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Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

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181–190 of 257 posts

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#181

Australia also has a remarkable tax incentive that lets you buy EVs basically tax free (fringe benefits tax exemption for novated leases, in bureaucratese). Basically, instead of paying $70k for a Tesla post-tax, you can get it deducted directly from your paycheck for around $45k pretax. The exact math depends on your income, and perversely enough the subsidy increases the more you earn and the higher your taxes, but…

Shame the infrastructure is so lacking, and the Victorian government have a road tax specifically for EVs

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the subsidy increases the more you earn and the higher your taxes What's the name of this law called that does this? Seems like quite the oversight.

It's not really a subsidy, just you don't pay income tax on it as salary sacrifice. Ideally there's be no income tax or VAT at all, and we'd tax wealth/land/property instead so this would be a non-issue.

Money being collected and then paid back is not required for the government to be subsidising something. It is sufficient that's the revenue collection be foregone.

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#183
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should the message to poor people, who are getting destroyed with very high energy costs, be "just spend $10,000 on solar"? Environmentalists are pretty out of touch when they throw poor people under the bus and tell them to just buy a $50,000 entry-level Tesla or a $10,000 entry-level solar system. They'll simply vote for populism if they are bled further, and price rises are a certainty with expensive renewable 'so…

You make good points. I wish govts in wealthy countries would offer more zero rate loans or grants to low income people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. It's a win-win: That means low income people lower their CO2 footprint and their incomes rise. For low income people, usually that gets spent right back into the economy, further boosting GDP. If you look closely at the heat pump rebates in the UK, it…

Resources can't be magicked into existence, they have to come from somewhere. They'll probably be the people who are being forced to buy new heat pumps. A 0% interest loan is going to act similarly to just forcing them to buy the heat pump.

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#184

Australia also has a remarkable tax incentive that lets you buy EVs basically tax free (fringe benefits tax exemption for novated leases, in bureaucratese). Basically, instead of paying $70k for a Tesla post-tax, you can get it deducted directly from your paycheck for around $45k pretax. The exact math depends on your income, and perversely enough the subsidy increases the more you earn and the higher your taxes, but…

Shame the infrastructure is so lacking, and the Victorian government have a road tax specifically for EVs

Well, they ain't paying tax for fuel, roads have to be fixed for something...

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#185
post #75

https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/ is the one-stop-shop for current energy situation in Australia. Anecdotal: SA was pushing towards clean energy notably before the battery came in, but in turn, had a very unstable grid, and the things like energy trading et al. were tied up in international ownership iirc (needing authorization to do a large energy trade required someone from France giving approval, timezones didn't…

Side note: OpenNEM has some of the most beautiful data presentation I've seen in a very long time. Particularly great typography and mobile performance / responsiveness as well. Open source too https://github.com/opennem/opennem-fe

I actually found it quite awful on mobile. It's really hard to scroll through because you accidentally interact with the graphs. There should be more whitespace to use for scrolling, or the graphs should be tap to interact or something. I'm not a web designer, but as a layman it was more frustrating than anything.

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other key thing is SAs power use is far smaller than NSW, Victoria and Queensland. So while they can shutdown their coal stations and import if there is a shortfall, those bigger states can't. For example as I type this Queensland is generating about 4300MW of solar, SA is generating about 1300MW of solar, but SA gets all the plaudits for being green.

As I type this, QLD is using 77% black coal. SA is using 71% gas. Over the past 24hrs SA was 83% renewable (solar+wind), 16% gas. In that same 24hrs QLD was 79% black coal, 12% renewables. Plaudits seem deserved. https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-elec...

That page is showing generation not use. 83% of the power SA generated was renewable, but it wasn't enough to cover their use, so they imported 28% of their power from interstate, renewables cover 45% and the rest was gas. Other states are too big to just import 28% of their power. SA is small enough they can shut down their coal and just import coal-based power from Victoria.

Meanwhile Qld, Vic and NSW each produced more than triple the renewable power SA did today.

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#187
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame the infrastructure is so lacking, and the Victorian government have a road tax specifically for EVs

Well, they ain't paying tax for fuel, roads have to be fixed for something...

Fuel excises do not get allocated directly to some kind of "road budget", they go into general revene. Almost all of it can be accounted for in corresponding fuel tax credits, three quarters of which go to mining companies. From memory the difference in 2019 census was like 100mil, so 7.8billion came in from fuel excise, 7.7billion went back out in fuel tax credits.

In essence, everyone pays for federal roads, road user or not, and municipalities pay for local roads. Except for larger state funded projects, which often receive federal assistance. Fuel taxes are a trivial component to infrastructure upkeep, is my understanding.

Another myth is that vehicle registration pays for roads, vehicle registration goes entirely to running the vehicle registration apparatus, that's all.

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#188
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are not in danger from an EMP. Sensitive electronic components are in danger. https://www.agilesurvival.com/emp-effect-batteries/

I don't see anything concrete here, and there's a ridiculously false statement that brushes everything away: > However, no one does High-altitude detonation experiments anymore. ... Since then, we have all kinds of new batteries, including lithium and rechargeable batteries. There are MIL specs for this, with test systems that emulate it [1], including some impressive mobile systems, from what I've been told. These t…

The Department of Homeland Security has not identified EMP as a high-risk threat, and thus has not included it in its 15 all-hazards National planning scenarios.

From "THE EMP THREAT: EXAMINING THE CONSEQUENCES" a house hearing. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg80856/html/C...

Of course a house hearing isn't a great way to argue ones point, but it does make me less apprehensive about an EMP attack.

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are not in danger from an EMP. Sensitive electronic components are in danger. https://www.agilesurvival.com/emp-effect-batteries/

I think they meant 'batteries as a system', not the individual cells and grid tied batteries have a very large amount of electronics to charge, discharge and protect the batteries.

Is there evidence that batteries as a system are more vulnerable to EMP than the current electric grid? More so, is there evidence that EMP is a viable threat? Ensure the battery grid has the same uptime or better than the current grid and call it a day.

Also, thank you for the reminder of the guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla

#190
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should the message to poor people, who are getting destroyed with very high energy costs, be "just spend $10,000 on solar"? Environmentalists are pretty out of touch when they throw poor people under the bus and tell them to just buy a $50,000 entry-level Tesla or a $10,000 entry-level solar system. They'll simply vote for populism if they are bled further, and price rises are a certainty with expensive renewable 'so…

You make good points. I wish govts in wealthy countries would offer more zero rate loans or grants to low income people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. It's a win-win: That means low income people lower their CO2 footprint and their incomes rise. For low income people, usually that gets spent right back into the economy, further boosting GDP. If you look closely at the heat pump rebates in the UK, it…

How long will the heat pump last? First result says 25 years. [1]

https://www.evergreenenergy.co.uk/heat-pump-guides/how-long-....

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