Live data from Hacker News

Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity

lenergy.com.au

301–310 of 427 posts

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

#301
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay about 38c per kilowatt plus $1.70 per day for the connection fee. So by that maths, you'd save 8×0.38=$3.04 per day. A 10kWh battery is in the ballpark of $4000. So it'll take about 4 years to break even. Then you'd just have to pay the connection fee, which seem to be increasing every year.

> $1.70 per day for the connection fee A sneaky tax that keeps rising. In the UK it pays for failed energy companies, people defaulting on their energy bills, energy bill subsidies... and supposedly for grid upgrades lol It's risen far above inflation (responding to a sibling comment)

This is even worse for gas. Most months I pay more in sales tax on the fees than I do for the gas.

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

#302

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…

Apparently, Australia has ~3x times rollout of solar than china, what is mostly caused by a much higher per capita consumption in Australia, both countries having basically the same share of electricity generated from renewables.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-electricity-per-cap...

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They also have hardly any GDP per capita compared to Australia.

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

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It costs $5-$10 for the electricity to charge a car using level 2 charging. It is a trivial "perk" for an employee that costs an order of magnitude more per hour of work.

Not trivial if they a bunch of chargers. I work for the state in California and we have chargers at work but are charged for them around $.29/kWh which is cheaper than Tesla I think.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 12 kW inverter (single phase) and 48 kWh battery. In Australia, 9 months of the year my 16 kW of solar fills the battery and covers all needs including cooking, heating and charging the EV. In winter, I’ve been using Ovo’s 3 hours free for about a year now and that ensures the battery is filled up daily. My electricity bill returns a credit every month since I got the battery a year ago.

I was trying to understand how to do this, and I formed the opinion that most of the battery providers don’t really allow the degree of ‘on/off’ or ‘charge/discharge’ customisation as might be necessary to make this work? Or was I fooled by the packaged products that are aiming to turn me and my battery and panels into a residential power plant at the whim of the energy company?

You can set your own timing schedule and choose self-consumption or to sell back to the grid. Joining a VPP is optional.

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

#306
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 you build enough solar that the output at 18:00 matches the demand, it will not have the same ROI as if you are using batteries.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If something actually saves money then it doesn't require a subsidy because people would be doing it regardless. Spoken as someone who never been poor. There is definitely a ton of stuff people with money can do to save more money, that is completely out of reach for the people who would actually benefit from those savings the most. Subsidies is quite literally about reaching these folks that others tend to forget…

To target the "poor people need more money" problem, the most direct answer is give them money. If someone's answer is a variety of politically-allocated narrow subsidies, you should wonder what interest they're really aiming to satisfy.

When you get money, you can choose to spend it on what's worth the most to you. Thus "strings attached" on the opposite.

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

#308
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still describes the current state of affairs perfectly. I'd love to see them on snowy 2 today.

> I'd love to see them on snowy 2 today. I can only imagine the comment warnings on that segment considering that, sadly, John Clarke passed away nine years ago.

He was towed outside the environment. (I think he would laugh at this)

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It’s a pretty nasty insult wrapped up in friendly-sounding language.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Texas is beating California by a large margin when it comes to solar due to bureaucratic red tape and "environmental" review in California along with monopolistic utility companies, which have successfully lobbied against solar by removing net metering and adding in extra solar connection charges.
Post reply on HN