Using Batteries To Increase Your Solar Earnings
Using Batteries To Increase Your Solar Earnings Smart Energy Answers December 15, 2021 Maximising Solar Earnings: The Power of Batteries in Australia’s Clean Energy Future Small-scale solar power is critical in Australia’s transition to a clean energy future. Australia already has one of the highest uptakes of rooftop solar panels globally, and renewable energy can account for up to half of the power supplied to the national energy grid during peak periods. The uptake of solar is happening at a grassroots level. Many thousands of individual households and businesses have done their research and chosen to install private solar power systems on their properties. The growth of Australia’s renewable energy industry has continued strongly, with the Clean Energy Council’s Clean Energy Australia 2021 Report indicating that in 2020, more than a quarter of Australia’s total energy generation came from renewable sources for the first time. Much of this renewable energy came from the small-scale solar sector, which added more than 3 GW of new capacity that year, marking a fourth straight record-breaking year. Energy Commission Charging Solar Households As reported in October, controversial plans by the Australian Energy Market Commission, or AEMC, to charge solar households for exporting power back into the grid were scaled back earlier in the year to help protect the investments of private solar system owners. The commission’s initial draft determination addressed the issue of “traffic jams” within the power network, which can occur during peak times when energy is being exported back to the grid. The proposed reforms were designed to change distribution network incentives and help users send power back to the grid more effectively. The reforms also introduced the idea of two-way pricing, where users could be rewarded for sending power to the grid when it is needed and charged for sending power back when the system is busy. The initial proposal received significant pushback from lobbyists and consumers. This resulted in an updated package that allowed power networks to offer private solar power users a range of options, including a free basic service, to encourage users to limit solar waste, save money, and support the grid. “We’ve listened to the feedback we have received and have tightened protections for consumers to increase certainty,” AEMC Chief Executive Ben Barr said. “This means that networks will have to offer a free basic service alongside any paid solar export plans, so people won’t have to pay if they don’t want to.” Batteries = Smart Solar While the reforms help protect solar households from being charged for exporting power back to the grid, Australia’s energy landscape has changed dramatically. In the past, small-scale rooftop solar power systems made sense for many private households on their own. However, as energy demands and costs increase, and technology continues to improve, fully integrated solar power systems with batteries are becoming the smarter long-term solution. The ability to capture as much solar energy as possible during sunny periods and then store a portion of that energy for later use when the sun is not shining is a practical and powerful advantage. Not only does adding a battery reduce reliance on the traditional power grid, it can also help users increase the value and profitability of their solar system. Smart Batteries, More Income Smart Energy Answers has partnered with selected smart energy retailers to help solar users capitalise on their investments. These solutions can help users sell solar-generated power back to the grid at the optimum time to maximise returns. Our smart batteries, together with Virtual Power Plant, or VPP, solutions, can offer users premium solar feed-in tariffs, profit sharing on energy trading, or credits for participating. With a new Tesla Powerwall installation from 1 December, eligible customers can receive a $2,000 upfront credit when signing up with one of the smart energy retailer VPPs. With an Alpha battery installation, customers may be eligible for $1,300 in credits over time. Users can monitor and manage their account and check usage data online at any time using an intuitive smartphone app. Choosing a System Choosing a battery and solar power system that perfectly matches your needs is very important. Ask for a tailored consultation to learn which solar energy solutions best suit your power consumption, budget, roof space, and savings goals.
Green Crypto Mining & Solar Power
Green Crypto Mining & Solar Power Smart Energy Answers June 4, 2026 Rooftop Solar and Cryptocurrency Mining: A New Path for Clean Energy The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, or CBA, recently announced that it will be making an official foray into the world of cryptocurrency. This was the first move of its kind by a major Australian financial institution. The largest of Australia’s big four banks announced that it will begin offering cryptocurrency exchange services to customers as part of the CommBank app. CommBank customers will have direct access through the platform to ten cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. A statement from CBA’s CEO, Matt Comyn, confirmed that the new offering was a response to increasing demand for access to popular digital assets. “We believe we can play an important role in crypto to address what’s clearly a growing customer need and provide capability, security and confidence in a crypto trading platform,” said Mr Comyn. Legitimacy CBA’s announcement lends a degree of legitimacy to the notoriously volatile digital currencies, at least in the eyes of some more conservative investors. Regulatory bodies, including the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, or ASIC, have also begun taking a harder look at crypto in recent times. ASIC recently released official guidance for companies offering cryptocurrency exchange and custodial services, helping them meet compliance obligations. Additionally, ASIC has created a new crypto-asset category in the application for responsible entities licensing. Is Bitcoin Still Crypto King? Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency and has retained the largest share of the crypto market since its introduction in 2009, although the original token’s dominance has waned in recent months. Bitcoin’s share in the total cryptocurrency market cap contracted from approximately 68% at the beginning of 2021 to around 40% as the year drew towards its end. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the market share of several leading altcoins, including Ethereum, Cardano, and Tether, increased significantly. Ethereum’s market share increased from around 10% to almost 19%. Cardano’s increased from 0.70% to 3.67%, while Tether’s increased from 2.77% to 3.67% of an overall cryptocurrency market cap of $1.91 trillion. The Environmental Cost of Bitcoin Mining Bitcoin miners earn fractional amounts of the currency by solving complex mathematical problems in order to show proof of work. Mining the currency requires intense computing power, and most miners employ dedicated mining rigs, which are powerful computers set up to solve problems and passively earn Bitcoin around the clock. Millions of machines around the world are competing full time, every second, to work out the next number required in complex sequences, thus creating new blocks for the Bitcoin blockchain. A huge amount of energy is required to power the process. The issue made headlines earlier in the year when tech billionaire Elon Musk publicly tweeted that his electric vehicle company, Tesla, would stop accepting Bitcoin as payment, citing environmental concerns around the energy-intensive mining process. A New Path While the concept of proof of work being required to add to the Bitcoin blockchain and mine currency is a foundational aspect of the legacy cryptocurrency, it appears there is a new path. According to Kathleen Breitman, co-founder of the Tezos blockchain network, “no cryptocurrency that has launched in the last four or five years has used proof of work, and that’s because it’s antiquated technology.” “Using a technology that creates an unnecessary amount of tax on the environment, which, as someone who believes in man-made climate change, I’m very inclined to not endorse,” Breitman added. Ethereum, the most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, also uses a lot of energy to mine. However, its developers have planned a transition to a new mining method that requires considerably less energy and is much cleaner for the environment. Ethereum’s share of the cryptocurrency market almost doubled throughout 2021. The network is moving to a consensus mechanism called proof of stake. Ethereum’s developers claim that a move to proof of stake will result in improved energy efficiency, lower barriers to entry with reduced hardware requirements for mining, stronger immunity to centralisation, and an upgrade when it comes to scaling the Ethereum network. Rooftop Solar and Crypto Mining As the environmental unfriendliness of standard, energy-intensive crypto mining has become a hot-button issue and hit the mainstream media, each new crypto or mining venture aims to have a green aspect. Some are more legitimate than others. One possibility that meshes well with crypto’s central tenet of decentralisation is the use of solar power as a source of energy to power crypto mining operations. There are many thousands of rooftop solar systems around Australia, and millions more around the world, pumping out huge amounts of clean, renewable, carbon-free electricity. It’s well known that energy networks don’t always pay huge sums of money for the power that’s fed back into the grid by private households and businesses using rooftop solar. In the past, most solar users chose to simply fit a solar system that would produce enough energy to power the household’s needs and not bother fitting a much larger system. Now that high-quality solar batteries are far less prohibitively expensive than in the past, many users are matching solar batteries to their systems in order to store energy for later use. Another potential use for excess power generated by private solar power systems would be to power cryptocurrency mining operations. This could be in the form of a few extra panels added to a home system in order to power a full-time mining rig computer, but could obviously be scaled up for commercial operations. Most private and commercial solar power system owners use only a fraction of their available rooftop real estate for their current systems, leaving plenty of space to fit additional panels that could potentially be used to power cryptocurrency mining operations. Entry-level mining rigs are sold for just a few thousand dollars on Amazon and eBay. By far, the largest commitment for the private user would be the fitment of additional solar panels, batteries, and
Scaled-Back Plans to Charge Solar Households for Exporting Energy
Scaled-Back Plans to Charge Solar Households for Exporting Energy Smart Energy Answers June 4, 2026 Securing Solar Futures: Revised Approach to Charging Solar Households for Energy Export Controversial plans by the Australian Energy Market Commission, or AEMC, to charge households using rooftop solar panel systems for exporting energy back into the power grid have been scaled back in order to protect the investments of current and future solar system owners. Plans to reduce the impact of the proposed reforms on solar users came in an announcement from the commission in August. The AEMC’s initial plans were outlined in a draft declaration back in March, with the goal of determining how to integrate more small-scale solar and other new energy technologies, such as batteries, into the electricity grid. In the draft declaration, AEMC Chief Executive Ben Barr claimed, “We can decarbonise the electricity sector faster and cheaper if we connect more small solar customers and make it worthwhile for them to install batteries. But to do that we need to make some changes to the power system.” The draft determination addressed the issue of traffic jams on the network, when energy was being exported back onto the grid during busy times. It included a package of reforms designed to change distribution networks’ existing incentives to help households send power back into the grid. This would allow networks to offer two-way pricing, rewarding solar households for sending power back to the grid when it was needed and charging for sending power back when the system was too busy. Solar Reforms Finalised In a statement released in August, the AEMC released the finalised details of the reforms. According to the statement, “the reforms will put tough new obligations on power network companies to make their networks smarter.” “They will now be accountable for getting their businesses solar- and battery-friendly so everyone benefits. A key part of the changes is removing the companies’ ability to put blanket bans on customers sending solar energy back to the grid.” The reform package means that power networks can offer solar households a range of options, including a free basic service, in order to encourage users to limit solar waste and save money while benefiting the grid. AEMC Chair Anna Collyer claimed, “These new measures to drive smart solar are fundamental to enabling a modern electricity grid that delivers out to 2030 and beyond.” “They represent a profound change to the way poles and wires businesses must think about how they manage their network and turn the current one-way street delivering power to people’s homes into a two-way superhighway where energy flows in both directions.” “Power network companies will need to deliver services to support solar, and they’ll be judged on their performance on how much solar exports they allow into the grid.” The reforms acknowledge the fact that Australia has the fastest uptake rate of household solar power systems in the world. They also address concerns from users requesting more certainty on what the changes will mean for current and future solar investments. “We’ve listened to the feedback we have received and have tightened protections for consumers to increase certainty,” said AEMC Chief Executive Benn Barr. “This means networks will have to offer a free basic service alongside any paid solar export plans, so people won’t have to pay if they don’t want to.” Solar Batteries Are Becoming the New Normal While the AEMC scaling back the severity of the reforms protects the interests of current solar users, the fact remains that the Australian renewable energy sector has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years. While simple, small-scale solar panel systems were sufficient for the needs of many households through the early years of Australia’s solar power revolution, it’s clear that going forward, fully integrated solar power systems equipped with batteries will be a much more profitable option. Any residential or commercial users considering installing a solar system should do their research and consider having a battery installed at the same time. This can help pay off the investment as quickly as possible and maximise profits. Virtual Power Plants Are the Future Virtual power plants function as a collective of separate solar batteries that are networked together in a sophisticated system. This allows them to function individually while also working together to store energy and efficiently trade or sell it to the grid. A virtual power plant, or VPP, is software that connects a collection of batteries localised in a community and allows them to function as a local virtual power plant. Individual solar households can band together to pool their power generation and storage capacities. This can benefit each other and reduce reliance on purchasing expensive traditionally generated power from the grid. The Smart Community Program VPP Smart Energy Answers has launched The Smart Community Program, a virtual power plant designed to help empower solar households. The programme turns individual systems into potent energy generators, reducing household costs while adding extra credit to users’ power bills. During times of high power demand, the energy provider can access the excess storage capacity of the individual batteries within the VPP and feed the power back into the network. Moving to virtual power plants allows individual households and their communities to benefit by cutting costs, utilising locally sourced power, avoiding power outages altogether, and enjoying high feed-in tariffs of up to 45c. Interested in joining the Smart Community Program or want more information? Call us on 1300 948 619.