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Australia has the most expensive energy bills

macrobusiness.com.au

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Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#101

Post by gravelld »

ptaipale wrote: post #99
gravelld wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe is the rule in most Western countries. The only countries I know that have their shit together on this are Germany, Sweden and Ireland. The truth is that fixing these problems is going to be expensive. Governments are just kicking the can down the road because they don't want to be the ones that raise taxes to pay for it (fixing existing houses I mean). But it will have to be done. Maybe the biggest…

Requiring better insulation for new buildings is not really that much a thing where you need to raise taxes, because the cost of proper insulation is passed on to builders - and the end users pay that, but in turn they have lower heating/cooling costs. (FWIW, Sweden's neighbours like Norway, Finland and Denmark also have houses where it's warm inside in the winter without horrific leaks. And yes, Iceland, even if it…

> Requiring better insulation for new buildings is not really that much a thing where you need to raise taxes, because the cost of proper insulation is passed on to builders - and the end users pay that, but in turn they have lower heating/cooling costs.

I was referring to retrofit, sorry for not being clear.

Also, the costs are not passed on to customers. Very few houses in the history of the world have been priced according to what it cost to build. The market sets the price.

Carpets in bathrooms is a kind of baby boomer 1970/80s thing I think - plenty of it still about. Check the corners of the room where condensation pours down the wall into the carpet... after a few years you get a nice dark grey brown mould line.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#102

Post by ptaipale »

gravelld wrote: post #100
Nursie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in the UK and Australia - the UK may not have its shit together compared to Germany, Sweden or Ireland, but it's streets ahead of Aus.

I'm a UK resident. Either way, the UK will have to fix its houses. There's a trope that new houses are energy efficient... it's not really true; there's going to be a big scandal when everyone realises how the targets (which are pretty poor anyway) are circumvented by developers that are able to employ their own regs assessors, or just send a design SAP and expect that to be ticked off, or go around after an air perm…

Sorry, this one I don't get. Why would you go and remove sealing after air permeability test? To have air circulation and avoid mold?

Normally, doing that would be additional work and additional cost, so if they do it, there must be a real reason.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#103

Post by cryptica »

dovdovdov wrote: post #87
manoj_venkat92 wrote: post #86

And instead of turning to solar power, they are letting Adani power build a coal plant? What is wrong with the government of Australia. And solar power's prices are on decline and are now getting lower than coal and it's clean energy, check any major business news sites like Bloomberg, NYTimes etc., If I am not wrong, Australia is a sunny place, so going solar was an obvious option and Elon Musk was even talking for…

I mean Elon's tweet VS. politicians' pockets' full of lobbyists' money.

... And Elon's pockets full of politicians' money.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#104

Post by rfrey »

grecy wrote: post #69
bitwize wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the joke told as: Canada could have had English culture, French cuisine, and American industry... instead it has American culture, English cuisine, and French industry.

What's amazing about that joke is Canada is a much better place to live than all of those countries, so I assume those countries tell it because they are jealous. (I have lived in the USA / Canada / Australia, my sister in France & England for many years)

> so I assume those countries tell it because they are jealous

Naw, that Canadians find that joke hilarious is part of why it's a great place to live.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#105

Post by craigds »

elyobo wrote: post #68

Funny, as a Kiwi living in Victoria it seems to me that, while prices have climbed a bit over the last few years, electricity costs here were incredibly low... I wish NZ was represented on that chart. That said, my per kWh charge is about half the "market" price shown for Victoria there (although I do pay $0.94/day on top of that, which I guess brings it up a little), and that's after a 10% price hike about a year ag…

NZ is on the chart

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#106

Post by ldp01 »

> "Power lines are natural monopolies. Traditionally they were all government owned. Jeff Kennett privatised Victorian networks, but until very recently, distribution networks in other states, such as NSW and Queensland, have remained government owned, with regulated pricing."

This author sounds confused. An electrical network operator is a regulated monopoly whether it is government or privately owned. The regulation may be good or bad, but it is independent of who owns the assets.

And why is it a surprise that building ANY sort of distribution network is inefficient in the third most sparsely populated country in the world[1]? At least in the West there is now a strong push for standalone power projects with a view to decommissioning some of the redundant infrastructure.

[1] - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_popul...

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#107

Post by romanovcode »

cylinder wrote: post #61
surfmike wrote: post #5

Sounds like an ideal market for home solar and Tesla powerwalls.

Once enough solar farms are built, australia will have some of the cheapest energy in Asia. This is a transition period due to dirty coal plants closing and uncertainty in policy from governments. The solar exposure is extremely high and the outback has limitless sunny land... You could build and charge all the world's batteries with solar there and ship it out on the Pacific or Indian oceans...

> cheapest energy in Asia.

No, it will probably cost the same because business.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#108

Post by gravelld »

ptaipale wrote: post #102
gravelld wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a UK resident. Either way, the UK will have to fix its houses. There's a trope that new houses are energy efficient... it's not really true; there's going to be a big scandal when everyone realises how the targets (which are pretty poor anyway) are circumvented by developers that are able to employ their own regs assessors, or just send a design SAP and expect that to be ticked off, or go around after an air perm…

Sorry, this one I don't get. Why would you go and remove sealing after air permeability test? To have air circulation and avoid mold? Normally, doing that would be additional work and additional cost, so if they do it, there must be a real reason.

A number of examples. One example is that carpets might be fitted afterwards. Because the air tightness design in the first place is so poor, they resort to sealing between floor and skirting and other such bodges. Carpet fitters hate such sealing as it makes it harder to get a pleasing finish. So they rip out the seals.

There's a lot of folksy wisdom in the UK building trade about natural ventilation (which isn't really true). Many builders will deliberately expose small gaps because they have not been properly educated. Having gaps gives poor ventilation - it becomes dependent on ambient pressure differentials which are difficult to control.

All of these are excuses for poor design and workmanship in the first place.

This might seem like more work for minimum wage labourers on site, but it's less work for highly paid designers, so it costs less. But costing is a difficult thing to sum because it's a complex supply chain with opportunities for efficiency all over. It's just that the volume builders (in particular) have a conservative interest in keeping the status quo, and carrying on without rocking the boat.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#109

Post by andrewwharton »

It really is a death spiral in the making.

As grid electricity prices rise:

1. Insulation and rooftop solar/domestic battery storage become more competitive / cost effective

2. Which drives adoption (including retrofitting to existing structures), reducing the demand for grid electricity

3. Which, due to the fixed network and distribution costs, becomes more expensive per kwh.

Australia is primed for boom in domestic battery storage.

Why? There's already a significant amount of roof top solar installed. And feed-in bonus tarifs (up to 40c/kwh which were used to drive roof top solar adoption) don't transfer when you sell a house. This means it's far more cost effective to keep the energy on site rather than sell it to the grid at 6c/kwh and buy it back at 25c/kwh. This combined with rapidly dropping costs for battery storage... It's going to be an interesting time to be a politician.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#110

Post by masklinn »

manoj_venkat92 wrote: post #86

And instead of turning to solar power, they are letting Adani power build a coal plant? What is wrong with the government of Australia. And solar power's prices are on decline and are now getting lower than coal and it's clean energy, check any major business news sites like Bloomberg, NYTimes etc., If I am not wrong, Australia is a sunny place, so going solar was an obvious option and Elon Musk was even talking for…

> And instead of turning to solar power, they are letting Adani power build a coal plant?

Coal mine not coal plant. AFAIK it'd mostly be for export (through Abbot Point and Hay Point, the former being very close to the Great Barrier Reef).

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