Rooftop solar delivers electricity to your house for around 5c/kWh. The grid averages about 30c/kWh.
You can’t run everything off solar alone, but fortunately batteries are going through a similar price drop, and for those who can afford the capital expense, solar and batteries as a combination are now also cheaper than the grid.
The batteries on four wheels have also arrived and “filling” your car with rooftop solar is the equivalent of paying about 20c/Litre of petrol. You save more than $1000 a year on each car.
Our households and vehicles are critical national energy infrastructure and if the system is designed right, their incorporation and incentivisation in the electricity market will increase reliability and increase resilience and lower the total cost of energy for all of us.
When you have excess solar energy from your roof, it shouldn’t be resold to your neighbour at the retail rate. It should be sold through at your cost of generation, a little incentivising extra, and the cost of moving it over the local poles and wires. To build a lowest-cost energy system we should maximise the incentives to install the largest rooftop installations we can, and also build community solar over our public buildings and car parks.
A government-led Household Infrastructure financing package from the federal government to help households electrify that addresses issues of equity and access to credit by having the government step in to keep interest rates low and credit access universal.
If households with solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles can trade electricity with each other, that will level the playing field between energy consumers and the big energy companies.
More locally produced energy will both lower system costs and lessen the need for expensive regional transmission infrastructure.
The Federal government should help Australian households invest in this national energy infrastructure – their homes – and remove barriers preventing households from installing solar panels, batteries and vehicle chargers.
Electrification will be the fastest, cheapest way to lower energy bills and eliminate polluting fossil fuels. If all Australian households and vehicles were all electric we could save $1 trillion by 2040 while addressing climate change and improving the respiratory health of our children.
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