The most important power station in the nation is no longer a distant coal plant – it’s on our rooftops

Australia’s energy grid is changing. Our clean energy future is being built panel by panel and battery by battery, in suburbs, towns and regional communities across the country.

Like cash is no longer king in a digitised economy, coal is losing its place in a modern, reliable and affordable energy system. Australia’s coal-fired power fleet is ageing, increasingly unreliable and expensive to keep running. No amount of patchwork can reverse that reality.

This month’s decision to keep the Eraring coal-fired power station in New South Wales open for an additional two years is hardly a vote of confidence in coal as a superior alternative to modern renewables, like sun, wind and batteries. Instead, it highlights just how difficult it has become to rely on ageing coal infrastructure.

When coal power stations break down – which happens regularly – wholesale prices spike and those costs flow directly onto household energy bills. In the twelve months to 31 October 2025, an average of 24 per cent of coal-fired generation was unavailable in NSW and Queensland, with Victoria close behind at 19 per cent.

In a single month late last year, there were seven unplanned coal outages. Prolonging coal does not prepare Australia for the future, instead it runs counter to how our modern energy system already operates.

Everyday Australians are already building the nation’s newest, largest and most reliable power station on their homes and businesses.

Heatwaves are traditionally the ultimate stress test for an electricity grid. Over the past fortnight, during extreme temperatures across southern Australia, when temperatures soared into the 40s, we ran our air conditioners hard, along with our ever-growing list of electricity hungry devices, and energy demand surged beyond 40 gigawatts to a new record.

Commentators ideologically opposed to renewables sat in their dens waiting for the grid to fail. 

It didn’t.

Coal was nowhere near centre stage. Instead, it was solar that supplied more than 60 per cent of power across the National Electricity Market, with two-thirds coming from rooftops.

Combined with wind and hydro, renewables met up to 76.6 per cent of peak demand and nearly half of all supply over a 24-hour period. By comparison, during a similar heatwave in 2019, renewables never supplied more than 26 per cent of electricity and coal carried almost the entire load.

Rooftop solar behaves like millions of small generators operating precisely where electricity is needed, with batteries kicking in to supply stored excess energy during evening demand peaks.

That reduces strain on transmission lines and supply bottlenecks. During this heatwave, distributed solar supplied the majority of daytime electricity – a stark contrast to past summers when coal had to do the heavy lifting.

Australia’s rooftop solar adoption is a national success story. Around 27 gigawatts are now installed across more than four million homes – roughly one in three households. On a per-person basis, Australians have installed three to four times more rooftop solar than the United States and around ten times more than the United Kingdom.

Home batteries have followed the same path. In 2025 alone, Australians installed 184,672 home batteries, delivering 4.27 gigawatt-hours of storage – more than the five largest grid-scale batteries combined. Families are doing this because it works.

The average household saves around $1,500 a year with solar and up to $2,300 when paired with a battery.

Australians are not waiting for permission to lead the energy transition. They already are. The challenge now is ensuring our rules, markets and regulations catch up.

Squeezing the last life from ageing coal plants sends mixed signals. The most important power station in the nation is no longer a distant coal facility. It is the combined rooftops of millions of Australians – and that is something we should be proud of.

Jackie Trąd is the CEO of the Clean Energy Council.