Solar power is producing more electricity than needed in the middle of the day when the sun is strongest. In turn that has reduced prices to zero in the middle of the day.
Thu 6 Nov 2025 00.00
Photo: AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
Consumers cannot take advantage of that at the moment so Chris Bowen, the Climate Change and Energy Minister, has announced “a new retail energy offer that unlocks free solar for homes during the day”. This will take the form of “a new regulated electricity offer, Solar Sharer, will be introduced next year through the Default Market Offer, requiring retailers to offer free electricity to households for at least three hours in the middle of the day when solar generation is at its peak.”
The retailers do not like this according to the Financial Review and they threaten to pass on “higher prices for electricity for those customers at other times of the day, limiting the benefit.” This means a big fight with the government is coming up because the government expects big savings to consumers from this initiative whereas the industry has made it clear it will recover its losses from those consumers.
The retailers are effectively admitting that the retail prices bear almost no relation to wholesale prices.
From AGL’s annual report we know it is
(The unit here is a kilowatt hour, KWh, which is the unit used by retailers when they bill you.)
That is why they do not want to see their customers getting free electricity when wholesale prices drop to zero. AGL and the other retailers may get their wholesale electricity for free but the wholesale cost is just a fraction of what they charge consumers and we can bet AGL and the others will be keen to keep their outrageous markups.
It comes as the Albanese Government announced it was opening new areas in Commonwealth waters for offshore gas exploration.
Australia’s main mining lobby group, the Minerals Council of Australia, has been running ads that say the mining industry paid $59 billion in tax in 2023-24, and that this is more tax paid than every other industry combined
The release of the mid-year fiscal and economic outlook (MYEFO) has revealed the cost of the changes to the superannuation tax concessions made by the government and the continued failure of the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax (PRRT) to deliver fair benefits to Australians
