How to Use Your Solar Power During the Day: 10 Ways to Increase Self-Consumption

Solar self-consumption means using electricity generated by your solar panels directly in your home.

Later in the evening, your solar may generate almost nothing while your home is using electricity. You then import electricity from the grid.

Solar Victoria describes this basic pattern as:

and, where a battery is installed:

Suppose you generate 1kWh of solar electricity. You have two broad options:

If the electricity you buy from the grid costs more per kWh than the value you receive for exporting solar, using your solar yourself can be financially more valuable.

Imagine your solar generates 8kWh during the middle of the day. Your home naturally uses 3kWh.

Now imagine you can move another 2kWh of flexible electricity use into that period.

You haven't generated any more solar. You've simply changed when you use it. That's load shifting.

You may see websites talking about achieving a particular percentage of solar self-consumption. Don't treat a single percentage as a universal target.

Your ideal self-consumption depends on:

A home with a large solar system and low daytime demand will naturally export more than a home with the same solar system and high daytime consumption.

But there is a limit. You can't realistically move everything. You still need electricity early morning, evening, overnight, and on cloudy days. That's where a battery can become useful.

Consider a home that generates excess solar from 11am–3pm and has high electricity demand at 6pm–10pm. You could:

1. Step 1 — Move dishwasher and laundry to daytime.
2. Step 2 — Run hot water during solar generation.
3. Step 3 — Charge EV during surplus periods.
4. Step 4 — Use heating/cooling strategically.
5. Step 5 — Send remaining surplus to the battery.
6. Step 6 — Use the battery in the evening.

This is where we need to be careful. There is no universal dollar saving from moving an appliance from night to day. The value depends on:

and, in some cases, the export value you give up.

For example, if a 2kWh appliance normally runs at night and you move it to a period when your solar would otherwise be exported, the value of that shift is approximately the grid electricity cost avoided minus the export value you would otherwise have received, assuming the solar would have been exported.

Use this simple approach.

This is an illustration, not a guaranteed saving.

Self-consumption is usually valuable when your avoided electricity purchase is worth more than the export payment you're giving up. But feed-in tariffs vary between electricity plans.

Victorian households can also use Victorian Energy Compare to compare available electricity offers.

This is one of the biggest objections. "I work during the day, so I can't use my solar." You don't need to be physically at home. Use automation.

• Before leaving: load the dishwasher.
• Dishwasher: set delay start → 1pm
• Washing machine: set delay start → 11am
• Hot water: set solar-aware schedule
• EV: set solar charging window
• Pool: set daytime timer

This is where you need realistic expectations. Solar generation changes with cloud cover, season, time of day, roof orientation, shading, and system size.

Don't create a schedule that assumes: "Solar is always available at 1pm." Your monitoring app is the better guide.

Not necessarily. North-facing panels generally maximise annual generation, but Solar Victoria notes that east/west orientations can sometimes make sense when the objective is to increase generation during the times the household actually uses electricity.

Think of your energy system as:

The goal is to coordinate these components. For example, on a sunny day:

This can be a much better strategy than:

This is an important concept. A battery stores electricity. But other devices can store energy in different forms.

"Potential value" depends heavily on the home's electricity consumption, solar system and tariff.

Consider a household with 6.6kW solar, no battery, heat-pump hot water, dishwasher, washing machine, air conditioning, and one EV. The family normally leaves home at 8am and returns at 6pm.

Without automation, much of the solar may be exported during the day. Instead, they could schedule:

The household hasn't changed what it owns. It has changed when those loads operate.

Don't stop load shifting. A common mistake is: "I have a battery, so I don't need to worry about daytime consumption."

You still want to use solar directly where practical. Why? If solar can directly power an appliance:

you avoid unnecessary conversion and battery cycling. If you instead:

you introduce battery charging/discharging into the process. Solar Victoria describes battery systems as useful for storing excess solar that isn't used in the home during the day, rather than as a reason to ignore daytime self-consumption.

This is exactly when flexible loads become valuable. Imagine:

You now have substantial potential excess generation. Instead of simply exporting it, you may be able to run hot water, charge EV, run pool pump, operate appliances, or cool the home.

Solar Victoria has published examples of households coordinating hot water, EV charging and batteries so that solar energy is used across multiple loads before excess is exported.

If your system is producing more than your home can use and your export limit prevents additional exports, some generation may be curtailed. Energy.gov.au notes that solar generation can be:

• Self-consumed
• Exported
• Used to charge a battery
• Wasted when an export limit is reached

There is a trap here. Suppose you have a 3kWh appliance. You could run it at noon using solar. But if you don't actually need the appliance to run then, don't buy expensive equipment simply to increase your self-consumption percentage.

If you have solar, battery, EV, heat pump, and air conditioning, an energy-management system can coordinate these loads. The objective becomes:

This can become increasingly valuable as homes become more electrified. But again, don't install complicated technology just for the sake of automation.

Samsun Energy's current solar offering includes smart monitoring, and its broader product ecosystem includes solar PV, batteries, heat pumps and EV-related solutions. A useful approach is:

Don't just look at: "Today's solar generation: 24.3kWh." That number alone doesn't tell you how effectively you used the energy.

Look for:

Then ask: When did those imports and exports happen? If you see large exports from 11am–3pm and large imports from 6pm–9pm, you have a classic load-shifting opportunity.

Before changing anything, monitor your system for one week. Record:

You don't need to manually do this if your inverter app provides historical data. After seven days, identify the biggest daytime exports and the biggest evening imports. Then look for loads you can move.

Increasing self-consumption isn't automatically the same as maximising financial return. You also need to consider:

• Feed-in tariff
• Electricity import tariff
• Battery efficiency
• Battery degradation
• Export limits
• Appliance efficiency
• Solar system size
• Seasonal generation
• Household behaviour

This is a different problem. If your household uses more electricity than your solar can provide during the day, increasing self-consumption isn't about using more appliances. You may instead need to examine:

• Solar system size
• Energy efficiency
• Appliance consumption
• Battery economics
• Future electrification

Solar Victoria recommends considering future electricity use, including additional electric appliances and EVs, when planning a solar system.

Possibly. If you regularly have high electricity demand but solar generation is insufficient, then adding solar capacity may be more valuable than focusing exclusively on self-consumption.

For example, high electricity use at 8pm cannot be solved simply by shifting everything if the household genuinely needs substantial evening energy. That's when:

• Larger solar, or
• Battery storage

— may need to become part of the conversation.

There is no single "perfect" solar-use schedule.

Your solar panels can only generate electricity when the sun is available. The biggest opportunity is therefore to make your household's electricity demand line up better with solar generation.

Start with the easiest changes:

1. Dishwasher during the day
2. Laundry during the day
3. Heat-pump hot water during solar hours
4. Pool pump during solar hours
5. Pre-cool/pre-heat the home
6. EV charging when solar is available
7. Use timers and smart controls
8. Monitor your actual generation and consumption
9. Shift other flexible loads
10. Consider a battery if substantial evening demand remains

Before buying anything, open your inverter or energy-monitoring app and look at:

• When do I generate the most solar?
• When do I export the most?
• When do I import the most electricity?
• Which appliances use the most power?

Then match the two:

That's the foundation of a smarter solar home.

• Solar Victoria — Solar Homes Program
• Australian Government — Energy.gov.au
• Energy Safe Victoria
• Victorian Energy Compare