Solar that was going to waste, and three blackouts nobody noticed

Simone lives in Goonellabah, New South Wales, with his partner. When he bought the property, solar panels were already installed, and he was struck by how much energy they generated. The trouble was timing: most of that generation happened during the day while the house was empty, and the surplus simply went to waste. In summer, the household runs air conditioning at night, and the panels had nothing left to contribute.

On top of that, the area experiences frequent blackouts. Simone had assumed the solar panels would provide backup power during an outage, only to discover they can't, not without a battery. Rising electricity prices, wasted solar generation, and blackout vulnerability all pointed to the same solution.

He had always wanted a battery, but the cost had been out of reach. When the government rebate was announced, he described it simply as his time.

On the day, an installation team of four arrived early in the morning as scheduled. Simone's property is on a slope, which made the installation challenging. The ten battery modules, weighing around 50 kilograms, needed to be brought down carefully, but the team managed to get them into place efficiently. Simone helped navigate the access and was impressed by how well they worked together to get the job done. The installation was completed by around 2pm.

The team was professional and good-humoured throughout. All packaging was removed, and the installation area was left clean. Simone described the finished result as looking very good and neat.

Simone spent considerable time researching before committing. He ruled out premium brands early, not because of quality concerns, but because the cost and features exceeded what he needed.

The deciding moment came when he saw VoltX Energy products stocked at Aldi. His reasoning was direct: if a major retailer of that scale was confident enough to carry the brand, the product had to be legitimate. From there, he looked at the specs and the pricing and found VoltX Energy offered the largest capacity at a price that made clear financial sense. He described it as ticking all the boxes and pulling the trigger.

The battery has made Simone more intentional about how he uses energy, in a way he finds genuinely satisfying. When he can see excess electricity being generated, he times his cooking, dishwasher, and hot water system to run in that window. He described it as something he could not do before, when he was entirely dependent on the grid.

He and his partner are conscious of their environmental footprint and feel that generating and using their own clean energy is a meaningful step in the right direction. In his words, it makes him feel good not to waste the energy his panels are producing.

Simone uses the VoltX Energy app regularly and described it as quite easy to navigate. He monitors solar production, household consumption, battery levels, and grid imports and exports. He uses it actively to manage charging and discharging, drawing from the grid when the battery is low after a run of poor weather and exporting to the grid when there is excess.