Home Battery Scheme

Mrs POWER (Elder) (14:48): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Can the minister please update the house on how the priority period for local manufacturers is going as part of the Home Battery Scheme?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:48): Thank very much, member for Elder—a terrific question. It is very important to fully understand all the many benefits of our energy policy. Of course, our highest priority is to make electricity more affordable and more reliable, but it is not the only thing we hope to achieve through this policy.

As the member would know, we are offering subsidies of up to $6,000 per household for the purchase of a new battery attached to solar, and of course, importantly, low-interest loans for the balance of the purchase price, plus the purchase of new solar for their home if they would like to have that as well. It is an outstanding opportunity by any measure.

Not only do those homes, those families, those households that take up this opportunity benefit themselves directly with regard to their energy consumption and cost but, by doing that, all other South Australian electricity consumers will benefit as well by taking demand away from peak demand times, thus reducing the pressure, thus reducing the price, which will then flow through to all other energy consumers.

While this is one of the planks of our energy policy, we are doing everything we possibly can to achieve more from this component of our policy. As the member for Elder quite rightly points out, there is a priority period attached to this policy, which we announced about three weeks ago. As part of that announcement, we made it very clear that for the first nine weeks of the four-year program—keeping in mind that we intend to have an additional 40,000 households equipped with battery and solar combined over four years through this policy—we are offering a priority period to battery manufacturers and/or assemblers who do the manufacture or the assembly here in South Australia.

We think that's very fair for those businesses that are contributing more than just the supply of the batteries, but also the assembly or the manufacture of them here in South Australia, to have that bit of a head start. Nine weeks out of four years do not significantly disadvantage other suppliers, and we have about 20 of them waiting to join the program in early December, but, very importantly, we want to contribute to the South Australian economy in as many ways as possible, not only through cheaper electricity.

As members would know, the German company Sonnen was announced as going to start assembly and manufacture here in South Australia, but today we have announced that another international company, Alpha ESS—and, for those who are interested, ESS stands for 'energy storage system'—has also met the criteria for local assembly and manufacture, so they join in the three weeks. For them, they only have about six weeks left because they weren't here at the initial time. They weren't able to be there at the start, so they don't get the full benefit. They will, importantly, manufacture from mid-2019, but in the meantime they are using Minda to help them with assembly here in South Australia, which is absolutely terrific in many, many ways. Let me just share some information from Mr Dong Lin on behalf of that company:

As one of the earliest pioneers in energy storage market, Alpha ESS was naturally interested in South Australia's Home Battery Scheme.

We believe it is one of the most ambitious government led schemes we have seen and it was a major draw card in attracting Alpha ESS to South Australia.

We are very pleased to announce Alpha ESS will be supplying batteries to South Australian households during the nine week priority period.