The Impact of New Charges on Homes with Solar: Navigating Australia's Electricity Grid

With the increase in Solar Installation across Australia, the electricity grid is starting to struggle with the changing power landscape, which is generating more solar energy than ever before. In other words, the excess solar electricity generation is causing "traffic jams" in the grid.

In Australia, an average of 20% of all customers now partly meet their electricity needs through rooftop solar power generation, up from just 0.2 per cent in 2007. 

Currently, households sell their excess power back into the grid, putting progressively unmanageable stress on it. Power is not just being distributed to homes but now also being distributed from homes. The end result is "traffic jams" in the network that are increasingly forcing big power companies to stop households from exporting solar energy back into the grid.

As a result of this, the the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) could soon start charging Australians with rooftop solar panels.

• For a medium-sized system, that means you’ll have around $900 return per year, a small reduction of $70.
• Those with a large rooftop solar system earning more than $1,200 a year could see their benefits slashed by about $100!
• Anyone with a smaller system of 2kW to 4kW, which is most households with rooftop solar, could lose about $30 a year.

Another possibility as that individuals could also be hit with a fee if they export when there is congestion on the network.

The Grid congestion is a certainty and something to get ahead of to avoid effects such as state-wide blackouts and fees.

Read More on this  HERE

So, what can you do now to completely avoid the change coming to accommodate the inevitable high traffic fears to the Grid?

Smart Energy Answers has the solution!

The VPP

Virtual Power Plants are a task force of individual solar batteries working together to sell, store and trade electricity to the grid. A VPP is software that connects a battery to a collection of local batteries within a community and together they function as a local power plant.

By using locally generated energy, such as rooftop solar in combination with battery storage, we can reduce the network’s overall cost and traffic by deferring expensive infrastructure upgrades and reducing the need to purchase expensive power directly from power companies or the Government.

Introducing the Smart Community Package VPP 

Smart Energy Answers has launched “The Smart Community Program.” A VPP designed to help turn individual systems into energy generators and save households costs, while adding extra credit to their power bills.

As a result, in times of high demand, your energy provider will be able to access the excess power from the individual batteries and feed that power back into the grid. This effectively means that each individual battery is combined to create one large storage system.

The move to Virtual Power Plants means that you and the community will benefit from lower costs, locally made power, completely avoid power blackouts & high feed in tariffs up to 0.45c on the Network!

For more information or to join our Smart Community Program, call us on 1300 732 679 or Click  HERE to get a quote today and start your Innovative Solar Journey.