1. SCT Certificates – federal government (~$17,000)

The discount is claimed by your installer, and taken off your installation bill.

This is the federal battery rebate program. You can claim these for up to 50kWh of batteries. If you get over 50kWh of batteries you can still claim, but it’s capped at 50 kWh. It’s called the ‘Cheaper Home Batteries Program’

https://www.dcceew.gov.au/energy/programs/cheaper-home-batteries

e.g. 2026. 8.4 STC/kWh, $35-$40 per STC

2. Virtual Power Plant incentive ($1015)

This must be claimed within 90 days of first connecting to a VPP in NSW.

(Only for batteries under 28kWh)

This is a one off payment of up to $1015 when you first connect to a VPP. You don’t need to stay with the VPP. After you receive the rebate you can change VPP or cancel your VPP.

This rebate is only available if your batteries are under 28kWh. If you get over 28kWh of batteries you cannot claim any rebate. (If you get 28kWh of battery, the rebate is $1015. If you get 29 kWh of battery, the rebate is $0).

3. VPP connection (~$200 one off)

This comes from your provider off your Bill.

This is the money an electricity provider pays you for being able to control your battery and take some power during peak times. They usually pay an annual fee for you to be connected to their VPP. This is what they pay you to be connected to their VPP, even if you export nothing. It’s like a subscription fee for them to subscribe to power form you.

Some Example Prices as of Feb 2026.

Origin Loop $200 credit

AGL $200 Credit plus $20 per quarter.

Engie $200 credit plus $20 per month

Energy Australia $15 per month

4. VPP Export Bonus (~$200 yearly)

This comes from your provider off your Bill.

Some providers also pay you a bonus for the electricity you export while on a VPP. Note: depending on the plan and time of day, you may get a feed in tariff for the power you sell, e.g. 6 cents per kWh. This is a bonus on top of that rate.

Origin $1/kWh during ‘Loop Events’ (capped at $200).

AGL $1/kWh (Capped at $250)

5. VPP Incentives ($300 – $600 yearly)

This comes from your provider off your Bill.

Some providers provide incentives to not use power during certain periods, eg if your overall usage is 0 during a time period.

AGL $600 bill credits if you overall export between 5-9pm.

GloBird ZeroHero $1 per day if you overall export between 6-8pm

Summary. There are 5 different kinds of payments you get for VPP, Government rebate on signup, provider bonus on signup, ongoing payment from company for staying connected, payment when you export in certain times, payment for not using any power in certain times. This is on top of any payment you already get for your feed-in tariff. It sounds a lot, but overall I’ve found they barely cover the monthly supply cost, if at all.

6. Referral Credits

This comes from your provider off your Bill.

This is an interesting one. When I went to sign up for Amber Electricity, it asked me for a ‘promo code’. I did a google search and found a code that gave me a discount of $10 per month off my bill.
But then when I signed up to Amber, they gave me a code that I could share with others. I don’t like flooding the internet with referral codes, so I didn’t post it to my facebook! But I did post it to the forum where I got my code from here, the Aussie referral links page on Reddit. I made back $80 on my bill. (9 people used my link!)

Amber $10 per month (Your own link is only available in the Amber app) e.g. https://mates.amber.com.au/MEQWVKKP

Globird $50 one off https://www.globirdenergy.com.au/refer/

Origin $50 one off https://www.originenergy.com.au/rewards/refer-a-friend/

7. Family Energy Rebate ($180)

Apply Online through Service NSW

For completeness I’ll list these even though they are not for battery. If you get Family Tax Benefit, there’s a rebate of $180 per year available off your electricity bill here:

https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/apply-for-the-family-energy-rebate-retail-customers

7. Low Income Help ($285)

Apply though your electircity provider.
If you hold a Health care card there is a $285 Household Rebate upon giving your Centrellink CRN to your electricity provider.

https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/apply-for-the-low-income-household-rebate-retail-customers

Very good article by a lawyer.

It might be time to get rid of your cordless phone….

I’m not completely paranoid about EMF. I still use a mobile phone. We have fixed wireless NBN.

But I did some measurements of EMF levels around our house and it was surprising how easy it is to reduce 95% of your EMF exposure with about 5% effort.

Take a look at this graph – it says it all…

The various devices that I measured around our home ranged from  8mV/m (that was my Apple LED display right in front of my head) to 10,000mV/m (that was our Uniden DECT cordless phone at my ear when on a call.)

If I were to get rid of the top three devices on this graph I would have reduced my EMF exposure significantly!  If I replace my cordless phone with a corded phone and use my iPhone on handsfree and I don’t need to do a lot else. (I actually did a bit more since doing these tests. We have turned off our wifi completely and have our house wired up with Ethernet cable. I only turn in wifi when we have guests who need to use it.)

Don’t worry too much about the actual units (mV/m)  because everyone measures EMF in a different way, I just want you to get a feel for rough proportions here.

We live out of town, and if I’m outside on the front lawn our background EMF is approximately 3mV/m.

If I go for a drive into town (we live in a city of population just under 40,000 people) the average background EMF in our city is about 150 mV/m. If I was living in the city I’d be trying to keep my home EMF levels below that, which is not too hard.

 Three big ways to reduce your EMF

1.  Get rid of  your Cordless phone

Our regular Telstra phone ( not cordless)  was under 300mV/m  when on a call –  I should have included it on the graph.  This means that changing to a  corded phone from a cordless phone will reduce your EMF while on the phone to about 1/30th!

2. Use earbuds for your iPhone.

Holding your iPhone on your ear gives you an EMF at your ear off approximately 10,000 mV/m.   Using headphones,  or using your iPhone in hands-free mode, reduces the EMF to approximately 50mV/m  at your ear.

This reduces your EMF exposure by 200 times!

If you are using a Bluetooth headset  thinking that it reduces the EMF at your head, think again!  It might be 1/4 the EMF of having the phone on your ear, but it’s 50 times worse than using your iPhone with headphones.

3. Turn off your Wi-Fi at night

After our DECT cordless phone and mobile phone, the next biggest source of EMF  was our Wi-Fi base station. We have an Apple airport express.  Wi-Fi base stations are built to a certain standard so your average base station is going to be roughly a similar EMF regardless of the brand.  This is the same for any device that you have Wi-Fi turned on for, for example a laptop with Wi-Fi, a computer with Wi-Fi, an iPad with wifi.

2 Principles of reducing EMF exposure

So there are two obvious ways to reduce your EMF from wifi:

#1  Make sure you are not close to it.

EMF reduces dramatically with distance. You can see this with the example of the iPhone. At your ear the EMF is 10,000mV/m  but when the iPhone is about half a metre away, the EMF has dropped to 50mV/m.

If you are sitting right next to your laptop with Wi-Fi on for extended periods of time, or you are sitting right next to a base station, you will be getting much more EMF exposure than if you are a couple of meters away. Any distance helps, so even if you can get the Wi-Fi base station 1 foot further away by moving it to the other side of your desk, do it.  This will be a significant change in EMF.

#2  Limit the time that your wireless devices are on.

The most obvious thing to do here is  to turn off your  Wi-Fi network when you are not using it. Think about it for how many hours in the day are you actually using your Wi-Fi network, yet you properly have it on 24 hours a day.  If you just turn it on when you’re using it or even just turn it off at nighttime,you may well cut your EMF exposure by one third or one half.  The simplest way to do this may be just to get a little cheap timer that turns your Wi-Fi network off each night.

I think the more we become aware of the effects of EMF on our house the more this will become an issue, but thankfully it’s relatively simple to reduce the effects of EMF with a little bit of knowledge.

Measuring EMF

My other piece of advice would be to borrow an EMF meter and wander around your house or office checking the levels. You might be surprised what you find.

If you are going to use an EMF meter, make sure you use one that is measuring the high frequency range,  for example 50 MHz to 5 GHz.

Wifi uses 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz.

Mobile phones use 0.8Ghz – 1.8Ghz.

There are some low frequency EMF meters that are designed to measure 50 Hz (from power lines) and they will not pick up Wi-Fi EMF.

I have another article I have written on this regarding Apple computers, here, and from a health perspective here.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/

Well, depending on how you use them that is…