Comment by msy
1 day ago
This is a bizarrely negative take. No residential is being charged negative prices without very, very explicitly joining a plan that exposes them to the direct minute-by-minute wholesale price. Most 'EV' plans include free hours during the day (and much cheaper power in the early hours as well), it's likely it'll be standard within months thanks to this.
They are now also subsidising batteries while should help meet the wave of solar with a wave of distributed storage capacity to smooth out grid demand as well as successful rollout of grid-scale batteries.
This is a generational success story big enough to have geo-strategic implications.
> This is a generational success story
So long as you ignore the working-poor. Those who live pay check to pay check, can’t afford solar / battery - or are renting so none of that applies to them.
Yeah, they can just get fucked.
What a success!
Yep. Years ago I got sick of listening to people who don't believe in climate change and emission reductions due to tribalism crowing about the solar pv on their holiday house and their incredibly low electricity bills while cost of living keeps going up for lower income families. Everywhere you look anything good is twisted into a wealth transfer. If you are left behind you are never catching up now. Between the housing market and everything else the myth of a classless society has been completely obliterated in a generation.
But isn't the OP article about distributing the benefits to the wider population? Add to that the uptake of batteries GP is mentioning will substantially reduce both the need for back-up power and the cost of transmission that have been driving up electricity prices.
At what cost, and to who?
So you can have three hours of free electricity, while you’re at work, the kids are at school, you’re renting so no battery for you, electricity has already increased 100% and continues to increase, but only once a year, and now you’re being offered something your 10 year old second hand appliances and petrol cars can’t take advantage of.
Forget trickle down economics, it’s deluge-up. From those who can barely afford it to those who barely need it.
Let’s not pretend there isn’t a cost of living crisis in Australia, and electricity prices factor in to everything.
Cheap reliable plentiful electricity is the backbone of an economy. Not sitting down and working out how you can use less power next month.
We should be sitting down trying to work out how we can use more power next month, in order to leverage that power to have a better life, warmer / cooler homes. Starting businesses and not having electricity be the killer.
3 replies →
That's a weird uninformed take. Both solar and battery are heavily subsidised in Australia if your household income is less than $180k AUD. Average solar 6kW installation with subsidies is ~3k AUD, 30-40kWh chineses batteries are 4-6k AUD after subsidy.
Median full-time salary in AU is ~90k AUD, and we have pretty good minimal wages, so solar panels are affordable to almost every working homeowner.
I never said anyone was being charged negatively. The wholesale price goes negative. The negative price currently is not passed on.
Your retailer can choose to pass it on, or not.
Mine (a VPP) does pass it on. They charge me the going wholesale rate. If the wholesale price is sufficiently negative they pay me to use electricity. That's pretty rare, but it does happen every few months. The wholesale price has to be below about -4.5¢ for my price to be negative because the people who own the wires get to add a fee regardless of what direction the electricity is flowing, as does the government (admin fees of some description).
The converse is also true. If the price spirals to $19/kWh, I get to pay that too. At that price as single night could cost me $400, or it would if I didn't have a battery.
Which possibly explains why you haven't heard of it. If you don't have a battery big enough to get you through at the peak and shoulder hours and enough solar to charge it during the day you are better off with a more traditional retailer, who charges you a fixed price regardless of the wholesale price.