Ryan Fitzgerald had a great solar and battery system and was still paying $15 to $20 a day for power. One hour sitting down with us got that under $3. No new equipment. Just a better understanding of the system he already owned.

A lot of households are in the same spot. The gear on the wall is good but nobody ever showed you how to use it.

Sometimes, the best energy plan is around energy usage and how to optimise your current set up.

This was the case for Fitzy. His system was installed by another company, and it was a quality install. A 10kW Sungrow hybrid inverter and a 51.2kWh Sungrow battery stack with 20kW of Solar. Plenty of system for most homes.

But his home isn't 'most homes'. With a pool, a spa, a sauna and large scale air conditioning, the house uses around 80 to 100kWh a day. And once the installers left, he was on his own. No walkthrough. No advice on what to run when. No one checking whether his energy plan suited the system.

They routinely ran big loads whenever it suited, with no consideration about when power was cheap, free or coming off the roof.

We went out to his place and sat down with him for an hour. We looked at how the house uses power across a day, then changed two things.

Two key considerations when optimising your solar system set up

1. Allocate specific times of the day depending on the energy usage: For Fitzy's house, we worked through the big four: pool, spa, sauna , washing machine, drying machine and air conditioning. Each one got a time of day that suits the system, so the heavy loads run when power is free or coming from the sun, not from the grid at peak rates.
2. ‍Review your energy plan. If available to you, look for a plan that gives your free power each day. We moved Fitzy to a GloBird plan with four hours of free power each day. With a large battery and loads you can shift, a free window like that is worth a lot. You fill the battery and run the heavy gear for nothing, then coast through the evening on stored energy.

What results can you expect after choosing the right plan and optimising a solar and battery system?

In Fitzy's case, his daily cost dropped from $15 to $20 down to less than $3.

Same panels. Same battery. Same house. The only things that changed were the schedule, the plan and how well Fitzy understood his own system.

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Here's a look into the before and after results

‍Before:

• Hybrid inverter: 10kW
• Battery storage: 51.2kWh Sungrow
• Battery charge rate: 10kW
• Most the battery can take in the 4 free hours: 40kWh

After:

• Hybrid inverter: 20kW
• Battery storage: 51.2kWh Sungrow 76.8kWh (existing 51.2kWh + 25.6kWh added)
• Battery charge rate: 15kW
• Most the battery can take in the 4 free hours: 60kWh

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The existing Sungrow battery stays. We didn't ask him to throw out good equipment. The 10kW hybrid inverter came out and a 20kW hybrid went in, plus another 25.6kWh of storage was added to the stack.

For a home using 80 kWh to 100kWh a day, that's the difference between topping up and filling up.

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What else should you consider choose a plan and optimising your solar and battery system?

Plan out the next 12 months

Under $3 a day is a good result. The goal is as close to $0 as possible, all year round. So we mapped out Fitzy's full 12 months, season by season, and found the bottleneck.

It was the inverter. A 10kW inverter can only charge the battery at 10kW rate. In a four-hour free window, that's 40kWh at most. His battery holds 51.2kWh, so it could never fill on free power alone.

The plan keeps what works and fixes what doesn't.

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Could your solar system be doing more?

You don't need a pool, spa and sauna for this to apply. If any of these sound familiar, your system probably has more to give.

• You have solar or a battery and your bills are still higher than you expected.
• Nobody walked you through the system after it was installed.
• You don't know what time of day your big appliances run.
• You've been on the same energy plan since before the system went in.
• You never open the monitoring app, or you don't know what it's telling you.
• Your household has changed since install: an EV, a pool, more people at home.

If it turns out your system is already running well, we'll tell you exactly that.

It doesn't matter who installed it, AR Energy can optimise your Solar and Battery System and help you find the best energy plan.

We didn't install Fitzy's original system, and that didn't matter. If you own solar or a battery and you're not sure it's working as hard as it should, we'll sit down with you, look at your usage and your plan, and show you where the savings are. Free consultation, no obligation.

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