With 3 hours of free power, a 15kW inverter and a 42kWh battery, I could almost do away with my solar panels and just survive of free grid power. I do have a 15kW solar panel set up, but I get very little from selling anything back to the grid.
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.
Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
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Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#372Earlier 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?
Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm on AGL and looking to change to the Ovo 4.7 cents per kWh (midnight to 6am) plan. The per day supply cost is higher as are some of the other rates, but overall should still save me roughly $20 a month - by my calculations.
Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I could imagine appliances that take that into account. e.g. an airconditioner that works harder during the cheaper periods. I wonder whether any retailers pass through the 5 minute pricing variation? Should be easy enough to monitor the price and adjust my AC via the infra red remote protocol.
Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are super economical… which is why there’s a subsidy required for people to buy them?
> which is why there’s a subsidy required for people to buy them? the gov't also offers interest free (but inflation indexed) loans to tertiary education. Just because there's a subsidy, doesn't mean the tax payer is paying a price for inefficiency. The policy itself needs to be individually examined to determine whether it's an efficient use of funds, not simply that it's a subsidy (time frame needs to be taken into…
Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#376Earlier 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…
This year is the only year that prices have gone down.
Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
The contract that the building manager signed.
So how do you get Internet? Is it provided as a shared wifi service for the building or something, like in a hotel? (so the building manager is essentially running a mini-ISP re-selling a single NBN service?) HTP!
Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The main problem, as Australians are no doubt aware, is that our houses are large and poorly insulated. I've done everything sensible already (ceiling + floor insulation, draft sealing, honeycomb blinds, etc) except paying $100,000 to double-glaze all windows, and it still feels like a tent.
Despite all this ranting, electricity is now effectively free in summer for me, and ~$5-8 per day in winter. Pre-battery it was in the ballpark of $10-25 per day. The battery should have a payback period of 4 years, but was heavily subsidized by the government. Due to how I'm charging and discharging it so regularly, I'm expected it might only have a 10yr lifetime.
Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need a battery to take advantage: then you may as well use a direct to market option like Amber. Which benefits grid stability too. 3 hrs without a battery is useless in Australia. As you generally use electricity for heating/cooling and need it longer than that esp. cooling.
I assure you first hand, you can turn on the heater (during winter) or airconditioner without battery and take advantage of this. You can wash your clothes during this time to take advantage on this. You can cook on the electric stove during this time to take advantage of this. No battery is required to do this. I can't connect your logic to my reality.
Re: Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
No the solar panels do not absorb only infrared or even mostly infrared.
OK, but I don't see how that addresses what I was getting at? As a thought experiment, imagine you attach a heater to the solar panels (maybe it's a sunny day in winter). Do you get free energy for heat?