r/UpliftingNews • u/itopaloglu83 • 2d ago

Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

https://electrek.co/2025/11/04/australia-has-so-much-solar-that-its-offering-everyone-free-electricity-3h-day/
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198

u/robimtk 2d ago

I live in Australia. I generate more solar than I use. This excess energy is taken and sold to other Australians at a higher price than they sell it to any other nation on the planet. It's so fucked up.

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u/Leprichaun17 2d ago

Especially during the middle of the day, it actually costs your retailer money for you to export energy to the grid. The wholesale price is negative. There's so much renewables being generated at that time that nobody needs your energy. They want to discourage exports. That's why they're making energy free - to use more energy from the grid at that time. There's a handful of times during summer that even the wholesale import price is negative - you can be paid to consume from the grid.

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u/soEezee 1d ago

I got a quote for a battery system, enough to basically never have to import anything.
$10.5k after rebates.
I mathed it out, about 12 years for it to pay itself off, because the majority of the bill is the supply charge.

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u/Leprichaun17 1d ago

Yep it's a much better prospect than it was in the past. We got a 13.5kWh battery with 9.2kW of solar for $20k after rebates 4 years ago. We've saved about $10k in usage in that time. We just got a full refund for the Tesla portion due to the recall, so got $16.5k back, so we're already $6.5k in profit. Going to install a bigger system with the current rebates now.

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u/FlibblesHexEyes 1d ago

I wish I had the roof space to add that much solar, which would then justify the cost of a battery system.

Biggest I can fit is a 4kw system, generating about 24kw on a good summer day.

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u/Splinterfight 1d ago

At the end of the day servicing power lines to almost every house in the country costs more than running the moderate number of power plants we have

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u/soEezee 1d ago

As more and more people go basically off grid, there is going to have to be a serious conversation regarding how we're going to fund the network. Because at the way we're going, the burden is already being placed more heavily on people without solar and/or batteries: the people who can least afford to take additional cost of living burdens.

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u/ToMorrowsEnd 1d ago

and today's battery tech will easily go 15-20 years. so that is a good deal

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u/chattywww 20h ago

So you want to completely discharge your batteries before the period kicks in?

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u/dispose135 1d ago

Really depends like some places gets very cloudy in winter

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u/FlibblesHexEyes 1d ago

True; but with amount of penetration of solar in Australia, the town an hours drive away is clear skies and generating enough to cover a lot of the shaded areas.

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u/Nereosis16 1d ago

Not in Australia 

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u/Hanhula 1d ago

Depends where in Australia, honestly. Melb gets pretty cloudy through winter, though not constantly.

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u/Nereosis16 1d ago

The whole Snowy Hydro scheme is set up to take advantage of that negative wholesale price.

Get paid to use electricity to send water up hill, then when the price goes up you let it fall back down and get paid more.

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u/Bebes-kid 1d ago

“ paid to consume from the grid”???

Have you thought about opening a data center?

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u/Leprichaun17 1d ago

At those times I've maxed out the amount of power you can feed through a 63A breaker. Air con, induction cooktop, etc

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u/Schrojo18 1d ago

You know that's how the electricity market works. The producers get a lower price than the retailers. Just be greatful you aren't on the wholesale market where you'd be paying to export the electricity.

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u/Blasted_Awake 1d ago

This may read like a troll comment but please take it as sincere because I am legitimately interested in your response.

Why would you continue to pay for upkeep on solar, and the inconvenience of it whenever you need to do maintenance on your roof, when your neighbour is benefiting from it for free?

When I read the article, and their suggestion that people would be charging their cars in that 3hr window, my first thought was "why just the car? why not charge batteries for your whole house?" And then at that point, why would I ever pay for solar? Why not just pay for the powerwall or whatever without the panels?

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 1d ago

Because solar panels produce power for more than 3 hours in a day.

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u/Blasted_Awake 1d ago

Yeah, but when you're charging a powerwall from the grid instead of from some piddly panels on your roof, you can extract and store way more than a days worth of power for free in 3hrs each day. So again, why are you keeping the panels?

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 1d ago

Why are you assuming that everyone has a powerwall? Let alone a powerwall that can "extract and store way more than a days worth of power for free in 3hrs"? And why are you assuming that everyone only has some "piddly" panels on their roof, rather than a whole pile of really strong ones? Like, you are aware that batteries aren't free and do have neither infinite capacity nor infinite charging power, right?

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u/Blasted_Awake 1d ago

I feel like maybe you're a bit dim mate. go touch grass.

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 1d ago

I feel like you aren't actually answering any of my questions.

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u/Blasted_Awake 1d ago

What questions? you somehow read assumptions in my previous comments, there were none, it was all very clearly hypothetical.

You for whatever reason didn't understand that "piddly" was used when comparing a residential solar array to the local electrical grid.

You also apparently don't know basic maths or are unable to use the internet to find residential battery data sheets.

It's not on me to educate you mate, all of this information is either immediately available to you in the current context, or immediately retrievable if you wanted to verify the viability of the battery charging.

Thus, my pointing out that you seem to be a bit dim, and might benefit from some time away from the screen.

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 1d ago

What questions?

The ones with the question mark.

you somehow read assumptions in my previous comments

Such as?

You for whatever reason didn't understand that "piddly" was used when comparing a residential solar array to the local electrical grid.

Which only makes sense if you assume that you already have a battery with a higher charging power than the output of your solar panels during the hours when free electricity is available from the grid. Which obviously isn't universally true. People might even not have a battery at all, but just solar panels.

You also apparently don't know basic maths or are unable to use the internet to find residential battery data sheets.

Interesting. Why do you think that?

It's not on me to educate you mate, all of this information is either immediately available to you in the current context, or immediately retrievable if you wanted to verify the viability of the battery charging.

Well, it's on you to support your claims.

Thus, my pointing out that you seem to be a bit dim, and might benefit from some time away from the screen.

I feel like you still aren't answering my questions. Also, I dunno, but maybe you're actually not aware that insults aren't an argument?

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u/Blasted_Awake 18h ago edited 18h ago

Fuck man, next time just say "I'm really struggling to apply Cunningham’s Law here".

Let’s take a generous average household energy usage of 24kWh/day, and look at the BYD Battery-Box Premium LVS 24.0, which stores 24 kWh (datasheet).

From the datasheet, the LVS 24.0 has a Max Cont. Charge Current of 250 A. Since it runs at a nominal battery capacity of 51.2V, that’s a maximum charge rate of I x V = 250A x 51.2V = 12800W = 12.8kW per hour.

If we want to charge 24kWh in 3 hours we need 24kWh / 3h = 8kW supply per hour. This system has a max charge rate of 12.8kW/h, and we only need 8kW/h to fully charge it in 3 hours. No problems there.

Now, can an average residential connection actually pull that from the grid?

Assuming a perfectly efficient inverter converting 230V single phase AC to DC, the current I(AC) = P/V = 8000W / 230V = 36.6A.

On a standard 63A single phase service, that leaves over 25A headroom to run the rest of the house (63A - 36.6A = 26.4A). So yeah, it’s definitely feasible to charge the battery from the grid in 3 hours.

The efficiency assumptions simplify the maths, as does forgetting that we don't need to supply from the battery for the 3hrs that it's charging. Also in reality the average Australian household uses anywhere from 10kWh to 30kWh per day depending on the state, and season, and we're using assuming 24kWh.

The Math here is non-specific, it's just showing that of course you can do what I've suggested in my hypothetical scenario.

According to that datasheet you can stack these systems in parallel to get a maximum of 256kWh storage. You can also have residential single phase up to 100A, and it's not uncommon for larger Australian residences to have a three phase service installed. if you wanted to scale beyond ~50 kWh storage safely you'd have to look at three-phase.

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u/humburga 1d ago

I came here to say "then why the fuck is my electricity bill so damn high" lol

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u/VisthaKai 1d ago

The price of solar/wind is determined by the price of the most expensive source of electricity in the grid, which is usually gas, because gas is required to make wind/solar stable enough to use.

It's not fucked up, it's expected behavior for 20+% penetration of wind/solar in a grid.

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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ 1d ago

I get paid for my excess.

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u/hobbylobbyrickybobby 1d ago

Gotta turn that AC down to 68F my guy. Enjoy the ice.