evibe News
What is new and worth knowing in Australian solar, batteries, EVs and electric living.
Draft rule would fund 14,000 kerbside and regional EV chargers
The energy rule maker has released a draft rule to unlock the $40 million Accelerating EV Charging Program, with about $1 a year added to a typical household bill.
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Home batteries now outpace rooftop solar installs, CEC data shows
The Clean Energy Council's latest half-yearly report finds 153 batteries went in for every 100 rooftop solar systems in the first six months of 2026.
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Victoria's Midday Power Saver free power plan starts 1 October
Victorian households with a smart meter can now opt in to three free hours of electricity a day, with regulated rates and consumer protections outside the free window.
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Australia now has 24 EVs for every public charger, new index finds
A global report has flagged Australia's charging network as under strain just as electric cars outsold petrol and diesel models for the first time in a single month.
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Australia's biggest battery finally hits full 850 megawatt output
The Waratah Super Battery in NSW briefly reached its full rated output for the first time since a transformer failure sidelined part of the plant last year.
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Large scale solar hits new state records as curtailment nearly halves
NSW, Queensland and Victoria all posted record utility solar output in August, and the share being switched off by the grid fell sharply from a year earlier.
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NSW cuts battery costs by up to 40 percent for businesses and apartments from 1 September
New South Wales has switched its battery incentives back on and widened them to shops, factories and apartment blocks, with discounts of 20 to 40 percent on systems up to 30 megawatt hours from 1 September 2026.
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EVs are now one in five new cars sold. The charging network is the weak link
Australians bought 23,510 battery electric cars in July, 21.7 percent of a record month for new car sales. Researchers warn the public charging network is not being managed to keep up.
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AEMO's 2026 grid outlook: reliability improves, but the 2030s are the real test
The energy market operator's latest reliability report says the grid is on track through the rest of this decade, but only if about 40 gigawatts of renewable and storage projects get built on schedule.
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South Australia will wind 100,000 rooftop solar systems down to zero on 25 August
On Tuesday 25 August, SA Power Networks runs its annual test of a capability that lets it remotely curtail rooftop solar. About 100,000 systems take part, for under an hour.
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Batteries now set the power price one time in six, the energy regulator says
The Australian Energy Regulator's new market report shows big batteries set the national wholesale power price 16.3 percent of the time in 2025, up from about 1 percent in 2021.
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The solar rebate is about to get ten times bigger, just not for your roof
From 1 October the small scale solar rebate will cover systems up to 1MW instead of 100kW, cutting roughly 20 percent off the cost of mid-sized solar on factories, farms, schools and shopping centres.
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Aldi Solar lands in Perth and Adelaide. Read the fine print first.
Solar and battery packages from $7,499 with the federal rebate already built into the price. The advertised number is not always the final number, and Aldi is not the company doing the work.
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Perth just got a fast charger that keeps working when the grid does not
A privately funded 250kW charger in Cockburn runs off its own rooftop solar and a 240kWh battery, with the grid connection kept purely as backup. It is reported to be the first of its kind in Australia.
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Australia's home battery rebate passes 500,000 installations
The federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program has now helped more than half a million households install a battery, with about 2,000 systems going in every working day.
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Home battery rebate about to crack half a million installs, Bowen says
The Cheaper Home Batteries scheme hit 487,000 installed systems by late July and is adding about 2,000 a day, putting it on track to pass half a million in August, more than four years ahead of the original 2030 target.
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EnergyAustralia admits breaching the rules on free midday power
EnergyAustralia has admitted it broke the Electricity Retail Code by taking 33 days too long to offer the new Solar Sharer plan, and has signed a court enforceable undertaking with the ACCC.
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Solar just set winter records in almost every state, and batteries are soaking up the excess
Large scale solar hit record highs in every mainland state but South Australia during July, and curtailment fell sharply as more battery capacity came online to absorb the surplus.
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China's rooftop mist cooling, explained
Videos of water pouring off apartment rooftops in Shanxi Province have gone viral this week. It is not rain and it is not a leak. It is evaporative cooling, the same physics as sweat, deployed at the scale of a whole street.
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Is balcony solar coming to Australia?
The push is building fast, but true plug-and-play kits are still not legal here. Where it stands, and what you can legally do today.
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Home battery rebate shrinks for big batteries
The federal battery rebate has been reworked. The pool grows, but the discount now tapers hard once a battery goes past 14kWh.
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Amber's vehicle-to-grid trial triples to 1,000 homes
ARENA has tipped more money into Australia's largest residential V2G trial, and the early earnings data is promising.
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Power bills fall for most states from July
New default electricity prices land on 1 July, and most of the country will pay less. One state is the exception.
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