The way solar power works in Sydney these days is all of the solar energy is directed into your home to be used immediately.

By using solar power, you’re not buying electricity from the grid, and that directly reduces your power bill. And importantly with that, you’re not actually going to see the saving on your bill as a line item, it’s just gonna be a smaller bill.

Say for example you have an $800 quarterly bill, and then you go and install a good-sized solar system, it may reduce your bill by $300 a quarter. In that case, your bill will just be $500.

But then there is also a feed-in tariff. So if you don’t use the solar power in the home as it’s being generated (and you don’t have battery storage), then the solar power will go straight out to the grid and you’ll get paid a feed-in tariff by your energy retailer.

This is not a rebate, but a part of the agreement you have with your energy retailer. The FITs bounce around a bit, they’ve been up over 20 cents per kWh before, but these days they’re somewhere between 5 and 10 cents. I think a lot of retailers at the moment are around about 7 cents, a kWh.

And so obviously with the price of power at the moment being a lot more than 7 cents a kWh (and it’s on the way up), in fact in the peak billing period if you’ve got time-of-use billing, it is often well over 50 cents a kWh. So it’s much, much better to save 50 cents in that example, compared to getting a 7-cent credit on your bill.

And so what we say is we want the feed-in tariff on your bill to be as small as possible because that means you’re using most of the solar power in the home as it’s being generated.

In this example, if you’re $800 bill is now $450, we’d only want to see a $20 or $30 credit on your bill from your feed tariff because that means that you’re really making the most of the power that you’re generating.

The Feed In Tariff is only something you need to worry about if you don’t have battery storage.

The price your chosen energy retailer pays for any excess electricity generated from your solar panels is recorded as a credit on your power bill.

In NSW, solar power is fed into your home as it is generated and your household will use it first before you draw power from the grid.

This means that for every kWh of solar power used in the home you are directly saving money you’d spend on your power bill. This reduction in your power bill is the main financial benefit of solar power.

Everything else will be bought up at an agreed rate by your electricity retailer.

At the moment, most feed-in tariffs are between 5 and 10 cents per kWh, with many being about 7 cents. They bounce up and down a lot, for example in previous years they have been up over 20 cents per kWh. Typically, they are always at least 5 cents per kWh.

A solar battery allows our system designers to size up a solar system to match your 24-hour energy usage. This means you can generate much more solar power compared to just trying to cover your daytime usage.

Without battery storage, most solar homes will only be about 30-40% self-sufficient. By adding battery storage, we can completely eliminate your power bills.

Unlike solar power, battery storage offers a lot more than savings on your power bill. So when you consider if battery storage is worth it for your household, you also need to factor in:

• Blackout protection

• Virtual power plants (VPPs) – sell excess solar power at a rate much higher than standard feed-in tariffs

• The ability to run your home on solar power 24 hours a day

• Protection from future price rises for electricity

• The ability to charge an electric car, which also helps you save money on petrol

• Divesting your home from coal and gas

There are also a number of intangible benefits that our customers enjoy, such as the freedom that comes from being independent of the power grid.

We get a lot of messages from customers after long blackouts who are genuinely grateful and relieved that they could get on with life while their neighbours struggled to make do without power.

In the same way that a nice new kitchen may not have a specific ROI calculation, living in a home where you can generate, store and manage your own electricity can be worth a lot more than the strict return on investment.

Of course, not having to pay a power bill isn’t such a bad thing either!

In terms of cost, the amount you pay for a battery will depend on how much excess solar power you have, how much energy you use, and what you’re trying to achieve. Lots of factors!

But as a starting point, the price of a Tesla Powerwall is $16000 fully installed.

The Solar Panels are the heart of any solar system. Whilst there are literally thousands of brands of solar panels on the market, Solaray only selects preferred suppliers that meet our strict standards. The supplier must:

• Manufacture their own products in their own factories

• Have a local office in Australia to provide warranty and other support

• Conduct Research and Development and show a level of technology leadership

• Have been manufacturing and supplying solar panels for at least 10 years

• Have the financial and market strength to be able to honour the long term warranty

• Have commercial scale and solar farm reference sites

As with most industries that have grown rapidly in the past (such as televisions, computers, cars etc), we are starting to see a growing consolidation in the number of manufacturers and it is likely that within the next few years, we will see the industry dominated by the top handful of suppliers. For this reason alone, it is worth selecting panels from any one of the world’s leading brands rather than the smaller or newer ones.