Nearly 9,000 discounted home batteries have been ordered through Western Australia’s combined state and federal rebate since its launch in July, putting the state “well on track” to hit 20,000 applications by the year’s end.
In an update to state parliament last week, WA energy minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said the stacked scheme had received 8,800 applications since July 01, with more than 5,500 of that number “on their way to installation.”
“In less than two months we have seen a huge influx of applications to embrace the clean energy future,” Sanderson told parliament.
“With WA’s significant uptake of rooftop solar, it is no surprise that it has been well embraced and we are well on track to reach 20,000 applications by the end of the year.”
Western Australia, whose energy market operates separately from Australia’s main national grid, has forged its own path on home battery rebates, too.
Once federal Labor’s Cheaper Home Batteries scheme was locked in following the election, the WA Labor government announced it would “stack” it with a revised version of its previously announced WA Residential Battery Scheme.
The revised version offers a much reduced state discount – between $130-$380/ kWh off the cost of installing a battery – but extends it to five times as many applicants (100,000 up from 20,000) and adds the federal discount of around $330 per kilowatt-hour.
The result, according to Sanderson, is “the most generous battery subsidy in the nation,” with the added option of a $10,000 loan for low income households. But not everyone shares this view.
The main point of contention is that applicants for the stacked rebate are required to join a virtual power plant (VPP) for at least two years, which in WA is more or less limited to state-owned retailer offerings, with one alternative.
Customers on the Horizon network will have to join Horizon Power Community Wave, while customers of the Synergy network currently have a choice of two: Synergy Battery Rewards or Plico Virtual Power Plant.
A quick scan of Reddit threads on the topic suggest some people are opting to settle for the federal discount alone, to avoid the VPP part of the deal. Others note that joining a VPP can require an upgraded inverter, the extra costs of which cancel out the state discount.
Solar Quotes has a good example, here, of how the stacked WA/federal rebate might be applied to a Sunpower 9.6 kWh battery with a straight forward installation, but does note that its calculations do not include the $2,000+ cost of its hybrid inverter.
It’s important to note, too, that the federal government requires systems installed through Cheaper Home Batteries to be VPP compatible, which may also require an investment in an upgraded inverter for some existing solar systems and/or retrofitted battery systems.
Still, WA has its reasons for pushing hard on VPP uptake. Already, about 40 per cent of households on the state’s main grid have rooftop solar, with around 30,000 new systems installed each year.
A three-year, Arena-backed program, called Project Jupiter, has been nutting out how to manage all this rooftop solar on the South West Interconnected System, or SWIS, which is one of the largest isolated electricity grids in the world.
The project’s goal is that by 2028, all new DER – including batteries – connected to the SWIS will be able to participate in a virtual power plant, allowing households to unlock greater value from their energy investments and paving the way for consumer energy to contribute to a majority renewable grid.
“The opportunity that virtual power plants [offer] is really significant for the grid and enables people to control their own energy use and supply,” Sanderson said in parliament last week.
“It will enable us to synchronise that demand and those batteries at times of peak demand which means we will be able to have more flexibility around the grid and enable the stabilisation of the grid, rather than all the solar panels pushing energy into the grid during the day when no-one is using it and everyone coming home and drawing down on the grid at peak. That creates destabilisation.
“Really importantly, this will mean meaningful, structural cost-of-living relief for all families who access it, but in particular, low-income and middle-income families,” the minister said.
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
