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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

#131

Post by dagw »

andy_ppp wrote: post #112
andrewwharton wrote: post #109

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…

I find it strange that a huge number of governments aren't falling over themselves to get Tesla to build one of the roughly 100 needed giga factories in their country. Pay for it to be built, give crazy good loan deals etc. whatever it costs really to have energy independance has got to be worth it.

How does building a giga factory in your country lead to energy independence?

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#132

Post by pjc50 »

bobabooey02 wrote: post #123
pjc50 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money, presumably. Plus a bit of the old toxic masculinity.

There's no reason to attack masculinity. I know it's trendy to do so right now, but the gender norms aren't going away yet in some parts of the country still. If politics are involved, it's likely all about money and power.

"toxic masculinity" is a subset of masculinity in the same way that "toxic water" is a subset of water. People are not asking for an end to masculinity any more than the Flint water protestors are asking for an end to water.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#133

Post by gravelld »

egh5oon wrote: post #118
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…

What? Ireland has terrible isolation and building quality in general compared most of EU.

Existing stock - yes. New stock - they have learned a lot and appear to be serious about making improvements.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#134

Post by bobabooey02 »

pjc50 wrote: post #132
bobabooey02 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to attack masculinity. I know it's trendy to do so right now, but the gender norms aren't going away yet in some parts of the country still. If politics are involved, it's likely all about money and power.

"toxic masculinity" is a subset of masculinity in the same way that "toxic water" is a subset of water. People are not asking for an end to masculinity any more than the Flint water protestors are asking for an end to water.

Masculinity is a spectrum, with extreme womanizers on one side and gender-fluid effeminate men on the other side. Where is toxic masculinity defined? Do you feel there should be checks on extreme feminism? If no, why not?

Also, if your goal is diversity, that requires me to consider one's cultural background before discriminating against them. Why wouldn't you do the same for masculine guys?

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#135

Post by gravelld »

masklinn wrote: post #116
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…

> What you describe is the rule in most Western countries. Say what now? Is the UK the only western country you've visited? because what they describe for Australia is not the rule of mainland western europe, serious insulation and at least double paned windows was the standard in the 90s.

Double paned windows are hardly some kind of best practice. The Mediterranean countries are still poor. Of Western Europe, only Germany and to some extent Ireland appear serious. You also have smaller jurisdictions, e.g. Brussels where some good work is going on.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#136

Post by gravelld »

StreamBright wrote: post #128
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…

Ireland? Where you can still suffocate from coal smoke at winter time and the average building does not have proper insulation and they still use hot / cold water taps? I do not think so. Newer housing surely has better insulation and better heating but it is fraction of the market (or at least it was in 2012).

I was referring to the new stock. But be careful with:

> Newer housing surely has better insulation

You only really know if you test and measure.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#137

Post by bash-j »

daemin wrote: post #92
rmm wrote: post #88

Some more context. South Australia went "all green" shutting down all their coal plants and betting big on wind and solar. However due to the peak issues etc. they now buy a lot of their power from the eastern states. Victoria uses brown coal (about 20% less energy when burned)

That is completely false. There is no way the state could have all of its baseline power needs met by just solar and wind. As far as I know the power plant up in the port is still running and burning coal as it always did. The buying of peak electricity from interstate is more likely a factor of higher gas prices as mentioned in the article. This is because the coal fired plant in the port has gas turbines that get u…

The Port Augusta coal power station was demolished. There are two gas power stations in Adelaide. One was mothballed, but the state government forced the owners to start it up again after a statewide power last year. The government plans to invest in a new gas power station, plus they have a 100 mil fund set up to invest in multiple energy storage solutions to help capture excess wind power.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#138

Post by GlennS »

zizee wrote: post #125
grecy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sort of on-topic but I recall once an Australian company called Enviromission that was wanting to build solar updraft towers in the outback Funny you call it "the outback". Their final proposed site was 20km from my then family home :) I was disappointed it never went anywhere, and yes, Australians should be adopting solar much, much faster than they are.

Australia is one of the top adopters of PV solar in the world. Granted, we are not yet at the level of Germany (500MW per million head), but we're doing ok at 250 MW per million head of population. Half the number of Germany might sound pretty poor, but it is twice that of the USA (125), Spain (118) and a a lot more than the UK (178). Last year saw overall production increase by 13% and there are a lot of big project…

Australia damn well ought to have more solar PV installed than the UK given that the UK is about 30 degrees further from the equator.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#139

Post by megablast »

dwhitworth1 wrote: post #2

I moved to Newcastle, Australia from the US (Los Angeles) about two years ago. I was shocked when I received my energy bill. Australians in general are hesitant to use their AC or electric heaters, opting to just layer up when it's cold or try to use fans in the summer. Many (most?) households don't have clothes dryers, using clotheslines instead. I would like to see how much energy the average Australian household c…

This is a good thing. We also don't leave our taps on wasting water.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#140

Post by c3833174 »

gravelld wrote: post #135
masklinn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you describe is the rule in most Western countries. Say what now? Is the UK the only western country you've visited? because what they describe for Australia is not the rule of mainland western europe, serious insulation and at least double paned windows was the standard in the 90s.

Double paned windows are hardly some kind of best practice. The Mediterranean countries are still poor. Of Western Europe, only Germany and to some extent Ireland appear serious. You also have smaller jurisdictions, e.g. Brussels where some good work is going on.

Mediterranean countries also get less harsh winters, especially in the last years people have preferred installing cheap stoves rather than doing all the work required to properly insulate buildings from the 60s (roof, external insulating coating, window frames, condensing boilers, etc).
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