Electrify Everything

A bit over a week ago, we finally had a home battery installed:

This was the last item on my personal list of things to do, to run everything on nuclear fusion energy: from garden tools (battery powered lawn mower, edger, chainsaw), through house heating/cooling (this is electric by default in Queensland), cooking and hot water, to charging the car.

We had PV panels since 2016, but we were still buying a lot of electricity when the sun was down. Grid electricity in Queensland, while quickly improving, is still, to a large extent, made by burning coal and gas (80% at night, 40% when the sun is up). With the current PV size, the battery should make us completely self-sufficient for about 3 months of the year (Sep, Oct, Nov), and reduce our grid use by half in the remaining 9 months, plus it should provide a backup in case of the grid going down, which does happen here and will be happening more often.

The battery size is 42 kWh (about the same as in our car), which is close to the average - 36 kWh - installed in January 2026 in Australia. The average size will probably go down from May because of the changes to the Cheaper Home Batteries program. 

Our 10 year old 6.5 kW of solar panels can produce 20 kWh of electricity on a sunny winter day and 40 kWh in summer. To cover the remaining 7 to 14 kWh of daily grid imports we may add more PV panels or perhaps install a smart meter and take advantage of the world-first, 3 hours of free mid-day electricity in the Solar Sharer Offer. Insulating the home better could help, but just the double-pane windows would cost 20k to 40k AUD for the whole house, while 8 kW of extra panels may cost $4k.