Australia's solar power surge is world-leading, but energy storage is lagging. Are cheaper household batteries inevitable?
Solar power is a remarkable success in Australian households, but huge progress brings its own set of challenges for the existing energy grid. For example, in WA there is no connected grid to offload excess power to, or to import electricity from when the sun isn't shining bright.
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00:00Alan Benn is an early adopter of all things electric.
00:06He bought his EV a decade ago and installed rooftop solar 20 years ago when the costs
00:13were high, but so were the government rebates.
00:17Someone has to buy these sort of things early on to develop the industry, to start getting
00:23the price down.
00:24Since then, solar power has gone gangbusters.
00:27About one in three Australian households are turning sunshine into energy.
00:31Many of those people did it to save money, some because they wanted to stick it up an
00:36energy company and some because they generally wanted to make a contribution to climate change
00:41or some combination of all three.
00:43The output from rooftop solar is now so significant, the system can struggle to cope.
00:49This was a new problem that maybe we should have seen coming, but because Australia was
00:54so far and is so far ahead of the rest of the world, we're the first ones to see this
00:58problem emerging seriously.
01:00It's particularly challenging in Western Australia, the world's biggest isolated electricity
01:05grid, because unlike the interconnected East Coast, WA has to manage supply issues on its
01:11own.
01:12We don't have the ability to borrow from our neighbours or indeed to give them the benefit
01:16of our excess supply at times when we have it.
01:18WA's main electricity grid powers about 1.2 million homes and businesses.
01:25Household solar is already its single biggest source of generation, supplying up to 76 per
01:31cent of demand at times.
01:33And it really very much is an opportunity.
01:35Storage of electricity is really the silver bullet.
01:38Governments are building large-scale batteries like this one in Kwinana, south of Perth,
01:43which stores enough energy to power 160,000 homes for up to two hours.
01:49But small batteries have a big role to play too, as demonstrated by the outer Perth suburbs
01:55of Harrisdale and Piara Waters.
01:57Here locals were given incentives like subsidised batteries and power credits to take part in
02:03a recently completed trial.
02:05The three-year trial here in Perth's southern suburbs showed that harnessing and coordinating
02:11consumer energy resources like rooftop solar and home batteries could save the state $920
02:18million over the next decade.
02:21In our studies that we do for the national electricity market, effective coordination
02:26again of these consumer energy resources could save literally billions of dollars of investment
02:30in large-scale infrastructure in our system.
02:33Some people are taking matters into their own hands.
02:36The latest addition being these two 5 kilowatt-hour batteries.
02:40Alan Benn recently bought a battery system for his inner-city Perth home at a cost of
02:44$12,500.
02:46The only con is really the cost.
02:48It's a huge cost because there is no subsidy at all.
02:51You're paying the full price for that battery.
02:53Stubbornly high prices mean the uptake of home batteries has been slow, particularly
02:58in WA.
03:00If everyone had batteries, it could potentially eliminate that very high peak in early evening
03:05electricity prices, and that would benefit everyone.
03:09Energy and Climate Action Minister Rhys Whitby, welcome to Stateline WA.
03:12Great to be here.
03:13Other governments subsidise the cost of household batteries.
03:17Why don't you?
03:18Well, we'll look at it, but it's certainly an important component of the mix.
03:23As you know, we've had great take-up of solar rooftop in Western Australia, where it ranks
03:29one of the leading jurisdictions on the planet.
03:32Every year we have about 25,000 units, which creates enough energy to replace two gas-fired
03:40power stations, about 200 megawatts, going onto the top of roofs across Western Australia.
03:49The flip side of that is if you're producing all this energy, then the ability for households
03:54to store it is important.
03:56We were hoping that the price would come down as rooftop solar has come down, but of course
04:02the world is trying to decarbonise and build batteries, and so those price pressures have
04:06stayed high.
04:07So you'll look at it?
04:08Is that this term of government, or are you going to make it an election commitment?
04:11We're certainly actively looking at the options, and I think it's important also to realise
04:15if we do move in that direction, and I'm supporting a strong consideration of that, that we look
04:21after struggling households, because not everyone can put their own money up front and be part
04:27of a rebate scheme, the types that exist in other states.
04:31So we'll look at what we do for public housing tenants as well.
04:34So should it be means tested if there's a subsidy?
04:37Oh, look, I'm not saying we should means test it, but I just think we need to focus on that
04:41equity consideration.
04:43Cost of living is an issue that everyone is concerned about, so if you have the means
04:47and there's that incentive, you will invest yourself, and we should encourage that, but
04:52there are families who simply don't have any means to invest at all in this new technology.
04:58How much longer will the government keep paying people for their solar power?
05:01Well, we want to continue to do so, but the problem has been that that great uptake of
05:06rooftop solar presents a risk to the current network, because it can overpower the network.
05:12The network can only handle so much power going in, and if lots of people have their
05:17own rooftop solar, so the demand is falling at a time when supply is increasing, and that
05:24can be a real harmful issue for the network, so that has to be managed carefully.
05:29But we're still paying for rooftop solar, and we want to continue to look at new ways
05:33to incentivise and to pay people.
05:36So there is the option of a campaign where we manage people's private energy resources,
05:43their rooftop solar and batteries, and increasingly EVs that can actually feed into the grid,
05:49which is a future option we're looking at, and if you manage that carefully, it does
05:55a couple of things.
05:56It means that we're able to pay consumers more money for the services they provide to
06:01the network, but it also means the great democratisation of energy.
06:05You know, in the old days there was one coal-fired power station, one network, and the customer,
06:13and usually that was a government utility.
06:15It's a very different market as you know today, but it also means if we're using the resources
06:20that are in people's homes, appliances, rooftop solar, batteries, EVs, it means we're not
06:27having to call on the public purse to build major infrastructure like transmission and
06:32generation, new power stations.
06:34So those are required, but we don't have to spend the extra that we otherwise would if
06:40we don't take advantage of the resources in people's homes.
06:44That's a benefit to taxpayers, but it's also a benefit for those householders because we
06:49can pay them for that privilege.
06:51Minister Rhys Whitby, thank you very much for your time.