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In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

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Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#21

Post by cube00 »

thelastgallon wrote: post #8
jmyeet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is that EVs tend to be charged when the sun is down. When sun is up you tend to be at work or driving. The surplus power is coming from solar.

EVs are parked 95% of the time. If it's parked, it can be charged. Work places also have electricity.

>Work places also have electricity.

Only households can access the free electricity window. If you're not on a free plan you can get reduced rates during the solar peak window but business accounts aren't allowed to access those either.

Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#22

Post by rswail »

thelastgallon wrote: post #2

Use EVs as energy storage. Millions of EVs form an energy reservoir. 20% of solar is curtailed now and q lot more in future, instead charge EVs. Pay the EV owners because they are creating a storage layer with their capital and power prices go negative hundreds of millions of times every year. No need of home batteries.

In Australia people do both. We don't have V2G yet, but EVs plugged in at home overnight with L1 charging can get charged by the home battery that was charged up during the day by the PV on the roof.

The solar PV and now storage rollouts in Australia have been one of the best government investments in public infrastructure in my lifetime here.

The more we electrify, the less reliant we are on the crude -> foreign refineries -> imported/distributed fuel risk.

Harvesting solar power is an awesome thing to do both at home and utility level.

PV and wind utility installations are being built with storage co-located, there are companies building synthetic condensers to maintain the grid stability and the job of frequency support is now done mostly by batteries, not gas.

We need to make electricity basically "too cheap to meter" and electrify our primary industries, mining and agriculture.

Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#23

Post by toasty228 »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #13
jmyeet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is that EVs tend to be charged when the sun is down. When sun is up you tend to be at work or driving. The surplus power is coming from solar.

surely its possible to invent a "plug in road" system, then cars could charge (at least on highways etc) even when driving. I had this thought ages back when EVs first came out, to tackle the problem of long charge times when doing cross country road trips.

On today's episode of "HNer's totally realistic and not deluded idea"...

Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#24

Post by hahahaa »

cube00 wrote: post #6
kleiba2 wrote: post #4

> The government has moved to make use of this surplus solar energy, including by offering free power in the early afternoon to homeowners in Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia, regardless of whether they have solar panels on their roof or not. The goal is to spur more consumers to run appliances or charge electric vehicles during this window. Taking the term "1st world problems" to new heights!

You pay a higher daily supply charge and more per kWh outside this window so it's more like free (conditions apply) The supply charge is 6% higher for the Solar Sharer plan, while the peak rate is 92% higher. Solar Sharer’s peak rate is almost double the flat rate. The off-peak rate is 17% lower than the flat rate. https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/solar-sharer-plans-compa...

Free as in kids eat free

Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#25

Post by gerdesj »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #13
jmyeet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is that EVs tend to be charged when the sun is down. When sun is up you tend to be at work or driving. The surplus power is coming from solar.

surely its possible to invent a "plug in road" system, then cars could charge (at least on highways etc) even when driving. I had this thought ages back when EVs first came out, to tackle the problem of long charge times when doing cross country road trips.

You could run a line overhead on pylons and put a pick up on a pole on the cars.

A smaller version of these things: https://sandtoft.org/wp/

Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#26

Post by red-iron-pine »

Wacari wrote: post #16
black_puppydog wrote: post #3

As ever, Volts did a really good episode on this: https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as Worth a listen, both to learn about how ridiculous the US situation is, and just how good the "news" of abundant solar is.

David Roberts does not have an EE degree and misunderstands anything related to power system operations. Great for positive vibes and LCOE parading tho.

elaborate

Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#27

Post by Wacari »

thelastgallon wrote: post #2

Use EVs as energy storage. Millions of EVs form an energy reservoir. 20% of solar is curtailed now and q lot more in future, instead charge EVs. Pay the EV owners because they are creating a storage layer with their capital and power prices go negative hundreds of millions of times every year. No need of home batteries.

Agreed. V2G is actually one of the best DER strats out there. The EVs are already purchased, the batteries and PCS are already configured for bidirectional flow in most brands. Coordination/visibility problem remains at Dx level, but actually worth the investment.

Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#29

Post by KaiserPro »

Wacari wrote: post #14
kleiba2 wrote: post #4

> The government has moved to make use of this surplus solar energy, including by offering free power in the early afternoon to homeowners in Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia, regardless of whether they have solar panels on their roof or not. The goal is to spur more consumers to run appliances or charge electric vehicles during this window. Taking the term "1st world problems" to new heights!

cause they have massive operational issues induced by effectively must-run oversupply that has increased costs for both ratepayers (and sometimes shifted to the taxpayer to hide costs). And then try to fix those problems with populist TOU rate magic (they won't be fixed), and bills continue to rise!! But hey, LMPs are down LOLOLOLOL

you're gonna have to expain that to me.

so cheaper 'leccy prices are bad? or that this upfront cost to get batteries installed are bad? even though long term costs will be dropping?

I mean whats the cost of 30% of 500k batteries compared to creating a new peaker genny or five?

Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices

#30

Post by testing22321 »

I put 7.3kw of panels on our roof for $0 of our money thanks to a $5k rebate and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.2Mwh of power a calendar year, which would cost $1000 if we had to pay for it.

So for 8 years we pay the loan instead of for the power, then we get -25 years of $1000 a year in our pockets. The price of power is also pre approved to increase a minimum of 5% a year every year here, so the savings will be more than that.

Right now we get a 1:1 credit for anything we put into the grid. If and when that changes I’ll get a battery.

The kicker? We’re in Canada in a tight valley where it snows a ton. If it works here…

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