{"id":93284,"date":"2025-07-19T07:03:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T21:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=93284"},"modified":"2025-07-23T09:42:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T00:12:02","slug":"phase-shift-make-solar-panels-great-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/phase-shift-make-solar-panels-great-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Phase Shift: Make Solar Panels Great Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-93286\" src=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Solar-panels-still-worth-it.png\" alt=\"A man with a red hat that reads 'make solar panels great again'.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"626\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Solar-panels-still-worth-it.png 1200w, https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Solar-panels-still-worth-it-300x157.png 300w, https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Solar-panels-still-worth-it-1024x534.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Solar-panels-still-worth-it-768x401.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/>There&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Or the slightly more restrained version:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve already got a modest solar system, but if it ever falls short, I&#8217;ll just top up the battery during the free window &#8211; no need for more solar panels&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sounds clever.<\/p>\n<p>In practice? Not really.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;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&#8217;re gaming the system.<\/p>\n<p>But the system&#8217;s gaming you.<\/p>\n<h2>Not As Easy As It Sounds<\/h2>\n<p>To make this work, you need:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A big battery in terms of capacity (kWh) to get through the other 21 hours.<\/li>\n<li>A powerful battery inverter (kW) to charge fast enough in the 3-hour window.<\/li>\n<li>Enough grid connection headroom to do it all without tripping your main breaker.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Let me explain that last one. Say you&#8217;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&#8217;ve got 20A left over to run everything else in the house. That&#8217;s not much. Add a kettle, a clothes dryer, and you&#8217;re in trip city.<sup class='endnote'><a href='https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/phase-shift-make-solar-panels-great-again\/#en-93284-1' id='enref-93284-1' onclick='return hhEndnotes_show(93284)'>1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Even if you&#8217;re on a beefy 100A supply, charging your EV at 7kW takes 32A. Add that to the 43A and you&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>But worse than the tech challenges is you&#8217;ve surrendered your autonomy. You&#8217;re trusting your retailer to keep the window open.<\/p>\n<p>Forever.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re betting they won&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_93287\" style=\"width: 666px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-93287\" class=\"wp-image-93287 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Electricity-price-components.png\" alt=\"A pie chart showing residential price components\" width=\"656\" height=\"817\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Electricity-price-components.png 656w, https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Electricity-price-components-241x300.png 241w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 656px) 100vw, 656px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-93287\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A breakdown of residential electricity price components. If you rely on your retailer, sooner or later they&#8217;ll make sure you pay to cover the costs.<\/p><\/div>\n<h2>Solar Is A Ticket To Independence<\/h2>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>This free window idea flips that on its head. Now, you rely on them &#8211; on the retailer &#8211; the very entity solar was supposed to liberate you from.<\/p>\n<p>And let&#8217;s be real. No retailer is giving you free power out of kindness. If they&#8217;re losing money 3 hours a day, they&#8217;ll make it back somewhere. Maybe it&#8217;s the shoulder rate. Maybe it&#8217;s the daily supply charge. Maybe it&#8217;s the tiny (or non-existent) FiT.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_93288\" style=\"width: 766px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-93288\" class=\"wp-image-93288 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/negative-wholesale-prices.png\" alt=\"A graph showing wholesale energy prices\" width=\"756\" height=\"227\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/negative-wholesale-prices.png 756w, https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/negative-wholesale-prices-300x90.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-93288\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">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 &#8211; amen).<\/p><\/div>\n<h2>There&#8217;s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch<\/h2>\n<p>And when negative wholesale prices are rare (like most of winter in SA), your retailer&#8217;s not getting paid to take that electricity either. They&#8217;re paying transmission, distribution, environmental and metering costs. Those don&#8217;t go negative. So guess who ends up subsidising your &#8220;free&#8221; power?<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. You do. Just somewhere else on the bill.<\/p>\n<p>I love a good deal as much as anyone. And if you&#8217;ve got a battery already, sure &#8211; top it up for free when you can. But ditching panels altogether? Or not expanding your solar because you&#8217;re banking on three free hours a day? That&#8217;s shortsighted.<\/p>\n<p>Aussies used to install panels to take back control. To future-proof their bills. Let&#8217;s not forget that. Let&#8217;s not go backwards.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s make solar panels great again.<\/p>\n<p><em>Phase Shift is a weekly opinion column by SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock. Subscribe to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/weekly-newsletter.html\">SolarQuotes&#8217; free newsletter<\/a> to get it emailed to your inbox each week along with our other home electrification coverage.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Phase Shift: Make Solar Panels Great Again<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The idea that you can skip solar panels and just get a battery to charge from the grid is fraught with danger. Here&#039;s why.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/phase-shift-make-solar-panels-great-again\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Phase Shift: Make Solar Panels Great Again\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The idea that you can skip solar panels and just get a battery to charge from the grid is fraught with danger. 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