heating. As an example of the impact of residential solar generation, [2] states that for an urban growth corridor of Melbourne being built largely in the era of residential solar panels being a standard housing feature, a distribution substation ATS West has 2x 150MVA transformers operating at combined peak of 200MVA, also with 125MW of embedded residential solar generation. Without that 125MW embedded residential solar generation, this substation and feeders perhaps would have had to be replaced years earlier to allow import of ~325MVA rather than ~200MVA. Also not mentioned explicitly in this report is residential battery storage which may be reducing maximum demand from predictions made before residential batteries were widely installed. As a side note, perhaps Australia perhaps has the most open and transparent electricity market in the world? I don't know any other country where the entire electricity grid down to 230/400VAC distribution lines running on poles in every residential street is available publicly on a map, including serial numbers of poles and ratings of pole-top transformers. And substation schematics and constraint reports, etc are all available through various public reports. I think the transparency demonstrates a great deal of confidence in the electricity grid and how it is managed. [1] https://www.powercor.com.au/network-planning-and-projects/network-data/ https://www.powercor.com.au/network-planning-and-projects/ne... -- refer to the PDF document in the TCPR zip file download for a substation-by-substation analysis in easy to read format. [2] https://media.powercor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/12194001/ATS-West-PADR.pdf https://media.powercor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/121...
fitsumbelay 2mo ago
Opposite story here in the US with very recent news about Trump breaking offshore wind farm agreements and using billions of US taxpayer dollars to pay repercussive fees to those operators. Our decline/regression in terms of clean energy and how easily the current administration's pulled it off and continues to is an ugly fucking mystery ...
thelastgallon 2mo ago
Australia is now ready for vertical solar, add a few more hours of production in the morning and evening. Panels are dirt cheap anyway, use them as fences, put them on high rise buildings. Change the building to require structural elements to hold the panels and build new homes with vertical + rooftop. The electric code should be updated to allow v2g. With BESS (home, grid) and EVs (always plugged in, parked 95% of the time), there may be enough storage to start replacing baseload. This will take decades, but can be done. We gotta start somewhere.
- epistasis 2mo ago
  Given the durability of panels, it'd be fascinating to see roof redesigns, and some changes in panel packaging, that standard large rectangles become the basic components of a 30 year roof. Or as siding. I've seen them used vertically on the Southern walls of commercial buildings in Alaska, and they looked great.
  - thelastgallon 2mo ago
    Absolutely. Energy has to be baked into every structural element. Either producing energy, or storing energy, or providing insulation, or acting as a transfer medium (heat pump).
  - password4321 2mo ago
    Why don't they do this for cars?
    - epistasis 2mo ago
      I'd imagine the difference between flat and curved, in addition to very different wear patterns, and inability to get your desired color. Even slight changes in packaging to adapt the panels to a structural material might increase cost. But doing custom shapes to fit the panels of a car? Getting just the right shape? That's an entirely different manufacturing process nothing like what currently gets produced. The benefit on cars is also pretty small, at least whenever I've bothered to calculate it. Cars need a massive amount of energy compared to a house, and have far less surface area.
thelastgallon 2mo ago
Australia is also 4,000km wide. A time difference of 2 - 3 hours. This adds a few more hours of Solar with long distance transmission.
- tialaramex 2mo ago
  As you say, Australia is very big. Big sections of it are also, as a result, empty. The coast-to-coast "long distance transmission" is not in fact a thing in Australia. China has long distance HV transmission, but it's crazy expensive and they built it because most of China's people live near its coast but most of its solar power is in the interior so the power needs to be moved. Australia is exceptional for having a lot of humans who live somewhere that's incredibly sunny. The whole place is sunny. It'll vary from place to place whether that's only "Southern Spain" sunny or full-on "Middle of the Sahara Desert" sunny, but it's all very sunny indeed, if you were inventing a country to buy solar panels Australia would be that country.
  - skissane 2mo ago
    > The coast-to-coast "long distance transmission" is not in fact a thing in Australia. The main Australian electricity grid reaches from Cooktown in far northern QLD [0] through to the Lower Eyre peninsula in South Australia [1] and down to the Huon Valley in Southern Tasmania [2]. So if by "coast-to-coast" you mean "East Coast" to "South Coast", then literally we have it already. Of course, I take it you actually mean including WA and NT into the main national grid. No, we don't have that, and probably won't any time soon. But there is a project (Australia-Asia Power Link aka SunCable) [3] to run a HVDC cable from Central Australia to Singapore via Indonesia, to export solar power. Why not the same thing between Perth and Adelaide? It simply comes down to economics – Singapore and Indonesia have the energy demand to economically justify it, domestic Australian consumption doesn't. However, there is a plan to extend the national grid to Mt Isa. [4] There's only around 600 km from Mt Isa to Tennant Creek (where the AAPL/SunCable project starts). It isn't impossible that they'll eventually link up. So we might actually see the northern NT connected to the national grid, eventually. [0] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/network_connections/generation-maps/qld-map.pdf https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ... [1] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/network_connections/generation-maps/sa-map.pdf https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ... [2] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/network_connections/generation-maps/tas-map.pd https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CopperString https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CopperString
yason 2mo ago
In Europe the battery subsidies could've been used to double the price of electricity and make things worse for everyone paying for it. What a wasted business opportunity.
Animats 2mo ago
This works best in areas where cloud cover is consistently low, so solar power doesn't vary much from day to day. That's most of Australia. Two days of dark overcast and the load on non-solar sources goes way up. How much battery do you need before there's no demand for peaking plants? In some places, a day. In others, months? I looked at cloud coverage maps. There are monthly and annual average maps, and raw data from satellites. Building a map of run length of overcast days would be useful.
- throwaway2037 2mo ago
  > This works best in areas where cloud cover is consistently low, so solar power doesn't vary much from day to day. That's most of Australia. I just want to point out that where the majority of people live in Australia definitely has great variance in solar power day to day. For example, Melbourne is a running joke amoung Australians about how wildly unpredictable its weather is.
adolph 2mo ago
While direct government subsidy is one way to increase battery adoption to increase power generation efficiency, a market based approach is for electric power companies to use batteries installed on customer premises as a power bank for the entire grid. If you ever check out gridstatus.io [0] or similar resources, you may have noticed "storage" or "battery" as a part of the fuel mix. These are most often power company owned centralized facilities. Another approach is for power companies to leverage batteries installed on customer premises. "A critical mass of home batteries scattered across a region and networked together through so-called virtual power plants, or VPPs, he says, marks 'the shift from energy storage as backup to energy storage as an active grid asset.' [1]" 0. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso 1. https://e360.yale.edu/features/home-battery-vpps https://e360.yale.edu/features/home-battery-vpps
- stubish 2mo ago
  The VPPs are interesting. Several of them available to join in my region in Australia. But update isn't as high as they like, as people don't like handing over control to the energy company (traditionally the enemy). And the reality that selling your power makes so little money that people would rather just hold onto it in case of blackout. There is also an option to do the equivalent to a VPP, using the live wholesale market prices (at least one retailer offers this). Batteries are now smart enough to download the market prices and predictions and make all the same decisions as a VPP provider would, but with any extra profit remaining with the customer.
ksec 2mo ago
It may be easy to install battery for house, but I wonder about apartments?
- timbit42 2mo ago
  Landlords have little incentive to install solar if the tenant is paying the power bill. Perhaps legislate that the landlord has to include power in the rent so they have an incentive to install solar.
Tepix 2mo ago
We also have a solar boom in Germany, unfortunately our minister is trying to stall the deployment of solar instead of copying what Australia is doing very successfully here... it's really a shame!
- throwaway2037 2mo ago
  Which minister and why?
hogehoge51 2mo ago
This article is nothing but a press release. It presents no evidence for it's claim, or details on what prices in what area at what time have been cut. Meanwhile any Australian can see contary evidence just by looking at their power bill.
hn_submit 2mo ago
It's only natural that countries with an abundance of sunlight will switch over to solar and batteries, especially if the price of the latter comes down. In the not so distant future, LFP and sodium batteries will become very cheap, no more than a $200 or so for a day's storage of daily electricity usage. That means that in the majority of nations people will essentially have free electricity for their homes and maybe even their cars.
senectus1 2mo ago
that must send socialist shivers of terror down the average american capitalists back... :-P
- Fizz43 2mo ago
  none of this is remotely socialist
  - testing22321 2mo ago
    Which is precisely the kind of thing that causes cries of “but that’s socialism” in the US!
    - Fizz43 2mo ago
      "but that’s socialism" is part of a socialist campaign to rebrand the more palatable liberal ideas as their own so they can get into power and enact their actual policies.
AneBytree 2mo ago
The home Battery boom shows most people expect price of electrity to rise. Which directly contradicts Chris Bowens frequent statements that renewables are cheaper. and the price of electrity will get cheaper.
AneBytree 2mo ago
Australians, who were falsely promised by Labor at the 2022 election that their household power bills would be $275 cheaper, want reliable and affordable power generation. If the Albanese government continues down a renewables-only path that excludes gas and zero-emissions nuclear, expect more Tomago smelter Billionm$$$ bailouts in the near future and fewer data centres

362 points by speckx 2mo ago

Use EVs as energy storage. Millions of EVs form an energy reservoir. 20% of solar is curtailed now and q lot more in future, instead charge EVs. Pay the EV owners because they are creating a storage layer with their capital and power prices go negative hundreds of millions of times every year. No need of home batteries.

ghostly_s 2mo ago
1. A couple orders of magnitude more people own homes than EVs; 2. EVs already are used as energy storage, but the thing about EVs is people want to use that energy to yknow, drive them.
- thelastgallon 2mo ago
  That's why paying EV owners is th right incentive. All new cars will be EVs. In 20 years, all cars are EVs.
- Lio 2mo ago
  Could it be that most people drive shorter journeys than the capacity of their cars with occasional long journeys? I know that my next will need enough range for one particular journey to a relative's house but I only do that journey once or twice a year at most. I could easily reuse the "spare" capacity the rest of the time and I'm going to lease the car so long term battery health won't be an issue. To honest I think plugin storage to go along with plug in solar will be a game changer.
jmyeet 2mo ago
The issue here is that EVs tend to be charged when the sun is down. When sun is up you tend to be at work or driving. The surplus power is coming from solar.
- thelastgallon 2mo ago
  EVs are parked 95% of the time. If it's parked, it can be charged. Work places also have electricity.
  - KaiserPro 2mo ago
    but you're assuming that work provides parking. Its not a given, plus whats in it for the drivers? plug my car in, it might be full, it might be empty, either way its racking up the charge cycles for no direct benefit for me. Batteries on a house makes a better sell for customers, and also targets the problem of both over supply and over consumption at source.
    - organsnyder 2mo ago
      Workplaces (and other locations) could offer free/reduced-cost charging, with the caveat that V2L is required. They could guarantee that the vehicle will be at a certain charge level at a designated time, and that the vehicle will never go below a threshold (in case an unanticipated trip is required).
  - cube00 2mo ago
    >Work places also have electricity. Only households can access the free electricity window. If you're not on a free plan you can get reduced rates during the solar peak window but business accounts aren't allowed to access those either.
  - Danox 2mo ago
    The boss may get a free charge, but no one else will…
- bad_haircut72 2mo ago
  surely its possible to invent a "plug in road" system, then cars could charge (at least on highways etc) even when driving. I had this thought ages back when EVs first came out, to tackle the problem of long charge times when doing cross country road trips.
toasty228 2mo ago
When I looked into it it didn't make sense to use an EV as a solar battery, the chemistry isn't made for high cycle counts compared to regular home/solar batteries.
- dyauspitr 2mo ago
  You looked wrong. These batteries can do 100,000 charge-discharge cycles while retaining 80% of their capacity.
  - willismichael 2mo ago
    It really depends on the battery chemistry of the specific EV, how many watts you charge at, and deep cycle vs. shallow cycle. Not all EV batteries will hold up to that many charge-discharge cycles. Even at that, 100,000 cycles is an exaggeration. From what I can tell, you can expect up to 3000 cycles from Nickel Manganese Cobalt batteries before they hit 80% of original capacity. Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries can last for 10,000 cycles before dropping to 80% of original capacity. https://bslbatt.com/blogs/lfp-vs-nmc-lithium-battery-comparison/ https://bslbatt.com/blogs/lfp-vs-nmc-lithium-battery-compari...
  - toasty228 2mo ago
    Hm sorry but no, feel free to read the specs of any manufacturer, they're rated for a few thousands cycles at best, usually under 5k, closer to 2k Even lifepo4 home storage batteries designed for frequent cycling are rated for ~10k cycles. As far as I can tell there are literally no battery chemistry that can survive 100k cycles and retain 80% capacity
    - dyauspitr 2mo ago
      Yeah, I have no idea where I came up with that from. It’s completely wrong.
      - toasty228 2mo ago
        You might have read 100 000 miles? They do last a long time when used for their purpose (driving), statistically you'll get a gas engine failure earlier than a battery failure. But they're not made for at home day to day energy storage
rswail 2mo ago
In Australia people do both. We don't have V2G yet, but EVs plugged in at home overnight with L1 charging can get charged by the home battery that was charged up during the day by the PV on the roof. The solar PV and now storage rollouts in Australia have been one of the best government investments in public infrastructure in my lifetime here. The more we electrify, the less reliant we are on the crude -> foreign refineries -> imported/distributed fuel risk. Harvesting solar power is an awesome thing to do both at home and utility level. PV and wind utility installations are being built with storage co-located, there are companies building synthetic condensers to maintain the grid stability and the job of frequency support is now done mostly by batteries, not gas. We need to make electricity basically "too cheap to meter" and electrify our primary industries, mining and agriculture.
Wacari 2mo ago
Agreed. V2G is actually one of the best DER strats out there. The EVs are already purchased, the batteries and PCS are already configured for bidirectional flow in most brands. Coordination/visibility problem remains at Dx level, but actually worth the investment.
- stubish 2mo ago
  Unfortunately most of the EVs already purchased don't have the electronics to support V2G. Newer Leafs and a couple of other brands do, but I think most models in most markets cannot support V2G.
Tepix 2mo ago
Volkswagen will limit your car to 100kWh of charging your home. That's not a whole lot.
- jeeeb 2mo ago
  It’s not really clear what you mean. 100kWh is more than the entire battery capacity of the EV.
  - inemesitaffia 2mo ago
    Maybe lifetime?

black_puppydog 2mo ago

As ever, Volts did a really good episode on this: https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as Worth a listen, both to learn about how ridiculous the US situation is, and just how good the "news" of abundant solar is.

Wacari 2mo ago
David Roberts does not have an EE degree and misunderstands anything related to power system operations. Great for positive vibes and LCOE parading tho.
- red-iron-pine 2mo ago
  elaborate
  - sanderjd 2mo ago
    I'm way less skeptical of Roberts than the parent commenter appears to be, but IMO he is more of a policy person than an engineering person. I still find the podcast very useful, with this lens in mind. There are other podcasts that get deeper into the engineering substance, and it's totally ok for different things to have different emphases.
- dataengineer56 2mo ago
  What does "LCOE" stand for?
  - stoneman24 2mo ago
    Perhaps Low Cost Of Electricity?
    - cinntaile 2mo ago
      Your sibling comment is right. It stands for Levelized Cost Of Electricity.

kleiba2 2mo ago

> The government has moved to make use of this surplus solar energy, including by offering free power in the early afternoon to homeowners in Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia, regardless of whether they have solar panels on their roof or not. The goal is to spur more consumers to run appliances or charge electric vehicles during this window. Taking the term "1st world problems" to new heights!

cube00 2mo ago
You pay a higher daily supply charge and more per kWh outside this window so it's more like free (conditions apply) The supply charge is 6% higher for the Solar Sharer plan, while the peak rate is 92% higher. Solar Sharer’s peak rate is almost double the flat rate. The off-peak rate is 17% lower than the flat rate. https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-sharer-plans-compared/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-sharer-plans-compa...
- stubish 2mo ago
  It is free if you can afford a suitably sized battery. Everyone else should stick to the existing plans. Fuzzy area in the middle for slightly undersized battery owners.
- hahahaa 2mo ago
  Free as in kids eat free
wongarsu 2mo ago
Some of that will be electricity usage that otherwise wouldn't happen, but a lot of it will be shifting load from times where electricity is carbon-intensive to produce to times where there is a surplus that would otherwise go to waste
Wacari 2mo ago
cause they have massive operational issues induced by effectively must-run oversupply that has increased costs for both ratepayers (and sometimes shifted to the taxpayer to hide costs). And then try to fix those problems with populist TOU rate magic (they won't be fixed), and bills continue to rise!! But hey, LMPs are down LOLOLOLOL

Wacari 2mo ago

so in other words, heavily subsidize another technology (introducing cost shifts onto non-adopters, typically poorer people) to try and solve operational problems directly caused by oversubsidizing rooftop solar (another regressive cost-shift and extremely inefficient cost allocation relative to tx-connected solar) by bringing down wholesale prices (already a minority of the utility bill). Fixed costs, the majority of the utility bill, continue to increase. But hey, LMPs (something residential tarriffs are not as exposed to) are lower!!! LMFAO

rswail 2mo ago
Wholesale power is ~37% of the customer bills. The other costs are the "poles and wires" distribution network and the HV transmission network. The government is also building out the transmission network to various renewable energy zones, which has the added benefit of making the transmission network more resilient. With large coal plants, the network was only one interconnector failure from blacking out a state (as happened to South Australia). Now there is a much better network of interconnected transmission across the entire east and south coast of Australia, covering something like 80% of the population. The government just bailed out an aluminium smelter that was going to close because of the increased cost of power because it was relying on an old coal plant. Now that will be replaced with renewables. So we get the benefit of the continued operation of the smelter, as well as the build out of replacement generation for the old coal plants at EOL that will be closed by 2030.
- Wacari1 2mo ago
  [dead]
- skew-aberration 2mo ago
  I think you could use more citations. The South Australia blackout was not caused by coal or renewables or lack of interconnectors. If there had been zero interconnects (the local grid was self-sufficient) it wouldn't have happened! The primary cause of the extended blackout was simply a lack of readiness/contingency planning/compliance particularly at several large windfarms. See wiki article. Coal is generally cheaper for baseload power like an aluminum smelter, even though solar is cheaper during the day. Firming with wind/battery is not yet competitive but is getting very close and is at the point where building new coal power plants is not viable. Refer to gencost report. However, replacing such a large load with brand new renewable capacity is almost certainly more expensive than simply continuing to burn coal, particularly when factoring in the grid upgrades required to make such a transition.

Apreche 2mo ago

[dead]

AnotherGoodName 2mo ago

It started with a solar boom, many small home scale solar roofs popping up everywhere. Australia has a free trade agreement with much of the world, including China, and solar panels have literally dropped to 1/50th of the price they were in 1990 ($10/W to $0.2/W today). A shout out to the work that was done to establish dynamic grid pricing too. Anyway that caused power prices to reliably go negative during the day as the solar boom led to too much energy being produced. So everyone started buying batteries (you can even get live feed in/out pricing as a consumer). In fact the government even today will pay you a $3000 subsidy to go install a battery. This is in a country where people can buy cheap batteries with no tariffs (free trade's amazing, seriously!). So everyone who could started doing it. For those in apartments etc. that couldn't easily install solar and batteries they won too since the entire power grid is now half the price. Another consequence of all this, aside from the cheap power prices during a datacenter boom and Hormuz blockade is that fossil fuel usage is plummeting. Particularly gas https://ieefa.org/resources/slump-eastern-australia-gas-demand-shows-no-signs-easing https://ieefa.org/resources/slump-eastern-australia-gas-dema... . No need for a gas peak power plant when the grid is packed with batteries. Which is helpful since one of the main issues with the current blockade is a lack of gas globally.

pnw 2mo ago
If you read the article, most of the decline in gas consumption in Australia is from changes in industrial usage. Residential demand is only down by 6% and part of that is likely due to the effective ban on gas in new residential construction which started in 2023 in Victoria. Prior to 2023 residential gas usage was increasing.
- testing22321 2mo ago
  Australia never had much residential gas usage. Mr he very vast majority of residential homes don’t even have gas. No need for a furnace.
  - dalyons 2mo ago
    Pretty much every house in Victoria had gas, and gas furnaces, winter is cold enough

plantain 2mo ago

The program has so far spent $2.5bn, and installed 11GWh. That's just the cost of the subsidy (~30% discount), not the cost of what home owners tipped in. Utility scale batteries are now at ~$66m/GWh, or about ~$726m equivalent. It does not make sense for everyone to be doing a bespoke installation inside their own home. It is ridiculously inefficient. We are a society. We don't build our own roads, water, grid, schools, hospitals. Why have we suddenly decided to DIY our own redundant power sources? (A: failure of governance)

ericmay 2mo ago
> Why have we suddenly decided to DIY our own redundant power sources? Because government is failing to address these issues? Back in Trumpistan we had some storms roll through my area the other day. Power has been out for some (not me, thankfully) for a couple of days in a major metro. It was a bad storm and I do not fault the crews who are doing hard work out there repairing everything and it takes time. But what the hell are you supposed to do when the power goes out and it takes a few days to get turned back on? Well, spend $10,000 - $20,000 and install your own backup power. Is it inefficient? Sure! Does that matter? Absolutely not.
- ch4s3 2mo ago
  This isn't a federal government issue in the US. Local and state governments dropped the ball here. No one wants to pay what it costs to bury power lines in most locales, and we have a ton of byzantine regulations that make it slow and expensive to add generation capacity.
- jebarker 2mo ago
  Yep. Here in Colorado I installed two powerwalls moderately subsidized by the electricity company. It’s not going to save me meaningful amounts of money even in the long term and I would much rather see energy issues solved at a societal level. But our electricity provider is just unable to reliably keep the lights on through winter and wildfire season, I.e. most of the year. Since installing the batteries a couple years ago our home has stayed warm and lit through two multi-day outages when neighbors have had to go stay in a hotel.

surfmike 2mo ago

California is also adding a lot of battery storage… but why are electricity prices falling in Australia and not in CA? Are they outpacing us?

zipy124 2mo ago
"Energy Minister Chris Bowen said that Australia now has more home batteries than the United States, which has a population 12 times larger." Yes.
Wacari1 2mo ago
[dead]
runsonrum 2mo ago
I wouldn't say they are falling. The pricing is just being distributed differently to make it look like you can beat the system. For my specific plan, the daily rate (supply charge) has gone up from $1.13 to $1.80. That is a price regardless of any usage. This varies depending on what you select for your usage rates. So if you happen to get a lower per kWh rate, then your supply rate goes up. Time of use also is manipulative. If you have a variable rate (time of use) then your peak time is much higher than your off peak which is higher still if you were on a fixed rate plan. If you select a plan that has 3 "free" hours then the peak time is rediculous priced. So to sum up.. You have to have a very good understanding of how you use your power. Home battery systems, and solar to some extent, are essentially 'pre-pay' schemes. A shift of where your money goes. At least for the next 7 to 10 years which is a rough payback period for solar/battery. I would also like to mention, when Australia introduced the solar panel schemes, the retailers were paying 60c/kWh for infeed, now they are paying 1 to 2c. The high infeed allowed a home owner to offset their bills by infeeding while at work, sometimes even generate a credit just from solar. Certainly not these days. So what would be the next shift after they get everyone on home battery systems.
ZeroGravitas 2mo ago
California has the lowest wholesale cost in the US and were predicted to fall by 30% this summer against an 8% drop for the whole country. Lots of other stuff affects end-user prices though.

testing22321 2mo ago

I put 7.3kw of panels on our roof for $0 of our money thanks to a $5k rebate and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.2Mwh of power a calendar year, which would cost $1000 if we had to pay for it. So for 8 years we pay the loan instead of for the power, then we get -25 years of $1000 a year in our pockets. The price of power is also pre approved to increase a minimum of 5% a year every year here, so the savings will be more than that. Right now we get a 1:1 credit for anything we put into the grid. If and when that changes I’ll get a battery. The kicker? We’re in Canada in a tight valley where it snows a ton. If it works here…

throwaway2037 2mo ago
I think it would be less click-baity to re-write your first sentence as: "I put 7.3kw of panels on our roof for a $8k interest free loan and a $5k rebate." > The price of power is also pre approved to increase a minimum of 5% a year every year here, so the savings will be more than that. That 5% growth rate sounds economically unsustainable. Power prices in rich, highly-developed countries in the last 50 years surely have grown much slower than 5% per year.
- testing22321 2mo ago
  Our local power utility has realized they’re waaay behind on maintenance. This year power went up 7% in town and 16% for those out of town. Both going up 8% next year.

greenleafone7 2mo ago

This whole thing started because of some power pylons got destroyed and electricity was not restored for about a year right?

rswail 2mo ago
Not quite. It was already starting, but the Federal government at the time was very anti RE. South Australia had a single interconnect to the rest of the Australian Energy Market that covers the states except for WA and Northern Territory. There was a big storm that took out an interstate interconnect and the voltage spike caused all the other generators to disconnect to protect themselves. Then Elon promised to build utility storage in 6 months or the state would get it for free. That was the Hornsby battery which is mainly used for Frequency services (basically when supply/demand fluctuates, it keeps things stable). That used to be done by gas plants, but the battery saved a large chunk of its cost in the first year by being able to switch on much faster.
- discordance 2mo ago
  >That was the Hornsby battery Hornsdale - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve
  - rswail 2mo ago
    Was going on memory and didn't want to google. :)

skew-aberration 2mo ago

The subsidy was closer to 70%, and in my case I was paid the equivalent of about 10 years of free electricity for a battery with a 10-year warranty. In total somewhere around 5-7 billion AUD was paid out (not yet public) - the wholesale market for comparison is around $16B AUD annually. Personally, I would have preferred it was used to build grid scale storage instead of funneling tax money to the relatively wealthy (myself included). Given the extreme volatility of power prices, a figure such as '47% decline' should be taken with a grain of salt - but power prices are certainly a bit lower than last year.

tialaramex 2mo ago
> Personally, I would have preferred it was used to build grid scale storage instead of funneling tax money to the relatively wealthy (myself included). I am generally sympathetic to this POV but I think for solar and batteries actually I end up leaning the other way. Solar PV scales appropriately for home owners unlike wind or indeed any conventional generation and both solar and batteries change how their owners feel about this so that you end up with people who have "skin in the game" in a way they didn't have when it was a BESS install six miles away they saw on TV once and have never thought about since.
- skew-aberration 2mo ago
  As I said in another comment, > For 2N government dollars, the program gets 3N home battery. Grid is 2x more efficient by their own accounting. Therefore, we could have gotten 4N grid storage. This is not comparable to the home solar programs - which I understand to 'enticed' more private investment. Simply buying votes and lying to the public. I feel for the renters who paid their taxes and never saw a cent. I'd rather the 50% of Australians who don't own the home they live in had skin in the game! But I do love my 42kwhr battery
  - munksbeer 2mo ago
    I thought the point of this article was they are benefiting from reduced grid costs?

collinmcnulty 2mo ago

I've long thought that any country should buy solar panels from any other country that's crazy enough to sell them to you at a subsidized price. It's not like buying oil; once you have the panels, that energy independence belongs to you.

pocksuppet 2mo ago
How many solar panels did you buy?
- iAMkenough 2mo ago
  Probably depends on what country they live in and whether their government is spending billions of their taxpayer dollars to simply not build renewable energy projects and invest additional billions on top of that in new oil, gas and coal instead.
- collinmcnulty 2mo ago
  11, and I wish I'd bought 15
  - philjohn 2mo ago
    I bought 32 and wished I got another 6 for the south west aspect of the house ... but still, producing 11mWh a year in the UK on an east/west aspect, electricity bill for the year (even with all cars in the household being EV's) is negative. Battery makes the difference - load shifting is doing the heavy lifting in the winter.
    - quickthrowman 2mo ago
      I hope you’re generating more than 11 milliwatt-hours per year, guessing you meant MWh :) 32*250*1400=11,200,000 watt hours, which makes more sense ;)
      - philjohn 2mo ago

epistasis 2mo ago

This is exactly what utility propaganda and PUC manipulation in the US has successfully stopped from happening. From NEM3 in California, to charging a high fixed fee for being on the grid in other areas of the country, utilities have manipulated rules at every step to prevent a future that has cheaper electricity for rate payers. They come up with rather fantastic propaganda about how ratepayers with solar are burdens on the grid, or concentrated in high-income areas, to try to hide the reality of what's possible with highly distributed electricity generation. And the media in the US have been very willing accomplices in perpetuating this as well. I have not figured out why its so different between Australia and the US, but it does seem that Australia has a far greater free-market bent when it comes to these things than the US. It's why solar is 4-6x cheaper to install than in the US.

jandrese 2mo ago
What is even more amazing is how many of Australia's politicians have been in the pocket of coal barons and yet they put up barely any struggle against solar adoption. Compare that to places like California where they've been fighting tooth and nail against green power.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  > they put up barely any struggle against solar adoption They put up plenty. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629617300877 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22146... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2024/oct/01/amid-australias-chaotic-climate-politics-the-rooftop-solar-boom-is-an-unlikely-triumph https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2024/o... As with climate change, there comes a point where the propaganda just stops working becuase it's impossible to contest.
  - epistasis 2mo ago
    What's funny is that Australian-born Rupert Murdoch has been far more effective in the US than in Australia on this front. The propaganda is still going really strong in the US. Talk to the population and 1/3 to 1/2 will happily tell you that EVs have fully failed and are being abandoned and will never gain traction in the future. And solar? Lol. Even the people who are saving money with it tend to refuse to talk about it due to the cognitive dissonance.

m101 2mo ago

Is the only reason that a behind the meter subsidy is more efficient because it reduces the upfront for an equivalent kWh storage (with the consumer footing the difference)? I would have thought few, larger, batteries at local substations was more efficient otherwise.

dhx 2mo ago
Distribution infrastructure capacity is a current and ongoing concern for summer peak loads (every house turning on air conditioners at once) even with the large government subsidies that have existed for residential solar panels, residential batteries, reverse cycle heat pump cooling/heating and insulation. The cost to rebuild every distribution substation, change every pole-top transformer and rewire suburbs would be much higher if these subsidies never existed. For most of Australia's population you can look up an annual report that each transmission and distribution operator is required to publish annually for their predicted demand on substations, transmission lines and distribution lines. For example in Victoria this report is the TCPR, an example available at [1]. For many distribution substations, the 10th percentile maximum demand is predicted to occur in the early 2030's, meaning that at least transformers at substations would need upgrading, or the substation rebuilt or expanded. The reasons include higher density development in urban areas, electric vehicle charging and for winter, electrification of gas heating. As an example of the impact of residential solar generation, [2] states that for an urban growth corridor of Melbourne being built largely in the era of residential solar panels being a standard housing feature, a distribution substation ATS West has 2x 150MVA transformers operating at combined peak of 200MVA, also with 125MW of embedded residential solar generation. Without that 125MW embedded residential solar generation, this substation and feeders perhaps would have had to be replaced years earlier to allow import of ~325MVA rather than ~200MVA. Also not mentioned explicitly in this report is residential battery storage which may be reducing maximum demand from predictions made before residential batteries were widely installed. As a side note, perhaps Australia perhaps has the most open and transparent electricity market in the world? I don't know any other country where the entire electricity grid down to 230/400VAC distribution lines running on poles in every residential street is available publicly on a map, including serial numbers of poles and ratings of pole-top transformers. And substation schematics and constraint reports, etc are all available through various public reports. I think the transparency demonstrates a great deal of confidence in the electricity grid and how it is managed. [1] https://www.powercor.com.au/network-planning-and-projects/network-data/ https://www.powercor.com.au/network-planning-and-projects/ne... -- refer to the PDF document in the TCPR zip file download for a substation-by-substation analysis in easy to read format. [2] https://media.powercor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/12194001/ATS-West-PADR.pdf https://media.powercor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/121...

fitsumbelay 2mo ago

Opposite story here in the US with very recent news about Trump breaking offshore wind farm agreements and using billions of US taxpayer dollars to pay repercussive fees to those operators. Our decline/regression in terms of clean energy and how easily the current administration's pulled it off and continues to is an ugly fucking mystery ...

thelastgallon 2mo ago

Australia is now ready for vertical solar, add a few more hours of production in the morning and evening. Panels are dirt cheap anyway, use them as fences, put them on high rise buildings. Change the building to require structural elements to hold the panels and build new homes with vertical + rooftop. The electric code should be updated to allow v2g. With BESS (home, grid) and EVs (always plugged in, parked 95% of the time), there may be enough storage to start replacing baseload. This will take decades, but can be done. We gotta start somewhere.

epistasis 2mo ago
Given the durability of panels, it'd be fascinating to see roof redesigns, and some changes in panel packaging, that standard large rectangles become the basic components of a 30 year roof. Or as siding. I've seen them used vertically on the Southern walls of commercial buildings in Alaska, and they looked great.
- thelastgallon 2mo ago
  Absolutely. Energy has to be baked into every structural element. Either producing energy, or storing energy, or providing insulation, or acting as a transfer medium (heat pump).
- password4321 2mo ago
  Why don't they do this for cars?
  - epistasis 2mo ago
    I'd imagine the difference between flat and curved, in addition to very different wear patterns, and inability to get your desired color. Even slight changes in packaging to adapt the panels to a structural material might increase cost. But doing custom shapes to fit the panels of a car? Getting just the right shape? That's an entirely different manufacturing process nothing like what currently gets produced. The benefit on cars is also pretty small, at least whenever I've bothered to calculate it. Cars need a massive amount of energy compared to a house, and have far less surface area.

thelastgallon 2mo ago

Australia is also 4,000km wide. A time difference of 2 - 3 hours. This adds a few more hours of Solar with long distance transmission.

tialaramex 2mo ago
As you say, Australia is very big. Big sections of it are also, as a result, empty. The coast-to-coast "long distance transmission" is not in fact a thing in Australia. China has long distance HV transmission, but it's crazy expensive and they built it because most of China's people live near its coast but most of its solar power is in the interior so the power needs to be moved. Australia is exceptional for having a lot of humans who live somewhere that's incredibly sunny. The whole place is sunny. It'll vary from place to place whether that's only "Southern Spain" sunny or full-on "Middle of the Sahara Desert" sunny, but it's all very sunny indeed, if you were inventing a country to buy solar panels Australia would be that country.
- skissane 2mo ago
  > The coast-to-coast "long distance transmission" is not in fact a thing in Australia. The main Australian electricity grid reaches from Cooktown in far northern QLD [0] through to the Lower Eyre peninsula in South Australia [1] and down to the Huon Valley in Southern Tasmania [2]. So if by "coast-to-coast" you mean "East Coast" to "South Coast", then literally we have it already. Of course, I take it you actually mean including WA and NT into the main national grid. No, we don't have that, and probably won't any time soon. But there is a project (Australia-Asia Power Link aka SunCable) [3] to run a HVDC cable from Central Australia to Singapore via Indonesia, to export solar power. Why not the same thing between Perth and Adelaide? It simply comes down to economics – Singapore and Indonesia have the energy demand to economically justify it, domestic Australian consumption doesn't. However, there is a plan to extend the national grid to Mt Isa. [4] There's only around 600 km from Mt Isa to Tennant Creek (where the AAPL/SunCable project starts). It isn't impossible that they'll eventually link up. So we might actually see the northern NT connected to the national grid, eventually. [0] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/network_connections/generation-maps/qld-map.pdf https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ... [1] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/network_connections/generation-maps/sa-map.pdf https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ... [2] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/network_connections/generation-maps/tas-map.pd https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CopperString https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CopperString

yason 2mo ago

In Europe the battery subsidies could've been used to double the price of electricity and make things worse for everyone paying for it. What a wasted business opportunity.

Animats 2mo ago

This works best in areas where cloud cover is consistently low, so solar power doesn't vary much from day to day. That's most of Australia. Two days of dark overcast and the load on non-solar sources goes way up. How much battery do you need before there's no demand for peaking plants? In some places, a day. In others, months? I looked at cloud coverage maps. There are monthly and annual average maps, and raw data from satellites. Building a map of run length of overcast days would be useful.

throwaway2037 2mo ago
> This works best in areas where cloud cover is consistently low, so solar power doesn't vary much from day to day. That's most of Australia. I just want to point out that where the majority of people live in Australia definitely has great variance in solar power day to day. For example, Melbourne is a running joke amoung Australians about how wildly unpredictable its weather is.

adolph 2mo ago

While direct government subsidy is one way to increase battery adoption to increase power generation efficiency, a market based approach is for electric power companies to use batteries installed on customer premises as a power bank for the entire grid. If you ever check out gridstatus.io [0] or similar resources, you may have noticed "storage" or "battery" as a part of the fuel mix. These are most often power company owned centralized facilities. Another approach is for power companies to leverage batteries installed on customer premises. "A critical mass of home batteries scattered across a region and networked together through so-called virtual power plants, or VPPs, he says, marks 'the shift from energy storage as backup to energy storage as an active grid asset.' [1]" 0. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso 1. https://e360.yale.edu/features/home-battery-vpps https://e360.yale.edu/features/home-battery-vpps

stubish 2mo ago
The VPPs are interesting. Several of them available to join in my region in Australia. But update isn't as high as they like, as people don't like handing over control to the energy company (traditionally the enemy). And the reality that selling your power makes so little money that people would rather just hold onto it in case of blackout. There is also an option to do the equivalent to a VPP, using the live wholesale market prices (at least one retailer offers this). Batteries are now smart enough to download the market prices and predictions and make all the same decisions as a VPP provider would, but with any extra profit remaining with the customer.

ksec 2mo ago

It may be easy to install battery for house, but I wonder about apartments?

timbit42 2mo ago
Landlords have little incentive to install solar if the tenant is paying the power bill. Perhaps legislate that the landlord has to include power in the rent so they have an incentive to install solar.

Tepix 2mo ago

We also have a solar boom in Germany, unfortunately our minister is trying to stall the deployment of solar instead of copying what Australia is doing very successfully here... it's really a shame!

throwaway2037 2mo ago
Which minister and why?

hogehoge51 2mo ago

This article is nothing but a press release. It presents no evidence for it's claim, or details on what prices in what area at what time have been cut. Meanwhile any Australian can see contary evidence just by looking at their power bill.

hn_submit 2mo ago

It's only natural that countries with an abundance of sunlight will switch over to solar and batteries, especially if the price of the latter comes down. In the not so distant future, LFP and sodium batteries will become very cheap, no more than a $200 or so for a day's storage of daily electricity usage. That means that in the majority of nations people will essentially have free electricity for their homes and maybe even their cars.

senectus1 2mo ago

that must send socialist shivers of terror down the average american capitalists back... :-P

Fizz43 2mo ago
none of this is remotely socialist
- testing22321 2mo ago
  Which is precisely the kind of thing that causes cries of “but that’s socialism” in the US!
  - Fizz43 2mo ago
    "but that’s socialism" is part of a socialist campaign to rebrand the more palatable liberal ideas as their own so they can get into power and enact their actual policies.

AneBytree 2mo ago

The home Battery boom shows most people expect price of electrity to rise. Which directly contradicts Chris Bowens frequent statements that renewables are cheaper. and the price of electrity will get cheaper.

AneBytree 2mo ago

Australians, who were falsely promised by Labor at the 2022 election that their household power bills would be $275 cheaper, want reliable and affordable power generation. If the Albanese government continues down a renewables-only path that excludes gas and zero-emissions nuclear, expect more Tomago smelter Billionm$$$ bailouts in the near future and fewer data centres