Ausgrid will buy the solar a warehouse roof can't use - 16-year contracts, about 8c a kilowatt-hour expected, in two trial areas
Ausgrid's Community Power Network trial offers commercial roof owners in Botany-Mascot and Charmhaven 16-year contracts for surplus solar, priced by reverse auction. Ausgrid thinks about 8c/kWh could work, against the 2 to 3 cents most business exports earn now. Up to 70 MW of extra rooftop solar and 130 MWh of community batteries. Ausgrid says its shareholders, not customers, carry the risk.
Plenty of warehouse and shopping-centre roofs are only half covered in panels, for one reason: the leftover solar is worth almost nothing. Ausgrid, the poles-and-wires company, is now offering to buy it, for 16 years, in two corners of its patch.
The Community Power Network trial covers the Botany-Mascot area of Sydney and Charmhaven on the Central Coast. It aims to add up to 70 MW of rooftop solar and 130 MWh of battery storage, with the solar mostly on the underused roofs of warehouses, shopping centres, schools and other large buildings. Community-scale batteries soak up the midday surplus and release it locally in the evening peak. Ausgrid launched the revamped trial in late September. Energy Matters set out the business case for roof owners on 6 October.
Workplace meaning first. "Feed-in tariffs at the moment are two, three cents, and if you're a commercial business, they literally are nothing," Ausgrid's Steve Lewis told RenewEconomy. So businesses size solar to their own daytime use and stop. Under the trial, commercial roof owners are offered a 16-year power purchase agreement for whatever solar their tenants do not use. Prices are set by reverse auction - roof owners bid the price they will accept - and Ausgrid estimates about 8 cents a kilowatt-hour could be viable.
The landlord line is the useful one. The contract stays with the building. If a big-load tenant leaves and the next one uses little power, the owner sells more of the output to the network instead of stranding the panels. "It's not a high return, but it's fixed and it's guaranteed," Lewis said.
Ausgrid's own estimate: one extra megawatt of commercial solar could make up to $440,000 in profit over the 16-year life of the system. Simple arithmetic: that is about $27,500 a year per megawatt, and 8 cents is roughly two and a half to four times a 2 to 3 cent export rate. Neither figure is your roof's quote.
Analogy: a farmer who used to sell surplus milk at the gate for whatever passers-by offered now has a collection tanker that comes on a 16-year contract. The price is modest. The tanker turns up.
Everyone else in the area is forecast a cut. About 32,000 local customers are expected to share the value, and those without solar - renters and apartment residents included - are forecast an annual dividend of up to $150 to $200. Ausgrid forecasts about a 20% cut in peak demand at participating zone substations.
Good: A 16-year buyer for export, tied to the building, not the tenant. A named price expectation. Ausgrid says it will invest about $120 million for a regulated return of about 6%, with $13.2 million from ARENA, and that its shareholders, not its customers, carry the risk if it fails.
Bad: Two trial areas only, for five years. The AER's own page still lists the trial as "yet to commence". The 8 cents is an estimate; the auction sets the real price.
Ugly: Retailers still run the bills and export payments, and Ausgrid cannot guarantee they pass the price through. "We don't want to see a world where we're giving you eight cents and you're only giving four cents to the customer," Lewis said. The waiver also lets Ausgrid install up to 70 MW of solar itself as a supplier of last resort - if private installers do not fill the roofs - which Master Electricians Australia opposed. And the AER notes Ausgrid could still seek funding for the trial at its next regulatory reset, so "shareholders carry it" has a footnote.
Source: Anne Delaney, RenewEconomy, 25 Sep 2026 - Network bets its own money on filling commercial roofs with solar and storing it in community batteries. Also Energy Matters, 6 Oct 2026 - Commercial solar exports could finally pay: what Ausgrid's trial means for business roofs and AER Energy Innovation Toolkit - Ausgrid Community Power Network trial waiver. Sizes, areas, 16-year term, 8c estimate, $440,000, $120 million, 6%, $13.2 million, 32,000 customers, $150 to $200, 20% and quotes as published. The per-year and multiple figures are our arithmetic. No auction result yet.