On September 9, 2024, I paid a lot of money to get solar panels installed on my house. It included a battery. This post serves as a financial breakdown of my solar system after one year, including everything I did to maximise my return on my investment along the way.

The solar system and battery itself is installed in a location in Southern Australia, Adelaide, in its Northern Suburbs. My roof is east/ west facing, and doesn't have complicated topology. Almost all parts of the roof are covered in solar panels, meaning I get good generation throughout the day.

AI image, not my actual house :D

First, the system itself, from my installer's documentation:

440W * 24 Panels
Inverter
Battery

For this system, I paid $22,500 AUD, which on the day of payment, would have been equivalent to the following in other currencies:

Currency	Value
USD	14,985
EUR	13.500
GBP	11,200
BTC	~0.2277

Now, there's a great little benefit of the Fronius Solar App. It tells me how much I've saved directly by combining the cost for time of use, export value, which gets me a baseline. The only problematic calculation is that of the battery savings.

This means, that over the lifetime of the system, the combined benefit of energy used from the panels, and energy exported to the grid is valued at:

Now this doesn't include the "value" from the battery - which is only available from the Tesla app, which is frankly, garbage. It won't allow a daily (over the course of a year) export of data, so instead I have averaged battery usage over the year by the month, in KwH, then can figure out how much it saved based on the peak and overnight rate - which is when the battery is used most often - when the sun ain't shining.

Firstly, though, in 366 days, the battery has delivered 2565 KwH to my home, which is pretty good for a 13.5 KwH appliance! That's approximately 190 full charge cycles, though in reality, I do not believe the battery has ever gone completely flat. Given that the warranty claims 70% capacity will still be available after 10 years (or 37000 KwH of use) - I'm only 6% through that in 10% of the warranty period, which means my battery should have higher than 70% usable capacity by the end of the ten year warranty.

Anyway, some rough calculations on what the battery has saved me since installation: about $1019.

Savings Summary

So, that means in a single year:

---

$1019 (battery savings)

PLUS

$3186.81 (self consumption and exports)

EQUALS

$4205.81 saved

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$350 a month I didn't need to pay to power companies. Electricity is EXPENSIVE in Australia.

I've "paid off" 18.6% of the solar system in a single year. But the savings don't end there. I took advantage of several offers by switching electricity companies throughout the year - and joined a "virtual power plant" to get a state government rebate.

Other Incentives

Rebate	Value
State Government Rebate for VPP	$780
Retailer Incentive for VPP	$200
Grocery Gift Card for Joining VPP	$200

So there's another $1180 that I got as an advantage from joining (and swapping) power companies throughout the year. The power company I am with at the moment also gives me membership to a local supermarket's loyalty program which gives 10% off a shopping trip a month, up to $50 - so if I spend $550 in a month on groceries, that's up to another $600 of cost offset - but that's not realistic, just another perk of me turning the screws on the energy companies and capitalism however I can. :)

Payoff, After A Year

So that takes the value of the savings from my system to:

$ 4205.81 (Energy costs not incurred)

PLUS

$ 1180.00 (Cash Incentives)

EQUALS

$ 5385.81 Cost Offset

So, taking that into account, in a single year, the solar system has been 23% offset in a single year! I'm dreaming! :)

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Some Fun Facts Over the Year:

Total Consumption: 8,832.7037 KwH
Average Daily Consumption: 24 KwH

Total Generation: 15,037 KwH
Average Daily Generation: 41 KwH

Total Energy Sent to the Grid: 6,639 KwH
Average Daily Exports: 18.13 KwH

Days with the highest Production:

Date DD.MM.YYYY	Production (KwH)
20.12.2024	75.54532
07.12.2024	74.74506
31.12.2024	74.73408
25.12.2024	74.52161
13.01.2025	72.95112
03.01.2025	72.89446
10.01.2025	72.64229
24.12.2024	71.55681
19.12.2024	71.5269
18.01.2025	69.90382

Days with the lowest Production:

Date DD.MM.YY	Production (KwH)
25.07.2025	4.01092
25.08.2025	6.91468
07.06.2025	8.11552
09.07.2025	8.23401
14.06.2025	8.40225
04.08.2025	9.87222
09.09.2024	11.75145
29.07.2025	13.04234
05.07.2025	13.20226
06.06.2025	13.75931

Days with the highest Consumption:

Date DD.MM.YYYY	Total Consumption (KwH)
27.01.2025	71.4330742
09.03.2025	62.5309639
25.12.2024	62.2266083
04.02.2025	60.9784631
03.02.2025	60.0035103
13.01.2025	59.3321175
02.02.2025	58.0100725
16.12.2024	56.5546547
12.03.2025	56.5112094
10.03.2025	53.7663742

Days with the lowest Consumption:

Date DD.MM.YYYY	Total Consumption (KwH)
30.08.2025	10.0983375
09.09.2024	11.0464514
14.06.2025	11.3264533
21.09.2024	12.6355739
12.05.2025	12.9461578
24.09.2024	12.9719503
23.11.2024	13.0055639
05.07.2025	13.2402639
11.05.2025	13.2518053
21.04.2025	13.3445697

TLDR: If you live in Australia, and don't have solar panels and a battery, and have the roof space, just do it. It is a no brainer. Get a set up that enables you to have electricity when there's a power outage, too - with a battery. In this year, my battery gave me power while there was none in the neighbourhood for a period of three hours.

As power prices increase in the coming years, this set up is going to pay itself off marvelously. It will also ensure that I have power available to my house to keep my food cold, and my house comfortable if there are extended outages, given the delta between my consumption and generation.

I just wish that I could afford another two batteries to store the excess power, and then I think I would be able to be entirely off grid! :) If I had, though, purchased BTC, I would have made a larger profit. I prefer energy sovereignty as a first step. :)