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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

#181

Post by actionfromafar »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #157
actionfromafar wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should they? In my mind it's all a coordination problem. Sometimes loans work better, sometimes subsidies work better. Neither loans nor subsidies are dirty words IMHO.

> In my mind it's all a coordination problem. But that's the point. It isn't. Electricity costs more in the evening than during the day and there is a technology that can profitably be used to arbitrage the difference. There is no coordination problem at all, people have the direct individual incentive to buy the technology, on credit if necessary, without any form of government subsidy or involvement whatsoever.

That cow is looking too spherical for my tastes. Credit is another thing which is highly intertwined with goverment involvement.

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

#182

Post by thaumasiotes »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #160
yorwba wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's what loans are for Upthread: "interest free loan of 15k" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48904009

Loans for non-trivially profitable investments don't require government interest subsidies.

Well...

>>> If it has a $100/mo loan payment and saves $150/mo on the electric bill then you take out a loan or buy it on an installment plan and don't need to have any accumulated capital in order to do it.

This depends on whether you'll pay back the loan. Just because paying the loan back saves you $50 / month forever starting immediately doesn't mean you'll do it. You might be the kind of person who takes out a loan, spends all your money on something else, and lets the bills go unpaid.

If you aren't that kind of person, you probably do have some accumulated capital.

But if you are, just the fact that the loan is hugely profitable and you should be able to pay it back - if you were a completely different person - doesn't mean you'll be able to get the loan. You shouldn't be able to get the loan, because you won't pay it back.

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

#183

Post by asdefghyk »

It actually alludes to a significant problem.

Solar generation is realitely cheap, much more storage is needed. Storage (overnight and also for several days) is challenging - one reason being its more expensive. Then there is the new transmission lines needed.

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

#184

Post by BeeOnRope »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #106
embedding-shape wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so out of the ordinary that a government tries to help people save money or what's the question? Sounds like you've only had the American experience in life unfortunately.

If something actually saves money then it doesn't require a subsidy because people would be doing it regardless. Meanwhile the government doesn't have any of its own money, so it can't really give you something that was yours to begin with, all it can do is take it from you and then give it back with strings attached. How is that helping you? Instead of subsidizing something you can make up your own mind about whethe…

It can work when the marginal cost of new capacity is high, compared to existing capacity.

E.g., if the marginal cost of supporting 1 kW of new capacity may be X, while the current averaged cost of 1 kW provided to existing customers may be Y, with Y The customer will calculate their ROI on a battery purchase based on the cost Y of kW to them, which may be poor (4%), while on the government level of the ROI may is closer to that implied by the cost X (say 10%). However, the government cannot easily pass on the "marginal cost" to customers as there is no specific kWh which is that marginal one across all customers.

In this case a subsidy directly picks out customers who can reduce their demand by buying a battery (e.g., a subsidy which raises the ROI to somewhere between 4% and 10%).

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

#185

Post by stubish »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #2

Edited to add: Clarification required in the title that the free energy is only between 11am and 2pm Very interested to see how this turns out. Ultimately we want the transition to benefit both consumers and producers / distributors (the industry). The problem from the rapid uptake of solar in Australia has been an over-supply during this 10/11am to 2/3pm period. If that over-supply is suitably encouraged to be soake…

The change certainly brings in some weirdness too.

For instance, I'm looking at a new hot water system. Economically speaking, I'm better off buying an oversized tank using resistive heating that I only need to heat once per day. The grid provides free power and I buy a cheaper appliance. But environmentally it sucks, as more solar needs to be rolled out to cover the additional non-peak usage (guess about 6x the power usage of a smaller tank with heatpump).

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

#186

Post by LoganDark »

tialaramex wrote: post #180
jiggawatts wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love being ripped off because I'm renting, so instead of having a direct relationship with my service providers, they are legally allowed to sign binding contracts with the building manager who I'm sure in no shape way or form receives a kick-back. So I'm stuck with an energy provider that is too incompetent to figure out how to bill me correctly, but puts a markup on what I'd pay as a home owner, and I don't even…

These are things where policy is set by government and so could be moved by your elected representatives. If you already have a preferred flavour of representative, try to get them to want to do this. If you don't, here's an issue that could make you prefer one over another, make sure they know that.

Single customers having these issues don't really have any power to convince representatives. Historically, the only real way to enact change in this way is to have thousands of people contacting their representatives about it.

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

#187

Post by yorwba »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #160
yorwba wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's what loans are for Upthread: "interest free loan of 15k" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48904009

Loans for non-trivially profitable investments don't require government interest subsidies.

The recipient doesn't necessarily know ahead of time how profitable the investment will be. Risk aversion will cause them to avoid investments that are profitable in expectation if they believe the chance of ending up worse off is too high. By offering interest-free loans, the government can pool that risk so that individual loan recipients hesitate less to make the positive-expectation investment.

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

#188

Post by Bockit »

thedays wrote: post #131

This article is misleading as it implies that Australian energy retailers must provide every household with 3 hours of free electricity. This is not the case. From 1 July 2026, Australian energy retailers with more than 1,000 customers must offer at least one energy plan which includes 3 hours of free electricity, capped at 24kWh per day, to residential customers in 3 states - NSW, SE Queensland and South Australia.…

Also, many energy retailers increased the daily 'connection service fee' to compensate. My dad's daily fee went up an extra 55c~, or +$200/year.

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

#189

Post by scheeseman486 »

grey-area wrote: post #169
CalRobert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is heat that would have escaped the house anyway

No, air conditioning units generate heat (that is how they cool!) and do contribute to local warming. Without AC the house reaches equilibrium with outside. With AC the house is cooled and that heat has to go somewhere.

They don't generate heat in the sense that heat is generated from nothing. If the AC is being powered by solar, then the energy that is powering the heat pump has already hit the earth and has become part of that system. The energy that would otherwise have hit the roofing and been radiated is more focused around the radiators, but as soon as that dissipates into the air the difference to the local climate isn't any different.

If the roof was white and reflective then a lot more of that light would be reflected, but most roofing isn't.

Your logic isn't really compatible with the laws of thermodynamics.

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

#190

Post by NothingAboutAny »

asdefghyk wrote: post #183

It actually alludes to a significant problem. Solar generation is realitely cheap, much more storage is needed. Storage (overnight and also for several days) is challenging - one reason being its more expensive. Then there is the new transmission lines needed.

it's much much more expensive, people like to repeat the line that solar is the cheapest form of energy while hand-waving away batteries and grid upgrades required. I did the napkin math a while back but a battery bank for 10's of thousands of homes for 48 hours costed as much (more?) than just building a nuclear power plant.
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