Many home batteries installed, but barely a VPP in sight (thelemmy.club)

submitted 3 days ago by arbilp3@aussie.zone to c/environment@aussie.zone

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400,000 home batteries installed, but barely a VPP in sight

Australia recently clocked 400,000 installations under the Cheaper Home Batteries scheme, equating to 11.2 gigawatt-hours of storage introduced since the program was announced in July 2025.

“(This) means there is less gas and coal being used in the nighttime, which is reducing prices for everyone, not just those Australians who have put in Cheaper Home Batteries,” Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen said.

While these numbers are significant and represent the readiness of Australians to adopt renewable energy solutions, how these batteries are actively supporting the grid is another question.

Read on for the details: https://www.energymagazine.com.au/400000-home-batteries-installed-but-barely-a-vpp-in-sight/

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[-] CameronDev@programming.dev 5 points 3 days ago

When I looked into it, VPPs didn't make sense. Yes, you can feed back into the grid, and get a reasonable rate, but if you feed too much, you'll end up importing energy at an even higher rate, completely wiping out any potential profit.

It only makes sense if you can import and export at the exact same rate or better, and when I tried it, there was a 20c price difference.

And the "wholesale" providers are definitely not wholesale. Amber was charging 19c at 1pm today, which is peak solar generation, where the prices should be negative.

[-] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

And the “wholesale” providers are definitely not wholesale. Amber was charging 19c at 1pm today, which is peak solar generation, where the prices should be negative.

Amber is wholesale + some other parts on top but for the most part they are wholesale, the reason prices didn't go negative is because the wholesale price didn't go negative:

https://www.aemo.com.au/Energy-systems/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-NEM/Data-Dashboard-NEM

In fact there's been so much cloud these last few weeks and the big batteries are slurping up so much power now that the price goes negative far less often these days

I'm with Flow Power, 45c a kwh export between 5:30-7:30pm

https://flowpower.com.au/residential/?I_home_page

I have a script setup that if I'm over 70% battery export 4kwh which covers my daily charge and a little bit

Lately because of all the cloud I've missed a few days and I've turned it off for the next few days because of all the cloud and rain expected in Brisbane over the next 2 days

[-] brisk@aussie.zone 5 points 3 days ago

Last I checked there was no regulated standard for VPPs, so each VPP has to independently implement each inverter that they want to support.

While we're fixing that can we get P1 ports on our smart meters?

this post was submitted on 26 May 2026

6 points (80.0% liked)

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