Are We Installing Too Many Home Batteries Too Fast in Australia?

If your job is on a screen, that's gone. So what do you do now? There's an opportunity for Australia to be a place where lots of data centers live. And that's because we have a relatively low drama liberal Western democracy.

Like we can just carp and bomb everything with solar and batteries. And there's lots of space for that. A lot of these batteries aren't being installed properly. It's impossible to me that we went from installing like 100 batteries a day to 2,500 batteries a day.

Like the value of my business and my profit and loss statement every month is 100% dependent upon like the reliability and trading performance of presented by Your Energy Answers. Welcome to a very interesting podcast. I've got again with us Dean Spacovento from Reposit. He has been here two and a half years ago when we just kind of started the channel and uh definitely got more subscribers now.

And Dean has a whole range of things that he really knows a lot about. There's AI. There is the VPP, the electricity market, and also we want to talk about a product that really has underpinned the success of his business. Um, you'll find out a bit later.

Welcome to the Your Energy Answers Podcast. Thank you, Marcus. Nice to be here again. Thank you.

Thank you. So we just started talking in the break before about AI, and there was a bloke in the US that's kind of mapped all the jobs and worked out uh how likely you are to be stuffed, is it? Not staffed. So his name's Andre Carpathy.

He did it only uh two or three days ago. Um, and he's provided an index for um how badly affected a particular employment role is to be affected by AI. And, you know, no surprises, software engineering's nine, massively affected. And then, you know, we're just commenting like electricians are two.

And I was talking to Leonard on the other side of the camera around we've both got kids the same age, and we're trying to work out well, where do we push our kids? Like, you know, my mum and dad were always like, well, you're gonna get a good degree in electrical engineering or computer engineering and finance. And like, you know, if you're if your job is on a screen, that's gone. So, you know, what what do you do now?

And so we're talking about, I still think physics, electrical engineering, Leonard mentioned philosophy, you know, I think a trade is useful. It's gonna be interesting to know what us humans will do as a cohort. But I would say the blood, sweat, and tear jobs, the ones the plumber having to dick the pipes and all that. I mean, that's still needed, isn't it?

Yeah, and if you look at the the sort of breakdown that you did, the Capathy breakdown on the on the on the employment, uh, yeah, those those are the ones that are like got twos and threes next to them. So that's what's gonna be around for us. Right. But it's interesting when I look for leadership in the current government, the whole AI thing, I haven't heard it debated much in parliament.

There is not much kind of feeling of knowing what's around the corner. Uh in some way it reminds me of the whole thing with the petrol. I mean, not having reserves sufficiently here in Australia, when we're an island, you could kind of in hindsight say that was a bit of an oversight. When it comes to AI, doing the future planning uh of where the country is going as a whole, the whole identity of the country, and what IEI means for it, no idea.

I haven't heard it debated. I I think there's there's like a two-speed thing going on very clearly in the software world where I typically live, and my friends are like we are seeing the effects of it immediately, like valuations of our companies are tanking, not mine, thank God, because I'm in electricity now, but um yeah, the effects of particularly AI on software um and what it costs now to get a piece of software written, um, and how many um engineers you need and that kind of stuff, that is becoming like real.

It's not no longer a theoretical conversation. Like there are there are job losses and there are 1600 at uh at Wise Tech, Atlassian, yeah, that's right. And like Wise Tech did a bunch as well, and you know, they'll and everyone else will do it. Like we use a lot of that generative AI stuff at Reposit, and we have for a long time.

And we've just noticed over the last sort of like 15 months, it's getting really good. Like we're we can be a we are we can be a better team with it. We never put on large numbers of engineers, um, and that is a good thing now for us. And then the only reason we didn't do that early was because we have relatively small numbers of very, very, very good engineers, and that's exactly the place you want to be.

Uh, because you can flesh out your team now pretty well with with these AI guys, these little agents. Wow, wow. But talking about the AI and the data centers and all that, um, I read a report recently that all the data centers planned for Australia, when you add them all up, um it's seven times or eight times the total power consumption of Canberra, or about half of New South Wales. Yeah.

Now, if you throw all that electricity demand into the grid when we already have issues with grid uh voltage and all of that, does it mean the AI centers get built, the infrastructure behind it is not their problem, and then we all pay bigger electricity bills because we as the end consumer have to build the grid? Okay. So I spent a lot of time on thinking about this one and talking to people on this one. So I think I'll go sort of I'll I'll take a different tack.

There's an opportunity for Australia to be a place where lots of data centers live. And that's because we have a relatively low drama liberal Western democracy. Uh, we're able to build things. We're actually pretty good at building things.

Costs us a bit more than everywhere else, but we get it done and we're doing a pretty good quality. We have large amounts of land, um, and we have a huge amount of energy potential. Like we can just carbon bomb everything with solar and batteries, and there's lots of space for that. Um, our transmission networks are a little underbuilt, but we're kind of dealing with that.

But like these AI data centers also need very, very strong fiber optic connections, and we have very, very, very strong fiber connections across the continent and well into inter-networked across across the globe. So we've got big tech cables going there. Massive, massive, massive. Everyone, like large amounts of investment in cables, some of it to do with our relationship with the US.

Um, a lot of it what kind of data is going through that one, but anyway. Yeah. Um not mentioning Pine Gap. Well, that's why the fiber goes straight across the country, perhaps.

Like I'm only speculating. Um But you know, we're a we're a naturally very, very good spot for data centers. And I think that, you know, the I think it's I think it's a thing that we should do as a country. I think we should we should do it.

And there's two things stopping it. One of them is the energy infrastructure, which we'll talk about a lot more, and the other one about it is the ability to train AI models in Australia. And that's a tricky thing. Um, and it's basically around how what is how fair is it to use other people's content without paying them or taking fair use or whatever it is.

And I think that's a conversation that it has was started and then was shut down very quickly. And I think that the opportunities available to make it so that it is fair for people to use people's content to train I.O. models will allow Australia to take this position that is being handed to us on a platter if we can just get our shit together.

All right. But um, in the US, I hear some of the data centers have affected the water pressure surrounding the homes and all that. Yeah. But is that a different technology because they're cooling it with water and we don't necessarily do that, or do we have that same problem as well?

You can do air-to-air cooling. There's data center in Marsden Park, not far from here, is air-to-air cooled. So the chips are liquid-cooled, and then you have to get rid of that heat somewhere, but you can do it with air. You can take it to the to the airbase, and you don't need to like use, you know, town water or river water or whatever.

Um, it does take more space, but that's okay. Because in Australia, we have lots of space, right? And the reason it takes more space is because the machines are allowed, um, and you just don't want to put like people right next to it. But in the US, they don't have the low population density that we have.

Like it's, you know, the towns are everywhere. Here we don't have that. There's lots of space. Right, okay.

But you haven't really answered my question if the data centers. Look, I know a particular local government area that they built a data center and they walked in with a $20 million check for all the facilities and the 94 contributions and all that. And the council was very happy to get that cash and they possibly build a use center with it and whatever. Yeah.

But it's not going into the infrastructure for the electricity, which is because that's the council got nothing to do with it. That's right, it doesn't work that way. So so I mean, maybe some of that money should have gone more towards that infrastructure building. Are we actually then gonna cop the extra bill on the more poles and wires needed to support the data centers?

So we are the bunnies and paying indirectly and cross-subsidizing these data senders. So it's there's a yes. I know you're pro SARTA senders, so you're probably trying to wiggle waggle out of that answer. I won't, I won't wiggle waggle out of the answer.

So the way there's two two costs that are going to come if we connect a bunch of data centers for electricity. The first cost is the extra demand for electricity at any point in time. So that'll affect the wholesale energy market. The second cost is the cost of the network infrastructure to get that energy into the data centers.

They are both going to cost money. Um the way that the electricity networks are paid to build electricity networks does put the cost onto consumers. It's called the regulated asset base. Electricity networks love building electricity networks because that's how they grow their business.

They get a bigger regulated asset base, they build more network, they get a bigger regulated asset base, and they get paid for that regulated asset base every year. So the networks would love these data centers, want them connected. But it's very clear top to bottom, government, federal, state, distribution networks, everybody that burdening consumers with the cost of data centers is the wrong thing to do. And so the Australian Energy Regulator has come up with um a bunch of sort of policy um actions around listen, it's not fair to burden all the consumers with this, you need to basically chip in in particular ways.

There's a lot of conversations going on around that. The Australian Energy Markets Commission has done the same thing. There are a lot of conversations going on about that. Yeah.

But for example, the Victorian government got a special minister who wines and dines all the data center people to get them done and approved ASAP. So by the time that policy is developed to how to kind of contribute it, probably all these data centers trying to get their applications through very quickly. Because if one day there's a contribution required and we haven't right now developed it yet, well, I got mine approved. I'm with existing development.

Bad luck. So they're all trying to push through quickly now before that gets developed. So they don't have to make the contribution. It doesn't move as fast as that.

Like none of these the grid connections of very large loads, like you know, you're talking 100 megawatts to a gigawatt, those connections don't move quickly. Like there's a lot of like regulatory and distribution and transmission network machinations. Like it's not a take someone to dinner and they grant you the grid connection kind of thing. All the engineers need to look at like what are the voltage sag implications on it.

Like these data centers, especially with the NVIDIA chips in them, need to be connected to two feeders, two independent feeders. So like there's a lot of easement work. It's not uh, it's not like getting a solar system connected at all. It's it's a it's a long, long, long process.

Well, I just want to see a politician come out and say anything that's impacting on infrastructure, you try 15 trucks on that road, there got to be some contribution towards the future road damage. Same thing with the network. And I just feel like we're possibly gotten it upside down where the data centers get built, and now people start calculating and go, well, one was okay, but 52, um, then there's a cumulative effect. That's what's going on at the moment.

Like, what is the contribution? And it's got to do with long and short run marginal costs. It's the economists at the Australian Energy Markets Commission and the AR, Australian Energy Regulator that are trying to work out how to work this out. They're trying, yeah.

They're trying to work it out. They're gonna have to, because if they don't, the backlash towards data centers will mean there will be no data central. Yeah, by then by then no, no, no, no. The thing is working, the network has been increased, and then suddenly we get another 28% on the 1st of July, and that'll kill our local small business even further.

And it's all after the train has left the station, because that's how it's been already in the past. The train is very, very long. And and like the issue will be like any data centers that get built in the next 18 months, they will be the beginning of the data centers. Like, if Australia can prove itself to be a good place to put data centers down, it will attract more and more and more data centers with and the amount of money that comes out of these things for hosting and and feeding and watering the chips is insane.

It'll be a lot of cash. The entire economy, global economy, especially the knowledge work global economy, is going to be based upon the generation of tokens. And a token is Yeah, but you you say that, but you know how when I bought my first computer, I treated the computer like I treaded the old black and white TV. You know, it was there, it should last 10 years.

If it was broken, there was a repairment in town, you brought your TV to it, and it was an asset, like your car and your house. And I treated my first computer like that. I was really annoyed when Windows 95 became whatever, something else. And then I had to all over start again.

I thought, oh, oh, by now I must have reached the limit. And it never stopped. And it's the same with solar panels. 175 water, we said 250.

Oh, well, that way that's where it is. And then they keep on reinventing, reinventing, reinventing, and you keep on, oh, I've got the latest technology. No, I don't. Well, isn't it the same with this data center?

They're going to rip all these chips out in a couple of years' time and re-chip it again and all of that kind of stuff. Isn't nothing stand still. That's okay. Like the chips, like it's about five million dollars for 10 megawatts of chips.

And in the context of a data center that maybe costs five or six hundred million dollars, like when it's all said and done, rechipping it is just not an issue. But but how do they make their money? I mean, I go into chat, I get a free answer. I don't even realize how much energy has gone into that answer.

Yeah, they're loss leading at the moment, right? How do they make their money? They raise lots and lots of money from other people at the moment, and that's but eventually, like I think it's it's like at least uh you can see it happening with software already. Like the value of however many software engineers they get displaced as a result of making the AIs generate tokens to generate code, like that economic value will go at least partially to the operators and the fuelers and the caretakers of data centers.

And I think you want those data centers in Australia running on our electricity system where we're able to then build a whole lot of generation as a result and a whole lot of network as a result. Like if we are, if we can get that balance right, where because we have big, stable loads in these data centers spread out around our population centers, which is where the data centers want to be, we should be able to overbuild our systems such that Australians will pay less for electricity.

Because instead of building a little bit of something and then just hoping that, you know, demand creeps up, you know where the demand is coming. It comes in a big block in one year and then another big block in two years and three years and four years. I think we can anchor electricity system development on data center builds. And I think we can do it for the next 15 years.

And I think that that's the kind of like thinking and planning that we should be doing rather than just, oh, this data center needs a grid connection. How are we going to do that? What kind of network will we need to augment? How much is it going to cost?

I think it should be a nation building thing where we go, we're going to build a m a fit-for-purpose electricity network for data centers. Right, right. Gee, you're very optimistic here for Australia being smart about this stuff because let's look at the um battery rebate here at the moment. Okay.

So we we're talking about nation building and we're talking about doing it smartly. And I'd say data centers, when you look at the battery rebate, that's like a that's a that's a really big juggernaut when you look at the I mean the battery looks big, but against data centers as a whole, the battery rebate is small. Now, how do we get it so wrong? In the sense that the minister came out and promised us a million batteries for $2,300 on average, because it was $2.

3 billion divided by a million is $2,300 rebate for everybody. It was a reasonable rebate. And we reached um the $2.3 billion being spent, but we ended up with 250,000 batteries.

So that's kind of 75% of the number at least. I know the capacity's gone bigger, but 75% of the number just died in the ditch somewhere in the calculation. Somebody was pretty wrong in the kind of And now we had to spend another 4.9 billion to add to it.

Um now you're in that space, you possibly meet the minister, you want to still have him buy you the coffee, but just give me your honest opinion where we went wrong. I think that the battery subsidy is formulated by the people that formulated it. We're modeling it based upon a Tesla Power Wall II, and they did not see stackable batteries. In the past.

In the past, and they did not see stackable batteries in the market. Um and the thing with stackable batteries is that it allows you to stack. To stack. And so everyone got stacked.

And continues to be stacked. Do you want another two batteries with that? Yes. Absolutely.

At repositive, that's what we've been doing as well, right? Like it it it works out that like it just makes sense to sell the biggest. Like the incentive's very simple, and the entire industry is just responding to the incentive. And that is put as many kilowatt hours as you can, because the kilowatt hours um are subsidized to the point where they pay for the inverter and then they pay for the labor.

And so the more kilowatt hours you put on, the more of this additional sort of subsidy surplus you get, which you can pay for other parts of the system, which is why you can get Fox CSS for eight grand and four grand and whatever else. Yeah, but I mean, whoever set the subsidy amount at $400 to start off with, when I can buy a Easy Sun home at, you know, $350 or so per kilowatt hour, and I get $400 in rebate, uh, I mean, the numbers, they all went by Tesla, didn't they? Yeah.

I think so. I think so. And I think Tesla's been very effective at like holding government attention for a very, very long time. They got the brand and they've got the nice.

They thought they're the only guy in town, is it? No, but I think I think governments are I think governments are uh are more more convinced by sort of this the very nice hair-cutted Tesla with a soft Californian accent than they are by crispy white shirt with a little red logo. Yeah, that kind of stuff, than they are by like the people on the ground who are doing the work in Australia with Australian accents. I just I mean I've seen it over and over and again.

I mean, they were overlooked too. Absolutely. Yeah, like those stackable batteries from Solax, Sun Grow, SIG, like those stackable batteries blew up that subsidy. Easy Sun Home.

Easy Sun Home. We love them. I got them under my house. That's right.

So like like, you know, these stackable batteries, like they they were not foreseen and they managed to like eat the subsidy. And like some people have got some beautiful batteries now as a result. And I think I think in some ways it kind of worked nicely because like in the kind of like electricity space, these larger batteries that exist now have proven a few things. A, you can get bigger batteries, like big batteries onto people's houses.

B, that if you put like, I mean, the subsidy's too generous, but if you put a generous subsidy on. I mean, they fixed that now, to be fair. They fixed it now. So like they're still calling that the subsidy will generate 40 gigawatt hours of storage into behind the meter residences and small businesses.

That's a lot. 40 gigawatt hours is a lot. Like, that's enough to run like a lot of data centers for four hours, right? Like, and I think that that's the kind of I think that's kind of ambition that we should have in the country.

Like that amount of storage behind the meter, or anywhere really, but especially behind the meter, because we're adding that again and then some in front of the meter, that's the kind of scale that we need to like host these data centers and like deliver what should it be. Everyone in Australia should essentially have free electricity. That's why Reposit does it that way. Like the mission is to make energy limitless and free.

And so we wanted to see if you could do it. And you can. With these big batteries, you absolutely can. Winter, you need some help.

Okay. You snuck that in nicely, but we will talk in a minute about Reposit because this guy actually gives free electricity or guarantees people that they get free electricity. But we're getting to that in a minute. I have one more question on this whole battery thing.

Yeah, it's great for the old ladies to get their 50 kilowatt hours, but A, some of the inverters that go with it, they don't actually get it out. It's like sucking it out through a straw. Yes. Um, I had an inspector who told me that he found a 50 kilowatt hour battery stuck to a one kilowatt solar thing.

Yeah, I've seen that too. So Maybe the three hour free power will fill that battery, but otherwise, you know, it's it's that's nine kilowatt hours or fifteen kilowatt hours, not fifty. Yeah, well, day after day and nothing goes out. Whichever.

The big issue I have, they said the batteries have to be VPP enabled, but they don't have to be VPP connected. Yeah. And because generally Australian people don't like energy retailers that much, that's why they buy sole-owned batteries. Yeah.

And now they should trust them to hand over the keys to their nice Mercedes, they're just bored for the energy retailer to run the battery. I'm not surprised it's not a really big uptake. What are you hearing about the VPP? And should those batteries be in as a condition to you getting 18 grand should have actually insisted on it to be controlled.

Okay. So I've spoken publicly about this several times. I'm going to say the same thing again. I don't think that there should be an obligation that the batteries must be controlled.

But I think that the the middle ground between what they've done now, which is like basically must be able to participate in a VPP, which means nothing. Must be able to technically be able to participate in a VPP. That's the language. But that means that if you say, now I don't want a VPP, that's the end of that discussion.

Well, also, what does must be able to participate in a VPP even mean? Meaning technically you're finding when you dig a bit deeper, some of them are not that good at it, is it? Well, well, it doesn't mean anything. Does it mean it has an Ethernet port?

Does it mean like if you shout at it in German, then it starts to discharge? Like, what does it mean? Does it mean it accepts SMS messages? Like what it doesn't mean anything.

Was done by some bureaucrats, was it? I don't know who it was done by. I can you could I I don't know who it was done by, but it clicks. It sounded it sounded like forward thinking.

It's an anti-definition. Right, right. All right. It's a definition that actually means less than than no definition.

And like, and and and I can understand. I think I suspect it was c Smart Energy Council? Like providing. No, no, no, no, no.

We're not bagging nobody's I'm not bagging anyone. In this program, we only throw the people under the bus that we don't like. All right. So the Smart Energy Council and John Grimes and Nigel Morris and all those people that we like, they were not involved in anything with the battery rebate that now is found out not to be working.

All right. That was all done somewhere else. Okay. All right.

Well, I'm glad that you cleared that up for me. Um uh so then what I think is that is that you're right. Like, people get solar and batteries partly as a response towards like, I don't like the retailers. Like it's a very, very low trust environment.

I've said this before, continues to be a low trust environment. And so, yeah, you ask somebody to hand over the keys and then they say, like, I'm not really doing that for you. Like, no. I think that part of the problem, though, is that um people who so most of these batteries have been installed post-winter, right?

Like they started getting installed sort of in July, and then we've had summer, and now we're going into winter. And I think people are seeing sort of low electricity bills, but I think most of that is the solar. Because I'm I get a feeling just from what I'm saying around the place, that a lot of these batteries aren't being installed properly. And that if they are what do you mean they're not installed properly?

This is Australian tradesmen. I just we're just some data that we've got from the field on on how on how these things are the where are the CT clamps in the right spot? Are the portals being set up? Do they have the right tariffs in them?

All of this stuff that is not the construction side, but is sort of the control and monitoring side. I think the construction side is one thing, but I think the control and monitoring side really is not being done very well at the moment. Um, and and what people will see is that their 50 kilowatt hour battery may not get them no electricity bills over winter. Maybe because the inverter is too small, maybe the solid isn't isn't like big enough to fill the battery, maybe the battery doesn't know how to discharge all the way, all sorts of different things can happen.

Actually, that's a good point because that's just happened to me. All right, well, there you go. So, what's happened is on my rental property, I had the tenants, I had solar, and the bill was relatively low, 100 bucks three months, all right? And then as the feed-in tariff dropped, dropped, dropped, dropped, suddenly my bill's gone up to 450, 500.

I go to the tenants and say, listen, guys, I'm already giving you a free solar, I've got to put the rent up. Um, because I've also given them electricity. It's a very yeah, it's it's my social project kind of thing. I helped the tens.

And I said, I've got to put the rent up. And they go, Oh, I can't afford living here, been here 35 years, please don't. So I had a good idea. I got an easy sun home battery onto my house, yeah, and voila, I was back to a hundred bucks.

Yeah. But now I'm noticing my solar on the top isn't big enough to feed the battery because I've got three 20-watt panels, yeah, and and it's a six and a half kilowatt system. Yeah. And now I'm sitting at 60%.

By the end of the day, is the battery full? And overnight I suck it all out. And now from maybe five o'clock onwards, I'm paying. Yeah.

So this is what's gonna happen. And it's gonna looks like it's getting worse in winter. It will get worse in winter. So I think that's what's gonna happen.

We're gonna have this sort of like moment where people are gonna start getting bills again after installing these big batteries. And I think it's gonna coincide with when they lift electricity prices. They always announce it in May for one July start. And I think there will be a general increase in electricity prices anyway, maybe because of this Iran thing.

But they said the wholesale price in Victoria is falling. Wholesale price in Victoria probably is falling uh for the moment. Looking historically backwards, um, I think that we saw a moment in June last year to price events in the wholesale market that we hadn't seen anything like before. And it was five and a half, six hour very, very high prices.

But the first sort of three and a half hours, the prices were about 50% of the total of the full market price. And the last two hours it went to 100%. And that's the gas guys setting the price. And so the gas generators are generating less and less for less and less time because there's more and more solar and batteries.

So when they do generate, they need to make all their money back. And when they set the price, they they looks like they're taking the opportunity to really set the price. You said the call manipulation of the market? Not really.

Like they've got to maintain these assets and they need to run them, and we need them there. But if they've got less hours to run in the year, then they need to like still pay for the same asset. Um, and so as a result. But because gas, when it's the highest, it sets the price for everybody else.

Correct. Everyone else, uh So we're we're paying heaps more for electricity then at that point. At that point. At that point, and the retailers, the electricity retailers insulate customers from that most of the time.

Not amber, but that's a choice that amber customers make to be exposed to that and other wholesale things like local vaults. Um, but the job of the retailer is typically to smooth those things out. Uh and so but what happens is like they have to smooth it out by sort of like lifting the prices all the time, and so you get these sort of like But but that's that'll make battery people and yourself in the VPP game fairly happy, wouldn't it? Yes.

Yes. Yes. So like I'm expecting winter to be relatively lucrative. Right.

But what I don't get is if all these batteries are now in the system and they're all available to kind of put downward pressure, wouldn't then then the price spike events be less and less. Yes, that will happen. But the problem with batteries is that they're not generators, they just move energy in time. But the energy has to be there.

So what we saw this summer was lots of batteries in the system, and we saw like a really, really like low average price for electricity all summer. And that was like the batteries coming in and all the solar coming in, and the gas almost didn't have to run. There was a couple of like relatively high price days, but not much. Very, I think it was like down 20 or 30 percent.

So Chris Burne would have had really good sleep. Yep, and well deserved. However, in winter, we have a problem because solar is about 30 to 40% effective. Um, and meaning we produce what, 30 to 40 percent of what we normally produce in summer?

Yep. Wow, that's a lot less, isn't it? Well, because the sun's lower in the sky and it's like as a result less hours, less hours. And so now all those batteries that were full and able to discharge into these into these peak presses, they're not gonna be full because the solar isn't like especially in winter.

The engine isn't big enough at the front. Yeah, yeah. You're like you what energy's coming from? Exactly right.

But we're gonna see this across the system. And so the gas guys are now gonna get to set the price or winter. Now we saw it happen last winter as well. We're gonna see it happen more this winter.

Uh, and I think that like I don't know what gas contracts are doing at the moment, because like who knows what's happening with anything to do with fossil fuels at the moment. But um I think it there's there's one direction. I think it's up. It's probably up.

Fossil fuels in the middle of this war. Of course it's up. So if gas goes up, what does it mean for electricity prices? So I I I my my punt is that electricity prices, um, wholesale prices will go up as a result of the war as gas is used to increasingly fill those those gaps.

Now, the other thing that I find annoying is that there's a lot of storage out there that just will not be used. A good chunk of those 50 kilowatt hour batteries aren't going to have energy in them all winter. And they need energy in them so that then they can deliver that energy. Well, they'll have a little bit.

You just said 30-40%. And with old ladies on 50 kilowatt hours, 30-40% is possibly all they need. Sure, but they're running their heaters at the same time as well. So they're running their bar heaters or whatever, those little old ladies, because they don't know about reverse cycle aircraft.

They have their aircons already too, maybe maybe 10 years old, but it's an air con. Sure. So, like how much additional, how much of that solar is actually making it to the batteries? Probably not a lot.

So if you're not charging those batteries off the grid during the day, those batteries are sitting there empty. Would it make sense then to create a charge your battery in winter time, maybe in the middle of the night? Have we got extra capacity then? No, it's middle of the day.

Like there maybe there's it's like No, but like the old hot water heaters that used to be. Yeah, the controlled load stuff. That was mainly done for like, I think, network benefit or no, and it was done for the coal guys, and and they did it in South Australia because they scheduled on like Torrens Island or something, and they turned all the heaters on. Like it's it's it's an inter it's an interesting story, the whole controlled load story, and it goes back a long, long, long time.

Let's leave that one alone. So you're saying it's got to be in the middle of the day with that like that free that solar share offer. Yeah, so the solar share thing makes sense to a point. I'm surprised Except on a rainy day.

Well, or in winter. Like, how much additional energy? Like I'm gonna be very interested to see what happens in that solar to the wholesale price during that solar share thing. Yeah, because from what you've explained just now, in summer it's fine.

We've got plenty, it goes anywhere, please use it on a sunny day. When it's a rainy day, maybe there should be an exception. Can only get that on free electricity on good sunny days. But you just told me in winter the existing solar systems are not actually matched with the battery capacity that we're throwing at it, and we're gonna find out in the first winter that this is the case now.

And then just to make the curry a little bit spicier, we throw the solar share off on top of it when we already haven't got enough in the pipeline. Yeah, it's gonna, there's a lot of things changed all at once. This winter in particular. Like, I'm I'm like interested, anxious, curious.

Like, I'm a lot of things are different this winter. Uh, the Iran thing on top of it makes it another thing on top. But like the solar sharer thing, you got quite a lot of batteries in the system now, seven, eight gigawatt hours behind the meter. Like, that's a lot.

How many of them are actually responsive to wholesale prices? Not many. 10, 15%, something like that. Yeah, I was gonna say, say, everybody's imagining these batteries are sitting there and are part of the game.

A lot of people just isolated themselves. Yeah. Most. And it means the only benefit we're getting is that that person isn't necessarily putting stress on the grid.

You know. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Because they're getting it out of the battery. At night, they're getting it out of the battery.

They used to get it out of the grid, now they're not getting it out of the grid. And you do that for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, that'll put down lower pressure on the grid, theoretically. Now I look at pressure on the grid at night anyway. Right.

Okay, fair enough. But uh, at least, you know, I'm I'm writing the rule book for the minister while we did it. Okay. Um but the issue, what I found with my battery at home, I was in Germany.

I hear through the news that Australia has some really hot days and they're really worried about blackouts. Now I've got my sister-in-law looking after my house, and she's very feisty, so I don't want her to be in blackout. Luckily, I got a battery. So I'm going, oh, look what my battery's doing.

My Seek Energy is on Stormwatch. Guess what it did? It said, I'm not giving the house any battery today because in case there's a blackout, I want to keep everything for the blackout moment. Yeah.

While in every normal day, I'm discharging into my house, I'm not taking anything from the grid. That night, which was the most critical night and the most pressure on the system, my battery decided, I'm not giving you anything in the house. I'm taking everything from the grid in a very selfish thinking way for the battery. But if hundreds of thousands of batteries do that at the same time, they will at that point in time just kick the grid even harder, just when the grid canted on the batteries to support them.

Yeah, and this is the point of why you need these things to be in a VPP, right? Or at least responsive to the wholesale market signals and to the network operator signals, because otherwise they do selfish stuff. And it makes sense for the house, but it's self-fulfilling. Because if you're worried about blackouts and then all of these devices start charging and holding themselves full, yeah, you're gonna get blackouts.

Right. And then all we're so smart, right? But actually, the battery remade and all the batteries have erotically increased the risk for blackouts. But we've seen this now with solar already.

Like this is not an old lesson. This is not a new lesson. This is an old lesson. Solar creates voltage instability because it's making very, very like local um um package decisions.

Yeah, it's not really making any decisions, right? But it's like it's not coordinated in any way other than sunshine, make electricity, dump to grid, put in-house, sunshine, right? Like the and and so we've got this problem where there's just too much solar, and then now we've got minimum system load, right? Where, okay, that's like really bad.

Um we can talk about minimum system load, but it generates blackouts, it creates big blackouts, like region-wide blackouts. Um, and the government is like absolutely responding to it. AMO's got like a uh a new electricity service they're tendering for to try and deal with it because it's like it's a real problem. But we've done the same thing again with batteries.

We've we've created an incentive for them to behave locally without any incentive for them to behave globally. And we're gonna just we're just making the problems worse. It's a different problem, but it's still a very, very local and possibly large-scale problem. And like the solution was simple.

It's not like we don't have the technology, it's not like it hasn't been around for 10 years. It's not like people haven't been asked to be. The solution is that the batteries should be able to respond to wholesale prices and network signals for supply and demand, just like all the other generators in the system do. Like there is no difference.

So we gave our batteries too much freedom. Yeah, we didn't put enough in we didn't encumber the batteries enough. Now it's too late. I don't know if it's too late.

I don't think it's too late. I think I think like I think there'll be some discussions on like the evolution of the battery subsidy as it moves forward. And I think those discussions should include But I mean, maybe some of the batteries in their software and their makeup don't even have the ability to really be working on the battery. Most of them don't.

Most of them don't, because like why you're not going to spend money. If you're a if you're a battery manufacturer and solar installer, the last thing you want is more complexity, particularly if you're a solar installer. Right. And so, like, the the general pressure against don't add complexity, don't add complexity is absolutely there.

And they're advising the federal government don't add complexity. Do you like your 290,000 batteries? Like, look how fast we did it. That's because there's no complexity.

I saw a survey result from Solaris Finance, sort of came out last week. And there were two interesting things in there from I think he surveyed 500 solar retailers at a conference somewhere. Let's shout out to the solar nerds. It is the solar nerds, yeah.

Um, Imran. And um two things came out. One, I think it was like 40 or 50 percent of uh solar installers said that regulation is stopping them from going faster. And I was like, okay, what regulation?

Like, there's not a lot of regulation going on like what? Like no, no, to I think they're talking about the regulation to claim the STCs where you have to stand there with a with a photograph to take it at a certain time of the day. Cash cycle. That's the regulation, you know.

I think that's the rel it's not the regulation on the battery software. Because there is no regulation on the battery software, it's literally screwed to the wall, turn it on, right? Um, and the second one was that no one's even bothering to try and find good solar installers anymore. They just want any solar installers.

And I'm like, okay, that's a race to the bottom. That's the definition of race to the bottom. And I think the problem with that is that there's no signal at all for like, guys, these things need to be like interactive and like providing actual real support rather than just imagined support or coincidental support or or just let's not worry talking about support because it slows us down. But even if they say, look, the that there is no people are just heading for the exit now on the 30th of April, they want to get that rebate going, etc.

, and they don't care, just give it to me now. Um there's a price to pay in the future. I I I think that price to pay will come in a couple of waves. One of them I think is that a lot of these batteries aren't being installed properly.

It's impossible to me that we went from installing like, I don't know, um a hundred batteries a day to two thousand five hundred batteries a day. Without issues. Like it's not like we parachuted in a whole bunch of like Polish electricians or anything like that. We didn't get like Martian electricians, like like it's the same electricians, like Hello.

Yeah, like just it yeah. And like we're seeing that in the data when we go and look. So, but then when the battery dies and maybe that manufacturer decides to leave, you can't get them fixed. I I think it's gonna be impossible to have us, I think it'd be very rare for solar installers to come back to a site because they've got other things to do, like they'll be rolling out other batteries.

Yeah, but they gave a warranty. Yeah, no, they I think I think it's I think that I think that we're gonna see that a lot of that. I think even the batteries won't be dead, they just won't be working properly. People will see that when they get their winter bills and say, hey, there's something wrong, call my solar installer, solar installers aren't answering the phone.

Oh no, no, not the ones in our system. The your energy answer, guys, that we've edited, close to 50 right across Australia, been in the game for 13 years, not installing the $4,999 units. Um their own reputation in their regional towns depends on them turning up. Yeah, and I think so.

If you want a good one, go to our installer finder on our website. You've got the top, what, 40 or 50 in the country. Yeah, we picked the best ones because I've known them for 15 years and they haven't ripped people off yet. And that's why we feel comfortable to promote them.

Yeah, and they're typically still in business because they did that, right? And that's no phoenixing on this watch. Yeah, so like, but but there's a lot of batteries being installed by not your cohort. And well, like you have look in the social media, like you look in the Sieg energy or the Fox ESS subreddits or Facebook groups.

It's like, hi, my battery's doing something weird, I got my installer, I won't answer the phone. Like, story as old as time, Marcus. Story as old as time. Okay, it's not really nice about this industry to talk like this.

Now I want to kind of pivot a little bit around to your company and reposit because um so Dean has how long have you been doing this now? 12 or 13 years. Okay, 12 or 13 years, and he started as and I get this completely wrong and give you a chance to make me look stupid. He started with a little controller that you had to physically switch screw to your switchboard, and that was able to control the solar and the battery, and so it allows him to see what's happening in the electricity market and then play in the electricity market.

And that extra money at that point in time, should there be any, was shared with the owner, was it at the time? Dollar a kilowatt hour. Right. So he offered.

You're a dollar kilowatt hour for that kind of thing. The problem he found was that most owners and most installers want to keep the thing very simple. They're not talking much about the racking. They used to talk about the panels and the inverter and make it look all special.

And another box on the end and all that, that just couldn't be bothered. So he didn't really find that the repositor was embraced by the industry, uh, other than some key installers who saw the benefit and they were his heroes, but the rest of it, the rest of the industry went a bit flat. So when you want to have him drunk and discuss um solar installers, there'll be a lot of swear words coming out of Dean, because I see a lot of solar installers as heroes who bring people lower electricity bills, but Dean sees them as the people that they could have added extra benefits to the customers, but they never really sold his extra benefit.

So he thought, stuff you all, I'm gonna do it myself. A lot of other people would have gone, oh, it's too hard, I got this little box, and he would have been now by now a software engineer or something, and by now AI would have just made him unemployed. But this guy has tenacity, he has stickiness. You know, you want to go uh that kind of two two compound uh estropole or that kind of stuff that you use for the gluing.

Oh, Arold died. Arrol died, that's him. That's him in the solar industry. When he gets stuck to it, can't get it apart.

So explain what you pivoted reposit to. And when we get the model we get, we suddenly realize how important it is that the battery in the inverter that he uses is bomb-proof because otherwise he's not going to be paid for the private education of his kids. Anyway, take away what's private education of my kids. Are they going to a private school, by the way?

They go to Catholic independent schools. Oh they'll be cheaper, but still independent. All right, go for it. Explain what Repositor is doing nowadays.

Okay, so your story is right. We have we still have the little box. It's a bigger box now, but it's a box. Um and the idea was that we went through a bunch of solar installers.

At one point we had 432 of them as partners, um, and they applied this box to when they did a battery install, and they would open up the battery to a bunch of new possibilities. The main headline one being you get the ability to share it a dollar a kilowatt hour when reposit controls your battery. Okay. So we did that.

We sold lots and lots, thousands of these things, and we controlled them. And what we found is that it was not a great product. And it wasn't a good product for a couple of reasons. One, but the product that you developed wasn't a great product.

Yeah, I'm happy to I'm happy to own that. I'm happy to own it. And I explain why. It's that it's that if people, the majority, like the mainstream, not sort of your tech bros, but you're the majority, normal electricity users, like people, um, they kind of see electricity as like a thing that should just work and cost not much money.

And I understand that and I 100% agree. Um, and when you add this complexity of like, okay, now there's someone in control of a battery, and like if they muck up, then they're gonna charge the battery at the wrong time, and maybe I don't get my dollar a kilowatt hour, like that started to create a lot of like anxiety and and conf and like distress for people, especially when you give them an app, and so you they can see in real time exactly what's going on. Like that sort of cognitive.

Why don't you give them the app and your mobile number? Well, they basically did have like they called like the help desk and then like so that like basically it's what happened, right? Like people had the app and then they had reposit's number, and we would always answer the phone, like always. We never would not answer the phone uh or respond to the email or whatever.

And like, yeah, we just get inundated, even when everything was working beautifully, which is most of the time, people were just like it's not doing what I'm expecting it to do. And as a result, I'm feeling very unsure and anxious. And of course, when you try to explain, well, actually, what we're doing is we're pre-charging the battery because we think that there's going to be a high price later on, they're like, Well, can you guarantee there's gonna be a high price? I'm like, No, I can't guarantee there's gonna be a high price, but you've charged my battery and I paid for that.

I'm like, yeah, I know, but like work with me here. You see, nowadays you could have said, Oh, but the AI told us, you see. But in those days, this is five, six years ago, even AI wouldn't have meant anything to anybody. I don't think anyone cares if I had said the AI told us, or like my mum said it's a really good idea.

No one, no, the response was basically, you're about to cost me a bunch of money, maybe I get a return, maybe I don't, and I have no, I have no control. You're gambling on my behalf. A little bit. That's that's and like, and I can understand.

And so eventually we got to a point where we went, you know what, this is not a product that can scale. And it's like, yes, it's cool, but it's it's like not it's not making people's lives better. It's in giving them something additional to worry about. I mean, everybody is only everybody's only on that solar train because they want a cheaper uh and the battery train now because they want cheaper build.

That's all it is. Yeah, that's the rest of it. I want to get on with my life. The tech bro types, your two percenters, three percenters are there because like they're trading their crypto and whatever.

Yeah, they're retired uh engineer types. That's right, yeah. The enthusiasts, I think if we call them on the city. They they got to clean the nappies, they got other stuff to do, right?

So we went, okay. We learned a lot from that. And then in 2021, we released this no-build product. And the idea of the no-build product is that it's gonna solve all of the problems that the grid critters product had.

So that is, you get a guarantee of no electricity bills. Even if you're yeah, you get a guarantee of for seven years. Um, even if you No electricity bills. Yeah, you literally one doesn't come to your house, you don't get it.

For seven years. Yes, yeah. And like that's your product. Yes.

But but uh you have to buy a system from reposit at the moment, at least, anyway. Maybe that changes very soon. But for the moment, you have to buy a system from reposit. Okay, why?

So the way we do that is we're using the same controller with, you know, just an evolved version of the same software that we had in 2020 on the grid credits thing. We're trading in more markets, and we make money from that. And because we can make money from that, it means that we can guarantee no electricity bills. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but overall it we win.

But I mean, if you charge me, let's say I make it up here $35,000 to buy a solar and a battery system for you from you, and you make it so hugey douchey that I mean maybe the next seven years my bills wouldn't even make up $35,000. Am I gonna be ahead? What are you charging? We price basically like about like what you would buy uh uh Sun Grow from an installer.

So your price point is very similar to you just buying the battery, yeah, but you allow yourself to put your controller on it, yeah, and therefore you have the ability to trade, you can control the battery, and all those benefits when you trade them backwards and forwards will actually give the owner no cost, and you obviously hopefully a little bit of a profit. Yep. And that's what works, is it? That's what works.

And how many of those have you got driving along now? A couple of thousand? Like five thousand? No, no, two, two and a half, something like that.

Two and a half thousand? Yeah. Okay. And the earlier ones, you were willing to go with any battery that was working.

Yes. So you got how many total controllers out there? Like eight and a half thousand. Right.

So, but out of this now the new model is about two and a half. Yeah. But in that system where you put a solar battery onto people's houses, you're guaranteeing them no bill for seven years. Yeah.

You got to really make sure that the uh software and the battery specifically that you put on that house, yeah, that it is a reliable product, otherwise your whole business model falls over. Yeah. So get that right. You're giving people a guarantee for seven years that they're getting no bill because they bought the solar system from you at a similar price they can buy from somewhere else.

But the difference is you've got the repositor box on it. That means your business model relies on very reliable product. Yes. Because otherwise, if you've got to go and fix the battery all the time, yes, or the panels fall off, you got no business.

Yeah. So are you running them all with Tesla or what batteries have you chosen? No, we use Solex. So I I I I did the numbers.

We have we have expanded our fleet with Solex equipment every year for the last 10, 11 years. So that's not really a brand in Australia that everybody who wants to be fashionable and use Tesla kind of mentions. I mean, Solex have been in Australia for over 10, 12 years. Yeah, they have stood the test of time.

Yeah. There's been a warranty recall with LGK. A long time ago. And they actually put their hand in their pocket.

Yeah. 300 systems installed and replaced, three million bucks. Yeah. But what was your experience with them?

Exactly the same. So, like, that's that's that's our experience with Solax. Our experience with Solax is that they do the right thing. And so it's not the sexiest brand, it's not like the prettiest gear, it doesn't pretend to be German.

Like it's it's Chinese price point, reliable, good. Okay. So if you've got two and a half thousand Solaxes working in harmony, like a VPP, are you in Australia the biggest VPP, the second, the third? What's that's the size of your fleet?

I well, you you do the maths, right? Like it's two and a half thousand by average power of about eight and a half kilowatts. And then like in you know, a lot of those systems are between 30 and 50 kilowatt hours because like a lot of them have been installed since the battery subsidy went down, right? So the fleet's pretty big, and it's all Solex.

Like it's all Solex, wall-to-wall Solex. We we Do you get an invitation for Christmas usually to their Christmas party? Or I think annually I get an invitation. I don't go, I send I send my guys to China and and they go and visit the factories and have the dinners and all that kind of stuff.

Um, but there are other people there as well. It's like not just for repositories, it's like other solar installers that use Solex. It's like it it is the unsung hero brand of the Australian electricity system. It cops a lot of flack, undeservedly.

They've been around forever, their gear is solid. We have straight up and down financial exposure. Like the value of my business and my profit and loss statement every month is 100% dependent upon like the reliability and trading performance of Solax equipment. And I would have stopped using it.

Like money where my mouth is, I would have stopped using it if that was like if it let you down. Yeah, it was going badly. Absolutely. I would have tried something else.

Well, you couldn't afford to. But my point is this so there's a lot of cheaper Chinese batteries in the market right now, but a lot of them have just come very recently. Yeah. Now Solax actually got the runs on the board.

Yeah. And with you running two and a half thousand batteries, some of them for what's the oldest one? Oh, we've got like there's there's a Solax installed from 2020. Right.

So like remember the old, the big ones? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you what degradation really bad, or what's the going there?

Have you checked it? Uh it's on an LG. It's on one of those 6.5 kilowatt hour low voltage LGs.

So like it's hard to tell, isn't it? It's hard to tell, but the the inverter still works. Talks to the controller, charges, discharges, like it works. Okay, so you've got 11-year-old products out there doing nicely.

So with those 2000, 200, 2,500 Solexes all operating Harmony. And there's a lot more, right? Like in the grid credits fleet, there's that many, but in the in the sorry, in the Noble fleet, there's that many. The Noble Fleet is 100% Solax.

It's only Solax. This is where you purchase the system. Yeah, this is because like we we absolutely have all the risk. Right.

Right. And we needed it to be bulletproof. Trevor Burrus, Jr. But in the other four or five thousand that you control, obviously you got Solaxes.

There's lots of Solaxes in there as well, and they and they're the best ones. Like our our FCAS fleet, so it's frequency control and auxiliary services, um, which is the fastest service in the market, and you've got to be like, and you have to hit it. Like if you hang on, I'll need to explain this to normal people. Because the electricity market treats in five minutes intervals, when you see a price bike coming through, you can't have gear and software that thinks about it, tries to work it out, finally presses the button, punches you.

In the meantime, you already moved past, it's five minutes over, and now they're releasing, and the prices come down again. So you need fast response time. This one's way faster than that. This is one second response time.

Wow. And we respond in 300 milliseconds with Solex equipment that's seven years old. Like all over the place. Right.

So what would you say that basically, I mean, in the early days we had LG Chem, we had Tesla, and we had Solex. Yeah. That was pretty little. I mean, SMA, there was SMA, and there was like a bit of Sun Grow.

Yeah, but I'm talking even bigger than earlier that. So so Solex has been there all the way. It's therefore a proven product, but with the Chinese price point. Yeah.

So now that we're taking off with batteries, uh Solex is still kind of that a quiet taste, unsung hero, but I hear that product has also improved, etc. What are you taking it that they're not right now getting a 30% market share? I think it's just I think I think that solar installers are the channel. So solar retailers and installers are the channel.

And the people, the the brands that connect most effectively with that channel are the ones that get all the volume. So SIG did a very, very good job at that, and then Fox did a very, very good job at that. But is that only because it's a really shiny little new thing? And I mean, wouldn't you think if it's shiny a little new, you've got actually a higher risk than that?

No, I don't think it's shiny and new. I don't think it's that. It's how effective they are at winding and dining, at like what their brochures are like, um, their install experience. Like you've got to remember the solar installers and the retailers, their incentive is to sell it and install it as quickly as possible and go into the next one as fast as possible.

Their incentive is not to like guarantee you no electricity bill. And so as a result, like SolX are they're an engineering-led organization. And so their gear is like robust and performant and reliable, but solar installers don't care about that. Solar installers care about how easy is it to like to put on the wall, how fast is the commissioning process?

How shiny is the brochure? How shiny is the brochure? And the solar retailers care about does it sound like it's from Germany, like SIG, right? And like, can can I can I sort of gloss over that it's all Chinese gear as well and like get past that objection handle?

So I mean, even Fox as a name is a bit like I always thought, you know, because there's the Fox news channel. Yeah, Fox learned. Fox, Fox, half of Fox is Solax. Like, that's what happened.

Solax, like a chunk of the Solax people left and started Fox in the massive Chinese nickel company, Sing Shua. Like, Cody Hua went from being the country manager of Solax for Australia to being the global account manager for Fox ESS. Right. Well, you know all these intricacies.

So look, in a short and sharp, we actually think the Solax is a good battery. They have a solid product. He's got two and a half thousand that he literally owns himself, two and a half thousand units. Obviously, they're one day going back to the owners.

No, the owners always own them. Like then they're not our gear, they're the owner gear. Oh, right, right. Yeah, they're not leased or anything.

But you're responsible for no bills. Yeah, I've got to guarantee no bills. So I have to fix them, I have to do all sorts of stuff, right? I mean, with that no bill thing, I mean, if all the bills go to your house, you got two people there sitting there opening the bills all day?

There there are people that open, like they a lot of them come electronically, but yeah, there are people that have like piles of envelopes on their desk at work, yeah. And do you sometimes lose out on them? Like meaning you actually have to pay out of your pocket to pay the bill? Yeah, absolutely.

Right. So as long as overall, it's fine. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah, it's a complicated business. Right, right, right. So look, so there's a bloke who's got 2,200 Solexes and controls maybe another 1,500, sees them in the market, and really sees that they're working. I wouldn't have po chosen Solax for the Nobel product if it wasn't the best performer on the previous product in the grid credits fleet.

Just would not have chosen it. Right, right, right, right. Okay, well, so if Australian consumers are looking for a battery that actually has been in Australia for 12 years, is at a fair price point, delivers even in that VPP space, uh, and I think they're looking a bit more sexy nowadays, too. I think the gear looks beautiful now.

So, like, you know, I I put Solx gear on all my VIP customers. I used to like put like N Phase and Solar Edge and whatever. Now I just put Solax gear. I put the pros and the ultras on, and their 5.

1 and 3.6 kilowatt of batteries are nice. Looks nice. Without mentioning brands, because you know, we're a small channel, we can't afford to be sued, you know.

Okay. But have you also picked sometimes a battery that had the right reputation and maybe European heritage and all that, and then you're actually still running around now trying to find parts and all that? Have you been disappointed by some of the batteries that you picked in the early days? More the inverters than the batteries.

Most of the batteries were LG Cam. So it goes kind of without saying the LG thing was problematic. I think that everyone knows about the LG recall thing now. But and but LG had the market, like you were there for it.

Like LG Camp. And by the way, I was with LG Electronics, not with LG Cam. Don't write to me, don't blame me. I told LG not to give their name away for free to assist the company.

There was Audi in VW. I worked for VW. The problem with the battery was Audi, just to make it clear. Yeah.

And so, like, but they they had the whole market. Like it was Tesla and LG, and that was it. Right? And so now we've seen recalls on both of those.

Like total recalls on the Power Wall 2 and total recalls. Oh, it's Power Wall 2 is a total recall. Did you see it? No, it didn't.

Is it not total recall? Do you think it's total recall? No, no, we we're not sure about total recall. Again, I don't want to be sued.

And Tesla has handled the recalls very well. Yes, absolutely. And so is LG, to be fair. Yeah, but a little bit slower.

Oh, and like the scale of it is crazy. $50 million. Lucky it was a big company that was backing the battery. Anyway, okay, so we got that.

So you'll rely on the Solic. So would you actually let us come to you, to Canberra, and look at one or two of them? Yep. You can, I mean, we're installing them in Sydney.

Everyone's installing batteries like you know, health or at the moment. Yep. So yeah, anywhere you want to come and look, absolutely. Like and how did you make sure because the install is quite important, isn't it?

You could have the best battery in the world if you put it on a western wall, fry it every day, it's not gonna last. Yeah. So have you got your dedicated installation fleet, have you, of people that do your work? Yeah, so we have a panel of installers in each sort of LGA, I guess, and they have to do have to be pretty good because it's not like they can install the battery and then run away and then it's the cons customer's problem.

It's actually not the customer's problem now, it's it's our problem because we're guaranteeing them no electricity bill. So even if their solar and battery doesn't work or does the weird stuff or is not under control, we're still paying their bill. So the difference here is that we have very, very clear incentive to A, pick very good gear and B, install it properly. And so, what's our downside?

We can't use most, the vast majority of the installers in the market. We have to Well, they probably don't want to work for you either because at the moment they're making big bucks. Yeah, and it's too complicated. We make them crimp an Ethernet cable and we make them hang around while like we check that everything works the right way.

And like people are like, no, no, mate, no, mate, I've got better things to do than like that. But that would have been then a bit of a difficulty for you too in this time because a lot of installer, a lot of uh solar companies lose their best installer being poached by the company next door who promised them 20 grand extra. So I mean, you must have gone through that same challenge too, is it? Yes.

We subcontract all the installers, so it's a panel of subcontracted installers, and you know, we don't mind if somebody if one of our great installers installs for somebody else as well, that's fine. Um so yeah, like our capacity to install things gets harder and the prices go up, and that's what we're seeing across the industry. So you've been asked to pay a bit more for installs. Oh, absolutely.

And like there are some systems we're just not gonna get installed before one May. Like that means you take the loss, is it? Um of the lower rebates. It means that we have to work out what to do with that.

Like, and we're gonna try it hard to find installers, like but these are the challenges when you have a boom and bust. Now, um, pretty well to wind it up, we still got about five billion in the pot to spend till twenty thirty. But now the Iran war, I'm allowed to call it a war or is it a war? It's for war, right?

Well, in you if you if you bomb a ship that's on an exercise somewhere else in another country and doesn't have any weapons in it, and you blow it to smithereens of the torpedo and kill a hundred People on it. But how can you still call it anything other than a war? So the Iran war that's put an extra pressure on pricing and interest rates. And the treasurer's running around really hard to find savings.

And there's this juicy five billion sitting there, where we still have discussions sometimes if it's the wisest way to spend the money. Is that uh battery rebate gonna last? I don't know. Ah, look at the politician here.

You always have an I have an opinion. You have an opinion. Here's my opinion. My opinion is that it's not like it's not money well spent.

Like you're benefiting from it. I'm benefiting from it, absolutely. I think that like getting as much storage down into the system now is going to be really, really important because gas prices are absolutely going up. And I think that I think that electrification will get a bit of a kick along as a result of this.

Already we're seeing fuel prices go up. People who haven't, you know, I've had people come up to me, you know, sort of like laugh at me for driving a fast EV. Not laughing so much now, right? And I think that like this, like at O1, BYD ADO1s are in the market, Auras are in the market, like there's electric vehicles now that are like well priced and good.

And I just think there's going to be a lot of EVs sold. And once you buy an EV, you're like, well, I can fill it up at home. So I think that like, and when you start filling it up at home, then all of a sudden you start thinking about solar, which now you start thinking about batteries. Like you're giving me all reasons why the battery rebate should uh kind of keep on going because it's benefiting all these people who are smart enough to move away from oil into electricity.

I think that like I feel weird saying it, but I think the battery rebate is and the EV rebate actually is going to be more important now than it was three or four weeks ago before you know the missile started flying. So therefore the message to Treasury is don't touch it, isn't it? No, I think it needs modulating, so that I think it needs I think it Don't touch it. I think it needs to the batteries, I think they need there needs to be some stronger performance standards or like controllability requirements or something.

I think that that needs to be there because you say we should learn from the first 250,000 we've installed and modify the program to get more general benefit for the grid. I think that I think that the battery subsidy and the EV subsidy can be nation building rather than just like electioneering. I think it's I think it's a good policy. Meaning electioning, meaning winning votes.

Winning votes, yeah. I mean, call me a cynic, but like it was a beautiful it's a beautiful policy. And the solar share I think is another one, right? I think it can be nation building, a little, just a couple of tweaks here and there.

And I think it's like I think it's actually like really good policy. And if we have to take a couple of cuts at it to get right, that's fine. Okay. So look, I'm not taking a cut yet, but I will take it in the future.

If you're looking for a Dean as the energy minister to help you to tweak these policies, he charges himself out at a thousand bucks an hour. I get a hundred dollars for referring him, but he will be able to improve the solar sharer, the battery program, as well as the EV subsidy program to create a higher nation building benefit of those. So um look for a reposit, give Dean a call, and when he's the next speaker at your event, he will charge you a decent amount and I will take a cut.

I don't need more work. You would be a wonderful people on person on boards. Oh, I don't know. It depends who you ask.

Yeah, but I mean, uh yeah, that's actually true. He has an opinion. Yeah. And if he doesn't get listened to, he tells it to you again and again and again till you listen to him because he usually has a good point.

Look, it's been a pleasure. Um, it's been a Will Win Tar talk, but uh I wanted to kind of get and finish off with a last one. And by the way, we're not sponsored by Solax, but I find it amazing that we actually got a battery off a cheaper price point that has been in Australia for 10 years plus, runs two and a half thousand of the homes he controls, and he doesn't have an issue with. So, I mean, you couldn't get a better endorsement for the Solax Power batteries than actually in the ground, in the running, in the proof of the pudding, and this guy's business depends on it.

So, would you actually endorse them, be willing to? Absolutely. Like it's good gear. Like I endorse it every day.

When my designers specify these things in, I'm endorsing it. And they've been done it, they've been doing it for four and a half years on this product now. So there is literally not one noble system that is not powered by Solax. But I mean, what I'm realizing is when in April the real rebate drops a bit, okay, yeah, it's gonna get harder to sell the $25,000 batteries.

Yeah. And especially when we're talking January 27, and then each year it's gonna be harder. Yeah. So I think a lot of people in the solar retail space would look for a good, better, best option.

And let's say they put the seek and the sungrow and the Tesla up to the best. But I could see the Solex sitting solidly in that better category, and I don't understand why more solar retailers wouldn't consider them. I I just think I just I just think this is a misalignment of like the value that Solex delivers is for the person who cares about the long-term operation and reliability of the battery. That's not the solar retailer or the solar installer, but it is reposit and it is the end user, the householder.

Yeah. But you probably don't want that battery to become too popular. I worry about this. I worry about this conversation.

Because he is used to go to the retailer's warehouse and just pick up 10 batteries and they're still available. Yeah. If we make the Solax too popular, he's gonna have to wait for them and then he's gonna ring me and abuse me. No, no, I'll call Solex and say, listen, I did you a huge favor.

Can you like like that extra contact priority? Yeah, that's right, on that on the next ship. All right. Well, thank you everybody for watching.

Uh, hopefully there was something in it for you. I know the written Dean comes, it's always a whirlwind, full of energy. I really appreciate you making your time. Thank you.

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