Solar panels in West Pennant Hills

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 2125 already taken off. Those are typical figures for a straightforward install, not a fixed price. Homes here are large and often two-storey on leafy blocks, so access equipment and a shaded roof face are the usual additions, and both are itemised in the quote.

West Pennant Hills is in STC Zone 3, rating 1.382. In 2026 a 10kW system creates 69 certificates, worth roughly $2,622 off the price, and a 13.2kW system 91 certificates, roughly $3,458. Batteries are a separate scheme: the federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program takes an estimated $3,402 off 13.5 kWh of usable storage, and NSW adds its PDRS battery incentive + VPP bonus on top.

A virtual power plant is a fleet of home batteries that an operator can call on together, so that many households discharging at once can stand in for a generator during a peak. In return you get some combination of an upfront bonus, a better tariff, or a payment per event. What you are agreeing to is the part worth reading twice: at certain times the operator, not you, decides when your battery discharges. Good schemes cap how often that happens, leave you a reserve so the house is never empty, and let you opt out of individual events. Poor ones do not. The scheme rules matter more than the headline payment.

Often yes, and in NSW the PDRS battery incentive + VPP bonus is structured to make it attractive. But take it with your eyes open: the bonus is paid once and the commitment usually runs for years, so work out what you are giving up over the term rather than comparing the bonus to the battery price. If the main reason you want a battery is backup during outages, check carefully how the scheme treats your reserve — a battery that has been discharged for a market event is less useful to you that evening.

Usually, and the terms will say how — sometimes with a clawback of the bonus if you leave inside a minimum term. The battery is yours either way; a VPP is a contract about how it is used, not a change of ownership. We will tell you what the scheme you are considering requires, and if the terms on offer are poor we will say that rather than quietly bank the referral.

Both, depending on your street. West Pennant Hills is split between The Hills Shire and Hornsby Shire, which catches people out when they go looking for the right council. For rooftop solar it rarely matters — in NSW most solar on a house is exempt development and needs no development application from either — but it does matter for heritage listings and for anything involving tree removal, which is a live question on these blocks. We check which side of the boundary you are on at the assessment.

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 battery in a VPP still operates inside those limits.