People with solar powered homes can now control their usage with smart phones.

A Brisbane company developed the idea to take advantage of evolving solar battery technology.

Josh Martin reports.

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Battery storage is the new wave in the solar power industry.

The Redback company is leading the way, in a partnership with the University of Queensland.

This intelligent energy management software application allows users to decide whether they want to use, save or sell the energy.

Philip Livingston, Redback Technologies: “And by doing that they significantly reduce the cost of these sorts of systems over time, allowing for a faster return on investment.”

He says the battery technology can circumvent power outages, which recently occurred in South Australia on a large scale.

Philip Livingston, Redback Technologies:”For the individual home owner they wouldn’t have noticed the power went out. Our system changes over faster than a screen flickers.”

Environment Minister Steven Miles was on-hand ahead of tomorrow’s Advancing Queensland summit, which will explore low carbon economy measures.

Dr Steven Miles, Environment Minister: “Achieving our fifty percent renewable energy target will come down to new large scale wind and solar, but also expanding the number of roof top systems.”

Despite the recent resurgence of coal the Minister believes renewable technology is the future.

A solar battery system can be expensive to install. The latest technology is reducing the cost of batteries by ten percent and hardware and software at an even greater rate.

But the Redback company is fully focused on decentralised power grids.

Josh Martin, QUT News