VoltX Energy has partnered with battery manufacturer ByteWatt to supply 10,000 Neovolt battery storage units to homes in South Australia, as part of a $40 million deal.
The Sydney-based home battery provider has already seen major growth in the New South Wales and Queensland markets, and its exclusive agreement with ByteWatt is predicted to eventually net the company a 30% share in the residential energy storage market.
VoltX Energy COO David Sedighi said South Australia was a natural next step for the company, where rooftop solar met all of the state’s demand for the first time in September last year.
Sedighi said the battery was highly price competitive.
“Whereas most players in the market are distributors of a brand, we work directly with the factory,” Sedighi said.
“The cost [of a home battery] has been very high to the consumer until now and we’ve approached it by reducing that cost significantly, making sure there’s a clear return on investment for the consumer.
“We don’t think there is a market player with a better price.”
South Australia is a fertile market for home battery providers, due in part to the high penetration of rooftop solar there (one in three South Australian homes has rooftop solar).
The state also benefits from strong government incentives and rebates and supportive energy policies.
For Ryan Parsons, a teacher based in Forestville, in Adelaide’s Southwest, the benefits of his family’s home battery system – which was not supplied by VoltX – have been huge.
Their old home, a 1950s double brick house, “had some cool features”, says Parsons, but was “unbelievably inefficient”.
“In winter we would have a $1000 energy bill for the quarter,” he said.
After attempting to install solar – and learning that the available roof space could not provide enough surface area to power the whole house – the family decided to sell up and start again, this time building a house with energy considerations built in from the first.
Parsons enlisted an architect and a green-specific builder – as well as extensively consulting the public Facebook group My Efficient Electric Home – to create a house that was more airtight, with heat recovery ventilation, a solar system and a 16.6 kilowatt BYD-manufactured home battery for storage.
“In 2023 when we moved in we didn’t have the battery yet, and because it was the middle of winter we did have a small electricity bill – like fifty bucks or something,” he said. “But we’ve now had the battery for over a year, and since then not only have we not paid a power bill, we’ve actually earned money.”
From September 2023 to September 2024, the family earned $260 in power returned to the grid, and saved roughly $2,000 per year compared to their previous home.
Parsons points out that these massive savings are not simply down to solar and battery storage, but also in large part owe to the efficiency of the house itself.
“When you hear that we haven’t paid a bill since we got the battery, it might seem that everyone can do that and that’s not the truth,” he said.
“It’s the energy efficiency of the house that allows the 16.6 kilowatts to cover our electric use.”
