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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

#291

Post by AnotherGoodName »

kiproping wrote: post #289
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite simply put this is what they ask you to do. To the point that the Australian government will heavily subsidise (30%) home battery installation. Remember Australia has over 10x the rollout of solar than china (per capita of course). It’s not hard to achieve this for any competent government. Bluntly China’s government is corrupt and inefficient (usa is even further behind china since their current government is…

Why is China's government corrupt? specifically when it comes to solar? Are they not accused of the opposite, overdoing solar? Help me understand your critique.

The have hardly any solar per capita compared to Australia. They are occasionally held up as an example by misguided westerners as if what they’ve achieved is an example of good policy on solar when it’s utterly dwarfed on a per capita basis by countries like Australia.

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

#293

Post by perilunar »

tialaramex wrote: post #237
perilunar wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely so. Unless you are on the equator, the sun is up for less than 12 hours a day from the autumnal equinox to the spring equinox. The sun will set before 18:00 local solar time. So apart from funkiness with time zones and summer time (which extends a couple of weeks past the autumnal equinox in Aus), yes, roughly half the year.

You're not crazy in the broad sweep of your idea, but actually because the sun isn't a point of light you're also not strictly correct, for example in Singapore the day is always more than 12 hours long.

Singapore is close to the equator (1°17′N) — the days are roughly 12 hours long all year. No, it's not exact. They vary from +3 to +12 minutes. It's close enough (It's not entirely due to the apparent size of the sun — refraction due to the atmosphere has a slightly greater effect.

(Singapore is also in the 'wrong' timezone. The sun sets around 7 pm every day, giving it effectively permanent daylight saving time.)

But regardless, Australia is not near the equator. The timezones are mostly ok. In most of the country (for most of the population anyway) the sun sets before 18:00 for roughly half the year. No amount of solar is going to power the evening peak demand without storage.

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

#295

Post by adrianN »

rsanek wrote: post #191
thedays wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - the regulated offer is capped at 24 kWh per day but some retailers such as Globird and CovaU are offering plans which include up to 50 kWh per day of ‘free’ electricity. With a large enough battery and inverter you could just end up paying daily supply charges of $1.65-2.20 per day.

Critically, that cost excludes the amortized amount the batteries will be over that period. And if you're cycling them every day like this, they're not going to last more than 15~20 years.

Cycling 50kWh of batteries daily seems like a very unusual level of consumption.

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

#296

Post by DFHippie »

budsniffer952 wrote: post #281
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite simply put this is what they ask you to do. To the point that the Australian government will heavily subsidise (30%) home battery installation. Remember Australia has over 10x the rollout of solar than china (per capita of course). It’s not hard to achieve this for any competent government. Bluntly China’s government is corrupt and inefficient (usa is even further behind china since their current government is…

> Bluntly China’s government is corrupt and inefficient (usa is even further behind china since their current government is also corrupt and inefficient). So countries are only behind Australia because of corruption? And the US is only behind because of Trump, specifically? Man, must be nice to have such a basic view of the world; everything so sinpmy explained.

The US is paying developers billions of dollars to scrap renewable energy projects. This is Trump policy. We're in a league of our own for sure.

It's not all Trump, of course. It's also the people who put him in office twice, the folks who block upgrading the grid, etc. etc.

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

#297

Post by tialaramex »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #272
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?

Quite simply put this is what they ask you to do. To the point that the Australian government will heavily subsidise (30%) home battery installation. Remember Australia has over 10x the rollout of solar than china (per capita of course). It’s not hard to achieve this for any competent government. Bluntly China’s government is corrupt and inefficient (usa is even further behind china since their current government is…

The bits of China where most of its people live are pretty mediocre for solar power. Like, Southern France at best, not Australia, not even California.

China is huge, and it does have huge solar farms, but the trouble is now you need a huge power transport infrastructure. Australia can move enough power from a desert where nobody lives to a small city 100 kilometres away on a few ordinary hundred kV pylons and be happy. China has huge cities, 2-3 thousand kilometres from those solar farms so it is building long chains of 1MV pylons which is the same idea but at this incredible scale.

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

#298

Post by AnotherGoodName »

pjc50 wrote: post #280
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite simply put this is what they ask you to do. To the point that the Australian government will heavily subsidise (30%) home battery installation. Remember Australia has over 10x the rollout of solar than china (per capita of course). It’s not hard to achieve this for any competent government. Bluntly China’s government is corrupt and inefficient (usa is even further behind china since their current government is…

> Australia has over 10x the rollout of solar than china (per capita of course) This is a remarkable stat that's the opposite of what I expected, but I suppose China is (a) starting from a lower base and (b) much, much larger in absolute population. Australia's population would fit in Chongqing.

Chinas solar rollout is absolutely pathetic. Netherlands is a close second to Australia in case anyone wants to argue latitude or population density alone is a cause. Germany’s up there too. In fact on a per capita basis China’s way down the list.

Where people get misled on China’s rollout is total generation (since it’s a huge fraction of the worlds population) and the fact that they do large centralised rollouts rather than enabling rooftop solar. So they have some of the biggest solar farms. Rooftop solar is the way the countries that have shot past china have mostly achieved results - remove barriers to installation and grid connection and suddenly every citizen is invested in it since it saves them money. It’s the classic efficiency win from a massively motivated population vs a central bureaucracy. China’s showing everyone how NOT to enable solar.

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

#299

Post by drew870mitchell »

Electric battery storage is a better option, but also your home is a very leaky battery storage for conditioned air. At my last place i got a plan that was nearly free on overnights and ran the HVAC all night, turning it off during the peak period. This was in the worst part of summer when the overnight lows were 80F or above so natural ventilation couldn't help much.

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

#300

Post by tialaramex »

DFHippie wrote: post #296
budsniffer952 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bluntly China’s government is corrupt and inefficient (usa is even further behind china since their current government is also corrupt and inefficient). So countries are only behind Australia because of corruption? And the US is only behind because of Trump, specifically? Man, must be nice to have such a basic view of the world; everything so sinpmy explained.

The US is paying developers billions of dollars to scrap renewable energy projects. This is Trump policy. We're in a league of our own for sure. It's not all Trump, of course. It's also the people who put him in office twice, the folks who block upgrading the grid, etc. etc.

Trump hates specifically wind turbines (or "windmills" as he insists on calling them). Which isn't to say his administration is friendly to solar projects, but the stuff which makes Trump visibly angry is the wind turbines. The fact this works and is free power is very annoying for a man who insists they can't work and shouldn't be used.

So yeah, Trump doesn't help, but in respect specifically of Solar you'd likely see pretty similar policies from many US regimes, including mainstream Democrats.

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