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Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

lenergy.com.au

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Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#21

Post by Scoundreller »

3stacks wrote: post #17
mchusma wrote: post #14

Incentivizing usage during peak times makes total sense, but if price swings are this wild, how are grid scale batteries not highly economical? My rough ballpark math was that you need roughly 20 kilowatts of battery storage to make this issue basically nonexistent, and that would cost about 10 billion dollars, which doesn't seem that much for this.

They've already burned at least $15bn on that disastrous Snowy Hydro "battery" project... Could've just rolled out consumer batteries on a large scale instead.

You can do similar math with building above ground oil storage tank capacity aaaaaand giving everyone free gas cans.

And you can get out every drop. And it’s always ready to go. Do need to cycle your inventory.

Fire departments probably wouldn’t be happy about it.

Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#22

Post by Walf »

mchusma wrote: post #14

Incentivizing usage during peak times makes total sense, but if price swings are this wild, how are grid scale batteries not highly economical? My rough ballpark math was that you need roughly 20 kilowatts of battery storage to make this issue basically nonexistent, and that would cost about 10 billion dollars, which doesn't seem that much for this.

They are, but they still take time to build, and loans to finance.

Here are two of SA's (which has the most renewable generation): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://web.archive.org/web/20220523164905/https://www.elect...

Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#24

Post by leonidasrup »

Dynamic pricing and deployment of digital smart meters should by mandatory in all electric grids dominated by renewables. Large electric consumers are already buying electricity at dynamic prices, small consumers should have the same incentives to shift the demand to day hours.

Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#25

Post by kaelwd »

bruce511 wrote: post #13
tw1984 wrote: post #10

basically they give you a few hours free electricity in exchange for significantly higher electricity prices for the rest of the day. basically a free IQ test.

Can you elaborate on the higher elec prices for the benefit of those of us not in Aus? Is that because of the smart meter requirement?

Before: 25c/kwh all day

After: 30c/kwh most of the day, 0c from 11-2

It's still worth it if you have a lot of load you can shift to the middle of the day (like a pool heater or battery), but for most 9-5 workers you just end up paying more at the times you're actually home.

Smart meters are free, most people already have one.

Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#26

Post by asdefghyk »

3stacks wrote: post #17
mchusma wrote: post #14

Incentivizing usage during peak times makes total sense, but if price swings are this wild, how are grid scale batteries not highly economical? My rough ballpark math was that you need roughly 20 kilowatts of battery storage to make this issue basically nonexistent, and that would cost about 10 billion dollars, which doesn't seem that much for this.

They've already burned at least $15bn on that disastrous Snowy Hydro "battery" project... Could've just rolled out consumer batteries on a large scale instead.

From Australlian ABC news...

The cost of the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project is estimated to range from \(\$12\) billion to as high as \(\$42\) billion depending on the scope of costs included (such as direct construction, interest, and broader transmission). Originally announced in 2017 with a $2 billion price tag, the project has faced massive scale and logistical blowouts. The cost of the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro project is estimated to range from $12 billion to as high as $42 billion depending on the scope of costs included (such as direct construction, interest, and broader transmission).

That said , hydro systems have a LONG LIFESPAN - 100 YEARS ?

Batteries need to be replaced every X years.

So the ecomiomics of the comparisoan would need to be calculated ...

Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#27

Post by dhotson »

testing22321 wrote: post #18

It’s very cool to see what happens where there are simply so many residential solar installs. Power price goes negative during peak sunshine hours so they just give it away. Solar installs benefitting everyone, even those who never got solar.

Yeah, it's been great to see the uptake of rooftop solar in Australia.

One downside is that large scale solar projects aren't profitable any more. It kind of sucks for the investors that adopted green tech, that they aren't getting a good payoff.

The good news is that co-located solar and battery projects are still profitable, but capital costs are higher and payback period of batteries aren't as good.

Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#28

Post by AtlasBarfed »

oliyoung wrote: post #20
testing22321 wrote: post #18

It’s very cool to see what happens where there are simply so many residential solar installs. Power price goes negative during peak sunshine hours so they just give it away. Solar installs benefitting everyone, even those who never got solar.

As an Australian, the lack of anxiety and guilt you get when you're using 10-12 hours of air conditioning in the middle of summer and not paying for a cent of it because your solar panels are covering is worth more than anything

Why shouldn't that be true practically every consumer home in the world?

Yes, grid scale deployments are cheaper, but I'm generally guessing a lot of the grid scale solar deployments do not price in the grid infrastructure adaptation costs, and I'm not even talking about grid storage.

Consumer rooftop solar is fundamentally democratic: it reduces reliance on centralized institutions for power delivery, Make society a lot more resilient in bad weather and other emergency situations, insulates everyday people from wild variations and petroleum and other consumable energy availability.

Combined with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, it would enable electrification of 80 and 90% of daily driving without grid infrastructure costs.

Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#29

Post by michaelt »

mchusma wrote: post #14

Incentivizing usage during peak times makes total sense, but if price swings are this wild, how are grid scale batteries not highly economical? My rough ballpark math was that you need roughly 20 kilowatts of battery storage to make this issue basically nonexistent, and that would cost about 10 billion dollars, which doesn't seem that much for this.

I think it's less a question of batteries being economical, and more a question of the relative economics of batteries vs solar panels.

After all, if the highest demand is between 16:30 and 19:00 you could use batteries to store power at 12:00 and sell it at 18:00 - or in famously sunny Australia you could build enough solar panels that solar output at 18:00 matches power demand.

If batteries have a solid 9% return on investment, but solar panels have an even better 12% return on investment, panels will outpace batteries even though the batteries are a decent investment.

(Also, from a politican's perspective, making batteries highly economical is how you get batteries built. And an awful lot of pro-environment policies involve raising taxes, banning things and creating new chores; it's nice to have some green policy announcements that actually benefit voters in the short term.)

Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

#30

Post by dhotson »

oliyoung wrote: post #20
testing22321 wrote: post #18

It’s very cool to see what happens where there are simply so many residential solar installs. Power price goes negative during peak sunshine hours so they just give it away. Solar installs benefitting everyone, even those who never got solar.

As an Australian, the lack of anxiety and guilt you get when you're using 10-12 hours of air conditioning in the middle of summer and not paying for a cent of it because your solar panels are covering is worth more than anything

Yeah totally, nice to be able to put the AC/heater on "for free". I even got a negative power bill once!

In my specific case, I barely use much power so home solar covers basically all of the usage, my bill is dominated by the daily charge, so the usage component is practically irrelevant to me.

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