By Jo Nova
Who wants to buy a battery to help save the Energy Minister?
Spread the word, the new desperate plan to rescue the Transition Fantasy is to trick Australians into buying home batteries (and EVs) because the wind and solar factories can’t afford to pay for their own backup. But read about the experience of poor Mr Anderson. He accepted a $1,000 discount off the price of his battery, and in return agreed to allow AGL to draw off emergency power from his battery to “stabilize the grid in times of drama”. But he didn’t realize that the Australian electricity market did drama all the time. It’s like The Hunger Games at 6pm and he’d just volunteered as tribute.
It seemed like a good idea to sign up to be part of a virtual power plant (VPP). It was fine for the first year, he says, but then AGL started draining his battery at dinnertime, leaving him buying electricity when it was the highest price. Worse, they also changed his payment plan — and he got suckered with the “Demand Tariff” surprise — the diabolical plan which takes someone’s single greatest half hour consumption and then charges them that high rate for the whole month.
AGL disputes his claims (but the more they say, the worse it looks). They declare they don’t flatten home batteries “below 20%” and insist they sent him a letter about the tariff changes. Don’t we all feel so much better, eh?
The reputational damage of this kind of behaviour needs to be known far and wide
Let’s do our part to share his story.
Trust ‘on the line’ amid claims AGL drained householder’s battery at peak times
May 9th 2025 [ABC]
Mr Anderson says that in the first year after joining the scheme and getting the battery, he barely noticed a thing. “It was all very gentle and easy going,” he says.
“The idea of it was to help stabilise the grid in times of drama. “So it all seemed very reasonable. “And for the first year, I don’t even think they touched the battery.”
That all changed after a year or so when Mr Anderson says he started noticing some dramatic shifts. They changed the way they use the battery,” he says.”It went from these little bites every now and again to just full on sucking the thing down to its 5 per cent reserve level, just dragging everything out of it. “And you could map when they were doing that to when the price on the (national electricity market) had skyrocketed.”
They drained the battery and flicked the pricing plan:
Mr Anderson asserts AGL also started “draining” his battery at times, forcing him to buy power from the grid at peak prices.
To compound his frustrations, he says the changes amounted to a double whammy — by forcing him to buy power from the grid at peak times, he claims he was driving up his costs under a demand tariff.
Oh Great: AGL will only drain 80% from your battery?
AGL, which is Australia’s biggest energy retailer with more than 4 million customers, defended its actions in relation to Mr Anderson and its management of the VPP. A spokeswoman rejected claims AGL ever entirely depleted the batteries of participating households, saying it was the company’s policy to always leave at least 20 per cent of a charge remaining.
What good, exactly, is a battery left at 20% charge? For practical purposes the last 20% is untouchable. Beyond that, the homeowner risks permanent damage to the battery. At that point it’s not backup power for your home, it’s a placebo with a lithium core.
So when they say “we’ll never drain your battery below 20%”, what they really mean is: “We’ll take everything that’s usable — and leave just enough so the warranty doesn’t catch fire.”
AGL kept digging — pointing out that the tariff change was completely separate from the VPP deal
It’s true that AGL surprised all kinds of customers with the “Demand Tariff” bomb, not just battery owners, but they can’t pretend they cared about their customers in either situation. AGL was separately awful in two different ways.
The Demand Tariffs, by the way, were so noxiously unfair and unjust that after the backlash last year, AGL is no longer using them.
Mr Anderson has said his experience was so bad he’s left the VPP scheme.