About twelve years ago, there was a quiet wave of solar company bankruptcies in Australia. They were not caused by dodgy panels, bad installs, or disappearing warranties. They were caused by tax.
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.
Cheap Battery Deals And The GST Time Bomb
Commercial Solar: When It’s Brilliant And When It’s Useless
This week I found myself involved in two commercial solar projects. One will almost certainly print money for decades. The other looked promising at first glance but fell apart the moment we climbed onto the roof.
The Most Important Sensor You’ve Never Heard Of
If you open the switchboard in a modern, all-electric home, you are increasingly likely to find little black clamp-on rings everywhere.
Five Tests You Must Do Before Your Battery Installer Leaves
Norrie is a long-time reader who just spent $8,300 on a home battery. The install looked tidy. The installers were pleasant. Then the surprises landed after they were gone. He was told only one circuit could be backed up. Not the fridge and lights together. Not the air conditioner and lights. One. He was also told that in a blackout he must go outside to the switchboard and pull a lever to get power. None of this had been mentioned beforehand. He now feels stitched up and is wondering whether he has any recourse.
[Read more…]
Your EV Will Eat Your Home Battery – If You Let It
Ten per cent of new cars sold in Australia are now plug-in EVs. Home battery sales are going through the roof. That means a growing number of homes now have both. Or soon will.
And yet, hardly anyone thinks about how the two will work together.
Vale Michael Bloch
Michael Bloch, SolarQuotes’ most prolific writer, died last week after a long illness.
Michael joined SolarQuotes in April 2017 and went on to write an extraordinary 3,363 posts over almost nine years. His final article was published on 22 January 2026. That volume alone is remarkable, but it only hints at the impact he had.
[Read more…]
When Did AC Coupling Become A Fashion Crime?
There’s a strange certainty creeping into battery talk lately. The idea that DC coupling is the grown-up option, and AC coupling is something we did back when we didn’t know any better. I keep seeing installers and Facebook pundits claiming the only proper way to attach a battery to a house is with a DC-coupled system. Anything else is framed as inefficient, messy, a historical mistake or just deeply uncool.
I don’t get it.
[Read more…]
Australia Is The World’s Cruellest Battery Test Lab
If you wanted to design the world’s harshest endurance test for home batteries, you wouldn’t build a lab. You’d build a normal Australian suburb. [Read more…]
When Nobody Designs Anything Anymore
This post is about a choice most people do not realise they are making.
Four Battery Backup Myths That Need To Die
Fifteen years ago, one of the hardest parts of selling solar was explaining why your panels shut down in a blackout. No grid meant no power, even on a sunny day.
Today, batteries fix that. Yet I am seeing thousands of homes getting large batteries with either no backup at all or poorly designed backup. That’s because – as batteries go mainstream – a set of myths has taken hold.
Let’s knock them over.
RSS - Posts
Currently Raging Debates: