When Erin Hilton bought a house near Coffs Harbour late last year, spending upwards of $20,000 extra installing solar panels with an accompanying solar battery was a “no brainer”.
Ms Hilton has two children, and her family consumes about 40 kilowatt hours (KWhs) of electricity each day between the air-conditioning, a pool and an electric vehicle they bought last year.
And with a 12.8 KWh battery, she tells The New Daily they’re able to get about half of that power from their roof instead of an increasingly pricey grid.
“For us, the ability to have a battery installed at our property has meant that as interest rates and inflation keep rising, we’ve protected ourselves from one variable – rising electricity prices,” Ms Hilton said.
Ms Hilton is one of a growing number of Australians that have taken the plunge on a battery for their homes, with a record 47,000 systems installed in 2022, according to new SunWiz figures.
That’s up 55 per cent over the past 12 months alone, said Stefan Jarnason, chief executive at Solar Analytics, who says 70 per cent of his customers with solar are considering a battery.
“There’s been a big jump in people looking at installing batteries,” he said. “The main thing people need to look at is whether it makes financial sense for them.”
Solar battery factors
Mr Jarnason said households considering whether to buy a solar battery should keep in mind that the financial return can be long term.
It can take between 10 and 15 years for a system to pay for itself.
It means anyone looking to take the plunge needs to carefully consider how their feed-in tariffs, electricity prices and energy usage may change over the coming years.
That includes questions like whether you plan to purchase an electric vehicle in the future, and if you’re able to buy a larger solar system.
And then there’s the energy plan itself, which can change the financial equations by hundreds of dollars a year depending on what your retailer will pay you for exported power (feed-in tariffs) and charge you for imports.
Households with large solar systems will want plans that pay larger feed-in tariffs, because they’ll have more surplus power to sell back to the grid, Mr Jarnason said.
People with smaller systems will want a plan with a lower feed-in tariff but also lower consumption costs, he said.
“Most people sell about half their electricity back to the grid.”
Batteries become particularly valuable for households that consume a lot of their electricity during the evenings when the sun isn’t out, as it will reduce your reliance on increasingly expensive power from the grid.
But even then, Mr Jarnason said, just 7.5 per cent of his users would make a return over 10 years if they invested in a solar battery today.
However that figure rises to 38 per cent over 15 years, he said.
“We do expect the costs to come down,” Mr Jarnason said. “We also expect the difference between electricity charges in the evenings and low, off-peak electricity charges … to increase.”
Ms Hilton said there are other benefits to having a battery system that aren’t necessarily captured in a financial cost-benefit analysis.
That includes the ability to keep the lights on when the power goes out.
“We’ve had four blackouts in the past three months,” Ms Hilton said.
“I was able to keep working from home.”
