The big picture
The grid is decarbonising fast. Your bill is held up by timing
Australia's grid gets greener every year, the wholesale cost of solar and wind has collapsed, yet bills stay stubbornly high. The reason is a shift most coverage misses: the cost of electricity is moving from generating energy to firming it, keeping power ready for when the sun sets and the wind drops. Watch the live mix below swing with the weather, then explore each renewable source and the green plans you can actually buy.
The idea that explains your bill: the system now runs two grids at once. A cheap renewable grid for when the weather is good, and an expensive firming grid (storage, hydro, gas) on standby for when it is not. You pay for both, all the time, because the standby grid has to exist even on the days it barely runs. More solar lowers midday prices and still leaves your annual bill flat.
Explore renewable energy
Every renewable source and green plan, explained
Independent guides to how each source works in the Australian market, and the green plans you can genuinely buy.
Renewable sources
Solar power
Read your roof and compare panels, batteries, rebates and feed-in tariffs.
Wind energy
How wind carries the grid after dark, and its role in the NEM.
Hydroelectricity
Australia's biggest battery: hydro and pumped-hydro firming.
Biomass
Turning waste, crops and landfill gas into dispatchable power.
Green plans & gas
Save energy at home
How the system actually prices renewables
Three forces holding your bill up
Cheap solar and wind are real. So are these, and they are why a greener grid has not become a cheaper bill yet.
The duck curve
So much solar floods midday that wholesale prices fall to zero, or go negative. Then solar vanishes at sunset and prices leap. Your flat rate hides the swing, so cheap daytime energy never shows up as a cheap bill.
Firming is the new cost
As coal retires, batteries, pumped hydro and gas peakers cover the evening peak and the windless night. They are expensive because they sit idle most of the time and earn their keep in a few critical hours.
The network rebuild
Renewables are built where the sun and wind are, far from cities, so the grid needs thousands of kilometres of new transmission. That build is recovered through network charges, a fixed and growing part of your bill.
The lever you control is timing: shift flexible loads into the cheap, green middle of the day, and put your usage on a plan that matches the grid's rhythm. Rooftop solar and a genuine green plan are how households capture it.
Common questions
A Selectra expert answers your renewable energy questions
It changes minute to minute with the weather. Renewables routinely supply a third to well over half of National Electricity Market generation, and much more during sunny, windy periods. The live widget above shows the current share from solar, wind, hydro and bioenergy.
Because generation is only part of your bill. Network charges, retail costs and the cost of firming, keeping dispatchable power and storage ready for when renewables are not generating, all sit on top. Cheap midday solar does not cut the cost of supplying power at 7pm.
Firming is making variable renewable output reliable around the clock using storage (batteries, pumped hydro), hydro and gas peakers. It is the real frontier of the transition and a growing share of system cost, because the grid must guarantee supply even when the weather does not cooperate.
South Australia and Tasmania run at very high renewable shares, Victoria and New South Wales are scaling fast, and Queensland is catching up. Western Australia and the Northern Territory sit outside the National Electricity Market entirely, on their own systems.
Yes, through accredited GreenPower or genuine renewable plans, though the electrons reaching your home are still the shared grid mix. What changes is what your money funds. The distinction between accredited GreenPower and marketing-only "green" plans matters, and is covered in the green energy guide.