Australia to give away free electricity – and it sounds legit. How much would 273,000 GwH cost?

Photo above - the Peak Downs coal mine in Australia, one of the largest on Earth. Australia just announced plans to give away free electricity from solar panels.

The land down under (Oz, Australia) has 80 BILLION tons of coal. Guess what they have more of? Sunlight. The nation’s pivot to solar panels is paying off. There’s so much solar power, the government plans to offer free solar electricity (see link below).

Of course, there’s a catch. It’s only free when the sun is shining. But still . . . sounds good to me.

There’s a bunch of other fine print which Aussies will probably ignore while playing with their Fosters and Rambo knives, too. The “sunlight” rule apparently applies only to PEAK daylight, when solar rays are crashing down vertically. Not midmorning, or late afternoon, when shadows are longer. And then there’s something called “negative wholesale rates”, which sounds especially diabolical. But still . . .

The obvious next question is – can we buy a battery to store this peak/free electricity to use during the other 20 hours a day? Yes we can – but those things aren’t free. Elon Musk sold Australia the world's largest battery array a few years ago. But that gear is waaaay expensive, and the government hasn’t come back for a re-order. Homeowners might be a better target for some casket sized battery pack that fits in the laundry room.

How much does a Tesla Powerwall cost? When you ask Amazon, they claim to have “100 results” but none of the products are actually Powerwalls made by Tesla. Most are car charging stations.

Copilot found a Powerwall 3 on sale for $15,400, including shipping, handling, and installation (probably not to Australia though). That’s $1,140 per KwH of storage. Will you need more than 13.39 KwH per day, in the 20 hours when government solar power isn’t free? I’ll leave that question to readers with advanced math degrees. Also, any questions about the half-life of a Powerwall, as it’s battery gradually sheds capacity while time goes by. But still . . .

Cheaper batteries are needed. They don’t necessarily need to use the popular lithium-ion-cadmium-manganese-unobtanium recipe, which relies on slave labor to extract rare earths from African pit mines. EV car batteries are only expensive because they need to be petite enough so your car won’t take a half hour to go from zero to 60. If you’re installing a home battery in your basement, it could weigh 8 tons instead of 800 pounds, and you wouldn’t care.

Someone could write a 2,000-word column on “non-EV batteries.” Things like pumping water back up INTO lakes, to turn the turbines later. Or concrete weights suspended from gears. Superheated liquid brine mixes.

The good news is that solar is going to provide free electrons, 4 hours a day, in Australia. What does Australia plan to do with all the coal they no longer need to burn? Probably sell it to China and India, which use as much coal annually as the entire rest of planet Earth combined.

I’m just sayin’ . . .




Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

The Actual Cost of a Tesla Powerwall: Is it Worth it? (2025 Data)