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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

#321

Post by christina97 »

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.

One issue with grid scale batteries is that the solar is predominantly generated in the suburbs, but the grid wasn’t built for a huge “generator” in the suburbs. It requires retrofitting the grid for this huge excess. It would be better to instead store it in the suburbs in household batteries (which they are also building out like crazy).

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

#322

Post by dmoy »

zardo wrote: post #303
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the geography (especially in the more populated areas) is like 60-70% mountains and hills and shit. Australia has significantly more flat land for easy solar builds, with 1/50th the population.

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

#323

Post by giantg2 »

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.…

"The downside of these solar sharer plans which include ‘free’ electricity is that they generally have higher daily supply charges and higher usage charges outside the ‘free’ window to recoup the costs of the ‘free’ electricity."

Free energy is too good to be true, even if you aren't a physicist.

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

#324

Post by ZeroGravitas »

tahoeskibum wrote: post #310
tialaramex wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Texas generates a lot more power than California.

The generate more grid solar, more wind, more gas and more coal than other states.

They're still #2 to California when you include distributed solar though.

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

#325

Post by ggreer »

vondur wrote: post #304
freshpots wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are they fast DC chargers or level 2 chargers? If it's the former, then that is cheap. If it's latter, then that is some expensive electricity.

I'm in Washington where electricity is cheaper, so 29 cents per kWh is not much cheaper than Tesla's superchargers. The closest one to me is 31 cents in the middle of the day and goes as low as 20 cents per kWh at night. I pay 8 cents per kWh at home, which is where I charge (at much slower speeds) unless I'm on a road trip.

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

#326

Post by gfxfan »

amelius wrote: post #286
pjc50 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anywhere in the world let you have multiple electricity plans on the same meter at the same time?

I'm now thinking of a scheme involving neighbors and isolation transformers.

The trick is to switch often, b/c of tricks like ”first X free”.

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

#327

Post by Reason077 »

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…

> ”Remember Australia has over 10x the rollout of solar than china (per capita of course).”

China is adding around 10X Australia’s total installed solar power generation every single year. Half of the entire world’s deployed solar is in China.

And while Australia’s solar growth is impressive, it’s worth remembering that it’s only possible because of China. It was Chinese government policy that pushed to develop the huge solar industry that exists today and supplies vast quantities of cheap solar panels to the world.

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

#328

Post by Reason077 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #302
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…

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...

China is adding 10 Australias worth of new solar generation every single year (315 GW of new solar installed just in 2025 alone). Half of all the entire world’s solar is deployed in China.

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

#329

Post by grey-area »

CalRobert wrote: post #172
grey-area wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that absorption by the roof or panels is around the same - however the aircon moves heat from inside to outside, so you are moving heat outside for other people to deal with. In an isolated house it makes little difference. If every building has aircon in a city it does impact outside temperatures and adds to the heat island effect.

Right, but energy that would have heated the roof goes towards powering the aircon (which likely is on the roof itself), which then emits the same amount of heat, no? Say a roof is absorbing 10000 watts. You install solar panels that absorb 2000 watts, used to power an airco. You now have your roof absorbing 8000 watts (released as heat) and ann airco absorbing (using) 2000 watts (also released as heat). Am I wrong?…

No the solar panels do not absorb only infrared or even mostly infrared.

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

#330

Post by grey-area »

scheeseman486 wrote: post #189
grey-area wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Solar energy is not just infrared, and infrared is not what is used by PV solar. So not it’s not equivalent and anyway doesn’t in any way impact the extra heating effect of a new heat source on the ground.

Instead of generate heat you could say they move heat if you like, from inside to outside.

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