For years, Australians have been been installing solar panels at a rapid clip. Now that investment is paying off.
The Australian government announced this week that electricity customers in three states will get free electricity for up to three hours per day starting in July 2026.
Solar power has boomed in Australia in recent years. Rooftop solar installations cost about $840 (U.S.) per kilowatt of capacity before rebates, about a third of what U.S. households pay. As a result, more than one in three Australian homes have solar panels on their roof.
“Now we’re at the level where we can share more of that power with more Australians,” Chris Bowen, minister for climate change and energy, said in an Instagram video announcing the policy.
The Solar Sharer plan will be available to everyone in New South Wales, South Australia, and in the southeastern part of Queensland to start; more regions will be added later. Households won’t need to have solar on their rooftops to qualify, though they will need a smart meter installed. The plan will help those who live in apartments or don’t have a suitable rooftop to benefit from their neighbors’ panels, Bowen said.
Although the government hasn’t said which hours in the middle of the day will qualify, the hours between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. are the most likely candidates. Customers will have to opt in to the new plan, which is meant to encourage people to shift their energy use to peak solar-production hours. Smart appliances can help people make the most of this by allowing them to time charging their EVs or running loads of laundry.
The free electricity hours “help us with the grid at night too because that means transferring the use of power from nighttime — when power is more expensive because it’s being run more by coal and gas — to the middle of the day when its being run by renewable energy,” Bowen said.
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Shifting loads will also reduce the need for grid-scale batteries, which Australia has been installing to absorb excess solar power.
The Australian plan isn’t the first to experiment with periods of free electricity driven by peaks of renewable power production. Octopus Energy in the U.K. has offered an Agile plan that occasionally gives customers free electricity, though it’s not a regular occurrence like it will be in Australia.
In many places, solar has become so cheap that electricity is essentially free for at least part of the day. Midday peaks in solar production can cause electricity prices to turn negative, which occasionally results in power providers paying customers to use energy.
Australia is generally considered a sunny country, with vast swathes receiving as much sunlight as the U.S. Southwest. But most solar panels are installed closer to population centers, which receive as much sunlight as most of the U.S. or southern Europe, suggesting that broader solar adoption could drive down energy prices in a number of regions around the world.
