Posts By SolarQuotes Founder Finn Peacock

Free power windows arrive for most Australians on July 1. If you own a battery, you probably want to configure it to take advantage, and fill it for free, from the grid.

But your battery will not do this on its own. Out of the box, it has no clue your free window exists. Somebody has to open the app and tell it, and that somebody is you.

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My first proper job was at a nuclear power station. If you wanted to change anything you started with a drawing.

You marked the change up in red. An engineer reviewed it. The drawing office turned the red ink into real drawings. The work was done to that drawing. Someone checked the install against the markup, and signed off the drawing ‘as-built’.

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Every second battery brochure that crosses my desk now has “AI-powered” stamped on it somewhere. Enphase has “AI-based energy management software.” Sigenergy promises “AI optimisation.” Even no-name brands are getting in on the act.

But what does “AI” actually mean when it’s printed on a battery spec sheet? In most cases, a lot less than you’d think.

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Images of DIY winter coats for Fox batteries – shared on FB by Australian owners: Update: a commenter has told me the middle one was done for a joke and the overcoat was promptly removed.

Fox ESS batteries recently became the most popular battery in Australia thanks to their nice stackable design and a price that undercuts most of the competition. When asked, my personal verdict on Fox has been: I don’t have enough real-world data to vouch for their quality in harsh Australian conditions, and I’ve consistently recommended waiting for a couple of summers before committing.

Turns out it’s not the summers I should have been watching. [Read more…]

That Smart Energy 2026 Conference & Expo: Australia’s leading show that isn’t All Energy.

I’m filling in for our editor, Max, who has taken himself on holiday like someone who doesn’t understand the gravity of the Smart Energy Conference. Someone had to go. So I went to Sydney. Here’s what happened. [Read more…]

We’ve been running this website for 16 years. In that time, we’ve published tens of thousands of reviews and written plenty of posts about installers and manufacturers. Shock horror, some have been critical. [Read more…]