141–150 of 317 posts
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In the UK, you can go on an agile tariff that does exactly this. I'm on one. It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts. Last month, we paid 11p per kWh on average, which is less than half what you'd pay on a standard tariff, and it's nice to be doing something good for the environment too. It's partic…
> It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts. As if we aren't busy enough. I see this as just yet _another_ job the government/business is making us do instead of them. Is it too much to ask for my government to provide sensibly and simply priced energy so we can get on with our day, working, studying,…
> IMO this is just setting us up for insane surge pricing for those people who don't do the good citizen thing of becoming nocturnal
It actually costs a lot more to produce marginal energy at peak times, the cost just reflects the cost of production. It doesn't seem unreasonable for me for the consumer to bear the cost, and also get the benfit if they choose to put their car to charge overnight rather than at peak time.
This also has a nice secondary benefit: anyone on agile tariffs who shifts demand away from peak time actually benefits those who don't want to bother, because the peak price/cost goes down, and so the overall average price of electricity goes down.
> I see this as just yet _another_ job the government/business is making us do instead of them
In most other market, people are expected to respond to price incentives. When local apples are cheap relative to imported cherries, people don't complain that government/business is making us do a job to push demand in the direction of apples.
> Is it too much to ask for my government to provide sensibly and simply priced energy so we can get on with our day, working, studying, raising kids etc?
The free market price _is_ the agile price. The government intervention is actually in the direction of fixing prices (e.g. by the energy price cap, which is sometimes below the free market price at peak times). In general, markets do not work very well when the government fixes the market
When you let the market clear and send out price signals, markets almost always become more efficient (which means that consumers benefit overall)
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Starlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind. The solar+battery revolution is doing for power what cell phones did for communications in the third world in the 90's and 2000's.
> Starlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind. There is a huge swath of Australia that does not have good internet access and/or very poor cell phone coverage. And I am not talking about about people living in the middle of the desert, I am talking about people who are 10 to 15 minutes away by car from a small town. So yes Star…
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I witnessed this traveling through smaller islands in the Philippines. They have cell service without connection to an electric grid in some places. The children with solar charging now have access to education materials and there is access to banking and payments systems. The effects of this are going to massive and huge in 10 years.
Yes indeed. All those unfortunate children will be introduced to the toxic, horrid internet. They'll be addicted, have no attention span, have their own data used against them to exploit and track them, and end up with their political system reeling under manipulative AI and generic bots. Far better to just give them books for their educarional system, and leave the evil Internet out of it.
This sort of arrogance where suddenly everyone remembers all reasons why some technology is bad once the "poor masses" get it (while they themselves had the technology for years), is hypocritical and frustrating.
The reality is that getting online makes a massive difference for someone in some remote poor area. Not just in terms of education but also economically.
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Everything about the push to convert the whole fleet to EVs falls apart under even the slightest rational scrutiny.
"the push to convert the whole fleet" Is that anything like the "_ agenda being pushed" I keep hearing about, but can't seem to see anywhere?
For some reason when I read that I thought it was offering anyone in the world free electricity, and I started imagining the USA setting up a giant undersea cable... then I realized the voltage drop would be too high, then finally realized they meant it for Australians only!
There is one project for an undersea cable to Singapore. As solar efficiency goes up, and prices of solar and batteries come down and make local installation easier, an already audacious project seems less and less likely to complete. I think they're pivoting the giant solar farms they were building for this to AI or green hydrogen now.
By the time they get the cable to Singapore, it will just be cheaper to generate it in Singapore.
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That is a lot cheaper than it would cost in a developed country, but is not more affordable. For example, that would cost about three times as much in the UK but median income is about an order of magnitude higher so its more affordable. I do realise it is a lot more affordable than telecoms were in the past, but its something like a day of median income.
Communications and electricity aren't just luxury goods, they're also critical inputs to work. There are lots of anecdotes of one or both of these increasing income by substantially more than their costs.
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> Last month, we paid 11p per kWh on average, which is less than half what you'd pay on a standard tariff That's pretty rough. That should be about 14¢ per kWh which only a hair less than the median price per kWh in the US (~17¢).
Yeah - unfortunately the UK has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. Almost all households are on fixed tariffs, typically about 26p/kwh at the moment.
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You'd spend $1000 to save $0.20 on electricity every day?
The average price of power in Australia is 34 cents per kWh. The average Aussie spends A LOT more than $0.20 per day.
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Don't forget Germany. If you look at the amount of PV built in Germany early this century and make some admittedly strong assumptions about learning curve, one could argue the Energiewende, then usually called failure, singlehandedly accelerated PV development by decades. I don't recall Germany ever credited on that.
I still wonder the same about the EU and LED lighting. Prohibiting traditional bulbs was highly controversial at the time