I missed out on the Solar Panel rush 5-10 years ago when the government was giving out massive grants and the energy buyback rates were awesome.
Given the recent price hikes in energy bills thanks to our useless government that privatised it all, is there any incentive to dump $5,000 on some panels? what is the ROI?
Is It Worth Getting Solar in 2025?
frostman on 11/02/2025 - 10:57
Comments
Depending on your situation, if you are in Adelaide, living at home during the day time and not planning to move out for the next 5+ years. Then yes without any calculation.
My one's RoI was approx 4 years (although did get them in the covid lul for $2250 for 6.6kw)
I think it's still worth it if you have a family or do working from home during the day.
My ROI was about 2.5 years less FIT. I calculated my savings based on what my electricity bill was to what it then became with Solar and it was 2.5 years. FIT is bugger all, so don't factor that into any of your calculations. Based it on your savings.
All depends on what your power usage is. $5k for a solar system would be a smallish one, so might not be worth it. You would ideally want to go for a solar + battery solution. Again, depends on your power usage.
Also a tip, you will need to change your habits. Don't run the dishwasher, washing machine or dryer at night, do as much as you can during the day when solar is generating to maximise the benefit.
You would ideally want to go for a solar + battery solution
For most people, a battery does not make financial sense…
100%, for me it isn't worth it. I would flatten the battery very quickly overnight or in poor sunlight.
Don't run the dishwasher, washing machine or dryer at night,
A bit hard when you're at work during the day.
All those appliances can be set to run on a delayed start.
Having said that, the biggest savings come if there's someone at home using the AC during the day by far.
All those appliances can be set to run on a delayed start.
Don't want to leave washing / drying in the machine after the cycle. Makes it too hard to iron.
Also, prefer someone is home when they are on.Makes it too hard to iron
You have time to Iron? I thought all your time was spent on OzBargain.
that's basically our use-case, i work from home and the minute there's enough sun on the panels i crank the bejesus out of the AC.
As per Zoob, you can set timers. I do it all the time for my dishwasher.
If you only work one day a week the it is not hard, but for the rest of us we are screwed by the feed out Tarif that will become standard in 12 to 18 months, unless you have a 1GWH battery….
Personal circumstances will vary any recommendation.
If you work from home, or have people at home during solar generating hours, then it's a definite yes.
Agree. It will a fair while for me to get ROI, about six years, as I don’t have a north facing roof line and thus can only power half a day. It is estimated my bill (without panel payments) would still be about $280 with a 6.8kwh system. It also depends on whether I put them on the eastern roofline or the west’s. Slightly better west as that is a little bit north of west. But that is front of house and Mrs entropy not keen.
I would never get an ROI in a battery.Neighbour was able to get a panel return in three years.
Yes, absolutely. Panels have gotten cheaper from 18 months ago when I installed it and it has been a benefit even ignoring tariffs.
IMO get the solar rebates while you can, they won’t last forever. They make even a small setup bring great returns. Don’t buy a battery yet though, they’re still far too overpriced compared to wholesale battery prices these days (about $US100/mwh) and v2g may solve needing a battery at home in the next few years.
I just wish I went bigger. I did 5kw and the payback is faster than I calculated thanks to buying an EV to soak up the excess.
have you considered a second system?
With an EV itd arguably be worth going whole hog and upgrading (or utilising 3 phase) and install a large solar set up and upgrade your charging infrastructure.
Faster Charge times, better exports and more sun juice to the car
Is It Worth Getting Solar in 2025?
Nah… Sun is running out…
As long as your idea is to reduce your electricity cost (and not to profit), then yeah.
reduce your electricity cost
It can cost a lot of money to install solar, so for some people, it is not reducing costs.
Invest the cost of solar in the right
sharescrypto and you come out ahead imo
I missed out on the Solar Panel rush 5-10 years ago when the government was giving out massive grants and the energy buyback rates were awesome.
You haven't missed out on anything. 10 years ago the systems were crazy expensive and fairly low in capacity, but you made savings around the clock. Now the systems are very cheap, but you only make savings by offsetting your daytime use.
I just schedule my washing machine/dishwasher/AC/etc during the day and save lots.
What's your current bill and how much power do you consume during daylight hours (in particular between 10 and 3)
That will define the payback period.just use OVO 11am-2pm free electricity plan, no need to have solar
Saves you what……. maybe $2 so maybe $60 a month? Plus you probably pay higher daily supply and usage fees? Solar for me saves me about $4-$5 a day depending on the day, maybe a bit more. So about $120 maybe more a month?
usually they have lowest supply and usage charges in most places, you can use all loads during that time, washing machine, dishwasher, heat pump etc, ROI of solar is so low with respect to that, because you can only use what you generate during the day time
i got shit generation in winter, perhaps avg 6kwh a day, ovo saves big time as I managed to charge my full bat and preheat the entire home in winter. winter monthly bill is around $50+supply, October to April - $20 inc supply.
OVO's rates outside these times are far higher than competitors so you end up paying more (depending on area)
OVO rate is 35c per kwh
Ampol Energy 27c per kwh
8c per kwh difference. My last bill for 92 days came at 1,080kwh of usage. That usage x 8 cents per kwh = $86.40 extra for the privilege of those "3 free hours" per day.
Haven't touched on the daily supply charge however my current provider is also 15c per day cheaper.
Yeah it is all about the location and usage. I am currently with Globird due to a promo, but I was with OVO for a year before that. Last bill per month with OVO was $123 for 486kWh (including 119kWh in the free time) at 117.59000¢/day and 29.59000¢/kWh. I think we forgot to set heat pump exclusively for the free time for that month. We don't have gas either, got 3 RCAC + heatpump for water heating.
When I crunched the numbers for my parents, the results were surprising.
Given their energy use, switching to the midday saver tariff (8c/kWh from 9am - 3pm, and offpeak 9pm to 9am) was far more beneficial than installing solar panels.
Their small, well-insulated house consumes little power, making the investment in solar financially unappealing. The payback period alone would have exceeded 10 years—just to break even.If you can shift most of your electricity use to between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. while minimizing consumption from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., the payback period for solar can stretch significantly.
How did you crunch the numbers? Do you have a spreadsheet for it?
Yeah, I built a custom spreadsheet for this about two years ago, but I can't find it now.
Their average daily usage is around 25 kWh, and optimistically, about two-thirds of that could be offset by solar—so roughly 15 kWh per day. At a rate of 30c/kWh in Perth, the maximum potential savings would be $4.50 per day.
However, factoring in cloudy days and two months of travel each year, a more realistic average saving is around $3.50 per day. If their actual electricity cost is only 8c/kWh—or even averaging peak rates to 12c/kWh—the real savings drop to about $1.80 per day.
That translates to roughly $650 per year in savings compared to the midday saver tariff. With a $6,500 system, the simple payback period is about 10 years.
how can we switch to this ?
the midday saver tariff (8c/kWh from 9am - 3pm, and offpeak 9pm to 9am)
A different angle —> if you have a smart meter then churn every 1-2 months for the sign-up bill credits & cashbacks. Significantly reduces your annual cost.
How do you churn every 1 to 2 months? Are there any limitations to this like having to hold the account for 3 months to get the sign up credit?
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/tag/electricity
Just take a new sign-up offer and switch providers as often as the last bonus has been utilised. No tricks to it. Plenty of offers available. Only need to have electricity for 30 days in most cases. Go through the offers and read the comments, it's all there.
It depends!
You might want to download your usage data from your energy provider (network) portal and you can see by the hour what your usage is. Assuming your solar can eliminate you daytime usage work out how much that is.
Get a hybrid inverter. Growatt (cheap, some call nasty, I've been lucky with 4 of them) has a cheap hybrid inverter that is battery ready and then all you need to wait is batteries to get cheaper. They'll be people who will tell you to go all electric but replacing working gas hot water for a heat pump and then forking out another $2k isn't necessarily the best option. Also cheap hybrid inverters from Huawei / Sungrow etc.
Home batteries are going LFP if you would believe which means a lot cheaper per kwh. I find it is better to actually not be an early adopter (betamax vs VHS) best to be around mass adoption when prices are driven very low (which is around about now). When V2G/H starts to come out for EVs home battery prices are going to get smashed as they no longer have an monopoly.
Getting a high enough feed-in-tariff to substantially offset energy usage is almost impossible these days.
The only way to make solar panels pay for themselves is if you use enough energy during the day (during periods of solar production) to substantially reduce your energy costs.
The good news is that $5k gets a pretty decent solar installation these days. Back in the days of yore when feed-in tariffs were high, $5k wouldn't buy you diddly squat.
Everyone's routine and usage will differ, so it's pretty hard to give good general advice. Your best bet would be to have a closer look at when you use most of your electricity, and how much of that usage could feasibly be shifted to a time when solar could supply that energy rather than taking from the grid.
You could consider alternative energy plans that can offer cheaper rates at a particular time of day - if you are capable of time-shifting energy usage into those times, you may find that you can reduce your costs substantially without needing to spend any money at all.
If you do decide to install solar, make sure your system can accept a battery in the future. They're not viable for the average household right now, but prices are falling fast enough that they may well make sense in the near future.
You basically need to assume that at some point your FIT will hit zero, that's the way the market is headed. Where I live in NSW they've gone from ~9c to ~5c in about 18 months, and the wholesale FIT is frequently negative (ie, you pay to export.)
So it's really about whether you can utilise the energy yourself by heating your pool, charging your EV, or putting it in a battery, etc.
Isn't negative FIT a major risk to the ROI of new systems that do not include batteries? Or can new systems be set up so as not to export excess energy so that negative FIT is not an issue?
It's more worth if you properly calculate your usage on a daily basis for all your needs. Long gone are the days when you could cover your needs and export excess for a reasonable price enough to cover initial input expenses. Even subsidized, it's probably not worth it for purely the exporting point of view.
This will be viable again when batteries reduce in price to store excess energy for you to go relatively off grid. Or until everyone says EVs are so bad that you can buy them second hand for cheap and you just salvage the battery for home storage. EV battery can easily be repurposed for home energy storage. Especially if they already have V2G.
Love the info supplied. What did the web sites say that you found when you entered your details of current power usage, place you are in and size of the solar system?
It's the Ozb way.
Depends on your specific use case, most importantly, how much of your usage you can move to the daytime.
It's a no-brainer if you have an EV that you can charge during the day, as an example. There are also plenty of people who are at work or otherwise never home during the day for which solar will practically save them nothing (given that feed-in tariffs are almost zero these days).
Also depends on how open you may be to getting a battery, how much electricity you use overall, which direction your house faces, where you are located, amongst many other factors.
Depends on what your usage habits are, it's actually worth it.
I've got that $33 government sponsored heat pump hot water tank that runs only during daylight hours, plus some low income government energy grant, and a pretty much non existant 3.5c/kwh… and somehow I've legit paid ~$47 in electricty for the past 12 months with Dodo. I'm in NSW so your milage may vary.
Average daily usage over the past four quarters is 7.02kwh/day.
idk about others but have installed panels 5 years ago and 1 year ago (on parents place) and the ones installed later were much cheaper (same brand, equivalent new model with higher W per panel)
Competition and increased supply and improving tech has massively cut the price to produce Solar Systems (inverters less so, but panel prices have declined sharply) that the reduction of gov grants, has been outstripped by price decreases overall.
Out of pocket, the newer system was about $1200 cheaper like for like that the system 4 years older than it (as just a basic 6.6kw system) and came in at just under $3k installed.
ROI on the otherhand is another story. FIT's are practically fkall so might as well have panel placement on E-W orientation to maximise household use vs export gen (I wish i could change mine now).
ROI from an ease of life though imo is much improved. Ill do the laundry and the dishwasher and run aircons all day knowing its effectively free and have much more relaxed summers over the last 5 years so personally already paid for itself