About Kim WainwrightA solar installer and electrician in a previous life, Kim has been blogging for SolarQuotes since 2022. He enjoys translating complex aspects of the solar industry into content that the layperson can understand and digest. He spends his time reading about renewable energy and sustainability, while simultaneously juggling teaching and performing guitar music around various parts of Australia. Read Kim's full bio.
Electric cars have notched up their biggest Australian milestone yet. In August, they outsold petrol cars for the first time, taking almost a quarter of all new vehicle sales. For households, that also means more transport energy is shifting from the petrol bowser to the electricity meter.
[Read more…]
Carefully trickle-charging your EV with surplus solar instead of buying electricity from the grid sounds like the perfect way to charge. But there’s an uncomfortable truth: slow charging can waste considerably more energy than charging at higher power with a home charger.
Spoiler alert: that doesn’t mean you should stop charging from solar. Cheap electricity still trumps charging efficiency when it comes to your wallet. [Read more…]
Australia’s data centre boom is going to need an extraordinary amount of electricity. Without the right rules, households and small businesses could end up sharing the bill. [Read more…]
Most of us want to believe the best in people.
If your solar installer says they’re waiting on stock, you’ll probably accept it. If they ask for a few more weeks, you’ll give them a few more weeks.
But when does patience stop being reasonable?
That’s the question NSW homeowner Mark Barnes eventually found himself asking after seven months of delays, a missed installation date and, after cancelling his battery order, still waiting for the return of his $6,500 deposit. [Read more…]
From 1 September, NSW businesses are able to cut the upfront cost of a new battery by around 20–40%, with the biggest discounts available when new solar is installed alongside it.
The battery incentives aren’t new, but with today’s launch, the NSW Government has now put some numbers around the savings, and confirmed they can be combined with federal support for commercial solar. [Read more…]
Western Australia’s government-owned Synergy has an unusual position in the electricity market: it owns some of the state’s biggest batteries, as well as generators selling electricity into the same market.
New analysis has found its batteries sometimes charging at surprisingly high wholesale prices in the middle of the night, helping push those prices even higher. On the one hand, Synergy is paying more to charge its batteries. On the other hand, its generators could benefit from higher wholesale prices.
The prices discussed in this article are wholesale electricity prices. Individual price spikes don’t flow directly through to the regulated tariffs that most WA households and small businesses pay. But persistently higher wholesale costs can ultimately affect the cost of supplying electricity in WA.
Looking at a modular home battery, adding another module appears about as difficult as stacking another Lego brick. Lift the new battery into place, stack it on top of the others, plug it in and away you go.
How hard can it be? It’s probably why the question pops up every now and then in online owner forums. [Read more…]
Australia’s electricity market operator has been warned that an overly cautious approach to planning the grid could leave consumers paying more than necessary.
That’s one of the findings of an independent review of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which has also raised concerns about potential conflicts between some of the organisation’s expanding responsibilities. [Read more…]
Australia has now installed more than 500,000 batteries under the federal government’s Cheaper Home Batteries Program.
It’s an impressive number for a scheme that’s a little over a year old, and one Energy Minister Chris Bowen was understandably keen to celebrate.
“Every battery installed means another household getting more value from their rooftop solar, and another job for the local installers and small businesses delivering this rollout across the country,” Bowen said.
But half a million batteries later, it’s worth looking beyond the milestone. The program hasn’t just put a lot of batteries on walls. It has changed Australia’s home energy market remarkably quickly.
The federal government has announced a major expansion of Australia’s Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES), opening the door for much larger commercial rooftop solar systems to receive the same type of upfront incentive that helped drive Australia’s household solar boom.
Under the proposal, the SRES threshold would increase tenfold from 100 kilowatts to 1 megawatt, allowing many medium-sized businesses, farms and community organisations to access an upfront discount on the cost of installing rooftop solar. [Read more…]
Finn Peacock (RSS) (388)
Ronald Brakels (RSS) (515)
Michael Bloch (RSS) (3363)
Staff Writer (RSS) (261)
Richard Chirgwin (RSS) (159)
Trevor Glen (RSS) (1)
Anthony Bennett (RSS) (242)
Kim Wainwright (RSS) (130)
Pat Southwell (RSS) (19)
Neerav Bhatt (RSS) (7)
Max Opray (RSS) (54)
Toby Hagon (RSS) (1)
Baran Yildiz (RSS) (2)
Tim Johnston (RSS) (6)
James Norman (RSS) (1)
Jacob Boyd (RSS) (11)
Before You Go..Download the first chapter of The Good Solar Guide, authored by SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock, FREE! We respect your privacy and you can opt out from the newsletter at any time. |
RSS - Posts
Currently Raging Debates: