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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

#61

Post by bruce511 »

kaelwd wrote: post #25
bruce511 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ahh, so the 30c rate is locked in for everyone? So they've basically price-shifted the elec so it follows production cost better?

Even if you're not home I'm thinking there are a number of ways to make use of the free elec. Hot water geyser seems like the obvious first candidate.

I'd also think heating (in winter), cooling in summer. Even if you're not there in those times, the effects will be evident for many hours after.

For those who have programmable washer/dryers or dishwashers it's also good. Even ovens on occasion.

I get that not everyone is best placed to take advantage of this, but equally improvements don't have to be an "everyone or no one" option.

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

#62

Post by bruce511 »

kaelwd wrote: post #37
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a battery

45% of us either rent or live in apartments.

Sure, a battery isn't available to everyone. But I is available for many.

One would have to do the math, cost of battery versus 24kw free daily. But clearly for lots of people the math will work.

A side effect of policies like this is effectively getting people to invest capital to time-shift elec usage. That's good policy. Reducing the peaks in consumption solves other problems.

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

#64

Post by jay_kyburz »

This will kill new household solar instillation.

The payback time was already well in excess of 10 years, but now that power is free during the day, you can't count those hours as helping pay down your investment. Payback time will be 30 + years at least. You are much better just enjoying your neighbors solar rather than paying for your own.

(Feed-in is about 3c now I think. Was 12c when many people bought their panels.)

Note: My state 100% renewable energy so reduction of carbon footprint has not bearing on my solar decisions.

This also feels like a fairly heavy handed way to encourage investments in batteries. But in the famous words of George W, "can't fool me again". As soon as there are too many batteries and the grid companies are not making enough money, they will introduce fees to have the batteries, or increase connection fees.

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

#65

Post by jay_kyburz »

Gigachad wrote: post #43
leonidasrup wrote: post #24

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.

I'm so on board for this. It would be kind of fun to wire all my appliances in to home assistant to have the dishwasher / dryer / etc all run during the free hours. I imagine eventually we might end up with some thermal storage where during peak renewable production you heat/freeze a large tank of water and then utilize it to heat/cool your house for the rest of the day. A large tank of water is much cheaper than bat…

Many of us with solar already do this manually, we run the appliances once the sun is up. Even the hotwater heater is programmed to only heat during the middle of the game.

I've been daydreaming about the tank of water idea as well, but the amount of panels you would need on the roof would be crazy.

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

#66

Post by kaelwd »

strken wrote: post #50
kaelwd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought most Australians had different pricing for peak/off-peak. I'm paying 39c/kWh for peak (3pm to 9pm) and 20c/kWh for off-peak (9pm to 3pm the next day).

Yeah just a simplified example, I pay 33/16/10 peak/off-peak/midday.

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

#67

Post by Gigachad »

fragmede wrote: post #58
Gigachad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so on board for this. It would be kind of fun to wire all my appliances in to home assistant to have the dishwasher / dryer / etc all run during the free hours. I imagine eventually we might end up with some thermal storage where during peak renewable production you heat/freeze a large tank of water and then utilize it to heat/cool your house for the rest of the day. A large tank of water is much cheaper than bat…

Or plug them into a UPS that charges when it's free but you can run them whenever.

Batteries are massively more expensive. Thats why the utility companies are just giving consumers free power over building their own grid scale batteries.

A tank of water is cheap, it’s just not possible to distribute hot water over the grid. But it’s very realistic to store it locally and use for heating and cooling. Which is the bulk of power usage anyway.

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

#68

Post by CalRobert »

ctenb wrote: post #63
CalRobert wrote: post #55

Incidentally the Netherlands has this too, at least with some providers (Budget Energy for one). I get free electric from 12:00 to 17:00 on weekends.

Link? I never heard of this and I'm very interested

https://www.budgetthuis.nl/energie/gratis-stroom

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

#69

Post by fnordian_slip »

josephcooney wrote: post #38
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.

One of my co-workers (I'm Australian) has 500 kilowatt-hours of storage at home...which is wild. Much more common is the 10-20 kilowatt-hours of domestic storage for a house.

Does he have a saltwater aquarium, or any other hobby that can make use of it? If not, I can highly recommend that he get into it, if he's into that kind of overkill :)
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