One Year of Australian Solar + Battery - Savings Galore!
On September 9, 2024, I paid a lot of money to get solar panels installed on my house. It included a battery. This post serves as a financial breakdown of my solar system after one year, including everything I did to maximise my return on my investment along the way.
The solar system and battery itself is installed in a location in Southern Australia, Adelaide, in its Northern Suburbs. My roof is east/ west facing, and doesn't have complicated topology. Almost all parts of the roof are covered in solar panels, meaning I get good generation throughout the day.
AI image, not my actual house :D
First, the system itself, from my installer's documentation:
Canadian Solar TOPHiKu6 440W * 24 Panels
Fronius Primo GEN24 8.0 Inverter
Tesla Powerwall 2 Battery
For this system, I paid $22,500 AUD, which on the day of payment, would have been equivalent to the following in other currencies:
| Currency | Value |
|---|---|
| USD | 14,985 |
| EUR | 13.500 |
| GBP | 11,200 |
| BTC | ~0.2277 |
Now, there's a great little benefit of the Fronius Solar App. It tells me how much I've saved directly by combining the cost for time of use, export value, which gets me a baseline. The only problematic calculation is that of the battery savings.
This means, that over the lifetime of the system, the combined benefit of energy used from the panels, and energy exported to the grid is valued at:
Now this doesn't include the "value" from the battery - which is only available from the Tesla app, which is frankly, garbage. It won't allow a daily (over the course of a year) export of data, so instead I have averaged battery usage over the year by the month, in KwH, then can figure out how much it saved based on the peak and overnight rate - which is when the battery is used most often - when the sun ain't shining.
Firstly, though, in 366 days, the battery has delivered 2565 KwH to my home, which is pretty good for a 13.5 KwH appliance! That's approximately 190 full charge cycles, though in reality, I do not believe the battery has ever gone completely flat. Given that the warranty claims 70% capacity will still be available after 10 years (or 37000 KwH of use) - I'm only 6% through that in 10% of the warranty period, which means my battery should have higher than 70% usable capacity by the end of the ten year warranty.
Anyway, some rough calculations on what the battery has saved me since installation: about $1019.
Savings Summary
So, that means in a single year:
$1019 (battery savings)
PLUS
$3186.81 (self consumption and exports)
EQUALS
$4205.81 saved
$350 a month I didn't need to pay to power companies. Electricity is EXPENSIVE in Australia.
I've "paid off" 18.6% of the solar system in a single year. But the savings don't end there. I took advantage of several offers by switching electricity companies throughout the year - and joined a "virtual power plant" to get a state government rebate.
Other Incentives
| Rebate | Value |
|---|---|
| State Government Rebate for VPP | $780 |
| Retailer Incentive for VPP | $200 |
| Grocery Gift Card for Joining VPP | $200 |
So there's another $1180 that I got as an advantage from joining (and swapping) power companies throughout the year. The power company I am with at the moment also gives me membership to a local supermarket's loyalty program which gives 10% off a shopping trip a month, up to $50 - so if I spend $550 in a month on groceries, that's up to another $600 of cost offset - but that's not realistic, just another perk of me turning the screws on the energy companies and capitalism however I can. :)
Payoff, After A Year
So that takes the value of the savings from my system to:
$ 4205.81 (Energy costs not incurred)
PLUS
$ 1180.00 (Cash Incentives)
EQUALS
$ 5385.81 Cost Offset
So, taking that into account, in a single year, the solar system has been 23% offset in a single year! I'm dreaming! :)
Some Fun Facts Over the Year:
Total Consumption: 8,832.7037 KwH
Average Daily Consumption: 24 KwH
Total Generation: 15,037 KwH
Average Daily Generation: 41 KwH
Total Energy Sent to the Grid: 6,639 KwH
Average Daily Exports: 18.13 KwH
Days with the highest Production:
| Date DD.MM.YYYY | Production (KwH) |
|---|---|
| 20.12.2024 | 75.54532 |
| 07.12.2024 | 74.74506 |
| 31.12.2024 | 74.73408 |
| 25.12.2024 | 74.52161 |
| 13.01.2025 | 72.95112 |
| 03.01.2025 | 72.89446 |
| 10.01.2025 | 72.64229 |
| 24.12.2024 | 71.55681 |
| 19.12.2024 | 71.5269 |
| 18.01.2025 | 69.90382 |
Days with the lowest Production:
| Date DD.MM.YY | Production (KwH) |
|---|---|
| 25.07.2025 | 4.01092 |
| 25.08.2025 | 6.91468 |
| 07.06.2025 | 8.11552 |
| 09.07.2025 | 8.23401 |
| 14.06.2025 | 8.40225 |
| 04.08.2025 | 9.87222 |
| 09.09.2024 | 11.75145 |
| 29.07.2025 | 13.04234 |
| 05.07.2025 | 13.20226 |
| 06.06.2025 | 13.75931 |
Days with the highest Consumption:
| Date DD.MM.YYYY | Total Consumption (KwH) |
|---|---|
| 27.01.2025 | 71.4330742 |
| 09.03.2025 | 62.5309639 |
| 25.12.2024 | 62.2266083 |
| 04.02.2025 | 60.9784631 |
| 03.02.2025 | 60.0035103 |
| 13.01.2025 | 59.3321175 |
| 02.02.2025 | 58.0100725 |
| 16.12.2024 | 56.5546547 |
| 12.03.2025 | 56.5112094 |
| 10.03.2025 | 53.7663742 |
Days with the lowest Consumption:
| Date DD.MM.YYYY | Total Consumption (KwH) |
|---|---|
| 30.08.2025 | 10.0983375 |
| 09.09.2024 | 11.0464514 |
| 14.06.2025 | 11.3264533 |
| 21.09.2024 | 12.6355739 |
| 12.05.2025 | 12.9461578 |
| 24.09.2024 | 12.9719503 |
| 23.11.2024 | 13.0055639 |
| 05.07.2025 | 13.2402639 |
| 11.05.2025 | 13.2518053 |
| 21.04.2025 | 13.3445697 |
TLDR: If you live in Australia, and don't have solar panels and a battery, and have the roof space, just do it. It is a no brainer. Get a set up that enables you to have electricity when there's a power outage, too - with a battery. In this year, my battery gave me power while there was none in the neighbourhood for a period of three hours.
As power prices increase in the coming years, this set up is going to pay itself off marvelously. It will also ensure that I have power available to my house to keep my food cold, and my house comfortable if there are extended outages, given the delta between my consumption and generation.
I just wish that I could afford another two batteries to store the excess power, and then I think I would be able to be entirely off grid! :) If I had, though, purchased BTC, I would have made a larger profit. I prefer energy sovereignty as a first step. :)
I didn’t realize solar could pay itself off this fast. The fact that you covered nearly a quarter of the cost in just one year is amazing. This makes me want to convince my parents to get a system, especially with electricity prices getting higher every year.
It very much depends on where in the world you are. In Australia it is a very different equation to the rest of the world. We get a LOT of solar energy, and the infrastructure and supply chain for solar components is pretty good (most of it, of course, comes from China) - but our homes are also typically large (and slightly pitched) which makes for ideal roof space for solar installations.
you guys have huge squirrels in your yard!
They grow up to six feet tall! :)
You mean you don't have baby kangaroos in your yard. :(
Seriously though, that's incredible. Bills suck.
Not in the yard for this house, but our old place backed onto a reserve and we'd see a few Koalas every now and then :)
I've heard not to let the cuteness fool you, that they are incredibly mean...
They're named "drop bears" for a reason :)
I do!!!!! We had roos on the street yesterday with baby joeys in their pouches!
Wow! I was just kidding. Must be a fascinating place to live!
Very hard to make Solar pay for itself here in Washington state, our electricity is very cheap and with new administration getting rid of solar incentives at the end of this year, it will make Solar a complete no go here...
It isn't viable everywhere, but down here, it is more than viable. There's a saying in solar sales pitches here in Australia - "the best time to install was yesterday" - but there is a constant flow of better, more efficient and more powerful products - to the point where if there's a fault with a system, it is often better value to rip the whole thing down and put a new one in.
That sounds like it's working really well for you. I think my system will have a longer payback period, but it's still worth doing up here in the UK where we don't get as much sunshine. A battery makes a big different if you can charge it on cheap rate. Do you run a/c much? That is something we don't have in our house, but then it doesn't get really hot for much of the year.
I will have to run the numbers for mine when we reach a full calendar year. I know we are paying out a lot less each month anyway.
!BEER
Yes, in summer time air conditioning is the single largest consumer of energy in the house. Our reverse cycle system can use up to 4KwH constantly, so in summer time, we use the house as a thermal battery to store as much "cold" in exchange for the sunlight falling on our panels.
It gets set to a timer, based on solar generation and sunrise and a fee other variables. I have smart shutters / blinds that auto close when the external ambient reaches a threshold.
As we now only get 2 cents a kilowatt hour for exports, it makes sense to use as much of the power generated as possible.
We generally need to be smarter with energy. Buildings can be designed to need less a/c and heating. Using solar to power the cooling ought to be standard as you tend to need it when the sun shines.
We get a much better export rate, so I am happy to feed the grid. Our solar gain is reducing now as we head for winter, but I think this will be a good year overall.
Rumours have it that we'll start getting charged to send our exports to the grid soon, so people with compatible inverters (like mine) will just turn off the grid export function. Good luck, grid. :P
That's crazy! They need to encourage people to get solar if they want to save on building new generating capacity. Is it the coal lobby using their muscle?
We seem to be lucky here in that respect.
We run air con during the summer in the middle of the day, but unless it's stinking hot with no breeze at night, we just have the windows open. With the solar, it's not that expensive to do that but I'd never run a/c with no solar power!
Powering a/c with solar just seems like a natural solution as it will save you money. We have to rely on more passive cooling techniques when it gets warm here. There is a/c at the office.
They don't put awnings on windows anymore. Its a shame.
I'm desperate to get solar panels on the new roof but we may have to put a new roof on first, including insulation! I run all my appliances during the day and it really saves us heaps. These days the batteries are better and more affordable as well. With our sun, there's no excuse!
If you have a partially shaded roof (which I think you may, given your prior house tour) - 1) fix the roof. 2) look into micro inverters. They will generate more power with partial shade (like at my old house)
TLDR, I know a lot, pls consult me to make sure you GET THE BEST.
This is a wise and practical idea.This posts are really helpful to those who consider solar.
23% offset in a single year is probably a bigger return than most other investments :) At first I thought, your house is so nice :)
Thank you, but sadly, no, just some AI generated kangaroos. We have quite a small garden here, and no deck, and no yard the size depicted in the image :P
I will expect that this time next year, my power consumption will be up - my wife now works from home, and I've added a hive witness node to my office. I expect that as appliances age, they will become less efficient, and use more power.
The oldest appliance we have is the fridge - and it is a monolith of black glass, so probably not the most efficient thing, but it would likely take years to offset the purchase of a new fridge by its power savings, so it will keep running until it stops working.
@tegoshei - you wanted to know about my solar? :)
Thanks for remembering...
Installing it is indeed pretty pricey, but you'll gain back more in the long run. This is amazing!!! If I had the money to have it installed, I'd definitely invest on it... Thanks again!!!
PS: I was low-key hoping that was your real house, and kangaroos were randomly hopping around. XD
Have a good one!!! 😁✨
I'll post another update in a year's time :P
More savings by then... And more batteries to store the power... 😁
A solar panel system with a battery is definitely a worthwhile investment, but unfortunately, with the absurd prices we have to pay here in the Netherlands, it's not affordable for everyone. And even if your energy bill could be lowered by consuming less, there's another bill on the other side; if you feed energy back into the grid, you have to pay for that too these days. They can't make it more attractive in the Netherlands, but they can make it more expensive and complicated.
Australia will soon have the same scheme - pay to feed into the grid. Like dumping your waste (I enjoyed your post on that, btw) - luckily, when that becomes a thing, I can set my inverter to not export to the grid.
I see it as energy sovereignty long term. Like having a herb garden, or chickens that can give you eggs. The only thing I can harvest from my garden currently are chillis, but we have a pomegramte, mandarin and mulberry tree brewing.
I completely understand, and if we could, we definitely would. Unfortunately, it's not financially feasible here, also because we live in an old rental house with a thatched roof. But while we can't install solar panels, we do have room for trees, and this year we've had a few apples from our own garden, as well as raspberries, gooseberries, mulberries, strawberries, black currants, and blackberries. Now we still have runner beans, tomatoes (snack tomatoes), vine tomatoes, and hot peppers growing. At least, we hope they're hot. Lol. Sadly, our summer has truly come to an end, and we're back to full-blown autumn weather.
Glad you enjoyed the post I wrote on people throwing waste everywhere. I don't enjoy seeing it ... LOL.
Use the solar energy to mine crypto, duuuuude! :-D I was thinking about getting solar after the energy crisis here last year, but then again, it would never pay off. Energy is just too cheap here, with around 0.10 - 0.15 USD per kw/h. My latest bill was $50 for 363 kWh with all the extra payments, just paid 5min ago. And the prices for panels and installation are almost the same, while the quality of both is probably not as good. So, a pass until now.
I could do that, too - there will be an excess in summer. I used to run a heater (it was a computer) made of GPUs in the bedroom because it was more profitable than a real heater :P
Now that's funny... I was thinking about getting the solar system to mine coins, that would make sense for the spending. But hard to get the equipment here 😅
Uh, hello, galactic police? We have an ambitious madman at large, trying to use a star and several planets to do a pump and dump scheme. We fear he's going to Alpha Centauri or Andromeda too.
As someone who lives on a continent that was based on a prisoner colony, you do know what is done with snitches, don't you?
And I never pump 'n' dump. I hodl until the end. Even the shit coins here on hive. I'm a hoarder.