Since the federal government introduced the Cheaper Home Batteries program, demand for batteries has surged, and it’s changing the game for renewable energy in Australia.
The biggest technology change in energy for consumers is the rapid take up of batteries, surging by 250,000, installations in a trend that mirrors the take up of rooftop solar in Australia and challenges the dominance of fossil fuels once and for all.
According to the Energy Efficiency Council’s head of policy, Jeremy Sung, the surge has had a huge impact on shifting the demands of the energy system.
Homeowners are installing batteries that average 30 kilowatt hours, which means most battery owners are covering their consumption in the evenings.
EVs and their very attractive battery capability
Another hot trend is EV deployment – especially the potential to use the batteries in EVs as storage devices, as they have the capacity of more than 60 kW hours, Sung says.
While the new generation of vehicle to grid technology (V2G) is still stuck, waiting to be certified by the Clean Energy Council since November 2024, Sung says the technology will likely be approved sometime this year, which will likely increase demand as well.
Many EVs, such as Australia’s highest selling cars from BYD, already come with vehicle to load (V2L), which can power a few appliances at a time.
One of the biggest barriers to the technology has been consumer concerns as to whether manufacturers would honour warranties if the batteries were to degrade by using vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology.
We’re in a bit of the Wild West because a lot of companies that, say, specialise in solar inverters, realise that the next frontier is then getting into a whole of home ecosystem of devices.
“Car companies obviously have an interest in making sure their product doesn’t degrade faster because of the way it’s being used, because they don’t want to be replacing batteries if they get damaged”
But “more and more manufacturers are coming on board and saying this is fine.” These include BYD, Kia, and Honda, which are offering guarantees to consumers taking part in trials for V2G technology.
Governments can play an important role here, such as embedding incentives in the NSW government’s Energy Security Safeguard or the federal government’s Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme to drive faster uptake of V2X technologies.
Consumers want to manage their own system
According to Sung, the biggest trend the EEC observes among its members is the interest in home energy management system (HEMS). But not all HEMS are created equal.
“The interesting thing is, the definition of what a home energy management system is, is a bit unclear”.
Some battery providers call the system that comes with their battery a HEMS, but it can only control the solar, battery, and EV plugged into it, whereas others include managing associated smart devices.
A trial in South Australia is a good example of what HEMS should work for consumers through the trial of its Energy Masters program, where 500 homes was provided with a device that links and manages the use of solar, battery, car, and smart appliances, such as hot water systems and airconditioning systems.
The system makes decisions to optimise energy use within a home, including what energy to use, when to use it, when it should export to the grid and when it should import to best reduce carbon emissions – with no disruption to the home or occupants.
It’s still a Wild West out there with interoperability
However, according to the latest findings from the SA Power Networks, which was delivering the trial, the biggest obstacle in rolling out this technology continues to be interoperability. Sung explains that most devices are built with different communication protocols that would otherwise never communicate with each other.
“Right now, I would say we’re in a bit of the Wild West because a lot of companies that, say, specialise in solar inverters, realise that the next frontier is then getting into a whole of home ecosystem of devices.”
If you use the cloud based app from the manufacturer, you’ll get a 15 minute delay. If you’re trying to participate in the energy market, you need much more real-time data to decide if you want to export or not based on the price of energy at the time
EV and appliance manufacturers, as well as tech companies, have seen the same opportunities, meaning every industry is now developing its own ecosystem, Sung says.
“What it means is it’s really hard for households to navigate this journey. At the moment, this is very nascent and requires a lot of work to make sure that devices can communicate with each other.”
And then households also need to pick between a physical HEMS, one that is installed in the home, or a cloud based option.
Because there is uncertainty around which technology and communication protocol will “win the battle, people at the front end of the adoption curve are having to do a lot of hacks to make it work.”
Sung, a self-confessed tech tinkerer and “nerd”, is using open source versions of HEMS to develop a smart system that controls his entire house.
He says the process is time consuming, difficult and “you have to love it” to commit the effort necessary to have a smart home.
Smart homes need accurate, timely data
The discussions around data privacy also apply in the consumer space.
Sung says households need to think about how much data they want big tech companies to access and potentially sell off. He says he joined the community that was trying to develop local solutions because he wanted to “get off the cloud” and take control of his own devices and energy use.
Set up at his place is live data from the solar inverter being sent to him over Wi Fi with exact outputs from his solar panels.
“If you use the cloud based app from the manufacturer, you’ll get a 15 minute delay. If you’re trying to participate in the energy market, you need much more real-time data to decide if you want to export or not based on the price of energy at the time.”
The platform Sung uses, Home Assistant, is linked to an Australian energy retailer through an API (application programming interface), as well as to the airconditioner so it can be turn on, off or pre cool or pre heat his home based on energy prices and availability of solar, thanks to the devices having Wi-Fi chips.
The process requires software modification, but the “local community has stepped up and written things to access data” from these appliances.
For appliances and aircon without Wi-Fi, Sung uses IR blasters, which are essentially a box that can be taught to turn appliances on and off through remote control.
Paired with low-cost temperature and humidity sensors he gets from IKEA, Sung said the setup has been helpful in regulating the room temperature to perfectly line up with what his newborn is wearing.
He’s has installed devices behind every light switch, under floor heating and an extractor fan that communicates over Wi-Fi or through a device called Zigbee, allowing the devices to turn on and off based on humidity levels, or turn off the lights if they’re left on.
His blinds are also automated to come up and down depending on sunrise, sunset and whether it needs to be shut during the hottest time of the day to keep the air cool in the house.
“There are a few examples of things you can do relatively easily if you’re a big nerd.”
The problem of so many apps
Consumers also face the issue that each device comes with its own app.
“You open your phone just to charge your car. I have a section of car charging apps, and looking at it now, I have 17 apps, and that is for the different chargers that are available across Australia right now.
“I’ve got an app for the blinds, for the lights, and for the airconditioner. There are solar monitoring apps; a third party one, and every solar inverter produces its own app as well.” Which is why hobbyists are developing their own solution to create “one place to bring it all together.”
Taming the Wild West
In more positive news for interoperability, Sung said Matter, a communication protocol generally found in Wi-Fi, is gaining momentum, with big tech companies such as Google, Apple and Amazon jumping on the bandwagon in implementing it in their devices.
“If big companies do it, then it might help create certainty where future appliance manufacturers might think ‘if that’s going to win, we’ll build Matter into our devices’.”
Sung adds, however, that the change to Matter then makes the future of Zigbee-compatible devices uncertain, meaning wider adoption of these technologies is still “a few more years away”.
Australian standards are not yet there
There are currently standardised protocols for smart devices in Australia, and having a government provide one could be an answer to standardising the devices.
“I do empathise with the government to some extent on this front, because technology changes so quickly, you don’t want to pick a winner that might end up being obsolete. There is potentially some benefit in waiting out and just seeing what the market decides will be the standard.”
And the risk doesn’t just apply to government. Consumers could choose one path but find the technology obsolete if the market opts for something else down the track.
For example, early adopters of V2G technology using CHAdeMO, a fast-charging standard for EVs, are now finding themselves with issues as the market moves towards using the combined charging system coming out soon.
The use of AI
While currently people are programming algorithms, the next frontier for HEMS is the potential to utilise AI – which early adopter Google Nest is attempting to perfect. AI would allow systems to learn about the habits of a household, preferred temperatures, and how demands change over time.
But there are two problems, whether the AI is hosted locally or over the cloud: allowing information such as facial, object identification and access to smart locks to be stored online in large servers and, if stored locally, how data and energy-intensive the processing would be.
The biggest resource drain with agentic AI is the interactive side of it, where it needs to understand your requests through human speech patterns, rather than speaking to it in its own programming language.
“Coming down the track will be low cost, high efficiency, local AI models that can run complicated processing requests like voice conversations, learn from your habits and make their own decisions on when energy use should take place,” Sung says.
New markets on the horizon
Sung says there’s potential for massive markets to evolve to solve these problems over the next few years.
He says there needs to be an evolving market for energy services to help people do this sort of thing, “because it’s clear that even if interoperability standards are sorted, there are a lot of households who won’t be able to benefit from these things without some assistance.”
Once the standards are set, it will spur a new market for energy services companies to cater to “this new and growing market.
“It’s likely to be one of the billions of dollars’ new market developing in the next few years, given everything is smart these days because of the low cost of producing sensors, it’s just waiting to be taken advantage of [once these barriers are removed].”