Can you skip solar and just get a battery?
Does it make sense to skip installing solar and go straight to buying a home battery? Yes it could but in short, if you want a rebate you won't be eligible.
Sam Bendat
Updated: June 17, 2025
A few newsletter readers have written in, curious if they can skip solar and go straight to a battery. With the idea of taking advantage of a plan that offers free energy in the afternoon by charging a battery for nothing, and then using that battery to offset their consumption later in the day. One major catch, though, is that nearly all the government rebates available will significantly subsidise the cost of a battery, provided your home already has solar or you are purchasing solar with the battery.
For my home a 8 kWh Sigenergy battery will save us $440 to $550 a year by buying free energy, but it all depends on the plan
Before we get into the details two personal caveats here, I only live with my partner and we don't use a huge amount of energy relative to other homes out there. So it's guaranteed that a large family would utilise the battery far more than we would, and would unlock greater savings by offsetting their consumption.
Also, the price of our energy is a bit better than other parts of the country, and cheaper energy means there are fewer costs to be saved. For example, the Ovo Free 3 peak rate, for a time of use plan, at my place is 32.78¢, but that exact same plan has a peak rate of 63.80¢ in some parts of Sydney, ouch! More on that in a minute.
Another note is that I only looked at the Ovo Free 3 Plan in this battery simulation, which has a short window of free energy from 11am to 2pm. It's possible there are better plans out there where the charging window is larger, or using wholesale pricing can provide even better rates and timing. But I tried to keep this simple.
In any case the real issue for me and smaller homes is the price of energy, rather than the availability of free energy. If your home is larger than the availability of free energy would be more important as you would probably need a larger battery.
But enough caveats, cutting to the chase a battery can save me hundreds on my energy bills per year. In the table below I looked at the two main Ovo energy rates available to my home, the single rate and the time of use rate. In the last row we can see the final cost of my energy bills if I had a battery, bought free energy, and used that energy later in the day all without a solar system on my roof.
As for the details of each rate, the single rate available is a consistent flat rate of 25.30¢ through out each day.
The time of use rate is an off-peak rate of 19.80¢ between 12am to 3pm and again at 9pm to 12am and then the peak-rate is 32.78¢ which runs from 3pm to 9pm daily. The daily supply charges are exactly the same for both plans so I didn't bother putting those in.
From the timing of those rates you might be able to see why the time of use plan is so great. If a battery is charging for free from 11am to 2pm and the peak rate kicks in at 3pm then the home can quickly benefit from the battery offsets. Meaning the battery is almost always offsetting the power consumption of the home when it's most costly, near to perfect!
Also, another interesting note, even without a battery, it's in my best interest to change to a time of use plan, a single rate plan costs me an extra $340 a year! Lucky I ran this analysis.
If I lived in the AusGrid region of Sydney then my time of use savings increases to $912 per year
Like I pointed out before, with more expensive energy comes greater savings. Within the Ausgrid area of Sydney there is quite a lot of money to be saved by avoiding the high peak rates.
The Ausgrid region also has more complex time of use rates where the pricing structure changes depending on the season, which makes it even harder to calculate the savings. But after taking into account the fluctuating rates, the overall price of energy in Sydney is still considerably more expensive than here in Melbourne.
In the table below are the comparative cost and savings.
For the same Ovo time of use plan the peak rate of 63.80¢ and the off-peak rate of 30.80¢ makes a huge difference in the overall cost of energy. Luckily the battery really shines through here, unlocking just over $900 in savings.
Expensive energy means higher savings, skipping solar and going for a battery could be worth it for some
Peak rates in the Ausgrid region kick in from 3pm in the afternoon and finish just before 9pm so it's certainly possible that a well positioned solar system can unlock significant savings for a home, especially in summer.
Also, batteries are expensive, even though solar rebates and solar feed in tariffs are starting to dry up, a solar system can still deliver great value for a home faster than most batteries can. In this case, we specifically looked at the Sigenergy 8 kWh battery, but other batteries out there might not be able to unlock the same amount of savings depending on availability and compatibility to a home's needs.
That all being said, batteries are beginning to look more attractive, as more homes install solar the amount of solar energy available in the grid continues to increase. If we reach a point where homes are turning off their solar systems to avoid export penalties, then it makes sense for some homes to skip straight to a battery and buy that cheap energy. It's a balancing act.
Then of course there is the question about EVs and their ability to be giant batteries on wheels that will power our homes in the future. It's something also worth considering as more sophisticated EV chargers become available in Australia and the prices of those start to drop.
How to find the best energy rate for your home and more
SolvingZero can remotely read your energy consumption stored in your energy meter. We can then use that data to help you figure out if an Ovo plan will actually save you money, or if there is a better plan out there for you. You could save hundreds of dollars a year within a few minutes. The whole process takes about two minutes to do online, we don't need to connect a device or visit your home.
Once connected, we sort through hundreds of energy plans available to your area to find you the best one that fits your actual consumption patterns. Including to see if the free energy from Ovo will save you money. We don't have to visit your home or connect a device, this whole analysis is done through the web. If you'd like to have your own analysis done for your home then reach out and let me know