Good news for battery customers in New South Wales – you can now join the rest of the country, installing battery systems within 600mm of garage door openings and other similar applications.
What exactly does this mean? Simply that NSW has now adopted the pragmatic approach everyone else takes to interpreting the rules.
The rush to get large home batteries before the federal rebate is restructured has seen many reputable battery installers booked out through to May, when the changes to the Cheaper Home Battery Program come into force.
There’s a strange certainty creeping into battery talk lately. The idea that DC coupling is the grown-up option, and AC coupling is something we did back when we didn’t know any better. I keep seeing installers and Facebook pundits claiming the only proper way to attach a battery to a house is with a DC-coupled system. Anything else is framed as inefficient, messy, a historical mistake or just deeply uncool.
I don’t get it.
The Clean Energy Regulator (CER) has revealed it warned manufacturers and installers to provide early notification of product risks, after reviewing the spate of melted Sigenergy inverter plugs last year.
If you wanted to design the world’s harshest endurance test for home batteries, you wouldn’t build a lab. You’d build a normal Australian suburb. [Read more…]
Imagine buying a home battery that offers automatic blackout protection, only to discover that when the lights go out, the installer set it up to require manual operation? It’s a trend that’s plunged far too many households into the dark across Australia. Here’s what to watch out for.
Fifteen years ago, one of the hardest parts of selling solar was explaining why your panels shut down in a blackout. No grid meant no power, even on a sunny day.
Today, batteries fix that. Yet I am seeing thousands of homes getting large batteries with either no backup at all or poorly designed backup. That’s because – as batteries go mainstream – a set of myths has taken hold.
Let’s knock them over.
The home battery installation count in Western Australia is rapidly increasing, as too is the national total according to an update from Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen. [Read more…]
Summer had a slow start around my place but it’s hard to miss now, and along with it, emergency warnings for bushfires, extreme heat and flooding.
So what special precautions should you take with your solar and battery systems?
For years, solar owners had it easy. You looked for the highest solar feed-in tariff. You checked the usage rate and the daily charge were not silly. You picked the winning tariff and moved on.
That world is gone.
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