Cutting power costs with solar

SOLAR PANELS TO THE RESCUE... Climate change is having a dramatic impact on power supply lines. Photo: Supplied

With the steadily rising cost of electricity, many Victorian households have already gone over to solar and are now considering adding a battery to supplement their solar PV system.

Adding a battery will enhance your solar bill savings by being able to store solar-generated electricity for use later in the day. Households may also be able to charge the battery with electricity purchased from the grid at off-peak rates for further savings on bills, although charging from solar would remain the priority. With enough batteries and solar panels, imports from the grid can become rare events.

However, the battery’s high initial cost means that these bill savings might be cancelled out for many households. An exception is where your battery cost is subsidised which is what the Victorian Government is currently doing.

Drawing from batteries in the early evening reduces your demand on the grid at peak times, which could help your electricity network provider delay expensive capacity upgrades (which consumers pay for indirectly).

Also, powerline voltage in some streets rises when everyone is exporting from their solar systems at the same time. If the voltage gets too high, solar systems cannot export and solar generation is wasted.

If you want to help the fight against climate change right now, then a battery doesn’t immediately reduce fossil fuel generated electricity in the grid, it simply stores energy. To make a difference it would entail using more panels to collect more of that solar energy.

When more households install solar panels and batteries, there is greater potential to increase our use of renewable electricity in our electricity grid. In this way, at a societal level, increasing use of household batteries can actually assist in delivering more renewable energy and benefit our environment.

To find out more about the battery rebate offered by the State Government, go to their website at https://www.solar.vic.gov.au/solar-battery-rebate.