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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

#101

Post by marcosdumay »

plantain wrote: post #75
figbert wrote: post #67

Earlier 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.

A thousand electricians doing 20kWh installations every week-day add up to 5GWh/year.

There are probably more than a thousand electricians in Australia.

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

#102

Post by ceejayoz »

jebarker wrote: post #56
ericmay wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why have we suddenly decided to DIY our own redundant power sources? Because government is failing to address these issues? Back in Trumpistan we had some storms roll through my area the other day. Power has been out for some (not me, thankfully) for a couple of days in a major metro. It was a bad storm and I do not fault the crews who are doing hard work out there repairing everything and it takes time. But what t…

Yep. Here in Colorado I installed two powerwalls moderately subsidized by the electricity company. It’s not going to save me meaningful amounts of money even in the long term and I would much rather see energy issues solved at a societal level. But our electricity provider is just unable to reliably keep the lights on through winter and wildfire season, I.e. most of the year. Since installing the batteries a couple y…

Isn't "subsidized by the electricity company" partially fulfilling "at a societal level"?

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

#103

Post by iAMkenough »

pocksuppet wrote: post #96
collinmcnulty wrote: post #49

I'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?

Probably depends on what country they live in and whether their government is spending billions of their taxpayer dollars to simply not build renewable energy projects and invest additional billions on top of that in new oil, gas and coal instead.

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

#104

Post by vladgur »

alexpotato wrote: post #36
plantain wrote: post #18

The 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.

That doesn’t sound like Hawaii

This does

“ A Solar Boom So Successful, It's Been Halted Photovoltaics proved so successful in Hawaii that the local utility, HECO, has instituted policies to block further expansion”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-solar-boom-so-s...

As of today Hawai’i rates are at $0.40+ per kWh

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

#105

Post by skew-aberration »

otherme123 wrote: post #68
plantain wrote: post #18

The 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…

Decentralization might be dollar-inefficient, but brings resiliency and redundancy to the system. The whole internet infrastructure would be probably cheaper with more centralization. Data backups are also ridiculously innefficient dollar-wise.

These systems are not truly redundant in that sense though - as they are intended to be centrally coordinated (the manufacturer provides a web API). So they are potentially vulnerable to e.g cyberwarfare.

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

#106

Post by modo_mario »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #49

I'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.

In the end you have to replace those panels and nobody in your country now produces them or has the incentive to start producing them unless they not only drop the subsidies but sell well over market value.

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

#107

Post by collinmcnulty »

pocksuppet wrote: post #96
collinmcnulty wrote: post #49

I'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?

11, and I wish I'd bought 15

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

#108

Post by mrngld »

plantain wrote: post #75
figbert wrote: post #67

Earlier 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.

No, we do not in fact have the "power pipes". Those "pipes" have capacity limits. Those "pipes" and getting them approved and built in the US is a key limiting factor that throttles... pretty much everything. Yes, it holds up data centers, but also I've heard 'green' energy advocates complaining for decades about how difficult it is to get the permits and approvals to get wind and solar facilities hooked up, they're holding up nuclear plants, they're holding all kinds of things up.

There's also something to be said for distributed production and storage. We don't all live in ultra-compact cities. I agree apartment buildings don't need to be playing this game. But Australia (and the US) are extremely dispersed relative to Europe, for example. There should, in theory, be resilience in distributed production and storage that grid managers could call upon to help manage point failures.

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

#109

Post by collinmcnulty »

modo_mario wrote: post #106
collinmcnulty wrote: post #49

I'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.

In the end you have to replace those panels and nobody in your country now produces them or has the incentive to start producing them unless they not only drop the subsidies but sell well over market value.

In 25 years, those panels will still be producing 80% of their starting value. Imagine what you can do with 25 years of energy independence.

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

#110

Post by epistasis »

This is exactly what utility propaganda and PUC manipulation in the US has successfully stopped from happening.

From NEM3 in California, to charging a high fixed fee for being on the grid in other areas of the country, utilities have manipulated rules at every step to prevent a future that has cheaper electricity for rate payers. They come up with rather fantastic propaganda about how ratepayers with solar are burdens on the grid, or concentrated in high-income areas, to try to hide the reality of what's possible with highly distributed electricity generation.

And the media in the US have been very willing accomplices in perpetuating this as well.

I have not figured out why its so different between Australia and the US, but it does seem that Australia has a far greater free-market bent when it comes to these things than the US. It's why solar is 4-6x cheaper to install than in the US.

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