Comment by nandomrumber
1 day ago
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.
> 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
Probably not useful for cooking dinner or watching the evening news, but most dishwashers and clothes washers have a delay start option. Your fridge is also working its hardest during the middle of the day.
> and now you’re being offered something your 10 year old second hand appliances and petrol cars can’t take advantage of.
A washer/dryer combo would be useful for delayed start. But as mentioned, delay start has been a common option for a long time now.
> 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.
BESS are the deluge up you're asking for. Much of the stress on the grid is that power generation is distributed unevenly. Grid scale battery prices have been crashing stupidly year on year, to the tune of about 20-40%, and those effects are only just starting to hit the consumer market. The uptake curve has been reasonably steady, and at current projections we would have 24 hours of world-wide storage by 2035. Which is nuts!
I think this is sensible policy. It ought to reduce power prices across the board. At the very least, energy companies would have few excuses to hide behind if prices don't become more competitive.
Another sensible policy to help renters would be to force landlords and owners' corps to put timers on their electric hot water systems. It's a kind of energy storage that most people don't consider.
I'm from Australia and my electricity provider has 12pm-2pm free electricity. As other's said, dishwasher and washing machine has delayed/smart start options, so that is free for me. That saves at least 3kWh per day for me, so ~$30 per month. So it really helps with CoL crisis.
And yes, those appliances are (almost) 10 years old.
Yeah, it’s not like it makes no difference.
Ya just have to remember that it’s table scraps compared to the 100% plus increases in electricity prices we’ve already been subject to.
And this is in a country that has the same volumetric gas exports as Qatar, which provides it citizens free healthcare, free education including university and vocational training, and electricity at 3.2 US cents per kWh.
What do we get? None of that. We get citizens living in tents. In a resource rich country.
And you people think our governments are capable of making wise decisions about long term energy policy. Check your ideologies.
When was governments picking winners ever a good idea?
When has that ever worked out well.
When was other people choosing what to do with other people’s money an ideal we should vote for more of?
I'm from Sweden and hearing those energy prices really caught me off guard. With taxes and fees we pay ~€0.1 per kWh on average.
I have stopped caring about when house hold appliances run, our main energy consumers are heating (during the cold months) and charging the electric car.
€0.1 is about AU$0.18
That’s about what our electricity used to cost.
Back before we locked ourselves in to wind and solar, and gas peaker plants, and a massive pumped hydro project that will approximate never be finished.
Sweden’s energy mix is predominantly nuclear, oil, and hydro. Wind and solar account for 10% and 1% respective.
There’s no escaping the fact everything wind and solar go electricity prices go up. Drastically.
In Australia, since 2005 wind and solar have increased to about 11% and 17% of electricity generation respectively.
And that time period correlates perfectly with the just over 100-200% increase in electricity prices, depending on where you live.
In 2005 I was paying AU$0.17 per kWh in South Australia, now that’s up around AU$0.44 per kWh. Elon even put in a big battery in South Australia. Hadn’t helped. Hasn’t helped reduce the cost of electricity. And that’s what the Australian government wants us to hail a success.
That’s 250% increase. While general inflation in the same period has been 67%.
Wind and solar haven’t even really started to put a dent in Australia’s over all energy use, which is dominated by gas and oil, and people are falling over each other to get in line to vote for more of it.
Other locations with big batteries and big electricity prices include Victoria Australia, Melbourne the capital is widely considered the California of Australia, and California itself. Big batteries, big solar, big electricity prices. Fact. Find me a counter example.
Germans are hanging solar panels off their apartment balconies. Not because they want to. Out of desperation. Just like poverty Africa. That’s equality: everyone can have nothing, and they’ll like it. My god.
No one is running an industrial economy on their balcony.