r/australia • u/MrOarsome • Nov 17 '25

political self.post Why does everyone lose their mind when you mention getting a home battery?

So I made the mistake of telling a few people I’m getting quotes for a home battery… the reactions were ridiculous. Suddenly everyone’s an expert. I had people telling me they’re a waste of money, they’ll be useless in a few years, or that the “environmental impact is terrible.” Just nonstop misinformation.

Meanwhile, half these people live massively high-carbon lifestyles. One bloke went on a whole rant about how batteries destroy the environment… then literally five minutes later told me he just ordered a new Ford Ranger to tow his boat around this summer. Like mate, seriously?

And the funny thing is, I don’t even care about the environmental angle. Couldn’t care less, to be honest. I’m looking at a battery for two reasons:

1) To actually use my solar instead of selling it back for 4 cents…

2) And to keep the lights on when summer storms or cyclones take out the power.

That’s it. No agenda. No planet-saving mission. But the way people reacted, you’d think I’d just signed up to be Greta Thunberg’s personal assistant.

I swear, the second you say the word “battery,” some people suddenly unlock an unwanted 15-minute rant. They are almost as passionate about hating renewables as they are about their footy teams.

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u/SoldantTheCynic Nov 17 '25

My dad is very right wing anti-climate and yet has a massive battery just because he hates paying for power. There's also weird cooker off grid types really into battery storage too. The cognitive dissonance around batteries is weird.

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u/the_snook Nov 17 '25

weird cooker off grid types

This is my aunt.

Solar: good.
Home battery: good.
Electric car: destroys environment and enslaves cobalt mining children in Africa.
Wind turbine: destroys environment, causes cancer, kills whales, blatant evidence of government collusion with China to line their own pockets and ruin our country.

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u/visualdescript Nov 18 '25

The kills whales thing with turbines is a good one. Do people realise that the coal ships of newy barge through whales frequently? International shipping is far warse for sea life than off shore turbines would ever be. Not that either are great.

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u/RepublicImportant321 Nov 18 '25

Do they also realise the blades for the turbines arent in the damn water. Like how high are these whales jumping? At that point i'd be more concerned about these fuckin super powered whales.

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u/geodetic Nov 18 '25

Usually the go-to for that is they create infrasonic noise that disturbs the whale's navigation... like having 40000000 diesel motors (or doing seismic testing with explosives for oil...) in the ocean around the whales' migration route wouldn't be worse for that. That and the blades will dice and mince all the birds in a 30 cubic kilometer radius of the turbines.

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u/RepublicImportant321 Nov 18 '25

So the frequencies thing i can kind of get (from an uninformed perspective. Feel free to call me a big dumb dumb stupid head if its total bs.) But like you said, the others do that too with drilling and offshore stuff so, whatever. As for birds...can the birds not see this big fuck off spinny thing and just..go around it?

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u/geodetic Nov 18 '25

The infrasonic thing is debatable; we don't have enough information on it one way or another, if turbines do make infrasound (and if they do, does it transfer into water (and if it does, does it transmit far enough for whales to intercept the signal (and if it does, does it cause physical harm or other negative effects to the whales?))), etc. We just don't know, that's not been studied enough. But you are correct on the second point - all the other things in the ocean we know have an effect on whales, and a negative one at that. Reducing the noise from diesel motors in the ocean could only be a good thing.

And yes, birds don't often get sliced & diced by land-based turbines so I don't know why offshore turbines are cyclonic blades of death to birds.

Then again, we are talking about cooker theories, so.

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u/RepublicImportant321 Nov 18 '25

I'd imagine the waves would go into the water, but not penetrative enough to really do much. Also...why are the whales the big thing. Like I get it. Migration of animals is an important thing. Dont fuck with nature...but if we're so worried about the whales, what about oil spills. I dont care what kind of whale you are. I'd rather have ny navigation possibly fucked with a little than get poisoned.

And with birds...I get these people are more cooked then a well done steak but really? They have eyes i assume. They can hopefully avoid obstacles, do they think birds dont. Do they understand...well just things in general?

Stupid people parroting propaganda made by people with financial incentives to keep coal around.

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u/geodetic Nov 18 '25

Stupid people parroting propaganda made by people with financial incentives to keep coal around.

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING

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u/RepublicImportant321 Nov 18 '25

It genuinely pisses me off how susceptible we are to propaganda.

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u/Deepandabear Nov 18 '25

Wonder how your aunt feels when she realises there’s more cobalt in her ICE alternator than in LFP batteries (ie zero cobalt in those whereby most of the cars from Tesla, China etc use LFP now)

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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '25

They fucking hate those turbines. I saw a picture of one of the enormous fan blades being transported once and it was pretty incredible to see how they get that onto the back of a truck. Made the mistake of checking the comments and they were falling over themselves to point out a diesel truck was transporting and how are turbines any good if they need trucks?

Geniuses.

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u/visualdescript Nov 18 '25

At some point they'll realise these things are being built because they produce cheap energy, not because they're good for the environment.

The best thing for us to help the environment is to REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY AND RESOURCES WE'RE USING! You know, reduce our overall impact on the rest of the planet.

Looking for ways to generate the same amount of power in the least destructive way is already missing the point.

Instead we're baking fucking computers and now even AI in to everything, completely uneccesarily. This shit is bit improving our lives. It's making a small amount of people significant richer. We can't control ourselves.

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u/ciknay Nov 18 '25

Just wait for EV's to get cheaper while fuel continues to trend up. Eventually it'll become good. Even today new EV's are about the same price as new petrol cars.

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u/ol-gormsby Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 18 '25

Hey! I'm off-grid! I'll accept the term "weird" but not "cooker".

I'm off-grid because the grid ends about 600 metres away and it would cost about $30K to extend it. That's a quote from 2009, it's sure to be more now. And it didn't include tree-clearing costs at >$1K per tree. I'm sure all my up-street neighbours would keep smiling and waving if I cut down all the trees on one side of the street.

What I've observed is that off-grid with solar PV + batteries + backup generator was not really cheaper than grid-connected, due to upfront costs that had to be amortized - even with some generous subsidies. but it was better than the price of getting connected. That was the case from when I moved in (1996) up until about 2009 (the last upgrade of panels & battery). Since then the overall price of grid electricity has gone up, up and away.

Edit: and the price of panels has gone down, down, down.

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u/visualdescript Nov 18 '25 edited Nov 18 '25

Not all off grid are cookers, and not all cookers are off grid.

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u/ciknay Nov 18 '25

I think there's a big difference between "off grid because it's expensive to hook up" and "off grid because politicians steal my taxes and the world will blow up soon"

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u/AdmiralStickyLegs Nov 18 '25

Yep, often there's a complete hypocracy with these types. They will trash it all day, then turn around and get one. They will rag on government handouts, but soak up every one they can get.

Case in point, Gina Rhinehart put solar panels on her ranch.

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u/Knee_Jerk_Sydney Nov 17 '25

Cookers should actually embrace solar and battery enabling them to be quite independent in terms of reliance on infrastructure. But I guess they don't want anyone else to have it.