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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

#241

Post by sarchertech »

lazide wrote: post #217
sarchertech wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes he has a fixed profit per person. In reality most business can do things like cut hours for staff, postpone upgrades or long term maintenance, cut amenities, raise prices etc… If most businesses were structured in a way that a small decline in customers immediately puts them out of business, any minor economic downturn would be an unrecoverable positive feedback loop for the economy. I’m not saying a 10%…

Uh, why do you think the Fed injects funds the way it does?

Sure that’s one of the argument for why they do it but the money doesn’t directly to most small businesses, we do have small downturns, and they don’t result in the majority of small businesses going out of business.

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

#242

Post by sarchertech »

Waterluvian wrote: post #228
sarchertech wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes he has a fixed profit per person. In reality most business can do things like cut hours for staff, postpone upgrades or long term maintenance, cut amenities, raise prices etc… If most businesses were structured in a way that a small decline in customers immediately puts them out of business, any minor economic downturn would be an unrecoverable positive feedback loop for the economy. I’m not saying a 10%…

> If most businesses were structured in a way that a small decline in customers immediately puts them out of business […] No business chooses to be structured this way.

That’s not what I was saying. I’m saying that we have small downturns where consumer spending drops yet those drops don’t result in crisis levels of small businesses closing. Which it would if most of them were structured like that.

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

#243

Post by HWR_14 »

vablings wrote: post #168
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #17

It started with a solar boom, many small home scale solar roofs popping up everywhere. Australia has a free trade agreement with much of the world, including China, and solar panels have literally dropped to 1/50th of the price they were in 1990 ($10/W to $0.2/W today). A shout out to the work that was done to establish dynamic grid pricing too. Anyway that caused power prices to reliably go negative during the day a…

I have made this argument several times that capitalism literally solves the issue of solar panels if the market allows arbitrage and true dynamic pricing. Good to see now a working example that capitalism is an excellent system of rewarding those who solve inefficiencies in markets

When is true dynamic pricing being prevented??

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

#244

Post by thelastgallon »

epistasis wrote: post #157
red75prime wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It requires large solar overcapacity to compensate for seasonal intermittency. Dedicated seasonal energy storage might be better economically.

Solar overcapacity is really cheap, because panels are really cheap. Dedicated seasonal energy storage technology doesn't even exist right now, much less economically efficient storage technology. The closest thing would be a massive thermal store used for district heating, but only prototypes are starting right now. Industrial scaling and mass deployment? That's a decade+ away at a minimum. We could build seasonal o…

Indeed. Solar overcapacity can be used to produce green hydrogen for industrial uses (high heat), green ammonia (fertilizer), etc. Ammonia has supply chains and is known quantity to ship and store. Could be used in fuel cells. Of course, the efficiency is low, but thats a necessary cost for seasonal storage.

Australia has so much land. And sunny everywhere. I'm sure Europe will buy green ammonia or fertilizer to meet their carbon goals. And green mining/metals/refining using hydrogen.

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

#245

Post by sarchertech »

II2II wrote: post #219
sarchertech wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes he has a fixed profit per person. In reality most business can do things like cut hours for staff, postpone upgrades or long term maintenance, cut amenities, raise prices etc… If most businesses were structured in a way that a small decline in customers immediately puts them out of business, any minor economic downturn would be an unrecoverable positive feedback loop for the economy. I’m not saying a 10%…

I was going to say that curring hours just offloads the problem onto their employees, but the reality is it does that and creates new problems for the bbusiness.If the employee cannot afford to keep the job, they will be forced to search for a new or additional job. The business is either hiring and training inexperienced people, or dealing with staff who have reduced availability. They also cannot do much about fixe…

All of those things are true. There are downsides to any of the levels they can adjust. I’d there weren’t, they’d already be doing it.

But it’s wrong to model businesses as if they have no ability to increase profit per customer and predict catastrophe from minor reductions in customer traffic.

They can and do figure out how to do more with less.

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

#246

Post by bborud »

Retric wrote: post #156
bborud wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and then the "colonies" figured out how to weaponize it and turn the balance in their favor. Or, not quite: the workers are being exploited just like they were during the colonial period. But at least now their rulers have power over our rulers that they didn't have before. So they get to be happy about that as they make novelty items out of toxic plastic for Temu.

Modern China is a vastly better place to live than China of 60+ years ago. Many countries are nicer places to live, but 1+ Billion people are simply better off making the “exploitation” narrative ridiculous.

It can both be better than 60 years ago and worse than what you would consider a «good» life. Exploitation and being less poor are not mutually exclusive.

It is easier to think poor quality of life is ok for people you cannot identify with.

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

#247

Post by runsonrum »

surfmike wrote: post #28

California is also adding a lot of battery storage… but why are electricity prices falling in Australia and not in CA? Are they outpacing us?

I wouldn't say they are falling. The pricing is just being distributed differently to make it look like you can beat the system.

For my specific plan, the daily rate (supply charge) has gone up from $1.13 to $1.80. That is a price regardless of any usage. This varies depending on what you select for your usage rates. So if you happen to get a lower per kWh rate, then your supply rate goes up.

Time of use also is manipulative. If you have a variable rate (time of use) then your peak time is much higher than your off peak which is higher still if you were on a fixed rate plan. If you select a plan that has 3 "free" hours then the peak time is rediculous priced.

So to sum up.. You have to have a very good understanding of how you use your power.

Home battery systems, and solar to some extent, are essentially 'pre-pay' schemes. A shift of where your money goes. At least for the next 7 to 10 years which is a rough payback period for solar/battery.

I would also like to mention, when Australia introduced the solar panel schemes, the retailers were paying 60c/kWh for infeed, now they are paying 1 to 2c. The high infeed allowed a home owner to offset their bills by infeeding while at work, sometimes even generate a credit just from solar. Certainly not these days. So what would be the next shift after they get everyone on home battery systems.

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

#248

Post by skissane »

tialaramex wrote: post #151
thelastgallon wrote: post #141

Australia is also 4,000km wide. A time difference of 2 - 3 hours. This adds a few more hours of Solar with long distance transmission.

As you say, Australia is very big. Big sections of it are also, as a result, empty. The coast-to-coast "long distance transmission" is not in fact a thing in Australia. China has long distance HV transmission, but it's crazy expensive and they built it because most of China's people live near its coast but most of its solar power is in the interior so the power needs to be moved. Australia is exceptional for having a…

> The coast-to-coast "long distance transmission" is not in fact a thing in Australia.

The main Australian electricity grid reaches from Cooktown in far northern QLD [0] through to the Lower Eyre peninsula in South Australia [1] and down to the Huon Valley in Southern Tasmania [2]. So if by "coast-to-coast" you mean "East Coast" to "South Coast", then literally we have it already.

Of course, I take it you actually mean including WA and NT into the main national grid. No, we don't have that, and probably won't any time soon.

But there is a project (Australia-Asia Power Link aka SunCable) [3] to run a HVDC cable from Central Australia to Singapore via Indonesia, to export solar power. Why not the same thing between Perth and Adelaide? It simply comes down to economics – Singapore and Indonesia have the energy demand to economically justify it, domestic Australian consumption doesn't.

However, there is a plan to extend the national grid to Mt Isa. [4] There's only around 600 km from Mt Isa to Tennant Creek (where the AAPL/SunCable project starts). It isn't impossible that they'll eventually link up. So we might actually see the northern NT connected to the national grid, eventually.

[0] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ...

[1] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ...

[2] https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/networ...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CopperString

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

#249

Post by nonfamous »

pnw wrote: post #45
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #17

It started with a solar boom, many small home scale solar roofs popping up everywhere. Australia has a free trade agreement with much of the world, including China, and solar panels have literally dropped to 1/50th of the price they were in 1990 ($10/W to $0.2/W today). A shout out to the work that was done to establish dynamic grid pricing too. Anyway that caused power prices to reliably go negative during the day a…

If you read the article, most of the decline in gas consumption in Australia is from changes in industrial usage. Residential demand is only down by 6% and part of that is likely due to the effective ban on gas in new residential construction which started in 2023 in Victoria. Prior to 2023 residential gas usage was increasing.

There appears to be some language confusion in the replies. FYI in Australia “gas” refers to natural gas (used in domestic cooking and some power stations), not gasoline for cars (which is called “petrol” here).

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

#250

Post by Retric »

soperj wrote: post #201
Retric wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern China is a vastly better place to live than China of 60+ years ago. Many countries are nicer places to live, but 1+ Billion people are simply better off making the “exploitation” narrative ridiculous.

How about before it was partitioned into colonies of various European powers? Population of China 60 years ago was half what it is now (700 Million). Anyway, the answer is both. They were being exploited 60+ years ago, and they're still being exploited now, regardless of if they can take the train away from the factory that they work at to visit their relatives over the holidays.

China’s population was absolutely fucked over by the CCP to a level that is hard to comprehend. That had nothing directly to do with any foreign powers, but because Chinese workers became valuable to foreign markets their lives massively improved.

The government is still horrible, that’s unlikely to change but foreign markets aren’t the issue.

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