Solar panels in Robertson

As an estimate, a 6.6kW system comes to about $3,990, a 10kW to about $5,490 and a 13.2kW to about $7,990, with the STC discount for postcode 2577 already taken off. Those are typical figures for a straightforward grid-connected install, not a fixed price, and not a figure that transfers to an off-grid design — an off-grid system is a different thing with a different price, which the rest of this page explains.

Robertson is in STC Zone 3, rating 1.382 — the same as Sydney. In 2026 a 6.6kW system creates 45 certificates, worth roughly $1,710 off the price, and a 10kW system 69 certificates, roughly $2,622. It is a discount applied at the point of sale and it depends on capacity and postcode only — not on how wet the winter is here, which is a reasonable question to have asked.

If your property already has a connection at the boundary, almost certainly not — and we would rather say that plainly than sell you the larger system. The difference between grid-connected and off-grid is not a battery; it is what the system must be sized for. A grid-connected system can be sized for an average, because the grid quietly covers every gap. An off-grid system has to carry your worst week unaided, and in this part of the Highlands a run of wet, foggy days is not a hypothetical. Sizing for that rather than for an average means multiples of the generation and several days of storage.

Generation sized well beyond your consumption, storage measured in days rather than hours, and — in essentially every practical installation — a generator for the stretch neither of those covers. That generator is part of the design rather than an admission of failure, and any honest off-grid proposal includes one. There is also the part that does not appear on a quote: an off-grid household manages its energy. You learn what a run of grey days means and you adjust. Plenty of people find that entirely reasonable. It should be a decision rather than a surprise.

When the alternative is a new grid connection that costs a fortune. If a property is a long way from the nearest line, the quoted cost of bringing power in can run into tens of thousands, and at that point an off-grid system is being compared against that number rather than against a normal electricity bill — and it can win outright, sometimes comfortably. That is the honest case for it, and it is a genuinely common situation on blocks out this way. Disconnecting a property that already has a working supply is a different proposition with much worse arithmetic.

Grid-connected solar with a battery and, usually, backup circuits — and it is what most people picturing independence actually want. You keep the grid as the thing that covers your worst week, the battery carries you through the evening and through an outage, and there is no generator and no energy management. It costs a fraction of an off-grid design because nothing has to be sized for the worst case. What it does not give you is independence from a bill, and anyone selling it as that is overstating it.

Only if it was specified to, which is a thing worth checking rather than assuming. A standard grid-connected system shuts down in an outage for safety reasons, and a battery does not change that by itself — backup requires the right inverter and a changeover arrangement that separates certain circuits. Those circuits are chosen deliberately: lights, fridge, a few power points and perhaps a pump, rather than the whole house. If outages matter to you up here, say so at the assessment, because it changes the hardware rather than just the price.

The distribution network that owns the poles and wires in your street approves it — not your retailer — and we lodge the application for you. That network also decides how much your system may export: on a flexible export connection, eligible customers can send up to 10kW per phase back to the grid most of the time, while a fixed export limit caps exports at 1.5kW. A genuinely off-grid system has no connection and therefore no application — which is one of its few simplifications, and not a reason to choose it.