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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

#71

Post by pjc50 »

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.

Affordability is always relative. Australia can't afford that much battery storage, it has to spend $368bn on nuclear submarines. /s

(did you mean 20kwh per user, or 20GW overall?)

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

#72

Post by Retz4o4 »

bob1029 wrote: post #54

I miss having Griddy in Texas. Direct access to the wholesale market is probably not good for the lower end of the consumer segment, but for people with some functional marbles it can make a big difference on the demand side of the grid. I feel like they had to kill griddy before all the powerwall solutions started showing up. We simply cannot empower the peasants with both things at once. The ability to store energy…

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/griddy-energy-charged-9000-powe...

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

#73

Post by pjc50 »

DamonHD wrote: post #16
nharada wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 24 kWh cap per day seems very reasonable. Drawing 8 kW is quite a lot.

My home is in London UK and is relatively small and efficient, but 8kWh may be higher than our peak demand ever over more than 20 years in this house...

UK appliances cap out at 13A, or 3.1kW. Electric cookers may be on higher current wiring, but seem to be rated at 3kW max anyway.

I think the only way most people could get to 8kW continuous without an EV would be to turn on their electric oven, grill, and all spots on their electric hob. And the kettle.

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

#74

Post by kaelwd »

bruce511 wrote: post #61
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.

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…

No it's optional, the retailers just have to offer it.

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

#75

Post by ZeroGravitas »

simondotau wrote: post #33
3stacks wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At current battery project prices, matching Snowy 2.0’s roughly 350 GWh of energy storage capacity with Tesla Megapacks would cost around AUD $218 billion [0] and require Tesla’s entire global Megapack production capacity redirected to a single client for five years. $15 billion is far more than Snowy 2.0 should have cost. But it remains substantially cheaper than any lithium-ion battery build for bulk storage. Stora…

Snowy 2.0 has major limitations on what it can supply, the headline number is very misleading.

And the comparison shouldn't be to batteries alone, but solar/wind and batteries. The former can be used directly and fill the batteries repeatedly on a timeline that is predictable.

It provides no extra value for the electricity to be stored long term if for the same money you can generate and store it short term.

Article on the various restrictions on Snowy 2.0:

https://theconversation.com/snowy-2-0-cost-blowouts-might-be...

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

#76

Post by bob1029 »

Retz4o4 wrote: post #72
bob1029 wrote: post #54

I miss having Griddy in Texas. Direct access to the wholesale market is probably not good for the lower end of the consumer segment, but for people with some functional marbles it can make a big difference on the demand side of the grid. I feel like they had to kill griddy before all the powerwall solutions started showing up. We simply cannot empower the peasants with both things at once. The ability to store energy…

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/griddy-energy-charged-9000-powe...

> Direct access to the wholesale market is probably not good for the lower end of the consumer segment

Not everything is for everyone. At no point did I feel like I was getting scammed as a customer. I was using them during the winter event.

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

#77

Post by abrookewood »

With 3 hours of free power, a 15kW inverter and a 42kWh battery, I could almost do away with my solar panels and just survive of free grid power. I do have a 15kW solar panel set up, but I get very little from selling anything back to the grid.

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

#78

Post by yurishimo »

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

You might check the rates on Tibber as well. A lot of companies that offer a "free" usage period tend to just move the cost around. If you're comfortable taking the risks associated with a wholesale supplier, then you can likely save a ton of money without even changing your consumption habits.

During this past month with the heatwave, my electricity bill was only about €50 despite running airco all day most days. I have 6 solar panels on my roof for reference (was 3k installed I believe). If I was willing to turn off the A/C at night, I could have easily cut the bill in half since most of the billed usage was between 18-21:00.

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

#79

Post by numpad0 »

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.

Maybe they just don't work? Otherwise someone's leaving tons of money on the table. Which implies nobody is.

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

#80

Post by hahahaa »

worthless-trash wrote: post #70
abstractspoon wrote: post #59

When it's hardly needed!

40c outside during summer in these times.. yeah.. hardly needed.

You need a battery to take advantage: then you may as well use a direct to market option like Amber. Which benefits grid stability too. 3 hrs without a battery is useless in Australia. As you generally use electricity for heating/cooling and need it longer than that esp. cooling.
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