If your house is getting too hot should you invest in heat reflective paint or solar panels?
It can get bloody hot in summer thanks to the sun blazing down on our roofs and making them hot enough to not only fry an egg, but some bacon as well.
This post is about stopping the summer sun heating your roof, turning your home into a metaphorical oven. [Read more…]
As soon as a battery manufacturer says this, your battery magically gets a 20 year warranty in Australia. No matter what the warranty document says.
The other day a salesperson give me the rundown on a home battery system he had on display. While it wasn’t cheap, it certainly appeared to be a very impressive piece of technology. The salesperson clearly had a lot of confidence in it because, even though its written warranty was only for 10 years, he very generously doubled that to a 20 year warranty without batting an eyelid.
Ben Affleck would bat his eyelids for two hours a day in preparation for this role.
We weren’t related, so nepotism wasn’t the reason for his generosity. And it wasn’t because I saved his life in Nam…bour. (That sugar cane train could be really dangerous.) We weren’t old schoolmates, and as hard as it may be to believe, he wasn’t taken in by my charm and good looks.
No, the reason why he gave me a 20 year warranty was simply because he didn’t realize he was giving one. Or possibly, he did realize he was giving one and really hates his company.
He gave me a 20 year warranty when he told me the battery system had a design life of 20 years. According to Australian Consumer Law, if a salesperson makes a statement that a reasonable person would conclude to mean that a product can be expected to last for 20 years, then that counts as a 20 year warranty. It doesn’t matter that this warranty was given verbally or that it is twice as long as its written warranty, legally it still counts. [Read more…]
Is it OK to put East and West facing panels on a single input inverter?
What will give you the lowest bill, a standard or time of use tariff? What if you add solar? What about batteries?
Australians pay for grid electricity in two ways. The most common way is a standard tariff. But you can also choose a time-of-use tariff.
This is where you pay a fixed rate for each kilowatt-hour used, plus a hefty supply charge. Australians have been paying for electricity this way since the the electricity meter, invented in 1888, was developed into the ‘spinning dial’ type in 1914. So Australians have been using standard tariffs for over a century. [Read more…]
Government backed CEFC has joined forces with ET Solar Panels to power large Aussie businesses.
What do ET Solar Australia and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) have up their sleeves to promote ET solar panels for large commercial businesses in our country?
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. And more than one model for financing solar energy. This was amply demonstrated last week with the release of the CEFC’s plan to stump up $20 million with the solar energy provider ET Solar in a new innovative partnership that has proved radically successful in overseas countries. [Read more…]
While it’s very early days for the national home battery rebate, here’s how the postcode leaderboard looks based on July 2025 installation figures. But there’s (a lot) of missing data, so expect changes in the rankings. [Read more…]
It’s October and Australia’s wholesale electricity price crisis has entered its sixth month. Massive retail electricity price hikes in the eastern states are becoming more likely (from July 2023). These could exceed 10 cents per kilowatt-hour.
This post is a quick update on the current situation, followed by a short whinge. [Read more…]
In South Australia we pay a lot for electricity.
If you feel the need to respond to that statement by saying, “Well, whoop-de-doo! We pay a lot for electricity in Newcastle,” I will understand. All Australians pay too much for household electricity. This is true whether you look at historical prices or at countries you’d expect us to be similar to such as the United States or Canada. [Read more…]
Are solar roofs making solar power stations uneconomic?
Utility scale solar, or solar farms, are fields of PV panels which generate electricity that is fed directly into the grid. Currently we don’t have much of this in Australia. Over 99% of our solar capacity is point of use which is mostly on rooftops and the juice it does produce is first used to power the household or business it is on top of and then after that the excess is generally fed into the grid. [Read more…]
This week’s column will take you into the realms of fantasy (if you’re a talk radio shock jock or anti-renewable pollie). Yes folks we’re treading into the dangerous territory of the concept of solar energy as baseload electricity.
For years one of the constant carping criticisms aimed at renewable energy in this country has been that it won’t provide baseload power resource in the same way as good ole fossil fuel-derived power. The argument goes that when the sun stops shining, or the wind stops blowing, renewable energy cannot deliver.
While the criticism may well have been a smokescreen thrown up to keep high polluting coal plants in operation, the point is valid: how can you rely on a source of energy if the power it creates cannot be stored?
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