From July 1, many Australians can choose something that once sounded absurd: free electricity in the middle of the day. The federal government’s opt-in Solar Sharer Offer will give three hours of free power to households with smart meters in New South Wales, South Australia and southeast Queensland. Victoria’s separate scheme will launch in October.

Free power sounds like a giveaway. It isn’t. It’s meant to encourage people to use more electricity during the hours when solar power flows into the grid. The real aim is to get people to shift the use of water heaters, pool pumps, air-conditioning and electric vehicle charging to the middle of the day. At other times, power prices will be slightly more expensive.

The main challenge for Australia’s power systems is no longer how to meet peak demand in the evening. We now have to use or manage the floods of very cheap solar during the sunniest hours when there’s more supply than demand. If this imbalance isn’t managed, electricity voltage and frequency can move outside safe limits, equipment can trip, and the risk of outages rises.

The scheme makes sense. But there are still questions about its fairness.........

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