SolarQuotes Blog

Solar Installer Fined $10,000 For Jobs He Never Attended

Solar installer compliance crackdown

A solar installer who claimed to be working on Melbourne installations while interstate has been fined $10,000, as Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator (CER) continues its crackdown on operators breaking the rules.

The case is one of several enforcement actions highlighted in the regulator’s latest quarterly compliance update, which includes two other installers barred from participating in the federal solar and battery rebate scheme.

While the CER says there’s no evidence of widespread fraud, the cases raise a question for homeowners: how can you be sure the accredited installer responsible for your system actually turns up?

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Why Queue For Discount Petrol When You Can Drive On Sunshine?

You have to hand it to the fossil fuel disinformation machine; they’ve done an amazing job of keeping people poor in many senses of the word. Driving through Adelaide recently, I caught sight of another mind-boggling example and thought I’d capture it for posterity – Australians stuck in a huge queue for discounted fuel.

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Back The Hell Up

backup indicator

Last week two flaws in PHP went public. PHP is the programming language behind SolarQuotes and a big slice of the web, and these bugs had been sitting in its code for about 14 years. AI models found them. Within 45 minutes of the announcement, Cloudflare was seeing tens of thousands of attempts to exploit […]

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How Batteries Land Electricians In Hot Water

Controlled load and batteries

Customers buying home batteries are often going for “whole home” backup on the assurance that going forward, everything will be solar powered. People are however alarmed when bills lob in the letterbox with hundreds of dollars consumption charged out. How is that even possible?

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ACT & Tasmania’s Best-Rated Solar Installers: 2026

Top-rated installers 2026 Tas and ACT

Two new winners have emerged in the ACT and Tasmania as SolarQuotes wraps up its 2026 state and territory installer awards. The awards use a weighted calculation of customer reviews published on SolarQuotes between September 1, 2025 and September 1, 2026. This gives smaller installers with fewer reviews a fair chance against larger businesses. To […]

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Fox ESS Launches Power Cube All-In-One Home Battery

Australia’s most popular battery brand, Fox ESS, has launched the Power Cube in Australia. It’s an all-in-one home energy system that combines an inverter and batteries into a single stackable unit. The Power Cube uses two to nine EQ5500 battery modules, giving you between 10.92 and 49.14 kWh of storage. Fox ESS says its design […]

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Does Your Home Battery Need A Smoke Alarm?

Home battery smoke alarm

A smoke alarm near your home battery might seem like a sensible precaution, but is it actually compulsory? The answer depends on where you live, where your battery is installed and, in some cases, whether you’ve claimed a government incentive. We look at the different rules and recommendations across Australia.

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Diesel Price Surge Fuels The Case For Electric Utes

As wars overseas push fuel costs higher at home, diesel prices in particular have been skyrocketing – up by more than a third since February to over 280c a litre at the time of writing. An electric or plug-in hybrid ute can now do the job for many tradies and weekend warriors at a fraction […]

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Tesla Pulls Off Its Most Unlikely Stunt Yet

Tesla showed off something last week that I genuinely thought I’d never see.

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Tesla’s Latest Updates Let Power Flow Both Ways

Tesla has introduced two updates for Australian owners, each affecting how power flows in a different way. Tesla’s Wall Connector can charge any EV using your extra solar power, but you need a Powerwall for this to work. New Model 3 and Model Y cars now have the ability to power your devices with a […]

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