On the flip side here in Australia the government for years encouraged us to get panels put on our house by selling it as, "You can export power and create a small income exporting the surplus you create".

So many people did so that at one point last year the government said, "So many people are exporting it now, and the surplus is so great on the network we may have to charge you for exporting it". Wholesale power prices become negative during peak solar times - but retail companies will still charge you for using it!.

Obviously, that didn't go down too well and this is the response - free electricity during peak solar hours.

That said, my understanding is that free electricity is only for people who are on the "default offer" from the electricity companies - that is effectively the highest tier of pricing. Most people are not on the default offer.

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sevenseacat 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

My dad was a super super early adopter with a tiny 2kW system that cost him about $20k, but he has a grandfathered feed-in tariff of about 50c/kW.

I'm pretty sure he hasn't actually paid for electricity or gas (same provider) since.

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jay_kyburz 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I haven't look into the details, but It sure feels like a slap in the face to those of us who invested in panels.

I think this is about battery sales for those that can afford it. Fill a battery up for free and use the power during peak hours.

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viraptor 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

There's currently a significant rebate on batteries in Australia. (Or maybe just Victoria?) So that's definitely one attempted solution. People are getting it for costs paying off in under 5 years.

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jay_kyburz 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I got this email from from our local provider the other day..

"For a limited time only, we're offering a $500 upfront electricity bill credit* with every eligible home battery system (Tesla Powerwall 2 & 3, LG Chem HV, SolarEdge batteries only) purchased through Electrify with ActewAGL and installed by one of our approved installers - plus a further $100 credit* every year for the next five years, so long as you stay connected to our Virtual Power Plant.

Join the thousands of households across across Australia taking advantage of the Cheaper Home Batteries Program. Over 100,000 systems have been installed since July 2025, and with the rebate scheduled to decrease as installations rise, now is the time to act."

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nandomrumber 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Not the working-poor. Not renters.

By rebate you mean: a wealth transfer from tax payers to those who need it least, those who can afford a battery, those who aren’t renting.

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viraptor 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not quite. There's an income limit on that rebate. I can't get it.

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shushpanchik 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Not sure what renting has to do with this? Renters in Australia do not install batteries/panels, it's landlord's business.

If landlord has batteries/panels installed, chances are rent would be a bit higher. Renter is free to choose a place with lower energy bills by paying that premium, so these subsidies definitely could benefit the renters.

	▲	beAbU 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> it's landlord's business This is the problem though. Landlords are rarely incentivised to enhance a property by installing solar+batteries on it, as they don't live there to reap the benefits. Solar still takes a couple of years to give an ROI, so I can't see how a landlord will agree to do this on an existing property. If a property's monthly rent is higher because it has solar installed, what is the benefit to the tenant? Sure they get cheaper electricity, but they pay more rent, so it balances out. Tenants won't pay for the installation, as it's a permanent improvement on a property that they don't own. I live in a country with an order of magnitude less sun (Ireland), but there is a big solar boom going on here now, and I'm missing out on the government subsidies (which ended recently) because I'm renting and I can't convince a landlord to put €10k+ up to install a solar system for very little benefit.

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rstuart4133 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I haven't look into the details, but It sure feels like a slap in the face to those of us who invested in panels.

Sure. But if you live in Australia, you knew that slap was coming. You could almost have said to have signed up for it.

Very early in the piece, the government offered to pay people who installed solar about $0.50 for every kWh you fed into the grid. To be clear, that was far more than the retail price of electricity at the time. It was sunsetted, in 2028 from memory (so if you signed up back then, that sweet subsidy money still flowing strong.) I know a few people who installed 50kW of panels on their houses and sheds purely because of that incentive.

The idea behind the subsidy was to kickstart the solar industry, and it worked. It was always obvious what was going to happen to feed in prices if it did work. Given the price of power is now very close to $0 for 8 hours a day, it's working very, very well. That's how this "free electricity" offer came about.

The same incentives are now happening for batteries. The Australia electricity regulator created a special kind of retailer called a "Virtual Power Plant". It's effectively a collective of battery owning consumers, and the VPP allows them to sell their excess storage into the wholesale market. The government is now subsidising batteries, in the same way they subsidised solar panels. And now, they are looking at offering free power to charge the batteries(!) The result you should be able to get will over a 10% return by installing a battery and joining a VPP. Consequently, there is currently a shortage of battery installers.

That 10% won't last forever of course. It will last for a while, especially in Queensland (where I live) as the conservatives are installing more gas turbines rather than building more renewables. The high price of gas generated power guarantees a good return on my battery investment. I will take great pleasure in sending the gas and coal generators broke by selling when the price is highest (which is a night) and taking their profit.

And fortunately night lasts a long time, and years and years of battery installs to take a real bite out of it. Nevertheless the fun and profit will wind down eventually. When it does I won't be whinging about a receiving slap in the face. I will shrug, be thankful I could have my fun while it lasted, and move on.

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nandomrumber 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

What we’re dealing with is successive Australian governments with absolutely no plan for long term energy infrastructure, so they’ve lobbed it over the wall to the residential customer.

Here, you deal with it. No options. It’s solar and batteries rammed down your throat. At your cost. If it doesn’t work out, it’s on us.

No big (reliable base load) energy projects to power industry in to the future, China can do all of that for us.

Equality. Everyone can have nothing.

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rstuart4133 2 days ago | parent [-]

> No big (reliable base load) energy projects to power industry in to the future

Snowy? https://theconversation.com/white-elephant-hardly-snowy-2-0-...

Snowy aside, households are installing 40kWh batteries now. Add 2 cars V2G that give you an additional 40kWh with impacting the car battery life overly. Across the 12 million Australia houses that adds something of the order of 1 terawatt hours of storage to the grid. It's almost double the total predicted storage (660GWh) Australia will need by 2050 https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/battery-storage-au...

The strategy of "lobbing it over the wall to the residential customer" has already turned Australia households into major suppliers of electricity to the grid. Apparently they don't mind the risk if there is money to be made. Now it looks like the government are hoping household batteries will become major suppliers of storage to the grid. If that is as successful as solar, it will be by any definition a wildly successful strategy for handing the transition away from fossil fuels.

The weird thing is: this was all kicked off by the Howard government. They would be the very conservatives who are railing against renewables now.

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nandomrumber 2 days ago | parent [-]

Snowy 2.0 isn’t an electricity generator, it’s pumped hydro. It relies on electricity being generated elsewhere.

The governments plan is bait and switch. Make it seem lucrative at the start, and then squeeze everyone who committed on better terms by ratcheting up the fees and ratcheting down the feed-in tariffs.

Alternatively, we could have built a handful of big combined cycle gas plants, close to the retiring coal plants to take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure, and legislated a cheap rate for gas from the gas extraction industry, and Australians could have had all-you-can-use electricity for $40 a month.

But instead of that, we’ve committed at least a couple of generations to virtue signalling, like Australia’s GHG emissions make any difference.

We’re happy to export the gas and coal, and uranium, so India and China can have cheap power to run industrial economies.

Cheap power comes not from residential customers managing their time of use, but from the excess of industrialisation. And we’re rapidly making it cost prohibitive to manufacture anything in Australia, or even run a restaurant. So that people in far away lands can have better lives.

Make us look pretty stupid to be honest.

	▲	nandomrumber 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Further to my comment about: In October 2025, the scheme was reported to be 67% complete but it could not be completed within the A$12 billion forecast cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_2.0_Pumped_Storage_Power... 6 years, incomplete, expected to cost well over six times the initial estimate if it ever gets completed. Expect Snow 2.0 to a big impact on electricity prices in Australia. Upwards. We’ll have to most expensive pumped hydro in the world. What an achievement!

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locusm 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The feed in tariff you refer to was 52c in the beginning and was limited to a 5kW inverter. I installed 6.25kW worth of panels with a 5kW inverter in 2011 and haven't paid a single power bill since. There's no slap in the face, sure I have to give up the FIT if I want the battery subsidy but I haven't paid a cent for power in 13 years (beyond initial investment).

	▲	rstuart4133 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		In NSW it was limited to 5kW. That wasn't the limit in Queensland. Granted, there is was "only" 44c, but 44c at 30kW isn't something to be sniffed at. The 50kW of panels was to ensure you got that full 30kW for most of the day. You also got the 15c the retailer paid you, so for a while you were easily earning $40k/yr on something that cost of the order of $200k to set up.

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hexbin010 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Governments do this all the time. And wonder why there is resistance and have to roll out the "why do you want your grandchildren to die" propaganda for the next eco green net zero thing du jour.

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msy 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is a bizarrely negative take. No residential is being charged negative prices without very, very explicitly joining a plan that exposes them to the direct minute-by-minute wholesale price. Most 'EV' plans include free hours during the day (and much cheaper power in the early hours as well), it's likely it'll be standard within months thanks to this.

They are now also subsidising batteries while should help meet the wave of solar with a wave of distributed storage capacity to smooth out grid demand as well as successful rollout of grid-scale batteries.

This is a generational success story big enough to have geo-strategic implications.

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nandomrumber 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> This is a generational success story

So long as you ignore the working-poor. Those who live pay check to pay check, can’t afford solar / battery - or are renting so none of that applies to them.

Yeah, they can just get fucked.

What a success!

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shirro 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yep. Years ago I got sick of listening to people who don't believe in climate change and emission reductions due to tribalism crowing about the solar pv on their holiday house and their incredibly low electricity bills while cost of living keeps going up for lower income families. Everywhere you look anything good is twisted into a wealth transfer. If you are left behind you are never catching up now. Between the housing market and everything else the myth of a classless society has been completely obliterated in a generation.

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aeonfox 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But isn't the OP article about distributing the benefits to the wider population? Add to that the uptake of batteries GP is mentioning will substantially reduce both the need for back-up power and the cost of transmission that have been driving up electricity prices.

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nandomrumber 2 days ago | parent [-]

At what cost, and to who?

So you can have three hours of free electricity, while you’re at work, the kids are at school, you’re renting so no battery for you, electricity has already increased 100% and continues to increase, but only once a year, and now you’re being offered something your 10 year old second hand appliances and petrol cars can’t take advantage of.

Forget trickle down economics, it’s deluge-up. From those who can barely afford it to those who barely need it.

Let’s not pretend there isn’t a cost of living crisis in Australia, and electricity prices factor in to everything.

Cheap reliable plentiful electricity is the backbone of an economy. Not sitting down and working out how you can use less power next month.

We should be sitting down trying to work out how we can use more power next month, in order to leverage that power to have a better life, warmer / cooler homes. Starting businesses and not having electricity be the killer.

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aeonfox 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> So you can have three hours of free electricity, while you’re at work, the kids are at school, you’re renting so no battery for you

Probably not useful for cooking dinner or watching the evening news, but most dishwashers and clothes washers have a delay start option. Your fridge is also working its hardest during the middle of the day.

> and now you’re being offered something your 10 year old second hand appliances and petrol cars can’t take advantage of.

A washer/dryer combo would be useful for delayed start. But as mentioned, delay start has been a common option for a long time now.

> We should be sitting down trying to work out how we can use more power next month, in order to leverage that power to have a better life, warmer / cooler homes. Starting businesses and not having electricity be the killer.

BESS are the deluge up you're asking for. Much of the stress on the grid is that power generation is distributed unevenly. Grid scale battery prices have been crashing stupidly year on year, to the tune of about 20-40%, and those effects are only just starting to hit the consumer market. The uptake curve has been reasonably steady, and at current projections we would have 24 hours of world-wide storage by 2035. Which is nuts!

I think this is sensible policy. It ought to reduce power prices across the board. At the very least, energy companies would have few excuses to hide behind if prices don't become more competitive.

Another sensible policy to help renters would be to force landlords and owners' corps to put timers on their electric hot water systems. It's a kind of energy storage that most people don't consider.

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shushpanchik 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm from Australia and my electricity provider has 12pm-2pm free electricity. As other's said, dishwasher and washing machine has delayed/smart start options, so that is free for me. That saves at least 3kWh per day for me, so ~$30 per month. So it really helps with CoL crisis.

And yes, those appliances are (almost) 10 years old.

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nandomrumber a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, it’s not like it makes no difference.

Ya just have to remember that it’s table scraps compared to the 100% plus increases in electricity prices we’ve already been subject to.

And this is in a country that has the same volumetric gas exports as Qatar, which provides it citizens free healthcare, free education including university and vocational training, and electricity at 3.2 US cents per kWh.

What do we get? None of that. We get citizens living in tents. In a resource rich country.

And you people think our governments are capable of making wise decisions about long term energy policy. Check your ideologies.

When was governments picking winners ever a good idea?

When has that ever worked out well.

When was other people choosing what to do with other people’s money an ideal we should vote for more of?

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quantor_ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm from Sweden and hearing those energy prices really caught me off guard. With taxes and fees we pay ~€0.1 per kWh on average.

I have stopped caring about when house hold appliances run, our main energy consumers are heating (during the cold months) and charging the electric car.

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nandomrumber a day ago | parent [-]

€0.1 is about AU$0.18

That’s about what our electricity used to cost.

Back before we locked ourselves in to wind and solar, and gas peaker plants, and a massive pumped hydro project that will approximate never be finished.

Sweden’s energy mix is predominantly nuclear, oil, and hydro. Wind and solar account for 10% and 1% respective.

There’s no escaping the fact everything wind and solar go electricity prices go up. Drastically.

In Australia, since 2005 wind and solar have increased to about 11% and 17% of electricity generation respectively.

And that time period correlates perfectly with the just over 100-200% increase in electricity prices, depending on where you live.

In 2005 I was paying AU$0.17 per kWh in South Australia, now that’s up around AU$0.44 per kWh. Elon even put in a big battery in South Australia. Hadn’t helped. Hasn’t helped reduce the cost of electricity. And that’s what the Australian government wants us to hail a success.

That’s 250% increase. While general inflation in the same period has been 67%.

Wind and solar haven’t even really started to put a dent in Australia’s over all energy use, which is dominated by gas and oil, and people are falling over each other to get in line to vote for more of it.

Other locations with big batteries and big electricity prices include Victoria Australia, Melbourne the capital is widely considered the California of Australia, and California itself. Big batteries, big solar, big electricity prices. Fact. Find me a counter example.

Germans are hanging solar panels off their apartment balconies. Not because they want to. Out of desperation. Just like poverty Africa. That’s equality: everyone can have nothing, and they’ll like it. My god.

No one is running an industrial economy on their balcony.

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aeonfox 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> In Australia, since 2005 wind and solar have increased to about 11% and 17% of electricity generation respectively. > And that time period correlates perfectly with the just over 100-200% increase in electricity prices, depending on where you live.

I'll say this one thing and get out of the way. The price shock began in 2022[1] (see figure 1). The rise in energy costs aren't due to solar and wind generation, which is the cheapest there is. It's due to the transmission and variability of intermittent renewable energy, and also sensitive to export prices of gas due to our weak policy on gas reserves. Batteries are the answer to that as they can store when its cheap and dispatch to the grid when it isn't (and that includes home batteries). The Neoen battery which you mentioned, was the world's first big battery. It's been wildly profitable, which is basically driving the market to invest more in grid scale batteries and less in large scale renewables. So the federal and state governments aren't picking a winner by backing batteries, these policies are just accelerating us towards a cheaper grid using the momentum that's already there in the market. The federal government is also trying to offset the ending of the state-level bill relief for those that can't afford batteries, and reducing grid pressure/prices in the evening when everyone gets home.

[1] https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/spot-market-prices...

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nandomrumber 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You can’t have distributed low power density intermittent solar and wind electricity generation at scales that matter without stupendous amounts of steel and concrete transmission infrastructure having to be built where no one lives or works, nor wants to, to connect them to places people do want to live and work.

There’s no way that can be separated from grid-scale wind and solar.

The level of self deception renewables advocates subject themselves to would be funny if I wasn’t forced to pay for it.

You also can’t have it without peaking capability. Which means being able to cover possibly all demand instantaneously, and that was always going to mean expensive gas / battery projects that sit idle a lot of the time. We tried it I warn you.

That wildly profitable Neoen battery? Where do you think the profits come from? Thin air? The end user. That’s you and me mate, we’re paying for it. Low income earners disproportionately so. Renters who can’t have solar or batteries. They can just freeze in the dark.

I’m all for profits when they’re mine. I can’t understand why anyone would worship someone else’s profits. Your profits are my costs.

I just drove half way across the country, from the south east to the middle of South Australia.

Broken wind turbines 300k, from the nearest industrial centre. Probably 600+k from the nearest capable industrial centre.

They’ll never get fixed. No one is driving a $1200 an hour crane five hours each way to spend six days set up waiting for a technician and parts from Europe who was supposed to be here two weeks ago to fix one or two turbines / broken blades. Those handful of broken turbines probably don’t even have spare parts available, every wind farm is a new model of turbine, locked in to one manufacturer indefinitely for after sales parts and service, and if they do have spare parts and service available the payback period on the repairs would be astronomical.

It’s cheaper to let them rot in place and build new ones elsewhere. You don’t get greenfields grid-scale rebates for performing maintenance on ten+ year old equipment.

I dare you to run the numbers on the quantity of steel and concrete needed globally to transition to wind and solar.

Or don’t, cos it will put you off renewables. And there’s nothing worse than having your preconceived notions of what’s right and wrong jump out of the math and throttle your brain. The concrete related CO2 emissions alone will choke the planet way beyond what we’ve merely dabbled with getting to this stage.

I used to do paid and volunteer work for The Wilderness Society and donate to Greenpeace. Then I learned applied mathematics.

	▲	aeonfox an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> stupendous amounts of steel and concrete transmission infrastructure Rooftop solar and home batteries keeps power where it's used for domestic use. Large scale solar is also deployed near to mining and refining sites, and not by mandate, but because it's the most economic option. If you have batteries you don't need to build out transmission. > You also can’t have it without peaking capability. Once again, enough batteries and gas peakers are out of business. > That wildly profitable Neoen battery? Where do you think the profits come from? Thin air? The end user. That’s you and me mate, we’re paying for it. They come from arbitrage. Buy low, sell high. They same thing that anyone with a home battery or EV can do. Neoen actively reduced the market prices for electricity by increasing supply at the right time. That means the people of South Australia profited mate ;) > Renters who can’t have solar or batteries. The OP article is about distributing free power to everyone to take advantage of. Assuming that plays out, I can only see this as Good News™ for renters. > They can just freeze in the dark. Lighting isn't really what's chewing up the power. But certainly people going cold because of high energy prices sucks. Again, the prices have increased due to gas export prices increasing the wake of the Ukraine conflict. This isn't "self deception" it's just economics. I could list ways that free energy in the middle of day could be used by renters and for low income earners to stay warn, but I get the vibe that you've got an axe to grind and I'd be wasting my time. So, as promised, I'm moving on.

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shushpanchik 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That's a weird uninformed take. Both solar and battery are heavily subsidised in Australia if your household income is less than $180k AUD. Average solar 6kW installation with subsidies is ~3k AUD, 30-40kWh chineses batteries are 4-6k AUD after subsidy.

Median full-time salary in AU is ~90k AUD, and we have pretty good minimal wages, so solar panels are affordable to almost every working homeowner.

	▲	nandomrumber a day ago \| parent [-]
		Every working home owner. Young people don’t own their own homes, the banks do. And many young home owners are now suffering mortgage stress, same with renters. That is, 1/3 or more of their income goes to repayments / rent. Double income households, at your AU$90k are paying $760 a week in rent or mortgage repayments. I recently worked a minimum wage job, and you are guzzling the koolaid something chronic if you think $24.95 is workable with a mortgage, the one necessary car, and all the associated taxes and insurances. Fuck me. I worked out I’d be only $50 worse off week on the disability pension. Admittedly I’ve made some stupid decisions in my adult life, but, unsurprisingly, we can’t all be far out on the righthand side of the bell curve. I’m just a dumb blue collar worker.

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andrewinardeer 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I never said anyone was being charged negatively. The wholesale price goes negative. The negative price currently is not passed on.

	▲	rstuart4133 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Your retailer can choose to pass it on, or not. Mine (a VPP) does pass it on. They charge me the going wholesale rate. If the wholesale price is sufficiently negative they pay me to use electricity. That's pretty rare, but it does happen every few months. The wholesale price has to be below about -4.5¢ for my price to be negative because the people who own the wires get to add a fee regardless of what direction the electricity is flowing, as does the government (admin fees of some description). The converse is also true. If the price spirals to $19/kWh, I get to pay that too. At that price as single night could cost me $400, or it would if I didn't have a battery. Which possibly explains why you haven't heard of it. If you don't have a battery big enough to get you through at the peak and shoulder hours and enough solar to charge it during the day you are better off with a more traditional retailer, who charges you a fixed price regardless of the wholesale price.