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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

#351

Post by jiggawatts »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #247
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…

What is the limiting factor in getting NBN? Getting fiber to the premises is that hard part, and that's already done.

The contract that the building manager signed.

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

#352

Post by protocolture »

rswail wrote: post #139
protocolture wrote: post #4

The fine print is interesting, theres a cap, fair use provisions and it requires a smart meter. Smart meters are still a bit contentious. Sadly probably wont be any good for selective crypto mining, alas.

Victoria has had smart meters rolled out for over a decade. The rest of the states in the NEM are aiming for 2030 to complete their rollouts. Aside from the supposed "contentious" nature of smart meters, which is mostly the RW cookers thinking it's some nefarious plot, along with vaccines and 5G.

>Aside from the supposed "contentious" nature of smart meters, which is mostly the RW cookers thinking it's some nefarious plot, along with vaccines and 5G.

Eh I sit on the fence on this one. Take your pick as to who is going to abuse the data. Corps or the government to taste.

Consider this very proposal, incentives to use power at certain times are good. But that incentive structure could instead be very anti consumer. Higher prices when we need electricity would be a horrid state of affairs when rents have doubled in 5 years and a lot of people are barely holding on.

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

#353

Post by aetherspawn »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #250
aetherspawn wrote: post #87

We already get free power between 0am and 6am, so with free power between 11am and 2pm we’ll have a whopping 9 hours of free power to charge our car and heat our water storage.

What plan and what provider to get free power from midnight to 6am? I'm in a plan that gets me $0.08/kWh during those hours, and I'm planning to switch to one that's just over half that, but I haven't come across any free power in that time span.

I’m with Powershop currently, but it was a hard toss-up between Powershop and Ovo. Sorry you’re right, it’s not “free” with Powershop (4.99 cents per kWhr), but it’s cheap enough that it’s basically free compared to the cost of living and what we were spending before.

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

#354

Post by upsuper »

markvdb wrote: post #347
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Australian grid presently curtails ~7-18% of production every single day between 11:00 and 14:00. I believe that incentivizing people to acquire batteries is precisely the purpose of the policy. It's good for the grid for there to be a lot of storage at the edges. As I understand it, the 24kWh cap is subject to annual review, with it being reduced/the policy being soft phased out once curtailment is no longer nec…

The core of the EU system is much more elegant. It sets a day-ahead production price per 15 minutes at auction. In EU countries with reasonable distribution cost, dynamic rates are a quite popular way to shift consumption to when cheap electricity is abundant.

Australia has that as well, the wholesale market changes price every 5 minutes, but it is a big ask for average consumers to follow that price and shift power usage in real time.

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

#355

Post by upsuper »

markvdb wrote: post #348
Panzer04 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connection fee would also rise with less energy consumption/free electricity to amortize the fixed costs of the power grid.

Not necessarily. At least in Flanders (northern ~half of Belgium), this was shifted onto consumers by making them pay for peak quarter consumption. Using more than 2.5kW for 15 minutes in a row on average means you pay a lot more for your fixed grid cost.

Australian grids are already talking about removing all per-kWh tariff and shift all the cost to fixed supply fee. The government rejected it probably because it doesn't make them look good, and it makes poor people pay more. But it's probably just time before that comes.

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

#356

Post by throwaway2037 »

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.

Yeah, I was thinking the same. If you look on Google Maps, California has some epic large parking lots next to office complexes. If you had 100+ "free" EV chargers that could add up pretty fast with California's expensive daytime electricity prices.

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

#357

Post by insane_dreamer »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #342
insane_dreamer wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SFH's are rare in China outside the villages; big cities are all high-rises (in Beijing, and I believe other large cities, it's illegal to build SFH's within the city limits, though the few remaining "hutongs" are exempted for historical reasons)

Yes, I think most of us know that, so I find the statement to be confusing that China is behind on personal solar. Of course they are! It is never going to be much of a thing as urbanization continues to accelerate, because people just don't live in those kinds of houses where you have your own roof to put solar panels on. You are much more likely to see community solar instead, or solar plants (along with wind farms…

> When I lived in Beijing, the apartment buildings I lived in usually had solar hot water

was that recently? I lived there from 2011-2017 and solar power was virtually unheard of, much less powering any buildings. But yeah, China is that kind of place that the city decides when you get heating in your apartment (Nov 15 IIRC, so early Nov could be _really_ cold inside; we wore our coats).

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

#358

Post by sire-vc »

defrost wrote: post #49
jondwillis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is their fire suppression setup like??? Granted I guess they could be doing pumped hydro storage lol

If they're in a rural / industrial area setting it could quite literally be a fire break around the battery area (bare dirt and no overhanging trees). Fire control in Australia is first and foremost about limiting spread - the bush in Australia goes off if it catches hard. "Mini" pumped hydro is a thing here (in places): https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-01/australian-first-mini...

'Is a thing' - obviously, stalled due to red tape. As an immigrant to Australia I am repeatedly amazed at how long anything involving the the government takes.

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

#359

Post by oliyoung »

grey-area wrote: post #32
oliyoung wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Australian, the lack of anxiety and guilt you get when you're using 10-12 hours of air conditioning in the middle of summer and not paying for a cent of it because your solar panels are covering is worth more than anything

You should still feel some guilt for the heat pollution your air conditioning causes for those outside your house, esp. in an urban area.

that's inconsequential to keeping my family cool on the third 43c degree day in a week

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

#360

Post by scheeseman486 »

grey-area wrote: post #330
scheeseman486 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All absorbed light gets turned into heat, infrared or otherwise (I'm not sure why you brought up IR?); solar panels catch some of that spectrum. I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make here, particularly given the second paragraph seems to contradict the first; "extra heating effect" (from where does this "extra" come from?) vs "you could say they move heat if you like" which yeah, not really about what I like, that's just how physics works, can't get any more fundamental than the law of conservation of energy.

You said that AC/heat pumps "generate" heat and if they were powered by fossil fuels, in an roundabout way they do. But if they're driven by solar, there's no long-trapped energy being expelled and therefore no "extra" energy added to the system beyond what the sun is providing.

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