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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

#131

Post by bryanlarsen »

graemep wrote: post #107
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.

That is a lot cheaper than it would cost in a developed country, but is not more affordable. For example, that would cost about three times as much in the UK but median income is about an order of magnitude higher so its more affordable. I do realise it is a lot more affordable than telecoms were in the past, but its something like a day of median income.

Communications and electricity aren't just luxury goods, they're also critical inputs to work. There are lots of anecdotes of one or both of these increasing income by substantially more than their costs.

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

#132

Post by larusso »

testing22321 wrote: post #111
larusso wrote: post #98

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…

A few things. Obviously it still works great on the weekend, or whatever days you’re not working to charge the EV at home for free. Given all power is free, why wouldn’t you charge the EV at work in the middle of the day? Even if you pay to have the charger installed it will pay back quickly. It’s not going to happen overnight, but with literally free electricity things will change quickly, and even huge parking stru…

I don’t know how the charging infrastructure in Australia is. But it’s of course cool that they have excess energy enough.

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

#133

Post by quickthrowman »

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…

Your friend is not the last person that will own that house, forcing a utility connection is a good thing for future owners. The same reasoning is why building codes exist, nobody really cares if you want to live in a substandard dwelling (aside from your mortgage insurer) but basically every house has more than one owner over time. Building codes mean when you buy a house, you can be reasonably certain there aren’t any weird cut corners.

He should’ve done DD on the land and local AHJ restrictions before moving ahead with a plan that wouldn’t work. One call to the local planning and permit office is all it would’ve taken to avoid this problem and find a different jurisdiction.

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

#135

Post by RobinL »

ch4s3 wrote: post #109
RobinL wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Last month, we paid 11p per kWh on average, which is less than half what you'd pay on a standard tariff That's pretty rough. That should be about 14¢ per kWh which only a hair less than the median price per kWh in the US (~17¢).

Yeah - unfortunately the UK has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe.

Almost all households are on fixed tariffs, typically about 26p/kwh at the moment.

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

#136

Post by nielsole »

teemur wrote: post #64
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.

Don't forget Germany. If you look at the amount of PV built in Germany early this century and make some admittedly strong assumptions about learning curve, one could argue the Energiewende, then usually called failure, singlehandedly accelerated PV development by decades. I don't recall Germany ever credited on that.

I still wonder the same about the EU and LED lighting. Prohibiting traditional bulbs was highly controversial at the time

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

#137

Post by tintor »

aiono wrote: post #126
gmueckl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't going to happen simply because it would introduce enormous strategic vulnerabilities. The first act ina war would be to sever an opponent's grid connections to their neighbors because that would massively erode their ability to maintain an orderly civil society.

Or if everyone depends on another maybe we will not go into a war with each other.

Well, power dependencies would be uni-directional, not bi-directional.

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

#138

Post by bdcravens »

jeffbee wrote: post #101
larusso wrote: post #98

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…

Everything about the push to convert the whole fleet to EVs falls apart under even the slightest rational scrutiny.

"the push to convert the whole fleet"

Is that anything like the "_ agenda being pushed" I keep hearing about, but can't seem to see anywhere?

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

#139

Post by dataviz1000 »

b112 wrote: post #97
dataviz1000 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow. Everything in life has good and bad consequences. It is important that we remember to look towards the light.

What you describe at its worst is still better than the exploitation many of the children in the Philippines endure today by westerners. Hopefully, being able to communicate on the 'evil Internet', the rest of the world, like you, can truly understand what they endure.

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

#140

Post by andrewinardeer »

On the flip side here in Australia the government for years encouraged us to get panels put on our house by selling it as, "You can export power and create a small income exporting the surplus you create".

So many people did so that at one point last year the government said, "So many people are exporting it now, and the surplus is so great on the network we may have to charge you for exporting it". Wholesale power prices become negative during peak solar times - but retail companies will still charge you for using it!.

Obviously, that didn't go down too well and this is the response - free electricity during peak solar hours.

That said, my understanding is that free electricity is only for people who are on the "default offer" from the electricity companies - that is effectively the highest tier of pricing. Most people are not on the default offer.

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