Aussie families are installing larger home battery set ups to maximise the cheaper home batteries rebate before sweeping changes take effect, slashing household savings by thousands of dollars.
Aussie father of three Rob Tooze from Warners Bay in Newcastle installed solar and a 50kW battery set up two months ago, slashing his electricity bill from more than $1,700 a quarter to zero.
MORE: Sad reason Hemsworth’s town is now Australia’s worst
Father of three Rob Tooze (right) and his family with their home battery addition
With five people in the household, Rob said his family are heavy energy users averaging 47kWh per day, including a pool pump running around the clock, but since November, they have not drawn a single unit from the grid.
“We got on board with that (home battery) and saw the rebate that you could get and it was pretty much a no-brainer,” he said.
“We tend to use a lot of power, we have lots of pets, we have snakes – I have lights in the ponds with fish, then we have rabbits and chickens.
“The little one likes to hatch chickens out, so every season we tend to do a batch of chickens so we have incubators running, the snakes just had babies as well, so we have nine baby snakes and they all need heating.”
MORE: Unit turned into pink ‘lover’s den’ exposed
Mr Tooze with the home battery system
Mr Tooze said they have just been through one bill cycle and came back with $20 in credit.
“That was before the summer, so I expect we would probably pump out a lot more solar over summer which will then hopefully get us a bit more credit,” he said.
“Then I expect winter is probably a different story and we will probably break-even or maybe we will have to use a little bit of power, but then it also becomes a game now of try not to use power.
“You get all this data back and you start to realise, gosh how do I reduce my power input and when to use it.”
MORE: Top five Arnott’s Biscuits family mansions in Sydney
Mr Tooze installed a 50kW battery set up
Mr Tooze said their total outlay was around $7,100.
“The app tells me its paid back $2,700 already so I think my payback period is going to be about two years,” he said.
“If you have a big family and a reasonably good solar system on your house it makes perfect sense.”
Changes to the scheme mean other families may not be so lucky. A household which installed a 30 kWh battery before January would have received a $10,602 rebate, but from May would receive just half that ($5,852).
VoltX Energy CEO David Sedighi said aussies who might have been sitting on the fence are now investing in larger home batteries, with data showing the average household is now opting for a 40 kWh system, that is four times larger than the 10 kWh batteries that dominated the market just 12 months ago.
MORE: Pro-netballer’s sad earnings claim
David Sedighi
Mr Sedighi said since January 01, the subsidy rate has been reduced by around 10 per cent or more than $1000 for a 30kWh system with a wider scale back to the program from May, driving increased demand.
According to Mr Sedighi, the financial impact of these changes on households will be significant and will equate to thousands of dollars in lost savings.
“Since the start of the year, the subsidy rate has been cut from 9.3 Small-scale Technology Certificates (STC) per usable kilowatt hour to 8.4 certificates,” he said.
“Each of those certificates is worth $38 so for an average 30kWh battery that adds up to $684 less.
“However from May, the changes will be tiered and see the rate of certificates drop again from 8.4 to 6.8, while only the first 14 kWh will qualify for the full 100 per cent of the rebate.”
English (US) · 