How I pay almost nothing to power my house and electric car

Australia is within the midst of a house battery-installation frenzy, as households scramble to reap the benefits of a subsidy launched by the federal authorities. My family is considered one of 300,000 which have already put in considered one of these subsidised batteries, and, a lot to my delight, I’m now working my home and electrical automobile nearly at no cost.

I’ve been obsessive about residence batteries since I first wrote about them for New Scientist in 2018. They retailer power captured from photo voltaic panels in your roof, so you should use it to energy your own home and, in case you have one, an electrical automobile. By producing and storing all your personal power in your premises, you’ll be able to cut back your carbon footprint and decouple your self from worth shocks within the exterior power market, as we’re at present experiencing amid the continued tussle over the Strait of Hormuz.

For a very long time, the hefty worth tags on residence batteries made them a pipe dream for myself and most different folks. However in recent times, their prices have been falling, even with out authorities subsidies, placing them extra in attain.

In my case, I first needed to transfer out of dear Sydney to fulfill the preliminary requirement of proudly owning a house. My husband, youngsters and I moved to a regional city about 400 kilometres north, the place we might afford the mortgage on a plain however stable Seventies brick home. We put in 13 photo voltaic panels (6.6 kilowatt general – the commonest measurement in Australia) on our roof to reap the benefits of the ample sunshine and bought a comparatively low-cost Chinese language electrical automotive.

The photo voltaic panels allowed us to run our dishwasher, washer, fridge, electrical hot-water system, induction cooktop and different home equipment at no cost on sunny days. However after the solar went down, and on cloudy and wet days, we needed to swap again to utilizing grid electrical energy. If we charged our automotive in a single day or ran our air-con on sweltering summer season evenings, we paid for it.

We regarded into getting an average-sized 15 kilowatt-hour residence battery to retailer power from our photo voltaic panels for nighttime use, however the price – A$20,000 (£10,000) – scared us off. When the federal government launched its subsidy scheme in July 2025, it introduced the worth all the way down to A$13,000 (£6,500). We determined this was doable, particularly as a result of we might choose to pay it off interest-free over 5 years.

The battery system we put in comprises three lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO₄) battery packs encased in a smooth white field, which is hooked up to a shaded wall on the skin of our home, to keep away from the chance of overheating.

Our payments for electrical energy utilization have since plummeted to round A$25 (£13) per thirty days, regardless of us cranking our air-con in a single day. It is a small fraction of the typical A$300 (£150) we used to pay earlier than we had photo voltaic panels and a battery, though we’re additionally nonetheless required to pay a small fastened provide cost to our electrical energy supplier that covers issues like meter studying and upkeep of the grid’s poles and wires.

To attempt to get our prices down additional, we’ve got simply signed as much as a digital energy plant. This connects 1000’s of households with residence batteries in order that any surplus power in particular person batteries may be shared. We can be paid as much as A$300 (£150) per yr for sharing our surplus battery power, which might cancel out our electricity-usage prices altogether.

Fortunately, our battery shielded us from the latest spike in gasoline costs that occurred after the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. Petrol costs in Australia went up by 40 per cent and diesel by 70 per cent, however we’ve got continued to run our automotive for subsequent to nothing. It additionally saved our lights on throughout an hour-long blackout on our avenue one night time final week.

After all, not everybody can afford a house battery, or certainly a house, however there are methods of constructing this expertise extra accessible. For instance, within the state of South Australia, residents of government-owned social housing can apply to have photo voltaic panels and batteries put in on their properties at no cost to decrease their power payments.

Some individuals are fearful about residence batteries catching on hearth, however the threat seems to be low. A latest research in Germany discovered that residence battery fires are 50 occasions much less doubtless than common home fires, 4 occasions much less doubtless than electrical automobile battery fires and about on par with tumble dryer fires. Some sorts of residence batteries, together with lithium iron phosphate ones, are thought of safer than others.

The Australian authorities’s home-battery scheme has been so wildly in style that it has simply needed to high it up with one other A$5 billion (£2.65 billion), though it can additionally cut back particular person subsidies subsequent month to make the price range stretch to extra households. The goal is to have 2 million residence batteries put in in Australia by 2030.

Elsewhere, California has additionally launched a authorities subsidy for residence batteries and over 200,000 have been put in there thus far.

The UK has been slower to undertake the expertise, with round 20,000 residence batteries at present being put in annually, however the UK authorities not too long ago introduced a plan to introduce a subsidy to encourage higher uptake.

A few of the applied sciences I’ve written about through the years have admittedly been a bit foolish, like robots that give massages or play golf and tiny vehicles that rats can drive, however residence batteries appear to be the true deal. It’s satisfying to see them lastly taking off and to have the ability to reap the benefits of one myself. With all the cash we save, perhaps we’ll even be capable of afford that robotic therapeutic massage therapist.