Australians have been installing solar panels at a rapid pace for years. Now that investment is paying off.
The Australian Government announced this week that electricity customers in three states will receive up to three hours of free electricity per day from July 2026.
Solar power generation has experienced a boom in Australia in recent years. Rooftop solar installation costs approximately $840 (U.S.) per kilowatt of capacity before rebates, which is about one-third of what U.S. households pay. As a result, more than one in three Australian homes now have solar panels installed on their roofs.
“We’re now at a point where we can share that power with more Australians,” Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said in an Instagram video announcing the policy.
The solar sharer plan will be available to everyone in New South Wales, South Australia and south-east Queensland. More regions will be added later. Households do not need to have rooftop solar installed to qualify, but they must have a smart meter installed. The plan will help people who live in apartments or don’t have a suitable rooftop benefit from neighbor panels, Bowen said.
The government has not said which daytime hours will be affected, but the most likely time is between 11am and 2pm. Customers will have to opt in to the new plan, which is intended to encourage people to shift their energy use to peak solar power hours. Smart appliances can help people make the most of this by allowing them to charge their EVs or do a load of laundry.
Free power hours “also help the grid at night, because it means moving electricity use from the nighttime hours, when coal and gas are more used and electricity costs higher, to the daytime hours, when it runs on renewable energy,” Bowen said.
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Shifting the load would also reduce the need for grid-scale battery storage, which Australia is installing to absorb surplus solar power.
Australia’s plan is not the first to experiment with periods of free electricity due to peak renewable electricity production. Octopus Energy in the UK offers an agile plan that occasionally provides free electricity to customers, although not as regularly as in Australia.
In many places, solar power has become so cheap that electricity is effectively free for at least part of the day. The midday peak in solar power generation can cause electricity bills to go negative, which may result in utility companies paying customers for energy usage.
Australia is generally considered a sunny country, with large areas receiving as much sunlight as the southwestern United States. But most solar panels are installed near populated areas, which receive as much sunlight as most areas in the United States or southern Europe, suggesting that widespread adoption of solar power could lower energy prices in many parts of the world.
