Perhaps the most effective way to make citizens understand that energy from the sun and wind costs very little is also the simplest: give it away when it abounds. In fact, the government of Australia has mandated that electricity retailers in three states-New South Wales, South Australia, and Queensland-offer households at least three hours of free electricity in the middle of the day, when photovoltaics push wholesale prices down, sometimes below zero.
The new offering, christened Solar Sharer will be available from July 2026 for those who have a smart meter and explicitly choose the dedicated tariff. It will not be triggered automatically: it will need to be adhered to. The goal is to shift demand from the evenings, when the cost of energy rises and the grid becomes burdened with consumer demands, to the sunniest hours, reducing waste, congestion, and intervention in system stability.
More electrical capacity in solar rooftops than in coal-fired power plants
Context helps to understand why. Australia has amassed more rooftop solar capacity than the entire fleet of coal-fired power plants still in operation. In numbers, more than 41 GW of installed PV, more than half of which, about 26 GW, is on residential and commercial rooftops. Under these conditions, mid-day generation often exceeds requirements, wholesale prices plummet, and, in the absence of flexible demand, people end up cutting generation or paying to feed electricity into the grid. The Solar Sharer tariff tries to turn this “paradox of abundance” into a concrete benefit for users with a simple mechanism: three free hours each day. Energy Minister Chris Bowen sums it up this way: make “every last ray of sunshine power our homes,” benefiting the environment and our wallets.
The program will not cover the whole country right away, but the government has opened a consultation to extend it to other jurisdictions by 2027, and the Energy Regulatory Authority will ensure that customers are treated fairly even outside the free windows. One knot yet to be unraveled concerns tax burdens: in the Dutch case, with the experiment HappyPower implemented in the province of Zeeland, users do not pay for energy during hours of high solar production and low demand, but continue to pay taxes and charges. In Australia, it is unclear whether these costs will also be zeroed out for the three hours. The similarity between the two approaches, however, is obvious: reducing grid congestion and better aligning supply and demand by rewarding those who shift consumption.
The principle is intuitive enough: if generators sometimes have to pay to deliver electricity to the grid, consumers can at least get it at no cost. It is also a retail energy policy choice capable of speaking to citizens without delving into technicalities. Clean energy has become cheaper on the generation side in recent years; this has not stopped bills from rising in several countries, aided by gas prices and investments to make grids more resilient to extreme weather. Herein lies one of the difficulties of the transition: the cost we see on the bill is the result of rules, tariffs and charges that add up, and the contribution of renewables tends to be confused with that of rising items. Tariffs like Solar Sharer try to carve out, in a transparent way, a portion of the benefit that is immediately noticeable.
A practical pedagogy
There is also a systemic aspect that is often overlooked. Grid rates are spread over every kilowatt-hour consumed: if demand grows, thanks to electric vehicles, heat pumps and, yes, better integrated data centers, the per-unit rate tends to fall. Shifting consumption to hours of plenty can reduce both variable costs and the need for expensive upgrades targeted only at evening peaks. It is a way to make existing infrastructure work harder, improving its utilization. For households, the message is almost obvious: use timers to schedule washes, recharges and air conditioning during free hours; store energy in household and vehicle batteries to be returned to the home or grid when needed; take advantage of what appliances already allow.
Australia, in setting a target of 82 percent electricity from renewables by 2030, is meanwhile trying to untangle one of the knots standing in the way: not technology, but adoption. Aligning daily behaviors with the trend of clean generation means accelerating decarbonization without asking for sacrifices, but by changing habits. In countries where PV is now a structural component of the mix, free windows become a practical pedagogy: they show that demand can be reorganized with immediate economic and environmental benefits. And they serve to clear the air of ridiculous accusations that impute price increases to renewables that depend on something else. Immediate and understandable measures, such as a few hours of free electricity, can bring attention back to the fact that the green transition brings tangible benefits.
