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Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

electrek.co

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Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#91

Post by bobmcnamara »

ch4s3 wrote: post #11
mikeyouse wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you built homes with a lot of thermal mass, you could cool the internal thermal mass when energy is $0 and have that mass absorb heat the rest of the day. This is sort of the principle a lot of traditional architecture uses where evaporation, wind over a courtyard, or nighttime lows cool thick walls.

This is how the cold storage caves work in the Midwest. They run their ammonia loops harder in the off hours and let the cave mass handle it(provided a large enough area is kept frozen, otherwise thermal expansion cycling can cause a carve out in the ceiling).

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#92

Post by bobmcnamara »

almosthere wrote: post #10

For 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!

Hey now, it's not free oil.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#93

Post by Onavo »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #15
willvarfar wrote: post #3

Ignoring 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.

For years I've been hearing one excuse for the US not doing more about climate change is that China is polluting more and if they aren't doing something about it then why should we? The argument always seemed disingenuous. For sure, China produces a lot of pollution as they are modernizing, but they are also investing a lot in the direction of sustainability. If we take the balance of (pollution produced - pollution…

If you ignore the pollution and environmental aspects, the main geopolitical reason is because the Straits of Malacca are very vulnerable in the event of a hot war and the overland pipelines from Russia and the middle east are insufficient to supply China. Getting rid of the oil dependency is the quickest way to autarchy. There are few other resources they can't produce themselves.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#94

Post by chankstein38 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #79
somanyphotons wrote: post #69

With free power for 3 hours a day, I'd skip installing solar and I'd buy a ~30kwh battery (2x Ruixu Lithi2-16) and a big inverter. Charge the batteries in the free time and then use the stored power the rest of the day.

Australia will give you a 30% discount on that purchase, they have a fund of 2.3 Billion Australian dollars available for this purpose called the Cheaper Home Batteries program.

Man as someone paying a premium for power in the US, Australia is sounding really nice

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#95

Post by jeffbee »

jimt1234 wrote: post #48
trollbridge wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they actually charge you a fee if you generate. My brother in law unhooked from the grid because back feeding was charging him $100 a month. To give away power.

A friend of mine is trying to build a house in a remote area of Southern California. He's planning to be completely "off-grid", generating power exclusively from solar. However, local regulators insist he hook up to the local electric utility. Further, in order to run the electrical cables to his property (from the substation), the local fire department insists that the brush is cleared around the new electrical cabl…

If your friend wants to build a remote off-grid house that's in the middle of nowhere, why wouldn't they shop for a jurisdiction that allows it? Places that require utility connections are actual places generally. When you live out in the center of Inyo County you can be off the grid if you want. It sounds to me like your friend wants the benefits of proximity to developed places, but also wants to opt-out of contributing to the development of the place.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#96

Post by hexbin010 »

RobinL wrote: post #21
ch4s3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the UK, you can go on an agile tariff that does exactly this. I'm on one. It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts. Last month, we paid 11p per kWh on average, which is less than half what you'd pay on a standard tariff, and it's nice to be doing something good for the environment too. It's partic…

> It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts.

As if we aren't busy enough. I see this as just yet _another_ job the government/business is making us do instead of them.

Is it too much to ask for my government to provide sensibly and simply priced energy so we can get on with our day, working, studying, raising kids etc?

IMO this is just setting us up for insane surge pricing for those people who don't do the good citizen thing of becoming nocturnal

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#97

Post by b112 »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #86
bryanlarsen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind. The solar+battery revolution is doing for power what cell phones did for communications in the third world in the 90's and 2000's.

I witnessed this traveling through smaller islands in the Philippines. They have cell service without connection to an electric grid in some places. The children with solar charging now have access to education materials and there is access to banking and payments systems. The effects of this are going to massive and huge in 10 years.

Yes indeed.

All those unfortunate children will be introduced to the toxic, horrid internet.

They'll be addicted, have no attention span, have their own data used against them to exploit and track them, and end up with their political system reeling under manipulative AI and generic bots.

Far better to just give them books for their educarional system, and leave the evil Internet out of it.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#98

Post by larusso »

I still wonder who came up with the charge your car during the day / use it as a batterie. I don’t have the luxury’s of owning two EVs that I can charge and use at the same time. If my car stand unused at home so I can charge it would mean I use it during the night? I understand that there could be useage pattern where someone works from home once or twice a week and waits with the charge during these peek hours. But the generalization of just charge your car during the day is weird.

Unless that also counts when the car could charge for free at the workplace of course.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#99

Post by [deleted] »

bee_rider wrote: post #24
willvarfar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the article talks about consumers scheduling things like washing machines during the day, or even filling up a battery.

This is the “smart grid” idea, right? We just haven’t fully explored it yet. Something I firmly believe is that there’s a ton of low hanging fruit for timing our energy use better. It is just hidden by the desire to present a uniform energy price. Like why not run our water heaters when power is cheap? Then if that became a thing, we might even be interested in larger water heater tanks. Batteries cost per volume, yo…

[deleted]

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#100

Post by rdm_blackhole »

inerte wrote: post #27
tasty_freeze wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years I've been hearing one excuse for the US not doing more about climate change is that China is polluting more and if they aren't doing something about it then why should we? The argument always seemed disingenuous. For sure, China produces a lot of pollution as they are modernizing, but they are also investing a lot in the direction of sustainability. If we take the balance of (pollution produced - pollution…

I am not familiar with Chinese politics or motivation, but I wonder if it's for the same arguments we have in the US, "save the world" vs. "the strong can do whatever they want". I am not sure China does for the sake of sustainability and environment. Yes I know the end result might be the same but are the reasons the same?

China also invests in solar/alternative energy because they still import a lot of coal from many other countries (some of which are aligned with the US) and that is something that could be leveraged in case of conflict.

Therefore reaching self sufficiency in terms of power generation will make this threat less relevant and an enemy will no be able to use it to make them back off.

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