00:00Alan Benn is an early adopter of all things electric.
00:06He bought his EV a decade ago and installed rooftop solar 20 years ago when the costs
00:13were high, but so were the government rebates.
00:17Someone has to buy these sort of things early on to develop the industry, to start getting
00:23the price down.
00:24Since then, solar power has gone gangbusters.
00:27About one in three Australian households are turning sunshine into energy.
00:31Many of those people did it to save money, some because they wanted to stick it up an
00:36energy company and some because they generally wanted to make a contribution to climate change
00:41or some combination of all three.
00:43The output from rooftop solar is now so significant, the system can struggle to cope.
00:49This was a new problem that maybe we should have seen coming, but because Australia was
00:54so far and is so far ahead of the rest of the world, we're the first ones to see this
00:58problem emerging seriously.
01:00It's particularly challenging in Western Australia, the world's biggest isolated electricity
01:05grid, because unlike the interconnected East Coast, WA has to manage supply issues on its
01:11own.
01:12We don't have the ability to borrow from our neighbours or indeed to give them the benefit
01:16of our excess supply at times when we have it.
01:18WA's main electricity grid powers about 1.2 million homes and businesses.
01:25Household solar is already its single biggest source of generation, supplying up to 76 per
01:31cent of demand at times.
01:33And it really very much is an opportunity.
01:35Storage of electricity is really the silver bullet.
01:38Governments are building large-scale batteries like this one in Kwinana, south of Perth,
01:43which stores enough energy to power 160,000 homes for up to two hours.
01:49But small batteries have a big role to play too, as demonstrated by the outer Perth suburbs
01:55of Harrisdale and Piara Waters.
01:57Here locals were given incentives like subsidised batteries and power credits to take part in
02:03a recently completed trial.
02:05The three-year trial here in Perth's southern suburbs showed that harnessing and coordinating
02:11consumer energy resources like rooftop solar and home batteries could save the state $920
02:18million over the next decade.
02:21In our studies that we do for the national electricity market, effective coordination
02:26again of these consumer energy resources could save literally billions of dollars of investment
02:30in large-scale infrastructure in our system.
02:33Some people are taking matters into their own hands.
02:36The latest addition being these two 5 kilowatt-hour batteries.
02:40Alan Benn recently bought a battery system for his inner-city Perth home at a cost of
02:44$12,500.
02:46The only con is really the cost.
02:48It's a huge cost because there is no subsidy at all.
02:51You're paying the full price for that battery.
02:53Stubbornly high prices mean the uptake of home batteries has been slow, particularly
02:58in WA.
03:00If everyone had batteries, it could potentially eliminate that very high peak in early evening
03:05electricity prices, and that would benefit everyone.
03:09Energy and Climate Action Minister Rhys Whitby, welcome to Stateline WA.
03:12Great to be here.
03:13Other governments subsidise the cost of household batteries.
03:17Why don't you?
03:18Well, we'll look at it, but it's certainly an important component of the mix.
03:23As you know, we've had great take-up of solar rooftop in Western Australia, where it ranks
03:29one of the leading jurisdictions on the planet.
03:32Every year we have about 25,000 units, which creates enough energy to replace two gas-fired
03:40power stations, about 200 megawatts, going onto the top of roofs across Western Australia.
03:49The flip side of that is if you're producing all this energy, then the ability for households
03:54to store it is important.
03:56We were hoping that the price would come down as rooftop solar has come down, but of course
04:02the world is trying to decarbonise and build batteries, and so those price pressures have
04:06stayed high.
04:07So you'll look at it?
04:08Is that this term of government, or are you going to make it an election commitment?
04:11We're certainly actively looking at the options, and I think it's important also to realise
04:15if we do move in that direction, and I'm supporting a strong consideration of that, that we look
04:21after struggling households, because not everyone can put their own money up front and be part
04:27of a rebate scheme, the types that exist in other states.
04:31So we'll look at what we do for public housing tenants as well.
04:34So should it be means tested if there's a subsidy?
04:37Oh, look, I'm not saying we should means test it, but I just think we need to focus on that
04:41equity consideration.
04:43Cost of living is an issue that everyone is concerned about, so if you have the means
04:47and there's that incentive, you will invest yourself, and we should encourage that, but
04:52there are families who simply don't have any means to invest at all in this new technology.
04:58How much longer will the government keep paying people for their solar power?
05:01Well, we want to continue to do so, but the problem has been that that great uptake of
05:06rooftop solar presents a risk to the current network, because it can overpower the network.
05:12The network can only handle so much power going in, and if lots of people have their
05:17own rooftop solar, so the demand is falling at a time when supply is increasing, and that
05:24can be a real harmful issue for the network, so that has to be managed carefully.
05:29But we're still paying for rooftop solar, and we want to continue to look at new ways
05:33to incentivise and to pay people.
05:36So there is the option of a campaign where we manage people's private energy resources,
05:43their rooftop solar and batteries, and increasingly EVs that can actually feed into the grid,
05:49which is a future option we're looking at, and if you manage that carefully, it does
05:55a couple of things.
05:56It means that we're able to pay consumers more money for the services they provide to
06:01the network, but it also means the great democratisation of energy.
06:05You know, in the old days there was one coal-fired power station, one network, and the customer,
06:13and usually that was a government utility.
06:15It's a very different market as you know today, but it also means if we're using the resources
06:20that are in people's homes, appliances, rooftop solar, batteries, EVs, it means we're not
06:27having to call on the public purse to build major infrastructure like transmission and
06:32generation, new power stations.
06:34So those are required, but we don't have to spend the extra that we otherwise would if
06:40we don't take advantage of the resources in people's homes.
06:44That's a benefit to taxpayers, but it's also a benefit for those householders because we
06:49can pay them for that privilege.
06:51Minister Rhys Whitby, thank you very much for your time.
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