Power Shift: Inside Australia’s Energy Transition

And of course, Australia leads the world in the uptake of rooftop solar-

Mm

... and, and household batteries.

Um, what's your take on the opportunities, but maybe also the challenges that this presents?

[lip smack] Well, I mean, the opportunities are, are still significant.

Like we do, we do look at that part of the transition and, and recognize it and celebrate it rightly as being, uh, a world-leading achievement to, uh, be at the point where we're, we're pretty close to two in five households, uh, with, with solar.

And just, uh, in the last 14 months through the Cheaper Home Battery program where we've seen 500,000, um, batteries, distributed storage become part of the picture, which we need to soak up all that abundant, um, solar energy and redeploy it, uh, at the peak time.

You know, Australia has in, in quick time gone to number three, uh, in the world in total deployed battery capacity, behind only China and the US, and on a per capita basis, we're number one.

So we're number one for distributed solar, and we're number one for distributed, um, battery storage.

Um, but if you're at two in five, you have to ask yourself, "What about the other three in five?" And we do recognize that at the moment the uptake of some of that technology in, in a category like owner-occupied single detached dwellings-

Yeah

... is very, very high.

Mm-hmm.

The uptake, uh, for, for renters, the uptake in, in apartments and, and strata-

Hmm

... accommodation is significantly lower.

Yeah.

So we see that very clearly.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and we're trying to address that with some programs like, um, Solar for Apartments.

Mm.

Uh, and, and considering how changes in technology...

I mean, whilst I've been here in Sydney just last couple of days, I went and visited, uh, an innovative business in, uh, Jerome Laxale's electorate where, where they are developing a sort of portable battery storage, which is something that a, a rental household might be able to make use of in time-

Hmm

... to come.