Childers Batteries September 2025
The great battery bonanza is well and truly underway. Not so much here in the regional area’s, but in the cities, its going crazy. In fact in the first month of the federal Cheaper Home Batteries initiative, the uptake of batteries far outstripped the uptake of solar in its first month of rebates. There is still a lot of enquiry, but most people living in our region are either already living off batteries or have been planning it for some time.
The popularity of this battery rebate program has stripped suppliers of stock. In fact, brands like BYD (that are popular with the Fronius Gen 24 Hybrid inverters) don’t have any stock now until late November, and they are saying that those containers will be pre sold by the time the containers land. It sure is interesting times in the off grid space.
Childers Batteries recently attended the “Off Grid Living Show” in Gympie on the 2nd & 3rd of August and I can report that there was also a huge increase in people wanting to move off the grid and get onto batteries. Sadly, the cost is still high even with the rebates, but the interest is there and the off grid movement is growing momentum.
As each person who leaves the grid it will make it more expensive for those who stay behind. Energy companies still need to maintain the same infrastructure whether there is 500 people on that grid or 50,000.
So there is the future, as prices rise and rise, we will see more and more move to solar and batteries.
New technologies are also entering the battery race that could really transform the off grid landscape. The new Sodium batteries (Salt Batteries) are starting to appear which have a far greater thermal stability than Lithium and are extremely safe. We have 2 of these new Sodiums at Childers Batteries that we are testing.
Well, actually, we are abusing the heck out of them because we want to make sure that they do what they claim they can do. We also want to better understand the extremes of these batteries and many of our customers have witnessed me seriously overloading these new Sodiums time and time again.
The cloudy days have been testing most off the off grid systems in our area. Heavy cloud is not good for solar production and some sites have been relying heavily on generators to get their batteries back up.
On average, in our region, we have about 12 times a year where your solar production will not be sufficient to cover your loads and charge batteries. So a good generator is a critical component in your off grid power system.
Well as usual, it’s been nice Chit Chattin with you and feel free to drop by the store if you ever have any questions or if you want to have a curious look at the new Sodium batteries we are testing (not selling, yet).
Megsy Out.
Written by Jason Marshall
Chitchat Newspaper. September 2025.