By Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson
AUSTRALIA could slash $4 billion a year off power bills by the end of the decade if households embrace solar batteries in larger numbers.
The Climate Council issued the prediction this month, finding the savings were possible if half of all homes with solar panels added batteries by 2030.
But progress could also get a bigger boost from allowing more electric vehicles to charge up the national grid, if solar battery prices continued to fall, and if all new households were designed for rooftop solar and battery systems, it found.
The report comes amid heightened demand for home batteries after the announcement of a $2.3 billion Federal Government scheme to subsidise their purchase by 30 per cent from July.
The Climate Council report, called Battery Boom, found about 300,000 (eight per cent) of the four million Australian households with solar panels used batteries to store energy.
If that figure was lifted to reach two million homes by 2030 – half of those with rooftop solar panels currently installed – household energy bill savings could hit $4 billion a year.
Electricity bill savings could rise from $1500 with solar panels to $2300 a year after installing a battery, Climate Council spokesman Greg Bourne said, although further support would be needed to help some families deal with the up-front cost.
“Batteries haven’t penetrated far enough into those four million (solar) households, but it makes a huge difference when you start picking up the sunshine from midday and time-shifting it to when high cost of electricity comes in,” he told AAP.
“It will start as word-of-mouth in the neighbourhood and talk of ‘my bill’s half of what it was’ or ‘my bills are a quarter of what they were because we put a battery in’ and that’s part of the education process.”
A typical household battery is expected to cover its cost within 8.3 years without the upcoming subsidy.
