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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

#251

Post by angry_octet »

pjc50 wrote: post #71
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?)

The submarines will be in port so much of the time, we may as well hook up their nukes to power the grid.

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

#252

Post by angry_octet »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #75
simondotau wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes Snowy 2.0 just won't have enough water for many of the years in out future.

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

#253

Post by mothballed »

pqtyw wrote: post #245
mothballed wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not talking about picking and choosing for a voted tax. I'm saying it can't be true most people don't want to help fund the poor if the majority are voting to tax themselves to fund the poor. Clearly under anything remotely resembling the Australian representation of what they claim their representative democracy is, the majority of people already decided they individually are incentivized to help the poor de…

> I'm saying it can't be true most people don't want to help fund the poor if the majority are voting to tax themselves to fund the poor. Or people have a tendence to perceive a system where everyone is required to pay their "fair share" as more just and are more willing to (often begrudgingly) participate in it. If the system was fully voluntary the average contribution would be significantly lower that it is now. A…

I can tell you you're absolutely wrong about the average person. I live in a place with no public infrastructure (I'm talking about, not even public roads, and not some rich HOA, a ~poor unorganized community without any infrastructure association) which has allowed me to view how average people react when there is no taxation based infrastructure. When it breaks, the neighbors help. I help maintain the roads for my poor neighbor. My other neighbor helped fix my water line when it broke. Sometimes I take my heavy equipment and donate labor to prepare for storms, etc. The infrastructure is literally donation based. We get it done for a tiny fraction of what the tax based system cost and everyone is far better off, even if the amount donated is less than what the taxes would be and some people "cheat" the system.

It's actually quite rare to find someone who says I will help the poor, but only if my neighbor also pays, otherwise they can get fucked. This is very bizarre thinking. The people in my basically ancap-dystopia neighborhood don't even behave in this sadistic way. It honestly sounds more like a manufactured "gotcha" to win an argument than a way someone would think.

In reality the fraction people that would vote to tax themselves, are more than willing to donate in the case they don't get the tax, your sadistic MAD view where you punish the poor just because some other guy didn't help too is relatively rare and not indicative of the mindset of most people who are voting to help the poor. I honestly think that most anyone who would vote for the tax, does not act that way when dropped in a neighborhood like mine, and you probably would not either.

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

#254

Post by bahmboo »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #235
reyoz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I am doing. 42 kWh battery, 6 kW solar and fully electrified house, 2x EVs. I am able to charge cars at work and so in the depths of winter I am able to run the house by charging during the 3 hour window. There have been just a couple of cold (~2-4 degC) days when the battery was depleted 1-2 hours before the window starts. As the weather warms and we get more solar exposure we will easily be in excess.…

> I am able to charge cars at work Nice perk! Does you know who pays for the electricty? Is this "virtue signalling" by the company or landlord... or a subsidy from the local/state/national gov't? To be clear, I am not making any value judgement about providing free charging for EVs. It seems like good gov't policy to promote the adoption of EVs.

throwaway account and "virtue signalling" plus a dig at so called subsidies. Oh and "no value judgement" except for the value judgement. You are not helpful here.

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

#256

Post by Nursie »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #239
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…

> I don't even get the NBN despite having fibre to the premises! Woah, this is crazy. Personally, I have read so much about the Aussie NBN (The Australian National Broadband Network) [1]. (Dear nerds: If you don't know about it, I highly recommend you read about it!) I am utterly jealous that you lot pulled it off! (Not perfect, but pretty damn good.) Can you share more details about why the building does not have hi…

At least part of the story is a cautionary tale about electing the LNP. The NBN was originally going to be as you describe, but then Tony Abbot came along, under instruction from his pal Rupert Murdoch, and threw a major spanner in the works.

He decided it was waaaaay too expensive and big-governmenty to do that and besides, Uncle Rupert had a satellite tv business to defend, we don't want him to have to compete with the likes of Netflix now do we? So he told Australia that it was too much money for a "glorified video delivery service" and that 25Mbit was enough for anyone for the foreseeable, and threw out the original plans.

The plan was downgraded to "Fibre in some places, we'll reuse copper where possible". This ended up taking longer and costing more than the original plan, delivered worse service, and we're only now getting towards where we should have been under the first plan. A lot of the work has had to be repeated due to the initial poor rollout and then needing to upgrade as that 25Mbit started looking woefully inadequate. Just last year a further $5 billion was pledged to replace more FTTN/Copper with FTTP.

It's still more expensive than other markets I'm aware of, a lot of people who aren't far from cities and major towns are on wireless connections (theoretical 400Mbit, actual ~150), and the real bush "Sky Muster" system tops at 100/5 (actual ~55-83) and is having its lunch eaten by starlink.

tl;dr the Liberal (conservative) party got in and fucked it up.

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

#257

Post by angry_octet »

asdefghyk wrote: post #26
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.

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 pro…

All the complexity has been in geotechnical issues, pockets of mud, sinkholes, then ultra hard rock, then loose shale, damage in blasting operations, needing to pump liquid nitrogen into the rock to deal with subterranean water flow, soluble limestone etc etc.

One of the scariest industrial deaths you can imagine: cutting into a pocket of shale and the TBM and crew just vanishing into the maw of the Midgard serpent and the whole tunnel filling.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-22/tunnel-boring-machine...

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

#258

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #235
reyoz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I am doing. 42 kWh battery, 6 kW solar and fully electrified house, 2x EVs. I am able to charge cars at work and so in the depths of winter I am able to run the house by charging during the 3 hour window. There have been just a couple of cold (~2-4 degC) days when the battery was depleted 1-2 hours before the window starts. As the weather warms and we get more solar exposure we will easily be in excess.…

> I am able to charge cars at work Nice perk! Does you know who pays for the electricty? Is this "virtue signalling" by the company or landlord... or a subsidy from the local/state/national gov't? To be clear, I am not making any value judgement about providing free charging for EVs. It seems like good gov't policy to promote the adoption of EVs.

> Is this "virtue signalling"

> I am not making any value judgement

Calling something "virtue signalling" is a value judgement.

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

#259

Post by inkyoto »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #239
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…

> I don't even get the NBN despite having fibre to the premises! Woah, this is crazy. Personally, I have read so much about the Aussie NBN (The Australian National Broadband Network) [1]. (Dear nerds: If you don't know about it, I highly recommend you read about it!) I am utterly jealous that you lot pulled it off! (Not perfect, but pretty damn good.) Can you share more details about why the building does not have hi…

> […] why the building does not have high quality NBN connections?

Because their place of residence is connected to an embedded network that has eschewed the NBN Co and chosen to connect to a private fibre operator who sits outside the NBN. They probably also pay more compared to NBN for the same speed.

Not every embedded network supplies fibre, but some do, and that appears to be the case in their situation.

By the way, NBN has recently upgraded the network to 2Gbps, with 10 Gbps having been trialled but no availability date set as of yet.

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

#260

Post by abanana »

nikcub wrote: post #231
tiew9Vii wrote: post #84

Free isn't free. Coinciding with this, suppliers put daily connection charges up.

It kinda is since wholesale energy prices are often negative in these markets during the day

That's the theory. Others in this thread are reporting the reality.

In practice, any profit-making enterprise will not want to miss out on the income they were previously getting, so will find other times and charges to load it onto. Also, they know some people will specifically choose an energy plan that seems to give them something free, so it's easy to take advantage by increasing the prices they pay less attention to.

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