Can I get free electricity without solar panels in Queensland?

For years, free daytime electricity has been a perk for people who own a roof and put solar panels on it. Renters, apartment dwellers, and anyone with a shaded or unsuitable roof paid full price all day, every day.

That changed on 1 July 2026. The Federal Government’s Solar Sharer Offer now requires major electricity retailers in South East Queensland (along with NSW and South Australia) to offer plans with at least three free hours of grid power per day — in SEQ, around 11am to 2pm. There’s so much rooftop solar feeding the Queensland grid at midday that wholesale prices regularly go negative, and this scheme passes some of that glut on to everyone.

No panels. No roof. No landlord negotiations about drilling into the tiles. You opt in with your retailer, and the middle of the day becomes free.

The obvious problem: most of us aren’t home at 1pm on a Tuesday, and you can’t run your evening shower or dinner off electricity you didn’t use six hours earlier. Unless you store it.

Your no-solar free power playbook

1. Ring your retailer and ask for their Solar Sharer plan by name. Costs nothing, needs a smart meter — but you won’t find it on a comparison site.
2. Shift what you can for free — dishwasher, washing machine and other delay-start appliances into the free window.
3. Add a home battery that charges from the grid during the free hours and powers your evening. This is where the real money is.
4. Size the battery to your evening usage, not to the biggest box on the brochure.

Let’s take them in order.

Step 1: opt in to a free-hours plan

This is the foundation, and it’s free.

a) Check you have a smart meter. Most SEQ homes already do. If you don’t, retailers arrange the upgrade — typically at no cost — when you switch to an eligible plan.

b) Ring your retailer and ask for the Solar Sharer plan by name. This is the part that catches people out. Every major retailer in South East Queensland has to offer one, but you will not find it by shopping around — the plans are regulated standing offers, so they don’t appear alongside the ordinary market offers on the comparison sites. We checked every residential plan listed for a Brisbane postcode on Energy Made Easy (the Australian Energy Regulator’s own comparison site) in July 2026, and not one Solar Sharer plan came up. At least one major retailer won’t let you opt in online at all — you have to phone them. Nobody is moved across automatically, so if you don’t ask, nothing happens.

c) Know what’s excluded. The free window covers your normal usage charges. It does not cover the daily supply charge, and it does not cover anything on a controlled load circuit — the older, separately-metered arrangement many Queensland homes have for hot water. If your tank is on controlled load, it keeps being billed at its own rate right through the free window. That single detail decides whether the free hours are worth anything to you.

d) Watch the rates outside the window. Free-hours plans often carry slightly higher rates during the rest of the day. If you can’t move any usage into the window, these plans can cost you more, not less — we’ve covered that trap in detail in our post on free power hours and the credit card trap.

What it costs, what you save: opting in costs nothing. On its own — without shifting any usage — it saves nothing either. The savings come from the next two steps.

Step 2: shift the easy loads for free

Almost every modern dishwasher, washing machine and dryer has a delay-start button. Set them to run in the free window before you leave for work, and that usage drops off your bill entirely.

For a typical household this is 1.5 to 3 kWh a day of shiftable usage — worth roughly $150 to $250 a year at SEQ rates as at June 2026. Not life-changing, but it’s free money for pressing a button.

If you own your place and have electric hot water on your main tariff, a timer on the hot water circuit is the single highest-return upgrade there is. If the tank is on an older controlled load circuit, it has to be moved onto the main tariff first — otherwise the free window never touches it, as above. We’ve covered the whole thing (and every other load worth shifting) in our free power hours playbook. It’s also the cheapest way into the free window if a battery doesn’t stack up yet — around $300–$600 installed (as at June 2026), and your tank does the storing as heat: more on the battery page.

Step 3: the battery — turning lunchtime into your evening

This is the part that makes free power genuinely useful for people who are out all day.

Your house uses most of its electricity between late afternoon and bedtime — cooking, air conditioning, hot showers, the TV, the lot. That’s also exactly when grid electricity is at its most expensive. A battery bridges the gap:

a) The battery charges from the grid during the free window. We set the schedule once, in the battery’s app. A 10 kWh battery charging at 5 kW fills from empty in about two hours — comfortably inside a 3-hour window. On an eligible plan, that charge costs you nothing.

b) From late afternoon, your home runs off the battery. Lights, fridge, cooking, TV, a sensible amount of air conditioning — all supplied from power that cost you nothing, instead of peak-rate grid electricity.

c) The cycle repeats every day, automatically. There are no moving parts to your routine. The battery quietly arbitrages the free window against the evening peak, 365 days a year.

What it costs, what you save

As at July 2026, indicative installed prices — all including a partial-home backup circuit, so your essentials stay on in a blackout (every system is quoted individually):

• 8 kWh — from around $10,650 installed without solar (from around $8,550 where the rebate applies). Suits couples and small households. Saves roughly $650 to $950 a year.
• 16 kWh — from around $14,750 installed without solar (from around $10,750 with the rebate). The sweet spot for a typical family home. Saves roughly $1,200 to $1,700 a year.
• 24 kWh — from around $18,900 installed without solar (from around $13,600 with the rebate). Big homes, pools, EVs — shifts the full daily free allowance. Saves roughly $1,500 to $2,100 a year.

All figures indicative as at July 2026, assume an eligible free-hours plan, and depend on your specific plan, usage pattern and site. Payback for a well-sized battery on this setup typically lands around 8 to 11 years without solar — or roughly 6 to 8 years where rooftop solar unlocks the federal rebate — against battery warranties of 10 years or more.

A note on the federal battery rebate. The Cheaper Home Batteries Program (rebate factor 6.8 for installations from 1 May 2026 — roughly $250 per usable kWh at recent certificate prices) only applies where the battery is attached to rooftop solar. If you have panels, or you’re adding them, that’s in the order of $2,500 off a 10 kWh battery, itemised on your quote. If solar isn’t an option for you — renters, apartments, unsuitable roofs — the rebate doesn’t apply, and the no-solar prices above are what to budget. The savings case in this post doesn’t depend on it.

Will this work for my house?

• Yes — homeowners without solar: shaded roof, asbestos roof, heritage listing, or you just never got around to panels. The battery doesn’t touch the roof.
• Yes — renters, with the owner’s written consent. The battery wires into the switchboard, so it’s a fixture; agree up front who owns it if you move. We’re happy to talk it through with your owner or property manager.
• Yes — apartments and townhouses with their own meter and a suitable spot to mount the battery, usually a garage wall. Body corporate approval is normally required.
• One thing to note — if you might add solar panels later, say so when you get quotes. Choosing a hybrid system now means panels can plug straight in down the track.

We’ve packaged exactly this — battery, install, rebate paperwork and free-window scheduling — on our battery without solar page, including a calculator that sizes the battery to your bill.

Step 4: size it to your evenings, not the brochure

The right size battery is determined by one number: how much electricity you use between late afternoon and bedtime. For most SEQ households that’s 6 to 12 kWh, which is why 10 to 13.5 kWh batteries hit the sweet spot — they cover the evening with a little headroom (and where the battery is attached to rooftop solar, they also sit inside the full-rate band of the federal rebate).

Bigger isn’t automatically better. A 16 kWh battery in a townhouse that uses 6 kWh a night is money sitting on a wall. Our battery sizing calculator gives you a starting point in about two minutes; we confirm it against your actual bills before anything is ordered.

A worked example

Consider a Brisbane couple renting a no-solar townhouse, both out at work during the day. Total usage about 18 kWh a day, of which about 8 kWh lands between 4pm and bedtime.

With the owner’s consent, they install a 10 kWh battery (about $10,000 installed, as at June 2026 — the federal battery rebate doesn’t apply without rooftop solar) and switch to a Solar Sharer plan when their retailer launches one:

• The battery draws about 9 kWh from the grid during the free window each day — free on an eligible plan, and well inside the roughly 24 kWh a day the 3-hour window allows.
• It delivers about 8 kWh into the evening after charging losses, covering essentially all of their evening usage: roughly $960 a year saved at 33 c/kWh.
• They also delay-start the dishwasher and washing machine into the free window — about 2 kWh a day: roughly $240 a year saved, for free.

Net saving: roughly $1,100 to $1,300 a year (as at June 2026; indicative, subject to their plan’s rates outside the free window). Against the $10,000 battery, that’s payback in around 7.5 to 9 years — on hardware warranted for 10.

When not to bother

A battery on a free-hours plan isn’t right for everyone. Skip it — or at least wait — if:

• Your total usage is very low. Under about 3,000 kWh a year, the payback stretches beyond the warranty period. The maths doesn’t work yet.
• Your evenings are tiny. If you genuinely use only 2–3 kWh after 4pm, a battery has nothing meaningful to displace.
• You rent and the owner says no. The battery can’t be installed without consent, full stop. Start with the free wins in step 2 instead.
• You have a sunny, suitable roof and you own it. Solar panels plus a battery beats a battery alone — the battery charges from your own panels and the free window, and a solar-attached battery unlocks the federal rebate that a standalone one doesn’t get. Start with our solar cost guide instead.

And a general caution: free-hours plans shift costs around rather than lowering every rate. If you can’t move meaningful usage into the window — by battery or by behaviour — the higher rates outside it can leave you worse off. Run the numbers first. Our fact-check on free power hours separates the marketing from the mechanics.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need solar panels to get the Solar Sharer Offer?

No. It’s a retailer plan, not a solar product. You need a smart meter and an eligible plan from a participating retailer. The free electricity comes from the grid, which is flooded with cheap solar in the middle of the day.

When does it start in Queensland?

It launched on 1 July 2026 in South East Queensland (the Energex network area), alongside NSW and South Australia. Plans, windows and eligibility criteria are set by each retailer — confirm the details with yours.

Can renters get a battery installed?

Yes, with the owner’s written consent — the battery becomes a fixture of the property. Agree up front who owns it if you move out. Some owners will co-fund the install because it adds value.

How much does a home battery cost in 2026?

As at July 2026, indicatively from around $10,650 installed for 8 kWh up to around $18,900 for 24 kWh without solar — including partial-home backup — with the popular 16 kWh size from around $14,750. Every system is quoted individually — and remember the federal rebate only applies where the battery is attached to rooftop solar (where it does, budget roughly $8,550 to $13,600 across the same sizes).

Is a battery worth it without solar panels?

Only on a free-hours plan. Charging at normal grid rates and discharging in the evening saves very little. Charging free at midday and discharging through the evening peak is what makes it work — typically $900–$1,200 a year for a 10 kWh battery, as at June 2026, depending on your plan and usage.

What happens if the free window changes?

You update the charging schedule in the battery’s app — a two-minute job. The hardware doesn’t care when the free hours fall.

What to do next

If you’re a no-solar household in South East Queensland, the order of operations is simple: get your name down for a battery quote now (installers will be busy when the offer launches), switch to a Solar Sharer plan when your retailer releases one, and set the delay-start habits in the meantime.

Start with the battery sizing calculator to see what size suits your usage, or get in touch and we’ll model it against your actual bills — including a straight answer if the numbers don’t stack up for your household. We don’t sell batteries to people who shouldn’t buy them.