Labor has announced a generous rebate on the home solar battery systems.
According the some other forums, it is same as for solar PV installation through STCs. The rumour is that it is going to be about 9.3 STC/kWh for batteries from 5-50 kWh.
Federal Labor has confirmed it will spend $2.3bn to slash the cost of household batteries by 30%, as part of a dual cost-of-living and climate action pitch to voters.
Check out VoltX NeoVolt at about $7600 installed AC coupled if you already have solar for 10.1kwh (9.6 useable). Second 10.1 battery after that even cheaper. This is before any rebates.
Not associated but have put down a deposit.
7-8 years to break even by which time the batteries have started to degrade is a tough justification though.
Seems you’ll get about $3.5k off the above price. I don’t think that’ll take 8 years to pay back.
@WhyAmICommenting: @WhyAmICommenting - that sounds really good and cheap. I've got solar and a 10kw non-hybrid inverter so need an AC coupled battery.
Who did you put down a deposit with and do you have a link? Thanks.
@proudwanderer: These guys. Their website seems a bit spammy but they are legit based in NSW and do interstate too for similar prices.
https://voltxenergy.com.au/pages/neovolt-home-battery-system…
@WhyAmICommenting: I got in touch with them. Unfortunately they don’t install in Victoria. Can only “ship” here and then you’d have to find your own installer to “follow their manual” to install it they said.
I’m not going to do that coz there’ll be potential liability problems and warranty problems if something goes wrong.
That said they are expanding to WA and SA. I don’t understand why not VIC. Would’ve thought we are a huge market.
@proudwanderer: Yeah that’s weird. There must be something about the market there - too many other players? Who knows…
Unfortunately with most government schemes the prices get jacked up to absorb the rebate. It will just enrich the suppliers and installers.
What a huge waste of taxpayers' money!
I am interested in your thoughts on the Australia-wide ('federal') 30% subsidy on batteries to store domestic solar-generated power just announced by A-a-a-lbo. In my humble opinion the subsidy should be 50%, and I would not be the least bit surprised if 'P-Diddy' counters with exactly that 'election promise'.
Approximately a third of Aussie households have solar panels on their roof, but less than 3% have a battery; because getting one does not make economical sense at the moment/without a sizable subsidy (~10 years to actually 'pay itself off'). But all of us with panels are extremely bitter about the pittance/fiasco that 'feed in' payments have become, and dearly want to get a battery.
Anyways, let me know your thoughts below please. Would you 'jump' on a battery if A-a-a-lbo gave you 30% of the cash? What about if P-Diddy gave you 50% of the cash? …
Even at a 30% discount batteries won't make financial sense for most people. There's nothing wrong with using the grid, particularly at off peak rates.
I'm not "extremely bitter" about feed in tariffs, which have been trivial and declining from that trivial amount for years. Anyone who purchased a system in the last decade as some kind of profit-making opportunity was kidding themselves.
Dutton won't match the battery subsidiaries because he despises renewable energy and all it stands for.
Also, he needs the cash to keep subsidising large power companies to keep running decrepit coal-burning power stations. It's one of the few substantive issues that separates the major parties.
Watch battery prices jump 30% when this comes in.
Woah! Lucky, I bought watch batteries for my watch last week, so I’m glad I dodged that price rise. $16 for two watch batteries was already highway robbery.
Will this affect the price of eneloops?
'Watch battery prices jump 30% when this comes in.'
That will not happen; just like solar panels did not 'jump 50%' when various governments began subsidising them. In fact they continued to get cheaper.
There's a lot of margin in solar system sales and installation. Prices could be a lot cheaper. In Victoria the price of getting a split system shot up if you were getting it as part of the government rebate scheme.
Government rebates are generally just a profit subsidy to the industry. The consumer benifits very little.
@JIMB0: Erm, nah. The prices never 'shot up', and you could (and still can) apply for the rebate on a split system retrospectively, so there is no '… if you were getting it as part of the government rebate scheme'.
@GnarlyKnuckles: The previous scheme ran by the Victorian state government had a list of participating business's, the rebate was processed by the business and passed on as a disconnect. They all jacked up the price if claiming the rebate, leaving you with only a fraction of the savings.
Approx 30% of Australians rent as well, pretty sure it aint gonna help most of them.
Yes, that's unfortunate. The legal issues around ownership vs tenancy make it a really tricky situation.
The Queensland government is currently in the process of reviving a scheme to incentivize installation of solar on rental properties, but it wasn't super popular last time. I don't know the exact details of how it worked, but it involved the tenant agreeing to a rent increase in return, which is rarely something met with a lot of enthusiasm.
Yeah I can't see too many landlords getting excited to spend that kind of money just to make the tenants power bill go down. :)
Is there a way to get of the grid completely?
Yes it's possible, but it costs quite a bit extra.
You need to have enough battery storage to cover all contingencies, including (for example) a couple days of heavy cloud cover that reduces your solar intake to a trickle. Plus you need to have enough generating capacity to run your entire house while still making enough excess to charge your large batteries to full.
It's not too hard to make yourself self-sufficient 95% of the year, but that last 5% is really quite difficult to justify.
For the last 5%, you can either buy a petrol generator, keep it nearby and hope you never need it, or suck it up and pay the ~$400 a year to maintain a grid connection. Or you can just survive without electricity for a day or two per year, I guess.
I see thanks
Sounds economically inefficient.
Until you find out how much the transmission of power interstate and peak prices cost for a few days a year…
If this was correct, subsidies would not be needed.
Gotta buy votes somehow!
They're phasing out nickel in batteries, besides most of it goes into the production of stainless steel and other metals. I hope they showed all the environmental destruction caused by oil production.
Few home batteries, and increasingly few EV batteries, use nickel these days. Moreover, the nickel used in the batteries is 99% recoverable via recycling at end of life.
People that bought EVs thinking they are good for the environment better think again.
All manufacturing has an environmental cost. The overwhelming evidence is that EVs are significantly better for the environment than their ICE equivalents.
Chinese companies are opening dozens of new coal power generators in Indonesia to produce the nickel for the batteries
There has been a significant drop in construction of new coal-fired power stations around the world in the past couple of years. Solar and wind are the fastest growing sources of electricity generation worldwide.
What a con.
The con is thinking that the old ways aren't much, much worse. We just don't talk about them much, because it's "normal."
The level of environmental damage caused by extracting, refining and transporting fossil fuels is absolutely immense. 40% of global shipping is just moving fossil fuels around. The scale is absolutely vast, and yet you're focusing on a single area and saying any effort to improve the situation is pointless.
Getting back closer to the topic, the justification for home batteries is very simple:
Australia has extremely high penetration of rooftop solar - the biggest in the world, and their combined output is equivalent to the combined output of every coal power station in the country.
This vast, distributed powerhouse creates a massive energy surplus during the day, but an enormous amount ends up being wasted - while the sun goes down, it rapidly falls away and our fossil fuel generators have to run hard for a couple of hours to meet the evening peak demand. Clearly, the missing piece of the puzzle is storage - the ability to capture all that excess energy from the sun, and release it when it's needed.
The proposed subsidy would result in a massive, distributed storage system that will kick in every evening to meet peak evening demand, reducing the need for expensive gas power stations, lowering emissions and taking the sting out of peak wholesale pricing, which will result in lower prices for everyone.
And because it's a 30% subsidy, it leverages the capital of homeowners who can afford the investment to get a much larger storage capacity. A direct purchase/grant program would be far less cost-effective as the government would have to pay the full price for each installation.
As an added bonus, local storage is highly efficient - it doesn't require upgrades to grid infrastructure (which we all have to pay for) and in fact reduces pressure on the grid from the giant rooftop solar behemoth.
Ok, so:
Option 1. The coal is extracted in australian mines often located nearby coal generation plants and used to produce cheap electricity for australian households and businesses. The coal is extracted and used in Australia under strict environmental laws and guidelines.
Option 2. The coal is extracted in australian mines, transported to a port, loaded on a ship, shipped to China or Indonesia, loaded on trains or trucks again and then burnt in power plants with no regard to environment or people, to produce cheap electricity to manufacture EVs, solar panels, solar batteries etc to sell to the west to save the planet.
In all this australians pay a lot more for electricity and China makes a lot of money producing EVs, solar panels, solar batteries etc.
Option 1. The coal is extracted in australian mines often located nearby coal generation plants and used to produce cheap electricity for australian households and businesses.
Firstly, coal power isn't that cheap. Renewables undercut them on cost on a daily basis, which is why most of them are slowly going broke. It's common knowledge that very few coal fired power stations are profitable these days.
Plus, about 60% of our coal-fired generator fleet is over 40 years old. They have a design life of 50 years, so will all be retired, or will be beyond reasonable repair, within the next 10 years or so. Literally nobody in Australia is going to be investing in new coal power plants - even if you ignore the environmental aspect, it makes zero economic sense.
Option 2. The coal is extracted in Australian mines, transported to a port, loaded on a ship, shipped to China or Indonesia, loaded on trains or trucks again and then burnt in power plants with no regard to environment or people
Let's be really clear here - there is no such thing as clean coal. Coal plants in Australia, and coal plants in China or elsewhere have very similar emissions profiles. And if we get a choice between the two, then pollution far away is better than nearby.
to produce cheap electricity to manufacture EVs, solar panels, solar batteries etc to sell to the west to save the planet
Unironically yes. But a few points on this:
An awful lot of the solar and batteries they make are not going far - they're being installed in China to feed those factories. China is adding solar, wind and storage at a faster rate than any other nation, because they understand the benefits just as well as anyone else.
Also, China is also rapidly replacing their ICE vehicle fleet with EVs at an astonishing rate for the same reasons.
To be clear, they're not doing any of this to save the environment. They do have some environmental controls these days to reduce smog, but mostly it's just economics - electrification is more efficient and cheaper than fossil fuels.
In all this australians pay a lot more for electricity
No, they don't. We pay a lot for electricity because gas is expensive, and the most expensive generator is the one that sets the price.
Renewables are the cheapest source of electricity - that's absolutely beyond dispute. The requirement for storage to deal with intermittency makes the equation more complicated, but GenCost makes it very clear that firmed renewables are still considerably cheaper than any of the alternatives.
China makes a lot of money producing EVs, solar panels, solar batteries etc.
If we could make them competitively ourselves instead of buying from China, that would be great. The Albanese government has attempted to kickstart this process, but it's virtually impossible to match the might of China's industrial machine. Nations much larger and more industrialized than ours are struggling to compete.
So if we can't beat them, then we might as well benefit from their spectacularly low prices.
@klaw81: Sure, once you have spent billions of taxpayers money to subsidise the installation of new solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, power lines (thousands of km of them), then the electricity produced, without counting the huge uprfont investment, is cheaper. Until you have to replace the panels, batteries and wind turbines after 10-15 years.
Coal generation has always been the cheapest source if electricity. And coal generation plants are the cheapest to build too.
That's why China and India are building them as fast as they can.
Right now Australia is throwing billions of austrslian taxpayers' money at renewables in the name of the climate change mith. Climate has always changed regardless of human intervention. Unless we think that the ice ace was caused by the dynosaurs farting too much. What can be curbed is indiscriminate and useless human waste of resources or energy chasing baseless ideologies.
@Mad Max: Let's address the inaccuracies here:
Sure, once you have spent billions of taxpayers money to subsidise the installation of new solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, power lines (thousands of km of them), then the electricity produced, without counting the huge uprfont investment, is cheaper.
Nope, totally wrong. The cost including all except the extra power lines is included in the overall cost.
Major powerline infrastructure upgrades are required regardless, although the infrastructure would be built in different places depending on generator mix.
Until you have to replace the panels, batteries and wind turbines after 10-15 years.
Wrong again on multiple counts.
Solar panels are good for 30+ years. Re-fitting solar farms with replacement panels after 30 years is trivially easy and very cheap.
Wind turbines are good for 20-25 years. Re-powering a wind farm (re-using the towers with new turbines) can extend them to about 50 years before full replacement is required.
Batteries are good for about 20 years depending on chemistry. And pumped hydro, which is a major part of the storage puzzle, is good for 50 years.
For comparison, nuclear has an expected life of 40 years, and would then require major refurbishment and re-fit to get another 20 years of life. Coal is about 45-50 years, assuming you perform major refits every 10 years or so.
Coal generation has always been the cheapest source if electricity. And coal generation plants
are the cheapest to build too.
Got a reputable source to back up that claim? Because it's absolutely false in an Australian context.
That's why China and India are building them as fast as they can.
Again, this is utterly false.
India has a renewable target of 50% by 2030 and is working towards that. The rate of installing renewables there is about double that of fossil fuel generation.
China is even further along that same pathway and has all but ceased new coal generation projects.
Right now Australia is throwing billions of austrslian taxpayers' money at renewables in the name of the climate change mith.
Oh, so you're a climate change denier as well?
I guess I have wasted my time discussing this with you, assuming you were a rational person. Have the last word if you must, but I won't be responding to any more of your falsehoods.
@klaw81: Ah ok. You must be right then regurgitating the government narrative. That's why we are enjoying so cheap electricity now.
The proof is in the pudding.
Yeah, waste of time discussing with the climate change cult. I just wish the cult adepts were the only ones paying the price for their own stupidity.
You've obviously never been to China. All the motorbikes and city buses are electric. Around half the cars are also EV and climbing. If you catch a high speed train through the countryside you'll see massive solar and wind farms. They're converting district heating from coal to heat pumps. Renewable energy is definitely a priority.
Great news for electricians and suppliers. Bet the prices will suddenly jump up overnight, with a lot more Ford Ranger Raptors and jetskis out there.
Should've been done much earlier . Labour is still not talking about reserving 15% Australian gas which is being given for free to companies paying 0 taxes
Not a good investment, Nuclear which costs a measly $80,000 per person to get up and running is a much better investment for Australia.
And we get to use our Nice clean natural gas resources for 15 years whilst its being built. Gas just comes from the air, its not like oil thats drilled from the ground and is bad.
Erm, I hope this is pure sarcasm. It is, right?
On Facebook the bots cannot tell that a comment like this is sarcasm and it gets upvoted.
Now that Labor have won, this obviously should be going ahead.
From my research:
1. Batteries installed anytime from the announcement can retrospectively make the rebate claim, so long as they are not "switched on" until 1st July.
2. Rebates are likely in line with the solar STCs which would mean somewhere between $320-370 per kWh (not a percentage - no idea where that came from but maybe on the basis of common battery prices). This is yet to be finalised and there might be some admin overhead for this.
Based on the above, I'm about to press the green button on Neovolt 20kWh DC-coupled to my existing 6.6kW solar panels.
The example used on the news was a potential 30% discount, so a $11,000 battery system would end up costing you around $8,000 and should yield $1,100 per year in electricity savings. Not sure how attractive that is to most people.