Cold Xpress keeps its warehouses at -25°C around the clock. A new solar rebate means it will cut its bills by more than a third

Refrigerated transport company Cold Xpress will save about $230,000 on a new solar system under a Federal Government scheme expansion announced Wednesday that cuts the cost of medium-sized solar installations by about 20 percent.

☀️ What’s happening? The Federal Government’s Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES) was previously designed to provide discounts for small solar systems up to 100 kilowatts.

• Energy Minister Chris Bowen announced the scheme would expand from October 1 to cover systems up to one megawatt, cutting the cost of installing a medium-sized solar system by about 20 percent.

• According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Australian homes have installed about 22 gigawatts of rooftop solar, compared with 5.6 gigawatts installed by businesses, most of it on systems smaller than 100 kilowatts.

🥶 Chilling costs: Keeping Cold Xpress’s storage facilities at -25°C requires large amounts of electricity around the clock.

• The company helps deliver chilled goods to most major supermarkets and completes about 5,000 deliveries each day across Victoria.

• Chief executive John Di Losa founded the company in 1998 with four trucks. It now includes about 180 vehicles across Victoria and expanded to a second Rowville site after buying the neighbouring property in 2024.

• The company installed a 750-kilowatt solar system at its main site in 2019, cutting about 25 percent from its monthly power bill, which was around $40,000.

What they said: Di Losa said the business had wanted to install solar at the second site but struggled to make the numbers stack up before the scheme expansion.

• 🗣️ “I don’t see any drawbacks at all,” he told the Eastern Melburnian. “Whatever we save, we can invest back into the business.”

💰 Savings breakdown: The company’s annual electricity bill across both sites is about $840,000.

• The existing solar system saves between $120,000 and $150,000 a year. The planned one-megawatt system is expected to reduce costs by a further $150,000 to $200,000 annually, cutting the overall power bill by about 32 percent to 41.6 percent.

📚 Schools will benefit too: Melbourne father Simon Campbell, who was part of a successful push for his daughter’s high school to install a 100-kilowatt solar system, said the school’s monthly power bills had already fallen by about $1,300 – with annual savings expected to reach $20,000.

• 🗣️ “With this policy, we could have installed double the solar, saving about $20,000 on the installation and then $30,000 in electricity bills every year,” Campbell said.

⏭️ What’s next? While welcoming the expanded scheme, Di Losa said businesses would still have to wait for approvals.

• 🗣️ “I’ve still got another two-to-three-month wait to process our application,” he said. “I would do it now if I could.”