There’s a new myth floating around: if your energy retailer gives you a free 3-hour energy window in the middle of the day, you don’t need solar panels. Just get a big battery, charge it for free during the magic window, and run your house on battery power 21 hours per day.
Or the slightly more restrained version:
“I’ve already got a modest solar system, but if it ever falls short, I’ll just top up the battery during the free window – no need for more solar panels”
Sounds clever.
In practice? Not really.
Let’s start with the appeal. The logic is tempting: skip the cost of more solar panels. Just buy a battery. You can fill it up with free electricity from the grid. Maybe even charge your EV too. Feels like you’re gaming the system.
But the system’s gaming you.
Not As Easy As It Sounds
To make this work, you need:
- A big battery in terms of capacity (kWh) to get through the other 21 hours.
- A powerful battery inverter (kW) to charge fast enough in the 3-hour window.
- Enough grid connection headroom to do it all without tripping your main breaker.
Let me explain that last one. Say you’ve got a 10kW charger running for 3 hours. That pulls 43 amps on a single-phase connection. If your main breaker is 63A, you’ve got 20A left over to run everything else in the house. That’s not much. Add a kettle, a clothes dryer, and you’re in trip city.1
Even if you’re on a beefy 100A supply, charging your EV at 7kW takes 32A. Add that to the 43A and you’re at 75% of your capacity without any regular appliances running. Suddenly your free electricity hour has turned into an episode of The Weakest Link.
But worse than the tech challenges is you’ve surrendered your autonomy. You’re trusting your retailer to keep the window open.
Forever.
You’re betting they won’t quietly change the plan or jack up prices outside the window. And if they do? Tough luck. Your system is now built around that window.
A breakdown of residential electricity price components. If you rely on your retailer, sooner or later they’ll make sure you pay to cover the costs.
Solar Is A Ticket To Independence
Energy independence was the whole point of going solar. You owned your panels. You made your own power. You used the grid like a backup. Batteries became part of that same story. A way to rely on the grid even less.
This free window idea flips that on its head. Now, you rely on them – on the retailer – the very entity solar was supposed to liberate you from.
And let’s be real. No retailer is giving you free power out of kindness. If they’re losing money 3 hours a day, they’ll make it back somewhere. Maybe it’s the shoulder rate. Maybe it’s the daily supply charge. Maybe it’s the tiny (or non-existent) FiT.
Electricity prices in South Australia last week. The brief dips below the line are the only points at which prices went negative (apart from the sabbath – amen).
There’s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch
And when negative wholesale prices are rare (like most of winter in SA), your retailer’s not getting paid to take that electricity either. They’re paying transmission, distribution, environmental and metering costs. Those don’t go negative. So guess who ends up subsidising your “free” power?
Yeah. You do. Just somewhere else on the bill.
I love a good deal as much as anyone. And if you’ve got a battery already, sure – top it up for free when you can. But ditching panels altogether? Or not expanding your solar because you’re banking on three free hours a day? That’s shortsighted.
Aussies used to install panels to take back control. To future-proof their bills. Let’s not forget that. Let’s not go backwards.
Let’s make solar panels great again.
Phase Shift is a weekly opinion column by SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock. Subscribe to SolarQuotes’ free newsletter to get it emailed to your inbox each week along with our other home electrification coverage.
Footnotes
- If you do get a beefy battery installed, please make sure your installer configures it so it can do real-time dynamic load management, and don’t even think of buying a battery without this feature. It constantly monitors your household load and dials back your charging power when necessary to avoid tripping your main breaker. ↩
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Thanks, Finn.
Let’s not forget where that negative pricing comes from, either. It somes from households’ PV systems. We have a chance to break out of our British every-man-for-himself culture and into the (globally!) more common community-minded way of thinking.
Have (recently) installed as much solar PV as will fit.
Unfortunately it’s not sufficient for covering our winter demand (unavoidable shading), so we import (free) energy to make up the difference.
Who knows for how long such tariffs will exist but for now it works.
What solar PV does do is lock in energy supply at a known low cost, be it 4-8c/kWh over it’s life. Which is much more than FIT, so use it or lose it.
But the paradigm has changed.
The solar PV (14.7 kW) part of our equation was far more expensive than the battery (32 kWh).
And precisely because of the change in tariff mix (daytime cheap, night time expensive, zero FIT), solar PV alone is no longer the “no-brainer” option it once was.
63 A single phase is still a decent capacity and dynamic load balancing manages that nicely. Definitely ensure large loads have that capability (e.g. home storage, EVSE), or at least a means to easily adjust limits.
In Canada, a 100 amp x 250 volt service is the smallest you’d see in a new home, 200 amp on a larger home, and I think they go up to 400 amp supply where they de-ice driveways, heat the home, etc with electricity.
But for some reason that the solar guy couldn’t explain or I couldn’t understand, the panel bus is limited to a 10 KW inverter at 250 volt.
Yes, “smart” panel is practically a necessity now.
My understanding was that Canada, like the rest of North America, was supplied by 120V mains – hence the greater amperage.
Are people really willing to forego the federal battery rebate (T&C: you need new or existing solar) for this? That rebate would outweigh years of potential savings.
Anyhow, from a society point of view, it sounds like a net positive. Another battery charging during the day and discharging during the night. The net downside is for the individual, and that’s their choice.
Hi Finn, Just to let you know how i am getting the most out of my Solar and Battery set up. I have 17KW system Micro inverter Solar. And a 13.7 KWH Battery. When the Sun is doing what it does, i can run my 5KW Reverse Cycle Ducted Air Condisioner all day off the solar panels. However when sun sets the battery takes over and i might get 2 to 2 and a half hours out of the battery. So i have installed a Multi Function Timer Relay in my Air Con unit which i have set to Run half hour On half hour Off. This gives me 4 to 4 and a half run time. It works for me. Regards Hans
Amber electric?
Low cost, free and even negative energy through the day and high feed-in tariffs for your battery export in the evening to the point where I can make money.
That’s with a tiny 9kWh battery with miserable 3.3kW power output and 5kWp of PV on the roof (that I have to curtail through summer due to negative feed-in tariffs).
And even when I charge my 76kWh Tesla Model 3 performance at home for 10,000km per year.
So who needs solar panels while the coal fired power station instability and lack of big battery and continued gas leaker station activity continues to deliver $18/kWh feed-in tariff peeks for your battery every month or two.
Yes $18 per kWh feed-in tariffs for a couple of hours every couple of months!
If only I had a battery with 5 or 7 kW output.
I haven’t had a power bill for two years.
1. No one is going to buy a battery without solar panels – no rebate.
2. Most people are at work in the middle of the day so there would be minimal load on the household circuit so you may as well charge a battery.
3. People can add solar panels if retailers take away the free energy plan. No point planning for unknown possibilities of energy policy. I’ll adapt add more panels if things change.
Under any energy system design scenario possible the one that moves the dial closest to energy independence is standalone solar PV + battery. On grid solar PV + battery is a very distant last place.
My recommendation remains consistent over many years of standalone solutions design and is even more relevant today with EVs, which should be viewed by solutions designers as nothing more than mobile battery storage units.
Never charge a battery system (fixed or mobile) with mains power. Never. Solar PV always.
It is surprisingly easy to design.
Lawrence Coomber
While I’m off-grid, with BEV, HWS, and aircons, that necessitates more battery than many could afford in the past. Remaining on-grid was generally cheaper, as the grid is your battery, then.
Now, with the 30% rebate and falling battery prices, taking free midday power can delay the need for more panel investment – while boosting the increasingly essential energy transition by aiding grid stability at high generation levels. It is solar sharing.
In time, grid-scale batteries will fill generation gaps for industry. Making domestic demand largely self-sufficient greatly reduces the corporate infrastructure investment cost.
For 30% of the capital cost, the rebate rapidly augments network battery capacity, gaining time for corporates to fight denialists and NIMBYs, and do their bit.
With a battery, only a compatible MPPT is needed for adding (DC coupled) panels later, even if all your inverter’s string inputs are taken up. Ample PV + big battery = resilience.
There no way I can have enough solar PV to provide enough energy in Winter for our home and EVs, so I’ll take the free/ubercheap grid energy thanks very much.
It’s not “surprisingly easy to design” if you don’t have the space for enough PV.
But it is surprisingly easy to take cheap energy on offer. How long will it last? Not forever but it won’t be going away any time soon.
Spot trading is a smart response to grid instability and the duck curve. It rewards flexibility now, when volatility is high, but its role will evolve as renewables and storage scale and fossil generation fades. By then, fewer spikes will mean less high value arbitrage. However today, it’s a valuable bridge to a stable, clean grid.
If you have the courage, then using arbitrage will deliver free electricity and profits for some years to come, and deliver a much quicker ROI.
Basically there are two modes of battery operation.
1.Self Consumption where the battery is held in reserve for home use only and charges from solar only. Good if you are on a flat tariff or even ToU tariff.
2.Arbitrage where the battery charges and discharges in isolation from home consumption and solar production. In this mode the battery is tied to the wholesale market where tariffs change every 5 mins and there are profits to be made in the predictable duck curve, just like big battery does.
Up to you
I always charge from grid and discharge to the grid depending on supply & feed-in price.
Supply and Feed-in tariffs vary from -10c to +$20 and change every 5 minutes for me. Non of this ToU and flat feed-in tariff ripoff.
I charge when supply tariff is low -10c to say +15c. Then discharge when feed-in tariff is high +25c to $19. (approximatly)
I charge the car and run the pool pump when tariff is low -10c to +15c.
The battery is independent from the PV production and house consumption and mostly reacts to the duck curve tariff fluctuations but also takes into consideration PV production and home consumption to achieve best profit.
Haven’t paid anything for electricity to two years and that includes charging my EV most days.
I’m in the wholesale electricity market not the retail market where the big suppliers make all the money.
We are using the 3 hrs free power with Globird in Melbourne since April 2025. We have 40.5kWh of Powerwall 2 batteries (3 x 13.5kWh). Tesla adjusted our Grid import to a maximum of 10.0kW (3 x 3.3kW) in 2021 when the 3rd PW2 was installed. Our 63amp mains CB was tripping when we were charging the batteries and having house load to a total of 19.2kW. As it turns out, this was a blessing because we have not had a CB Trip in 4 years. The settings are…. Grid import 3 x 3.3kW and when solar is available with the grid we can achieve 3 x 5kW (15kw) total charging. I use NetZero to automate the charging and no EV.
I have a battery so for me the calculation is more whether adding a second is a smart move, when I can access the free and cheap grid power. In the winter on many days there’s barely enough solar to cover household needs and charge one battery, so without the cheaper grid power to possibly top up a second battery, it’s a no from me for now.
What are the chances of retailers retiring cheaper EV charging rates as well as the free middle of day hours?
I don’t like the framing of this as ‘taking control’, as if the grid is the enemy. There’s already far too much of a survivalist ethic in the solar community, many resent sharing a single electron.
Isolating oneself from the grid is crazy if there is the ability to connect to it.
But the benefits of solar and / or batteries depends entirely on the sort of pricing structure you have for electricity.
If you pay wholesale prices, it is not worth having much solar, but having a battery is great. It protects you from the price spikes but in general, you use energy from the grid when it is cheap and use it or export it when the prices are high. Even in winter electricity is cheap during the day most days.
But if you pay retail prices then sure, solar is good because every bit of electricity you produce is electricity you’re not having to buy from the retailer. In these instances a battery is not as worthwhile.
I’ve chosen the wholesale electricity and battery path. I have only a 20 year old, 1kw solar system and a 13kw battery. My electricity bill is $hundreds in credit.
I did the sums on wholesale, looking at long-term rates for both that and retail, and decided I was better off with a good retailer. Didn’t help that I have micro-inverters that can’t be easily curtailed during negative pricing periods.
Didn’t quite get why using wholesale rates would be better than solar? Both wholesale and retail will always cost more than solar.
You can’t “do the sums on wholesale”? I’ve heard people say this in the past but that’s like saying “I priced the stock market and I’m better off keeping my money under my bed”.
You can’t determin what you’ll earn from the wholesale market day by day. It all depends on the dynamics of your consumption, solar production and both the tariffs changing every 5 minutes.
I’ve seen prices for electricity supply at -18 cents. When that happends I’m charging the car, running the pool pump, putting all the aircons on and all the lights and getting paid to consume all that electricity.
The only thing you can be sure of is that the price in the middle of the day won’t be as high as the price in the middle of the evening and that fact you can make money from. Powerfull enough battery and you can be well in the green every month.
If this wasn’t the case then no business would be investing in grid size batteries.
Wholesale price data is readily available. So I looked at time series of that over a year. Many people I’ve seen here have compared going wholesale with their experience with a good retailer, and found marginal difference on overall cost. The retailer often wins because you’re not stuck constantly monitoring the wholesale price shifts.
The negative pricing periods are also pretty sporadic. For three-quarters of every year my solar gives me free electricity all day and night (with my battery). No work needed from me, no tracking of wholesale price trends every day etc.
You can’t manage spot trading manually? You need to use a machine learning algorithm like Model Predictive Control to manage the forecast data and the constantly changing states of energy flow into and out of the system.
I recalculate desired state of charge, pool pump operation, car charging rate, etc every 30 second. Then apply the change to those loads automatically across a home automation system.
I use Home Assistant, Node-Red and EMHASS running on a NUC to do that. You can buy an energy management system to do that. Not sure they’ll manage pool pumps and hot water systems etc or you can use Amber’s less accurate and less holistic smartshit system (doesn’t work with my battery).
But you can’t do that manually monitoring all your data every 39 seconds?
Here’s a blog from amber abour their V2G trials. Interesting the money you can make with the power of an EV battery.
https://www.amber.com.au/blog/lessons-learned-on-v2g-trial-updates-early-results-and-next-steps?utm_source=email&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=always_on&utm_source=V2G+Interested&utm_campaign=24c0c530fb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_08_22_02_59_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_667a256b9d-24c0c530fb-434554263
“get a big cable first”
The real estate owner ( that can host panels/batteries ) is in front now. There are businesses that will front your panel / battery cost if you have real estate – and apparently they make money after that funding.
But you absolutely need to be able to send or receive those electrons to/from your property as fast as possible when you choose to do so. Big cables in/out are the thing now.
I feel sorry for all you down south with multiple retailers with all their offers to lower your power bills. I imagine it must be very confusing for most people.
Here in Central Qld., our one and only supplier Ergon, we now have slightly lower prices on general tariff 11 but higher network fees and much lower feed-in so, in all a small loss overall for someone like me on solar and batteries.
In regard to some comments from down south, do you really need to aircons 24/7? We are becoming a weak population.
Tom, congrats on the simpler life – with the bonus of greater benefit from self consumption. 😉 A BEV takes that to the max, if you don’t need to traverse the whole state in one hit.
With a very sharp frost yesterday, the RCAC was very handy for heating, as it is again today. OK, the wood heater adds no CO₂ to the biosphere, and on-farm forest effects immediate atmospheric extraction in daytime, but multiplying photonic energy by four for heating adds zero CO₂, even transiently.
The IEA estimates there could be an extra 4 billion air conditioners around the world by mid-century:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-12/rising-demand-for-air-conditioning-alarms-climate-change-experts/10710956
adding ½°C to global warming. But that’s only so long as we persist with the fossil fuel folly. Will SA’s algal bloom catastrophe drop the hint that climate hell is looming fast?
RCAC is ideal, I submit, if fully solar powered, as here, off-grid.
Thanks Erik, yes we are lucky.
We are planning a caravan trip to Kangaroo Island in October our EX30 EV we will be towing a small caravan, Nearly got the whole trip planed.
The beauty is in October last year we fed-in nearly 2 MW’s into the grid which if year is similar it will pay for our trip.
Hey Tom, did you go to QIT in the 1970s and did the CLBT course? I recognize your name.
Yes, I did. Amazing, is your name Colin?
No it isn’t. If you’re interested, text 0409064319 & I’ll tell you. You did invite me to your wedding but I couldn’t attend. It was a long time ago. I remember you.
Rumours are rarely based on facts, as are many promotions for electricity providers. There is no substitute for careful calculations, but sometimes it is difficult to get the information needed to do the calculations. Especially with electricity providers.
I just fell for one of those offers for $300 discount on your electricity bills over 6 months if you allow the supplier to calculate a Price Efficiency Adjustment (PEA) and Feed In PEA, based on Time Of Day prices available to the supplier from which the supplier estimates your electricity costs. I have PV panels but no battery -yet!!
The wonderful scheme more than doubled my electricity bill!! Their estimated PEA doubled my consumption charges and their estimated Feed In PEA resulted in me paying them for every kWh of solar fed into the grid.
An expensive lesson in leaving it to your supplier to calculate “savings” from Time of day charges. I changed my supplier the day I received my first bill.
The current market conditions that see low cost power in the middle of the day will disappear as storage and other things come online to soak it up. Building a battery system to take advantage of what is likely to be a short term market condition isn’t a great idea.
That said having the market sending price signals that encourages more even consumption, or even reduced consumption during times of low RE generation is no bad thing.
Yes, spot trading is great just at the moment.
I was almost hoping that the libs would get in with their nuclear plan and extended life for coal fired power station. We’d be enjoying ever increasing tariff spikes for years fattening the duck curve.
Now it’s a limited time thing until big battery gets built (and behind the meter batteries) and we won’t be making much money any longer.
Malcolm you said:
“Rumours are rarely based on facts, and there is no substitute for careful calculations”.
You are absolutely correct.
But here you are now – lamenting your poor decisions – precisely because you have by your own admission and in hindsight [and just like most global renewable energy commentators] based your poor decision making around this subject on both rumours, and false calculations!
How come mate?
You sound like an intelligent and thoughtful man, but most of us fit into this category.
So what’s actually going on with all the global energy science hysteria, and is it all (according to your definition) simply unsubstantiated rumours and miscalculations?
You may find an entry point for some answers here:
https://www.2greenenergy.com/2017/09/06/solar-wind-and-the-future-of-human-civilization/#comment-40984
In a nutshell, it’s not about reducing global power consumption at all. It’s the opposite, and by a factor of over 400 times by 2100.
Lawrence Coomber
For me it is more about sizing the battery. Winter in Melbourne means low solar generation, made even lower by limited unshaded roof, and high consumption for heat pump heating. Summer has more generation and less consumption, as a solid brick house needs little cooling here, so a battery much larger than winter generation is unlikely to pay. Free energy for three hours every day of the year means that a battery close to a winter’s day consumption seems likely to pay. Unfortunately I have not found a modelling program to show this.
Yes all of Finn’s caveats apply. Will the battery charge in three hours? Will the wiring allow it? What is the tariff for other times? And especially, will the tariff continue to be available?
Fo rme solar is about reducing emissions first, saving some money second, with being less dependent on the grid coming third. Panels without a battery no longer save money to pay for themselves in Victoria. Sad but true.
The cynic in my considers that you will want to keep promoting the idea of getting solar panels because that’s the very foundation on which SolarQuotes has been founded upon?
Sorry to go as far as even making the suggestion… but if people were to be less interested in rooftop solar PV, it would then follow on that they would be less interested in the traditional offering from SolarQuotes, yeah?
For what it’s worth… I’m in the very neutral and non committed position of having done *NOTHING* in regards to planning for rooftop solar PV or batteries for our Adelaide Hills home. My expectation is that our year round average daily energy demand will be less than 8kWh/day…. and hopefully more towards 5kWh/day. This makes the current position in regards to considering battery only and a retail offering that supports such a scheme somewhat more attractive than also investing in rooftop solar PV (which can be retrofitted at a later date).
I’ll also note that I look outside and see cloud
Understand why your inner cynic might think that, but Finn’s built a career out of his reputation for calling things as he sees it, and has explained his reasoning here very clearly.
In any case, we offer battery quotes in addition to solar, so it is not like people going for batteries instead of solar is a threat to our bottom line: Finn just thinks it might be a problem for your bottom line!
We have 13.2 kW of panels and a 10 kW Sungrow battery.
A couple of months ago, I sussed out how to charge the battery off the grid at the cheapest rate. So, at 1.00 am, the battery gets charged and in the morning, the panels do some work on the very cloudy Winter days. The battery kicks in around 6.00 pm and will run out before 8.00 pm.
My retailer is Diamond Energy, and their website is useless for me to check what’s happening, but based on the last bill, it appears to be working.
So complicated to work out. Almost need an independent advisor to help get the setup and energy plan right for the circumstance. Struggling to find the right info and what will work best for our household so thought I would ask here for advice.
Our setup:
13 kW Solar panels generating about 20 kWh on sunny day in winter (shading from tree) and about 70 kWh in summer when sun is higher.
Single phase in NSW (Ausgrid).
10 kW GoodWe Inverter (2 year old) – to be replaced with Sigen 10 kW Invertor and 24 kWh Sigen battery.
EV max 7 kWh charging doing 10k per year – can charge in day.
We use about 60 kWh in winter per day (about 45 kWh from grid and 15 kWh from solar).
So which plan? 3hrs free power 11am to 2pm sounds attractive for winter as can top up battery in winter and car. So if limited to only drawing 10 kWh from grid is the solar generated additional? Exactly how will it work? Will real-time dynamic load management just allow me to max out what I draw from grid without tripping?
I have 5 hours of 7c kWh, 7kWh commited in that period, and 63Amp supply.
My peak usage is 4kWh/$2, my night time usage is max 10kWh $2.20, and daytime is 10kWh/$0.75.
What battery capacity would allow me to breakeven (excluding battery cost and daily service cost) 5 days a week?
Hi Evorg,
It is a bit hard to give you an answer, as you seem to have kW & kWh confused. Also, what is your 7kWh committed to? How is your peak kWh usage bigger than your max kWh usage?
What we need to know is, what is your average daily usage in kWh and what is your average daily solar kWh production? What is your solar system’s peak kW rating?
It is not possible to breakeven every individual day, with various differences in usage and solar production.
The ideal is to get the largest battery you can afford, so you can join Amber to sell excess usage on the wholesale market.
That is what I will be doing next week when I get my new 12kW solar system with 48kWh battery system with a 15kW inverter.
I question that logic, given that wholesale returns are highly variable and batteries (especially at that size) cost a lot of money. And as the renewables grid matures I think rates of return will also fall.
Nick
I agree completely, if the Grid matures, and goes bad it may still be worthwhile, and if prices go down batteries will have worse returns for those who have them.
Problem is as you allude to, changes can’t be guaranteed.
Steve, thanks for reply.
I hope the following better explains why I use kW and kWh. It does get more complicated when I use Watts and kWh which is because my spreadsheet has 105,120 5 minute meter records which never reach kW entries.
I pay 7c per KWH during 5 hours of day time during which I use 7kWh heating storage Hot Water System for household use and around 5kWh of miscellaneous over the 5 hours. With 63kW service expect 15+kWh chargeduring this time. Battery would have 5 to 10kW inverter.
I have never needed more than 4kWh total during the 5hr evening peak and on average 2kWh over 5 hour peak total, costing $1 daily.
On hot or cold days night time usage is up to 10kWh over 14 hours and much less in spring and autumn. Max cost is around $2.5 daily.
I have no suitable solar roof. I have no EV.
Evorg talk with an experienced PV System designer/installer. They have several alternative system mounting design options that are not solely reliant on a traditional roof space being available.
It’s 2025 Evorg and far removed from 2010 thinking limitations, regarding system designs.
Lawrence Coomber
15kW inverter? Are you on three-phase? Most of the single-phase ones I’ve seen max out at ten…
It’s the predictable highly variable wholesale tariffs that make the money.
You can guarantee that there will be at least a variation of 20 cents in winter and closer to 40 cents in summer.
Depending on your circumstances this is a break even scenario.
Then there’s grid events or spikes that happen periodically that can make a lot of money with variations of $18 that’s buy at 0 sell at $18.
If you have a powerful enough battery (with spikes, size is not so important) you can make $200 in a single night with a normal household battery.
Of cause as more and more storage comes on line these spikes will diminish so get in now and pay off your battery as quick as you can.
My 6 year old battery investment has been returned some time ago.
No solar or battery $655 a quarter (not charging EV at home)
Solar + battery on ToU $190 a quarter (not charging EV at home)
Solar battery on VPP $173 a quarter (still not charging EV)
On Amber VPP -$20 a quarter and charging an EV on top.
In regional QLD we have fixed tariffs annually but change 1st July. We can move seasonally but tariff doesn’t change. Circumstances vary according to your location and suppliers.
My tariff is fixed this year for 11am to 4pm for 5 hours at $0.075 per kWh. Last year from 10am to 4pm my tariff was $0.14 per kWh. Agree changes change our economics.
I would not be as confident about your predictions of the future.
There’s also Localvolts. https://localvolts.com/ They allow to to sell your electricity exports to anybody that wants to buy them. Even yourself.
So if you have one house with a lot of solar and another house with no solar you can export solar from one to the other at $0 if you like. Effectively using the grid to transport your solar or battery energy from one property to another.
They also operate in QLD. https://localvolts.com/bulletins/faq-items/which-states-does-localvolts-operate-in/
The mind boggles.
Oh perhaps not regional areas. Not sure about that.
Not if you go with Amber Electric. They expose you to the wholesale tariffs which change every 5 minutes or 30 minutes depending on your location. They operate in QLD as well.
You s see changes in feedin tarrif as big as -10 cents to as much as +$19. These changes are forecast and you can use software to plan your energy flows and make a bit of money.
That’s what Amber are about. They don’t make money from selling as much electricity as they can at the highest tariff. They make their money by charging you a membership fee per month.
It’s up to you to surf the wholesale market and I gotta say it’s easier than trying to predict the stock market. You can always rely on the duck curve and the AeMO forecast to a certain degree.