Emma Hewitt is a single parent south of Perth who works for her local council. When the Australian government announced a battery subsidy, she took an interest-free loan to cover the rest of the cost of a 16kWh storage unit. It has let her lean less on the grid and cut hundreds of dollars from her quarterly power bill.
“I don’t have huge amounts of savings but I can afford to pay things off out of my wages,” she said. She also worries about “the planet that my daughter will inherit.”
Hewitt is one of many. The Guardian reported that nearly 60% of household battery capacity installed this financial year across almost 200 countries, China excluded, will be in Australia. About 415,000 units have been connected since July, roughly one for every 25 homes.
Where the savings show up
The effect is visible in the evening. Gas-fired plants used to switch on for the peak, and gas is the costliest power on the Australian grid. Batteries now cover much of that hour. Total gas generation was 24% lower over three months this summer than a year earlier.
Tennant Reed of the Australian Industry Group said it has “completely changed how electricity prices are formed.” In his words, “more and more, every day, it is batteries that are surging into the market at 6pm.”
On the day the Liddell power station’s chimneys came down, energy minister Chris Bowen was announcing a fall of up to 10% in the benchmark electricity price in parts of the country. He argues the benefit reaches households without batteries too: “When those people aren’t calling on gas at night or are using less gas that’s reducing prices for absolutely everyone.”
Who gets left out
The scheme has not reached everyone. Renters are in effect excluded, Bowen acknowledged. Thomas Longden, a senior research fellow at Western Sydney University, wants installations spread beyond the big cities. “We need to ensure there are batteries across the whole country and not just in pockets in the big cities,” he said.
The subsidy is paid for by taxpayers. Labor committed A$2.3bn over four years from last July to cut upfront costs by 30%. Take-up beat forecasts, with more than 1,000 batteries going in each day, and in December the government lifted total funding to A$7.2bn and doubled its goal to 2m batteries.
A separate “solar sharer” plan would make retailers offer three hours of free electricity a day to all customers, renters included. People welcomed it, though some fear savings could be eroded if companies raise other charges.
AGL has commissioned a 500 megawatt, two-hour battery at the Liddell site, due to begin full commercial operation next month.
