The Solar Grid Saver offer is available to eligible customers participating in the Market Active Solar Trial, where you'll be rewarded for smarter management of your solar exports.
It’s designed to help lighten the load on the grid and reduce solar traffic jams, which happen when there’s excess solar in the electricity grid. Solar Grid Saver does the work, occasionally limiting solar exports, while you get the credit.
Add Solar Grid Saver to an eligible AGL electricity plan (no additional hardware required).
When the electricity grid needs it, we’ll access your solar inverter remotely to pause your solar system exports - no more than 200 hours over the whole year.
In return you'll get bill credits spread over the 12 month period of the Market Active Solar Trial, based on the size of your solar inverter: a total of
You remain in control of your solar power. You can continue to generate and use your own solar power even during events when exports are paused
To add Solar Grid Saver to your plan and earn more from your solar you must:
AGL has partnered with Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and SA Power Networks to run the Market Active Solar Trial. Eligible customers are invited to join the trial by adding Solar Grid Saver to their plan and by taking part will be rewarded with annual bill credits. The trial will begin in early 2025 and will run for 12 months. A key focus of the trial will be to understand the experience of participating customers. During the trial, customers will be invited to participate in surveys and share feedback with ARENA, SA Power Networks and AGL and this will help inform the future design of our energy grid and its integration with rooftop solar.
By adding Solar Grid Saver to your energy plan, you agree to participate in the Market Active Solar Trial. You agree to participate in surveys, customer feedback interviews and other data collection activities reasonably requested by AGL, ARENA or SA Power Networks for the purposes of the trial. You agree that we may access and use your Personal Information and responses to surveys and customer feedback/data collection activities for any reasonable purposes in connection with the trial and that we may share this information with ARENA, SA Power Networks and other entities associated with the trial. You otherwise consent to AGL collecting, using and disclosing your Personal Information in accordance with AGL's privacy policy and credit reporting policy, which are available at agl.com.au or on request.
Solar Grid Saver works by pausing your solar exports for up to 200 hours per year – less than four hours per week on average – when the grid needs flexibility rather than more generation. When we access your solar inverter, we’ll do it remotely and reduce your solar exports (not your total generation). You can continue to generate and use your own solar power for your home even during times when solar exports are paused.
This is a meter connected to the inverter or gateway device that measures your household’s consumption (note that this is different to your electricity smart meter which is used for billing). All solar inverters measure how much solar energy they’re producing. By understanding how much energy your house is using at the same time, it allows your inverter to make sure that its only reducing exports to the grid rather than shutting down the inverter altogether.
A way to determine if you have a household consumption meter installed at your property is if you can see your existing solar production and household consumption in your solar inverter manufacturer’s monitoring system (via app or web). Please note that your billing meter (which provides your household consumption data in your AGL app) is not connected to your inverter, and doesn’t serve the same purpose as the household consumption meter.
You won't need to install any additional hardware. Providing you have a compatible SolarEdge solar inverter with an associated household consumption meter, and a reliable internet connection, Solar Grid Saver can be added on to any AGL electricity plan.
If you do not have an eligible solar meter installed, but still wish to sign up to Solar Grid Saver, you will need to contact your installer or solar inverter vendor to arrange installation of the additional meter.
When we manage your solar system, the amount of solar energy you feed into the grid and your feed-in tariff credits reduce.
However, during periods when you are suppling energy back to the grid, you’ll continue to receive your feed-in tariff as per your AGL electricity plan.
You're free to switch your electricity plan at any time as there are no lock-in contracts. However, you must remain on an AGL electricity plan in order to stay on our Solar Grid Saver offer.
We’re not quite ready to talk to all solar inverters, but we’re planning to expand the range we can communicate with. Right now, we can connect with eligible SolarEdge inverters.
Let us know if you have a different inverter type and we'll look to include it in the future. Email us anytime at BatterySupport@agl.com.au.
Read the full Terms and Conditions (PDF).
