About Finn PeacockI'm a Chartered Electrical Engineer, Solar and Energy Efficiency nut, dad, and the founder of SolarQuotes.com.au. I started SolarQuotes in 2009 and the SolarQuotes blog in 2013 with the belief that it’s more important to be truthful and objective than popular. My last "real job" was working for the CSIRO in their renewable energy division. Since 2009, I’ve helped over 800,000 Aussies get quotes for solar from installers I trust. Read my full bio.
Last week I was in Officeworks waiting for some printing. Next to me, a woman was buying a laptop, and the Officeworks bloke helping her knew his stuff. Processors, RAM, screen brightness: all of it correct. Then he asked whether she’d considered a Mac, which opened a second long conversation about MacBooks, and by the end of it, she looked more confused than when she started.
He left her to think it over. I couldn’t help myself. [Read more…]
A fortnight ago, 7.30 aired an investigation into Solar Power Nation, a retailer the ABC reports is under investigation by authorities in Queensland, NSW and South Australia after hundreds of complaints.
One customer, Amin Khorram, paid $13,000 for a battery system. Only one of the two inverters was installed, so he got 5 kW of the promised 10 kW and couldn’t charge or discharge his batteries fast enough to get all the savings he expected. He chased the company for eight months. The missing inverter finally appeared last month, as his QCAT hearing date approached. Funny, that. [Read more…]
Heat pump hot water systems continue to grow in popularity as more Australians look for ways to get off gas.
To find out which heat pump installers trust most in 2026, we asked Australian installers a simple question:
“Which heat pump hot water system would you choose for your own home?”
The result wasn’t even close. [Read more…]
I first wrote about this back in 2012. Fourteen years later, I’m still writing about it. That should tell you something about how sticky this confusion is. [Read more…]
“After installation, we have found out the battery will not power the aircon after dark…”
This is a direct quote from the My Efficient Electric Home (MEEH) Facebook group. Tim Forcey suggested it deserved an article. I agree, because there’s a limitation of three-phase battery systems you need to understand before buying.
With full EVs accounting for more than one in five cars sold in July 2026, home EV chargers are selling like hot cakes.
To find out which chargers the experts trust, we asked our network of installers a simple question:
“Which EV charger would you choose for your own home?” [Read more…]
Every year we publish the Installer’s Choice Awards, and every year the same two objections turn up in the comments within about four milliseconds.
This week SolarQuotes ticked over one million quote requests. Somewhere in a database is customer number one1, and somewhere in the queue right now is customer number one million.
Only 24% of Australian battery owners have joined a Virtual Power Plant (VPP). That’s from the ACCC’s latest electricity market report, and the reaction has been fairly uniform: this is a problem, and the fix is to make VPPs more appealing. Better consumer protections. Simpler products. Minimum technical standards. Probably more VPP rebates.
 But there’s another way to read a number like that.
Continuing the 2026 Installer’s Choice Awards, we asked Australia’s solar installers a simple question:
“Which home battery would you choose for your own home?”
These are the people designing, installing and servicing battery systems every day, so they have a front-row seat to what works well in the real world. And Australian Consumer Law holds the installer liable for the units’ warranty and performance for 10 years plus. So I reckon their opinion is what counts.
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