Why the solar battery boom has failed to reduce your power bill

David Hershan, founder of Melbourne-based PortfolioEnergy, says he is being “honest and pragmatic” about why renewables are yet to help ease the cost of living crunch, saying “so far nothing has for consumers” led to lower prices.

“A large part of that is because the network costs keep going up, and if we’re building more transmission, like that’s over 50 per cent of the electricity costs for end consumers,” Mr Hershan said.

Still, he said battery energy storage was becoming the predominant form of balancing renewable energy supply globally, with infrastructure investors “piling into” battery energy storage systems (BESS).

 

The Clean Energy Council says the first quarter of 2025 was the “second best on record for investment in large-scale” BESS in Australia, with six projects worth $2.5bn securing funding to deliver an extra 1.5GW in storage capacity and 5GWh in energy output.

The council’s quarterly report found investment commitments for renewable energy generation surged 500 per cent to $9bn last year, compared with weaker investment in 2023 of $1.5bn.

Clean Energy Council chief policy and impact officer Aaron Wood said when the report was released in May that “wind and solar combined with energy storage is the lowest-cost form of electricity generation”.

“By installing more battery storage projects across the country, Australians can get the biggest benefits from renewable energy through cheaper, cleaner, more reliable power – while creating thousands of new jobs,” Mr Wood said.

Tech Council of Australia and Atlassian billionaire Scott Farquhar agrees, saying Australia’s “abundance” of renewable energy will help position the nation to become a global data centre hub and capitalise on the artificial intelligence boom.

He said Australia can build data centres for almost half the cost of the US, and without nuclear energy, and has canvassed the idea of “data centre embassies”, which would be subject to the rules of foreign countries, to attract investment from global tech titans.

But Mr Farquhar said while data centres would help underpin the energy transition, and result in a more stable and cheaper electricity grid, “how that flows through the whole network to be cheaper at the meter for a person’s power bill comes down to a whole bunch of other factors”, including competition.

 

Mr Hershan said efficiency was the key, which is where BESS software comes in, which is designed to help businesses and homeowners lower electricity bills by optimising how they use and store energy.

“Batteries don’t provide more generation. They’re just moving energy around,” he said.

“The ability to maximise revenue from these system depends on how effectively your optimisation software operates the cycling of utility scale BESS assets along with your existing portfolio of generation assets.”

Mr Hershan said PortfolioEnergy had developed the “world’s first utility scale BESS optimisation software that is built on an open-source platform”.

He said the company has struck deals with “anchor customers” in the Netherlands and US and the “objective is to increase competition and capability”.

“This is achieved by enabling BESS asset owners and operators to have ‘interrogable’ software that realises market leading revenue today and can be enhanced to meet their portfolio needs over time.

“The aim of this software is to increase BESS investment returns now and into the future for the largest operators of these assets in Australia, Europe and USA.”

This article first appeared in The Australian as Why the solar battery boom has failed to reduce your power bill