This article is misleading as it implies that Australian energy retailers must provide every household with 3 hours of free electricity.

This is not the case. From 1 July 2026, Australian energy retailers with more than 1,000 customers must offer at least one energy plan which includes 3 hours of free electricity, capped at 24kWh per day, to residential customers in 3 states - NSW, SE Queensland and South Australia. https://www.energy.gov.au/rebates/solar-sharer-offer

Not all energy plans that the retailers offer have to include 3 hours of free electricity. In practice, most energy plans currently offered don’t include 3 hours of free electricity but some retailers such as Globird are offering more than one energy plan which includes ‘free’ electricity.

The downside of these solar sharer plans which include ‘free’ electricity is that they generally have higher daily supply charges and higher usage charges outside the ‘free’ window to recoup the costs of the ‘free’ electricity.

Australian consumers can choose the retailer and energy plan their home or business is on and can change their plan at any time.

This page on the Energy Consumers Australia website has more details about the Solar Sharer Offer and a similar Victorian Government scheme which starts on 1 October. https://energyconsumersaustralia.com.au/news/solar-sharer-of...

I feel like this is still relevant today:

Clarke and Dawe - The Energy Market Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELaBzj7cn14

Incentivizing usage during peak times makes total sense, but if price swings are this wild, how are grid scale batteries not highly economical? My rough ballpark math was that you need roughly 20 kilowatts of battery storage to make this issue basically nonexistent, and that would cost about 10 billion dollars, which doesn't seem that much for this.

Edited to add: Clarification required in the title that the free energy is only between 11am and 2pm

Very interested to see how this turns out. Ultimately we want the transition to benefit both consumers and producers / distributors (the industry). The problem from the rapid uptake of solar in Australia has been an over-supply during this 10/11am to 2/3pm period. If that over-supply is suitably encouraged to be soaked up then hopefully consumers can reduce their power bills whilst the industry has less effort in managing the oversupply and less stress on infrastructure.

It's also about time that those who lack the means or situation to have solar panels of their own can get some advantage, in a 'herd immunity' kind of way.

I'm in the privileged position to have had solar panels for over a decade, and now have a battery as well, and it was very obvious to me at the time that, in regards to solar, it cost money to save money, so if you couldn't afford it then the savings are inaccessible.

This change hopefully helps those who need it, at least somewhat.

Many retailers have been offering this for ~6 months already. Very popular with home battery owners (which have taken off over the last 9 months thanks to subsidies), so much so that the effect of people turning on loads is suspected as the reason for an increasing dip in grid frequency at 11 am [1].

[1] https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2026/06/system-frequency...

First world problems but my Australian retail plan already offers a free period between 11am-2pm without any usage cap, so now with this policy introduction i'm worried my provider will introduce such a cap under the guise of 'its what the government says we can do'.

With 3 hours of free power, a 15kW inverter and a 42kWh battery, I could almost do away with my solar panels and just survive of free grid power. I do have a 15kW solar panel set up, but I get very little from selling anything back to the grid.

I've been on a GloBird plan with 3 free hours for a while. Works out very well as I have a 20 KWH battery and solar. Costs about $15 a month to run the house inc. cooking, heating/cooling, hot water, and charging my PHEV. To make the best of these sorts of plans you need to be home during that period and/or have a decent battery/inverter.

Related to this article, I recently saw this video on YouTube: "I Powered My House Using 500 Disposable vapes" [1]

It is wild how cheap are solar panels now. Really, bonkers cheap. A huge rooftop solar panel costs less than 100 USD. From everything that I read/see/watch, most of the cost associated with solar panel arrays is the labour required for installation. (No hate on those folks -- they are skilled labour!)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy-wFixuRVU

We already get free power between 0am and 6am, so with free power between 11am and 2pm we’ll have a whopping 9 hours of free power to charge our car and heat our water storage.

Ideally, they should pay the EV owners because electricity price goes negative. The EV owners are spending their own money to create a scalable on-demand storage infrastructure. This saves CapEx/OpEx of BESS and also eliminates peaker natural gas plants. EV owners should be paid once for allowing storage, and paid again for using the power to supply back to the grid (V2G).

Electric battery storage is a better option, but also your home is a very leaky battery storage for conditioned air. At my last place i got a plan that was nearly free on overnights and ran the HVAC all night, turning it off during the peak period. This was in the worst part of summer when the overnight lows were 80F or above so natural ventilation couldn't help much.

Dynamic pricing and deployment of digital smart meters should by mandatory in all electric grids dominated by renewables. Large electric consumers are already buying electricity at dynamic prices, small consumers should have the same incentives to shift the demand to day hours.

I am curious what interesting opportunities free power for a short time opens up.

I know crypto mining in TX can operate like this, but that's boring.

Desalination and carbon capture are both energy restricted, that sounds a lot more interesting. However, the deployed equipment has to be cheap if you only have 3hrs per day of free power, right?

Australia, excluding Western Australia as we are on a separate electricity grid.

Incidentally the Netherlands has this too, at least with some providers (Budget Energy for one). I get free electric from 12:00 to 17:00 on weekends.

Seems like a good idea. Slightly tweaked consumer behavior can achieve what would take a hell of a lot of batteries

I actually built a calculator around this to help someone figure out if they would save money by switching to 3 hour free plan.

https://solarsharercalculator.com.au/

> No solar panels required. No need to own your home. You just need a smart meter and to opt in through your retailer to have access to free daytime electricity. The scheme is called the Solar Sharer Offer.

What is then the incentive to install (or repair/maintenance) solar panels?

The requirement is to accept time of use TOU variant charging and if you cannot shift enough load into 3 hours you may pay more overall for power in other times of day.

Demand shifting is good. Do not mistake this as free energy, it very much depends. Many people still don't have TOU meters and many people won't successfully move load into the window.

Fixed line costs are rising massively. Electricity should be significantly cheaper but the economics here favour incumbents and people like John Quiggin arguing for renationalisation are drowned out.

I miss having Griddy in Texas. Direct access to the wholesale market is probably not good for the lower end of the consumer segment, but for people with some functional marbles it can make a big difference on the demand side of the grid.

I feel like they had to kill griddy before all the powerwall solutions started showing up. We simply cannot empower the peasants with both things at once. The ability to store energy makes access to wholesale prices substantially more effective.

I'll never forget the days where we would get push notifications about negative prices. I'd throw the dryer and oven on every time to try and unwind the meter a bit.

Damn, we need this in Spain. Market prices go negative basically every daytime, but consumer prices stay exactly the same...

That sounds great at first, but just imaging having dynamic price contracts, like tibber, that also forward you the negative prices while still maintaining very low grid fees.

It actually alludes to a significant problem.

Solar generation is realitely cheap, much more storage is needed. Storage (overnight and also for several days) is challenging - one reason being its more expensive. Then there is the new transmission lines needed.

I am so building an arc furnace in my yard.

https://theshovel.com.au/2025/11/05/electricians-prepare-for...

It’s very cool to see what happens where there are simply so many residential solar installs. Power price goes negative during peak sunshine hours so they just give it away.

Solar installs benefitting everyone, even those who never got solar.

Free isn't free.

Coinciding with this, suppliers put daily connection charges up.

How’s that privatisation working out for Australian electric grids?

They could just sidestep it, by making the electricity free but the transport or cable use more expensive, no?

Australia should deploy vertical solar massively. Adds a few more hours of production.

Its because they have NO economical way to store it to sell for night time usage.

Not really.

The fundamental costs and margin requirements in the system haven't changed.

This is a government-mandated electricity plan (a default market offer) that competitive electricity retailers are now required to offer. Those retailers still have network costs, environmental costs, energy costs, and administration costs to recover, and so prices at other times of day necessarily go up.

Some consumers may be better off on this plan (generally at the expense of other consumers), and some will be worse off.

It's good politics and only so-so policy.

This will kill new household solar instillation.

The payback time was already well in excess of 10 years, but now that power is free during the day, you can't count those hours as helping pay down your investment. Payback time will be 30 + years at least. You are much better just enjoying your neighbors solar rather than paying for your own.

(Feed-in is about 3c now I think. Was 12c when many people bought their panels.)

Note: My state 100% renewable energy so reduction of carbon footprint has not bearing on my solar decisions.

This also feels like a fairly heavy handed way to encourage investments in batteries. But in the famous words of George W, "can't fool me again". As soon as there are too many batteries and the grid companies are not making enough money, they will introduce fees to have the batteries, or increase connection fees.

When it's hardly needed!

Translation: “you will just pay more for electricity at other times of day”

Some parts of Australia.

Not Victoria which has bankrupted itself building roads and railways it cannot afford.

basically they give you a few hours free electricity in exchange for significantly higher electricity prices for the rest of the day.

basically a free IQ test.

The fine print is interesting, theres a cap, fair use provisions and it requires a smart meter. Smart meters are still a bit contentious.

Sadly probably wont be any good for selective crypto mining, alas.

wow