Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
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Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#2* only in the middle of the day, when the real price of that electricity may be negative, so it's still sold at a profit
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#3Ignoring the politics, we have to say that China has done the world collectively as a whole a major service in strategically developing and mass producing super cheap solar panels.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#4* only in the middle of the day, when the real price of that electricity may be negative, so it's still sold at a profit
Yes the article talks about consumers scheduling things like washing machines during the day, or even filling up a battery.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#5> The Australian government is floating a scheme that would share the benefits of solar power with everyone on the grid, offering totally free electricity to ratepayers in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining the strongest.
> Australia proposes letting everyone benefit from negative wholesale rates
I know more countries have this now, so that's a good initiative that hopefully will spread to other countries (with negative rates).
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#6* only in the middle of the day, when the real price of that electricity may be negative, so it's still sold at a profit
Yes the article talks about consumers scheduling things like washing machines during the day, or even filling up a battery.
They could also run their AC to below where their normal set point would be to “bank” some of the free electricity. I wonder if we’ll start seeing other more passive energy sinks… if you lived in a hot area and could rely on several hours of free electricity each day, it enables all sorts of interesting options like turning on a secondary cooling system to “charge” a large boulder or hunk of metal that you could then pass air over to cool your house when energy is expensive again.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#7* only in the middle of the day, when the real price of that electricity may be negative, so it's still sold at a profit
Yes the article talks about consumers scheduling things like washing machines during the day, or even filling up a battery.
More countries where there's a surplus, are advising people to charge or use electricity during the day.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#8* only in the middle of the day, when the real price of that electricity may be negative, so it's still sold at a profit
This seems like a great way to encourage the behavior you want, which is conserving when energy is emitting more carbon by shifting consumption. Do your laundry, charge a car, charge a whole house batter, run laundry, crank the AC, run your own aluminum smelter, whatever.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#9* only in the middle of the day, when the real price of that electricity may be negative, so it's still sold at a profit
still sounds like an incredible way to incentivize consumers to buy small-scale storage. if i knew i could get free electricity for an hour or two each day (or even each week) it'd be a very easy choice to drop ~$1000 on a home battery.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#10For some reason when I read that I thought it was offering anyone in the world free electricity, and I started imagining the USA setting up a giant undersea cable... then I realized the voltage drop would be too high, then finally realized they meant it for Australians only!