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Times of plentiful solar also tend to be the cheapest times to buy wholesale electricity from the grid, and innovative retailers like Amber Electric are passing through these price signals to customers.

Mark Campbell was paid $22 on Sunday to charge his Tesla and use his dishwasher and clothes dryer. This remarkable transaction came about because bumper generation from rooftop solar drove demand for grid power to a record low in Victoria and sent prices below zero.

One Friday in August, when the high-voltage interconnector between South Australia and Victoria was down and prices spiked, Adelaide man Jai Nankivell earned $177 in six hours selling energy from the battery of his Nissan Leaf back to the grid.

By 2030 Australia will already have enough battery storage from home systems and electric cars to meet the demands of the renewable energy transition. That’s the assessment of Amber Electric co-founder and co-chief executive Dan Adams and, notably, it excludes the development of any large-scale commercial battery farms.

The majority of customers buy their electricity through fixed contracts that keep prices stable. Some retailers are offering to give consumers access to the wholesale market in a bid to cut their power bills.