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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

#201

Post by [deleted] »

som wrote: post #156
chicken-stew wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, capped at 24 kWh a day? Our household consumed 8 kWh per day over the past week (gas cooking, no airco). So with a home battery that sinks 10 kWh during those 3 hours you have minimal energy costs?

Forget 3hrs free. We lived in the tropics in Australia with a ~6kW system and often had negative quarterly invoices (i.e. got paid by our retailer) ... esp. in winter months. Aircon, pool, appliances all electric. At the very least the pool pump ran free all year round. Edit: should add, that's straight solar no battery

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by NothingAboutAny »

defrost wrote: post #192
NothingAboutAny wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Australian scientific body, the CSIRO, did an extensive report on the full life costs of various energy strategies and concluded that nuclear made little to no economic sense in Australia. Perhaps had they used a napkin they would have agreed with you.

The CSIRO renewables plan factors in only 2-4 hours of battery capacity (way less, with some already built) with the rest of the backup coming from existing pumped hydro and an existing Natural Gas plant. one of the reasons nuclear looked worse in the report is that they would have to actually build a nuclear power plant. it might not make direct sense to build nuclear given what already physically exists, but apples to apples it's not quite as clear.

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

#203

Post by stubish »

ggm wrote: post #159
nutjob2 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or buy a subsidized battery to store the free power and use it whenever you like.

Yes, that's also being done. A critique I have seen is that this is empowering the rich to get richer. Renters are less likely to be able to adopt these strategies.

The rich certainly benefit more, like anything where an investment needs to be made (I expect the new plans will be like the existing 'free' power plans and be a poor choice without a battery). In this case, the poor still benefit a little bit as it should drive down peak period prices and the cost of fixed rate plans.

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

#204

Post by chrisandchris »

defrost wrote: post #192
NothingAboutAny wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Australian scientific body, the CSIRO, did an extensive report on the full life costs of various energy strategies and concluded that nuclear made little to no economic sense in Australia. Perhaps had they used a napkin they would have agreed with you.

I think not everything that makes (purely) financially sense does make economically sense. There's much more to it that just money (e.g. where do you get the uran from for the next 30 years?).

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

#205

Post by cmoski »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #199
som wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget 3hrs free. We lived in the tropics in Australia with a ~6kW system and often had negative quarterly invoices (i.e. got paid by our retailer) ... esp. in winter months. Aircon, pool, appliances all electric. At the very least the pool pump ran free all year round. Edit: should add, that's straight solar no battery

> often had negative quarterly invoices (i.e. got paid by our retailer) ... esp. in winter months "[I]n winter months"? My stupid northern hemisphere brain did a double take; I needed to remind myself that Christmas (December) is summer!

It's got nothing to do with the hemisphere.

Most likely the aircon is running less in winter so they don't use as much power. There is not much of a winter in the tropics.

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

#206

Post by throwaway2037 »

michaelt wrote: post #29
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 o…

    > 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.
Sorry, normally I hate this follow-up on HN, but can you share a source? I tried to Google for sources, but there is a pretty wild range of ROI in different countries/regions. My point: Ideally, can you provide personal/anecdotal experience, or something that is specific to a country or region?

EDIT

I forgot to say: I like your idea of intraday arbitrage using batteries! It is a very cool idea. Surely, this could be well modeled to know your expected ROI before investment/build-out.

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

#207

Post by brabel »

jazoom wrote: post #173
brabel wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow your current electricity must be really expensive... or your solar setup is?? Also the calculation was done by the company selling it, I'm pretty sure that was far too optimistic.

That actually sounds pessimistic to me. My ROI for 18kW solar plus 42kWh battery will be under 3 years. - Expensive electricity - Government subsidy for solar and battery - Much sunshine - 3 hours free charging daily Nearly $5000 yearly bill gone. $14000 installation cost post rebate.

With a calculation like that I'd buy solar in a heart beat!

But as I said, my main concern is my winter bill, which I know by asking people who own solar in the region, is almost the same with solar since there's no sun at all (it's not that it's cloudy, it's that the entire day duration is like 4 hours - under which you barely feel any sun heat and in practice the solar output is exactly zero on the worst month and near zero for 4 or so months). Hence the very long ROI here, but I agree that for Queensland, 10 years would be a bit too long if you dimension the solar array properly.

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

#208

Post by throwaway2037 »

Related to this article, I recently saw this video on YouTube: "I Powered My House Using 500 Disposable vapes" [1]

It is wild how cheap are solar panels now. Really, bonkers cheap. A huge rooftop solar panel costs less than 100 USD. From everything that I read/see/watch, most of the cost associated with solar panel arrays is the labour required for installation. (No hate on those folks -- they are skilled labour!)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy-wFixuRVU

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

#209

Post by penteract »

stubish wrote: post #185
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 powe…

To check I understand you: the smaller tank with heatpump would consume less energy outside the time window in which energy is free than the large tank with resistive heating, but has a higher capital cost which would outweigh the amount saved on energy?

If that's right, it's not obvious to me that building a suitably sized solar panel is environmentally worse than building a heat pump.

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

#210

Post by LoganDark »

tialaramex wrote: post #197
LoganDark wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless I misunderstood them, this is a common problem so there's no reason that wouldn't happen though.

If it's a common problem then change will happen without you. A difference of one is no difference at all.
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