The Write Direction: It’s a battery, stupid

ONE of the more famous political statements of our lifetime – “It’s the economy, stupid” – was delivered by political strategist James Carville, who was working on Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 Presidential Election campaign.

The catchphrase meant that the key concern of US voters in the election was the state of the economy.

I think this statement can be applied to Chris Bowen’s latest announcement about renewable energy.

Last week the Albanese Government introduced a new retail energy offer that unlocks free solar for homes during the day, regardless of whether they have solar panels.

The initiative, Solar Sharer, will be introduced next year through the Default Market Offer, requiring retailers to offer free electricity to households for at least three hours in the middle of the day when solar generation is at its peak.

Free power in the middle of the day!

Bowen sees this as a sign his energy policies are effective.

My attitude?

Why give it away when the answer is to send it to batteries to use later.

The massive increase in the price of electricity to both domestic and commercial users is becoming more of an issue to voters, particularly when they realise that the government’s subsidy on power prices paid to household consumers will be reduced and then eliminated in the near future.

This will have the effect of having electricity prices revert to the so-called market production cost, which will again increase electricity prices at an ever-faster rate.

How will that go down with consumers already feeling the cold economic wind when it comes to their monthly or quarterly power bills?

How could our politicians have forgotten how and why the community needed to be heavily subsidised into getting rooftop solar in the first place?

Are they also forgetting how successful that enterprise has become?

The latest estimates are that one third of all of Australia’s residences have rooftop solar.

Have they easily forgotten what the whole deal involved?

Once you have rooftop solar installed, the next stage is to fit a battery to your array so that this excessive production of electricity, at a time when you are not consuming it, needs to be diverted to a solar battery for nighttime use.

The answer is “It’s a battery, stupid”.

And isn’t there a reasonably new scheme being promoted by government for the heavily subsidised production and installation of batteries for our homes’ solar supply?

By John BLACKBOURN