Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does "LCOE" stand for?
Perhaps Low Cost Of Electricity?
I'm not asking for guesses thank you (especially if they turn out to be incorrect).
In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
91–100 of 328 posts
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree 100%, this is one of the most inequitable government policies I've ever seen in this country. The numbers are much worse than you make out. The program has spent more than 2.5bn (the projected figure) and we don't know yet how much. The subsidy was closer to 70% for a typical large battery install. The government's own gen cost report would have put grid storage 1.5x ahead on ROI. Note that figures like $66m/…
I've tried to be as charitable on both sides. As you note the real subsidy is higher, but the owner contributions are still high, and the projected cost of the program is now closer to 7.5Bn. It's pure middle-class welfare.
For 2N government dollars, the program gets 3N home battery. Grid is 2x more efficient by their own accounting. Therefore, we could have gotten 4N grid storage. This is not comparable to the home solar programs - which I understand to 'enticed' more private investment. Simply buying votes and lying to the public. I feel for the renters who paid their taxes and never saw a cent.
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#93Earlier 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.
We could call it: Train!
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#94The subsidy was closer to 70%, and in my case I was paid the equivalent of about 10 years of free electricity for a battery with a 10-year warranty. In total somewhere around 5-7 billion AUD was paid out (not yet public) - the wholesale market for comparison is around $16B AUD annually. Personally, I would have preferred it was used to build grid scale storage instead of funneling tax money to the relatively wealthy…
> Personally, I would have preferred it was used to build grid scale storage instead of funneling tax money to the relatively wealthy (myself included). I am generally sympathetic to this POV but I think for solar and batteries actually I end up leaning the other way. Solar PV scales appropriately for home owners unlike wind or indeed any conventional generation and both solar and batteries change how their owners fe…
As I said in another comment,
> For 2N government dollars, the program gets 3N home battery. Grid is 2x more efficient by their own accounting. Therefore, we could have gotten 4N grid storage. This is not comparable to the home solar programs - which I understand to 'enticed' more private investment. Simply buying votes and lying to the public. I feel for the renters who paid their taxes and never saw a cent.
I'd rather the 50% of Australians who don't own the home they live in had skin in the game! But I do love my 42kwhr battery
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#95The subsidy was closer to 70%, and in my case I was paid the equivalent of about 10 years of free electricity for a battery with a 10-year warranty. In total somewhere around 5-7 billion AUD was paid out (not yet public) - the wholesale market for comparison is around $16B AUD annually. Personally, I would have preferred it was used to build grid scale storage instead of funneling tax money to the relatively wealthy…
> Personally, I would have preferred it was used to build grid scale storage instead of funneling tax money to the relatively wealthy (myself included). I am generally sympathetic to this POV but I think for solar and batteries actually I end up leaning the other way. Solar PV scales appropriately for home owners unlike wind or indeed any conventional generation and both solar and batteries change how their owners fe…
It definitely has led to a lot of 'I'm not an environmentalist but of course i got solar on the roof and a battery!'. eg. https://xkcd.com/3226/
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#96I've long thought that any country should buy solar panels from any other country that's crazy enough to sell them to you at a subsidized price. It's not like buying oil; once you have the panels, that energy independence belongs to you.
How many solar panels did you buy?
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#97The program has so far spent $2.5bn, and installed 11GWh. That's just the cost of the subsidy (~30% discount), not the cost of what home owners tipped in. Utility scale batteries are now at ~$66m/GWh, or about ~$726m equivalent. It does not make sense for everyone to be doing a bespoke installation inside their own home. It is ridiculously inefficient. We are a society. We don't build our own roads, water, grid, scho…
> Why have we suddenly decided to DIY our own redundant power sources?
That's simple! As per Felon Musk - to sell overhead to electricity providers. Allegedly they will gladly buy energy from you! So with big enough roof, you can just sit home relax and watch TV, while your solar panels make your living.
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#98The program has so far spent $2.5bn, and installed 11GWh. That's just the cost of the subsidy (~30% discount), not the cost of what home owners tipped in. Utility scale batteries are now at ~$66m/GWh, or about ~$726m equivalent. It does not make sense for everyone to be doing a bespoke installation inside their own home. It is ridiculously inefficient. We are a society. We don't build our own roads, water, grid, scho…
There was an article a few years back about how homeowners in Hawaii were buying solar panels to try to get cheaper power. Then the local power company realized that as well and started shifting to solar with the net result that it became cheaper to buy the power company supplied electricity than from your own solar.
> the net result that it became cheaper to buy the power company supplied electricity than from your own solar.
I'm sure this is the way you remember it, and maybe even the way it was explained in that article but if you bought a solar panel the sunlight to power it is free, so your electricity from the panel is free. You're not "buying" that power and so the commercial supply can't be "cheaper".
Now if I've paid $5000 for a product which makes me electricity for free and then later you offer me the same amount of electricity for just $4000 you could say yours is cheaper, but, er, I already bought that $5000 product, I'm already out $5000 and my electricity is free, yours is not actually cheaper now. What we're seeing here is just "Did you know solar panels have become cheaper over time?"
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Installing on people’s houses isn’t just about install costs (the numbers for which above I highly doubt). There’s a huge additional benefit, and cost reducing factor, that comes from installing storage where grid connection already exists. Instead of building out battery farms in the desert and piping the power into urban centers over cables like a power plant, you can install capacity and run it essentially p2p. Th…
We already have the "power pipes", from the power plants. > Professionals are manufacturing and installing these at scale. A couple of electricians doing 20kWh (average install size) once per day, with an individual inverter, gateways, etc. is not at scale, by any means of the word.
> We already have the "power pipes", from the power plants.
And when they break, many people lose power.
Ukraine's seen some of the benefits of hyper-local generation over centralized production.
Re: In Australia, a home battery boom has helped cut wholesale power prices
#100The program has so far spent $2.5bn, and installed 11GWh. That's just the cost of the subsidy (~30% discount), not the cost of what home owners tipped in. Utility scale batteries are now at ~$66m/GWh, or about ~$726m equivalent. It does not make sense for everyone to be doing a bespoke installation inside their own home. It is ridiculously inefficient. We are a society. We don't build our own roads, water, grid, scho…
Are we a society though? Margaret Thatcher famously said "There's no such thing as society" and a lot of people have been doing their best to make that true.
There's no use pretending. Utility scale has a single political point of failure. Batteries in home do not.