Three hours of free power a day — if you have a smart meter

The 30-second take

• From 1 July 2026, retailers must offer a default Solar Sharer plan — three hours of free electricity in the middle of the day.
• It requires a smart meter. The rollout now covers more than 3 million households, roughly 40% of Australian homes.
• The policy target is households without rooftop solar, giving them a way to use Australia’s midday solar surplus.
• Free midday power is not free power overall — the cost is generally recovered in the rates outside that window.
• For solar households it is worth checking, but the free window overlaps exactly with when your own system is already generating.

What Solar Sharer is

From 1 July 2026, the Default Market Offer framework requires retailers to offer a Solar Sharer plan as a default option. The headline feature is three hours of free electricity in the middle of the day for customers with a smart meter.

The policy reasoning is straightforward. Australia generates an enormous amount of rooftop solar at midday — so much that in high-penetration areas the local network struggles to absorb it, and wholesale prices in the middle of the day sometimes go negative. Meanwhile, roughly two-thirds of Australian households do not have rooftop solar and get no direct benefit from any of it.

Solar Sharer is an attempt to close that gap: give every household a way to use the midday surplus, whether or not they own panels.

“Two-thirds of Australian households do not have solar. Solar Sharer is how they get some of the benefit.”

The smart meter condition

The offer requires a smart meter, because a time-based tariff needs interval metering to work. An old accumulation meter records only total consumption and cannot distinguish free-window energy from any other kind.

Australia’s smart meter rollout now covers more than 3 million households — approximately 40% of homes. If you do not have one, you can generally request one from your retailer, though timeframes and any charges vary.

It is worth checking rather than assuming. Many households have had a smart meter installed during a solar installation or a meter replacement without particularly noticing.

Free is not free

This is the part that needs stating plainly, because "three hours of free power" is a headline designed to travel.

Retailers do not give away energy. A plan with a free midday window recovers that cost somewhere else — typically in higher rates during peak periods, higher rates overnight, or a higher daily supply charge. Whether you come out ahead depends entirely on how much of your consumption you can actually move into the free window.

For a household that is home during the day — shift workers, retirees, people working from home, families with young children — and that can run the dishwasher, washing machine, pool pump and hot water in that window, the plan can be genuinely good.

For a household that leaves at 7am and returns at 6pm, with most consumption in the evening peak, a plan that gives away midday energy and charges more at peak is likely to be worse than a conventional tariff.

• Work out what share of your usage you can realistically move into the free window before switching.
• Compare the peak, off-peak and supply charges on the Solar Sharer plan against your current plan, not just the free window.
• Timer-capable appliances and hot water on a controlled circuit are the easiest loads to shift.
• If you charge an EV at home, the free window can be the single biggest lever — but only if you are home to plug in.

What it means if you already have solar

Here is the awkward overlap: the free window is the middle of the day, which is exactly when your own solar system is generating.

Energy you would have taken from your own panels for nothing is not made cheaper by being free from the grid. So the direct benefit of a Solar Sharer plan to a well-sized solar household is smaller than it looks — you are being offered free access to a resource you already own.

There are still cases where it can help. If your system is undersized relative to your daytime consumption, if heavy midday loads exceed what your array produces, or if a winter day leaves you drawing from the grid at noon, the free window covers the shortfall.

And if you have a battery, there is a more interesting possibility: charging from free grid energy during the window, preserving your own solar export or covering a shortfall. Whether that is worth doing depends on the plan’s other rates and your battery’s control options, and it is a calculation rather than an obvious win.

The bigger signal

Solar Sharer is worth paying attention to beyond whether you personally switch, because of what it says about where the market is going.

Every significant change in the last two years has pushed the same direction: midday energy is abundant and getting cheaper, evening energy is scarce and getting more valuable, and the households that do best are the ones that can shift consumption or store energy across that gap.

Feed-in tariffs falling, two-way export pricing, battery rebates, VPP incentives and now free midday power are all the same policy instinct expressed five different ways.

If you are making a decision about solar or storage now, design for that world rather than the one where exporting was the point.

What this means for you

If you’re a homeowner

• Check whether you have a smart meter before assuming you can access the offer — around 40% of Australian homes now do.
• Compare the whole plan, not the free window. The cost is recovered in the peak, off-peak or supply charges.
• If you already have well-sized solar, the direct benefit is limited — the free window overlaps with your own generation.
• If you have a battery, ask whether it can be set to charge during the free window. It may be worth it, but it is a calculation, not a given.

If you’re an installer

• Expect customers to raise Solar Sharer as a reason they may not need solar. The honest answer — that it helps most for households without panels and evening usage still costs money — is more persuasive than dismissing it.
• Battery control strategy is becoming a genuine differentiator. Systems that can be configured around a free-window tariff are worth more to the customer than ones that cannot.
• Tariff literacy is now part of the sale. Being able to compare a Solar Sharer plan against a customer’s current plan builds trust quickly.

Read next

• Home batteries explained
• Solar panels explained
• What system size actually suits your home
• Federal solar and battery rebates

Sources

Every quantitative claim on this page traces to one of the sources below — government, regulator, market operator, or independent industry reference.

• AER — Final Default Market Offer 2026–27
• AEMC — Accelerating smart meter deployment
• Australian Energy Regulator — Information for energy consumers