Michael Bloch
Senior Renewable Energy Correspondent
Michael Bloch wrote and published news items on solar power and related topics from 2008 until 2026.
Michael’s first brush with solar energy was in the late 1970s. When visiting a friend’s house, he noticed some odd-looking equipment on the roof – a solar hot water system. His friend’s father explained how the system worked and Michael remembers thinking it was magic.
Not so magic was his experience with coal power. After visiting a mine and adjacent coal power station in the mid-80’s, Michael concluded that if hell was a cold place, that’s what it would look like.
Decades – and a misspent youth – passed, but Michael didn’t lose interest in solar power. Also never losing his interest in environmental issues and with a career built around computers and the web since the late 1990s, Michael began writing about green living in 2006.
In 2008, he acquired a bush property out in the middle of nowhere in South Australia’s mid-north, with the goal of rehabilitating and protecting it. Having experienced the displeasure of totally relying on a noisy, smelly petrol generator and a bank of lead-acid car batteries in the past at a previous property, he decided to go solar.
The first system he cobbled together consisted of a 100-watt solar panel, a charge controller and a 100 amp-hour AGM deep cycle battery. He made his own solar panel stand with bits of aluminium and a battery box from a repurposed dog kennel. The dog wasn’t happy and the battery box was rather rough, but it all did the job.
Even with such a small system, this allowed him to stay at the property and continue working online for weeks at a time, with minimal petrol generator use (mainly in the winter).
That first panel cost $1,000 back in 2008. Today, a solar panel of the same capacity can cost under $100. Michael subsequently expanded the system to a whopping 240 watts and set it up on a trailer with a new battery, regulator and a more-fit-for-purpose battery box.
The first system also turned out to be the entry point for working in the solar industry, originally for another company as a writer. He published solar power news from then on and joined the SolarQuotes team in 2017.
Life has a habit of throwing curve-balls and Michael returned to living in Adelaide full-time, where he had a 10kW grid-connected solar power system. Gone is his ICE ute, replaced with a BYD Atto 3 EV, which was mainly charged with surplus solar electricity generated on his home’s rooftop.
Michael passed away in February 2026 after a long illness.
A lifelong advocate for solar and environmental responsibility, Michael helped make renewable energy understandable, practical and accessible for everyday Australians.