Edited to add: Clarification required in the title that the free energy is only between 11am and 2pm
Very interested to see how this turns out. Ultimately we want the transition to benefit both consumers and producers / distributors (the industry). The problem from the rapid uptake of solar in Australia has been an over-supply during this 10/11am to 2/3pm period. If that over-supply is suitably encouraged to be soaked up then hopefully consumers can reduce their power bills whilst the industry has less effort in managing the oversupply and less stress on infrastructure.
It's also about time that those who lack the means or situation to have solar panels of their own can get some advantage, in a 'herd immunity' kind of way.
I'm in the privileged position to have had solar panels for over a decade, and now have a battery as well, and it was very obvious to me at the time that, in regards to solar, it cost money to save money, so if you couldn't afford it then the savings are inaccessible.
This change hopefully helps those who need it, at least somewhat.
Incentivizing usage during peak times makes total sense, but if price swings are this wild, how are grid scale batteries not highly economical? My rough ballpark math was that you need roughly 20 kilowatts of battery storage to make this issue basically nonexistent, and that would cost about 10 billion dollars, which doesn't seem that much for this.
Well, i can only be cheaper to shift demand to high production hours then building a battery. Especially as you don’t only need an inverter for the battery but also the charger or MPPT to suck up the peak solar power which is only lasts for about 3 hours. So you can save building a lot of excess batteries
The fundamental costs and margin requirements in the system haven't changed.
This is a government-mandated electricity plan (a default market offer) that competitive electricity retailers are now required to offer. Those retailers still have network costs, environmental costs, energy costs, and administration costs to recover, and so prices at other times of day necessarily go up.
Some consumers may be better off on this plan (generally at the expense of other consumers), and some will be worse off.
It’s very cool to see what happens where there are simply so many residential solar installs. Power price goes negative during peak sunshine hours so they just give it away.
Solar installs benefitting everyone, even those who never got solar.
Every individual household can. There are many programs where you can get a free/discounted home battery and get paid to export to the grid when needed. The economics will make it work.
Dynamic pricing and deployment of digital smart meters should by mandatory in all electric grids dominated by renewables. Large electric consumers are already buying electricity at dynamic prices, small consumers should have the same incentives to shift the demand to day hours.
Ideally, they should pay the EV owners because electricity price goes negative. The EV owners are spending their own money to create a scalable on-demand storage infrastructure. This saves CapEx/OpEx of BESS and also eliminates peaker natural gas plants. EV owners should be paid once for allowing storage, and paid again for using the power to supply back to the grid (V2G).
I miss having Griddy in Texas. Direct access to the wholesale market is probably not good for the lower end of the consumer segment, but for people with some functional marbles it can make a big difference on the demand side of the grid.
I feel like they had to kill griddy before all the powerwall solutions started showing up. We simply cannot empower the peasants with both things at once. The ability to store energy makes access to wholesale prices substantially more effective.
I'll never forget the days where we would get push notifications about negative prices. I'd throw the dryer and oven on every time to try and unwind the meter a bit.
The payback time was already well in excess of 10 years, but now that power is free during the day, you can't count those hours as helping pay down your investment. Payback time will be 30 + years at least. You are much better just enjoying your neighbors solar rather than paying for your own.
(Feed-in is about 3c now I think. Was 12c when many people bought their panels.)
Note: My state 100% renewable energy so reduction of carbon footprint has not bearing on my solar decisions.
This also feels like a fairly heavy handed way to encourage investments in batteries. But in the famous words of George W, "can't fool me again". As soon as there are too many batteries and the grid companies are not making enough money, they will introduce fees to have the batteries, or increase connection fees.
With 3 hours of free power, a 15kW inverter and a 42kWh battery, I could almost do away with my solar panels and just survive of free grid power. I do have a 15kW solar panel set up, but I get very little from selling anything back to the grid.
For people without that, they can treat their house as a battery by lowering the AC down to 65deg between 11am-2pm, and hopefully not need to run AC the rest of the day.
We already get free power between 0am and 6am, so with free power between 11am and 2pm we’ll have a whopping 9 hours of free power to charge our car and heat our water storage.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 64.3 ms ] threadVery interested to see how this turns out. Ultimately we want the transition to benefit both consumers and producers / distributors (the industry). The problem from the rapid uptake of solar in Australia has been an over-supply during this 10/11am to 2/3pm period. If that over-supply is suitably encouraged to be soaked up then hopefully consumers can reduce their power bills whilst the industry has less effort in managing the oversupply and less stress on infrastructure.
It's also about time that those who lack the means or situation to have solar panels of their own can get some advantage, in a 'herd immunity' kind of way.
I'm in the privileged position to have had solar panels for over a decade, and now have a battery as well, and it was very obvious to me at the time that, in regards to solar, it cost money to save money, so if you couldn't afford it then the savings are inaccessible.
This change hopefully helps those who need it, at least somewhat.
Sadly probably wont be any good for selective crypto mining, alas.
basically a free IQ test.
Not Victoria which has bankrupted itself building roads and railways it cannot afford.
The fundamental costs and margin requirements in the system haven't changed.
This is a government-mandated electricity plan (a default market offer) that competitive electricity retailers are now required to offer. Those retailers still have network costs, environmental costs, energy costs, and administration costs to recover, and so prices at other times of day necessarily go up.
Some consumers may be better off on this plan (generally at the expense of other consumers), and some will be worse off.
It's good politics and only so-so policy.
Solar installs benefitting everyone, even those who never got solar.
I feel like they had to kill griddy before all the powerwall solutions started showing up. We simply cannot empower the peasants with both things at once. The ability to store energy makes access to wholesale prices substantially more effective.
I'll never forget the days where we would get push notifications about negative prices. I'd throw the dryer and oven on every time to try and unwind the meter a bit.
The payback time was already well in excess of 10 years, but now that power is free during the day, you can't count those hours as helping pay down your investment. Payback time will be 30 + years at least. You are much better just enjoying your neighbors solar rather than paying for your own.
(Feed-in is about 3c now I think. Was 12c when many people bought their panels.)
Note: My state 100% renewable energy so reduction of carbon footprint has not bearing on my solar decisions.
This also feels like a fairly heavy handed way to encourage investments in batteries. But in the famous words of George W, "can't fool me again". As soon as there are too many batteries and the grid companies are not making enough money, they will introduce fees to have the batteries, or increase connection fees.
Coinciding with this, suppliers put daily connection charges up.
Clarke and Dawe - The Energy Market Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELaBzj7cn14