Solar & Battery Storage vs Large-Scale REZs: Why Distributed Energy Works Better in Australia

Recently, Smart attended the 2025 National Renewables in Agriculture Conference, with MD Huon Hoogesteger giving a talk titled ‘Batteries 101’. Just outside the conference, media gathered to film a group of farmers protesting against the impact of large-scale solar and wind farm projects in regional Victoria.

Smart MD and Founder, Huon Hoogesteger joined the protest and afterwards was interviewed by Prue Bentley from ABC Radio’s Victorian Statewide Drive.

Head to the ABC Radio website to hear this interview in full or head to our LinkedIn to listen to an edited segment.

We lead the world in solar; we believe in it, and the economics show it's now the cheapest form of energy. It's cheaper than coal. It's cheaper than nuclear. It's an unbeatable force now.

- Huon Hoogesteger, Smart MD

Prue Bentley, ABC Radio:

Farmers and renewable energy pundits have descended on Bendigo today to discuss the future of renewable energy, specifically in agriculture. Now the event drew a small crowd of protesters as well, angry about the way transmission projects have been dealt with in regional Victoria, highlighting that friction between the renewable sector and primary producers.

Huon Hoogesteger is the MD of Smart Commercial Solar. He's been at the conference today and is presenting a battery technology session as well. Now, you are presenting at this conference, but you also took time to join the protesters this morning. Why is that?

Huon Hoogesteger, Smart Commercial Solar:

Well, I really empathise with farmers, and I can see that the protesters today, they're not actually protesting against renewables. They're really protesting against the way that the government is riding roughshod over landowners, taking away their sovereignty with a new set of laws to basically get higher high voltage transmission lines wherever they want them, and it's that type of government lever that we're against. Also, these renewable energy zones are not actually necessary.

The renewable energy zones are being designed for large-scale solar and wind farms. And the reality is that when you build a very large-scale solar farm in the middle of nowhere, you basically bring all the same issues that traditional technologies like coal fired power stations have, which is, you know, a remote location, a very huge amount of power in a long way from really where it's needed.

So, you have all the transmission losses, you also have with renewables a very high intermittency. The issues are compounded. But the reality is that there is more than enough rooftop. In fact, just take the commercial rooftops of the major metropolitan centres. If we were to put solar panels on every one of those roofs, on all of them, we would have more than enough power to power the entirety of Australia. We don't need large-scale solar farms.

Prue:

You talk about the intermittency though, there are a lot of people who say, well, you know, you need to have something baseload or you need to have a heck of a lot of batteries in order to be able to keep some of that energy through the night, through the winter, all of those sorts of periods.

Huon:

Absolutely. And I agree with you. You know, we've got the new home battery rebate, which is a $2.3 billion exercise. We would need around about $100 billion of investment into storage, into batteries over the next few years in order to become a wholly renewable grid, which we can absolutely do. And it will be a really good financial and environmental outcome.

But the point here is that solar and batteries particularly are suited to a high amount of distribution. So, we can have solar on rooftops, we can have batteries on houses, we can have batteries in carparks and in other areas of land, dotted throughout the areas where it's actually needed. Not taking up precious farming land, not taking away people's sovereign right to live in a place that they enjoy and that they’ve lived on for potentially many generations.

We don't need to create a divide between city and country either, because what we're trying to solve is the city's high consumption of energy, using farmers backyards.

Prue:

How were you received when you went to speak to the protesters today, Huon?

Huon:

Originally, very cautiously. They were not sure why this guy's coming out of the conference to spend some time with them. And we were, on both sides, very quick to isolate that the farmers that were protesting are not against renewables at all. In fact, most of them actually have solar of some sort on their properties.

What they what they are actually protesting about is the way that government's going about it. It's more about the way it's being done. We saw Lily D'Ambrosio, the energy minister in Victoria, yesterday, say, ‘Yeah, we've done consultation, but we're going to do this anyway. We're just doing this’. And it's that sort of attitude which is getting everyone's back up.

It's not right. It's un-Australian in my view, and it's taking away people's sovereign rights.

Prue:

Barnaby Joyce and one of his colleagues as well, Michael McCormack in the Nationals, are pushing for Australia to drop net zero targets so they have drafted legislation they're looking to basically dump it from the Australian agenda.

It is unlikely to get through, but it does sort of put it does put their agenda squarely on the table. What do you make of that move from the Nationals?

Huon:

It's largely irrelevant. The reality is that, you know, regardless of what they say out loud, the financial benefit of solar and battery has become so feasible. The grid costs have, over the last 15 years, on average, across every network in Australia, risen by 8% per annum. Some of that has been to do with renewables, but not most of it. Most of it's to do with other costs.

But whilst that grid cost has been rising, the cost of solar and battery has been rapidly coming down and we have actually passed the point of no return, which means that solar is, it now cheaper to install solar and battery than continue to pay for grid costs. So, they can come out with an announcement saying we are rejecting net zero. It doesn't matter. The market's going to continue.

In fact, the market's getting stronger. More people are going to put more solar and more batteries in. Batteries are the key to our renewable energy future. We need a lot of them, and we need them soon. And yeah, the Nationals are going to make a headline, but it's going to be more divisive. They're just trying to appease some of these people who are very upset about the other policies.

Prue:

Barnaby Joyce has been very outspoken, saying, ‘look, it can't even be achieved. So why are we going through all of this pain if it's something that we can’t even manage, we won't get there’. Do you think that that's completely unfeasible?

Huon:

We’ve already proven him wrong. I'm very pragmatic and I'm actually a conservative voter to this extent, but we've already proven him wrong with a huge amount of renewable energy. Now we're up to about 43%. In fact, sometimes over summer, around about 80% of Australia's energy is coming from renewable sources and we are on a very steady trajectory to becoming one of the highest solar and battery grids in the world.

Prue:

So, you think this is just theatre do you, Huon?

Huon:

I absolutely think it's theatre. I mean, Barnaby is a pretty theatrical sort of character and yeah, it's making a lot of noise, probably trying to return his base. But the reality is, economics speak louder than these sorts of noises, and fundamentally 40% of Australians have solar on their houses. We lead the world in solar; we believe in it, and the economics show it's now the cheapest form of energy. It's cheaper than coal. It's cheaper than nuclear. It's an unbeatable force now.