Labor’s ‘free power’ gimmick attracts just 10,000 customers - The Australian

Labor's free-power scheme, which offered eligible customers free electricity during off-peak hours, has attracted only 10,000 customers since its launch. The program was intended as a cost-of-living measure but has failed to gain significant uptake, suggesting either low consumer awareness, inflexible household schedules that cannot shift demand to off-peak periods, or both.

Where this fits

The scheme reveals a structural problem with the renewables transition: weather-dependent generation produces surplus power at unpredictable times, not at times households find convenient. Free power at 2 a.m. on a windy night does not reduce consumer bills if people sleep then. This is a demand-shifting problem, not a cost problem. It exposes why a high-renewables grid needs either massive battery storage (capital-intensive, China-dependent, material-heavy) or dispatchable power that runs when needed. The take-up rate shows Australian households cannot be behaviorally engineered into filling the gaps that variable generation leaves.

What it means

The policy rested on an assumption about consumer flexibility that the market has rejected. This matters because the electricity transition is banking on similar flexibility, from vehicles to hot water systems to pool pumps, to absorb renewable surplus and flatten demand. If 10,000 households cannot be moved by free power, grid-wide demand-response programs will struggle too. Australia is building a system that needs its customers to be smarter, faster, and more adaptable than they have shown they are willing to be. That gap between engineering assumption and human behavior will either require heavy investment in firm backup power or in expensive storage and transmission to move that surplus power across time and distance.