Battle of the batteries: Solar soakers provide some common ground for Australia’s competing energy visions

The Albanese government and the Liberal National Party might be approaching the federal election from diametrically opposite ends of the ideological spectrum on energy, but there is one key battleground where their policies are likely to collide: home batteries.

Faced with the undeniable fact of Australia’s world-leading rooftop solar success, federal support for the uptake of residential battery storage – both to drive down energy bills and soak up some of the solar flooding grids during the day – is shaping up as a policy must. It could even be considered a policy slam dunk.

The only question seems to be which major party will score first – and what the policy proposal will look like. And will it be better than the competitor’s?

Federal Labor has so far resisted the many and varied pleas from across the clean energy industry to put home battery supports in place, opting instead to focus on community or neighbourhood batteries – with three more government subsidised units switched on in New South Wales just this week.

On home batteries, the closest federal energy minister Chris Bowen has come to directly supporting uptake was most likely last month, when he directed the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to consider funding them as part of a deal made with cross benchers over the Future Made in Australia legislation.

Shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien, too, has taken time out from his nuclear vision to talk up community batteries, naming them as one of three things the Coalition would need to do between getting elected and getting nuclear power stations actually built (the other two being delaying coal closures and doubling down on gas).

“We do need to continue with renewables,” he told 2GB radio in June last year. “I’m especially excited about what we could be doing with storage behind the meter, community batteries, it’s storage especially for solar we need to look at.”

But this week, “according to to sources with knowledge of the discussions,” the AFR is reporting that O’Brien has “dropped the strongest hint yet” that the Coalition will announce a major election policy to drive investment in home batteries.

“The Coalition understands the importance of practical solutions like household batteries to improve energy resilience and affordability, and we’ll have more to say about this closer to the election,” O’Brien reportedly said.

“Under Labor, the solar panels on people’s roofs are already being turned off because they’ve failed to understand the importance of storage such as household batteries.

“If we’re going to ask Australians to electrify, they need confidence that their power will be affordable and reliable – so they aren’t left paying more for a system that doesn’t work when they need it.”

Leaving aside the rubbish about solar panels already being turned off under Labor – a lot of other stuff is but not rooftop PV – and ignoring the fact that the most of Australia’s federally subsidised rush to residential rooftop solar happened on the federal Coalition’s watch (with nary a battery subsidy in sight), O’Brien has it right on one count: Home batteries are an important practical solution to energy resilience and affordability.

And they will need to be under the Coalition’s nuclear plan because, should Peter Dutton’s “always on” nuclear plants ever be built, rooftop solar output will need to make way, and that means either switching it off or storing its output.

So how might households be incentivised to invest in home batteries?

One of the more popular options put forward by experts and industry bodies has been to extend and expand the existing national rooftop solar subsidy – the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) – it to include home batteries; particularly considering – as Paul McCormick explains here – that the flip-side of the scheme’s huge success has been the duck curve grid instability issue.

The Clean Energy Council, for one, has proposed a national incentive scheme of up to $6500 per household to install batteries be incorporated into the SRES, noting that the scheme is legislated and well understood with product and installer regulatory framework that consumers trust.

And all the way back in 2021, when the Coalition was still in government, a report by Green Energy Markets explained in detail how simple modifications to the SRES could deliver 10,000MW of home batteries by 2030.

Even the Australian Energy Market Operator has hinted at the importance of government subsidies, after having to factor in the slower than expected embrace of home batteries to its upcoming planning for the 2026 edition of its 25-year planning blueprint, the Integrated System Plan.

“It is the role for governments to determine specific means to incentivise a desired level of consumer participation in CER (and other consumer investments), if governments choose to support consumers in this way,” AEMO said in December.

But with predictions that the yet-to-be announced federal election will result in a hung parliament, perhaps the final call on a national home battery subsidy will lie in the hands of independents.

It was, after all, the federal independent member for Indi, Dr Helen Haines, who launched the most serious political bid to add home batteries to the SRES with the proposal of a private member’s bill to federal parliament in February 2022.

Haines’ Cheaper Home Batteries Bill proposed to reduce the cost of a standard household battery installation by around $3,000 and was seconded by Warringah MP and independent Zali Steggall.

“My policy would deliver 15 times more capacity than the [Coalition] government will get from the new gas-power station it is building in the Hunter Valley,” Haines said at the time of the still highly controversial Kurri Kurri gas plant being developed by Snowy Hydro.

“Not only would this save families money, these batteries would act as a massive electric sponge, soaking up cheap solar power during the day and balancing the grid at night. That’s good news for energy security and means a smoother transition to renewables.”

As it turned out, Haine’s bill lapsed in April with the calling of the 2022 federal election. Perhaps it is time to try again.

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