A leap of faith into emerging technologies is paying off for a small community of Western Australian farmers, who say their solar cells and lithium battery energy storage units are better than the old hard wires.

"It has been just fantastic, it's far exceeded our expectations, and it's very good, clean power," said West River, WA resident Ros Giles to the ABC. 

"It's good, clean, reliable power and that's the big advantage," said husband Bernie Giles said.  "Cleaner meaning frequency and voltage consistencies.. and that means less damage to things.. like electric fence units with voltage spikes and fluctuations." 

West River, 500 Kilometers south of Perth, is one of thousands of outback communities on the fringes of Australia's troubled grid.  The Giles and five other farming households jumped at the chance when Western Power offered solar panels and battery storage units.  It was an experiment to cuts costs associated with building and maintaining transmission lines; the power company takes care of that in remote areas, but landowners foot the bill for the lines on their properties.

It turned out to be a great decision:  When the West River area flooded in January, many customers lost their power - but not the solar families.  They have all the juice they need when frequent power outages hit other homes on the grid.

"Friends are often out for up to 24 hours and thinking, 'we might come visit because you've got power and we haven't'," said Ros Giles.

The West River families are happy, Western Power is happy, and the taxpayers will/ought to be happy because of the savings.

Because the program is working so well, consultants are urging the government to rewrite its out-dated regulations:  Western Power is allowed only to distribute energy through poles and wires.  The government views solar batteries and battery storage to be power 'generation', and it will probably take both legislative and regulatory changes to bring policy into the same century as the new and better way to provide power to far flung homes