Australians To Get At Least Three Hours a Day of Free Solar Power - Even If They Don't Have Solar Panels (theguardian.com) 62
Australia's new "solar sharer" program will give households in NSW, south-east Queensland, and South Australia at least three hours of free solar power each day starting in 2026 -- even for those without rooftop panels. Other areas will potentially follow in 2027. The Guardian reports: The government said Australians could schedule appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers and air conditioners and charge electric vehicles and household batteries during this time. The solar sharer scheme would be implemented through a change to the default market offer that sets the maximum price retailers can charge customers for electricity in parts of the country. The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, said the program would ensure "every last ray of sunshine was powering our homes" instead of some solar energy being wasted.
Australians have installed more than 4m solar systems and there is regularly cheap excess generation in the middle of the day. Part of the rationale for the program is that it could shift demand for electricity from peak times -- particularly early in the evening -- to when it is sunniest. This could help minimize peak electricity prices and reduce the need for network upgrades and intervention to ensure the power grid was stable.
Australians have installed more than 4m solar systems and there is regularly cheap excess generation in the middle of the day. Part of the rationale for the program is that it could shift demand for electricity from peak times -- particularly early in the evening -- to when it is sunniest. This could help minimize peak electricity prices and reduce the need for network upgrades and intervention to ensure the power grid was stable.
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We're in the same NEMM eastern states power grid.
conman Bowen. Canberra is a right wing money laundering cult.
First not till middle of next year closer to the election
They said certain areas almost certainly will announce the areas they need votes in
Bowen is a Conman True. Canberra though is Left wing and a left wing money laundering cult much like the USA and Europe are finding out about their lefty politicians
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Australia is extremely well suited to solar. Canada is not. Netherlands is not.
Net Metering is high maintenance, and that's why it's not justified to do it in the first place, because it encourages people to over-build PV installs because they think they can sell the excess, to a power grid that doesn't have the necessary battery storage to take it. So "free solar" is basically that, finding a way to sink excess power generation during a very specific time window so they don't have to pay for solar they can
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In hotter climates, there is a lot of overlap between when the sun shines and when you need air conditioning. Where I live, with July daily high temperatures averaging 36C, air conditioning is a very large chunk of the electric budget.
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As someone who has solar I can say its best suited to retired people if your working and the kids are in school solar power goes to waste unless you have good but expensive batteries (the cheap ones have had recall warnings due to fire risk). And don't say you can schedule your washing machine for when the sun shines thats only one load per day as no one is there to put the next load in.
Electric hot water is a big load. With a 300L tank you can store a day's worth of hot water for the whole family, and heat it in whichever part of the day is cheap/free.
You mention retirees but there are also professionals who work from home, or even stay-at-home parents, though I'll concede the latter are more rare than they used to be.
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... over-build PV installs because they think they can sell the excess, to a power grid that doesn't have the necessary battery storage to take it. So "free solar" is basically that, finding a way to sink excess power generation during a very specific time window so they don't have to pay for solar they can't use.
This was exactly my thought when reading TFS, but my reaction wasn't, "Net Metering is not justified to do in the first place." IMO, they don't want to treat solar as an equal, so they're not paying for that energy. They'd rather give it away than reinvest in solar. IE: if they still charged for usage and paid those providing solar, then those with solar could reinvest in their infrastructure (additional solar, more storage, etc..).
This seems like another way to kill off the threat of solar to the centrali
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there's already too much solar at those parts of the day. the money paid for giving it to the grid when it's not needed is exactly zero
If there were no solar contributed to the gird, would they charge for power? Yes.
If the power company had excess capacity on their end, would they give it away for free? No.
The only reason there is excess from solar is because they haven't invested in storage to handle it. They won't have money to invest in that storage if they're giving it away. Why is that up to them anyway? It's not theirs to give away. The only reason people are OK with contributing their own excess back to the grid is because they get
UBE (Score:5, Interesting)
Universal Basic Energy .. That is pretty amazing. If they keep building solar capacity they may be able to either get the cot to be super low or provide it free for 18 hours a day. That's an amazing safety net.
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Don't worry - they'll claw back the expense of the free periods by increasing charges outside of these hours...
No such thing as a free lunch...
Re: UBE (Score:5, Insightful)
Regulating markets is a never ending process. At no point can a government just set it and forget it when dealing with capitalism and profit motive.
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Not quite.
Australia could easily over-build their PV solar industry so that every house generates a little more PV than it needs, and thus only people in high-rises really end up paying for electricity since they can't install solar. So that could easily make residential energy "free" as long as someone has enough solar panels to cover their winter (Heat) and summer (AC) needs.
The thing people need to realize is that PV panels die, quickly. They will not last the life of the building if they are installed p
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The actual big cost in power for most places (Not just australia) ends up being infrastructure anyway.
Every now and then the local conservatives here have a sook about how green energy is making everyones bills go up. But when you actually look at where the hikes in bills came from, its almost always maintaince of ageing power grids, usually in areas serviced by the old coal and gas stations, because the infrastructure is just so old.
Re:UBE (Score:5, Insightful)
This is complete nonsense. Most panels come with a minimum 25 year guarantee, and it's looking like 40 years is not an unrealistic expected lifetime.
Anyone replacing their panels after only 10 years has been conned.
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There is a reason you might replace your 10 year old panels - you have limited roof space, personal demand for more solar power, and the higher output of newer panels will make you more than the power upgrade.
But if you do, you'll find a ready second hand market for those panels.
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In some areas I guess you could get 10mm of dirt or something coating the panels, but here there's very heavy rain on random days in Winter which will wash your car away, let alone a bit of grime.
Re:UBE (Score:5, Interesting)
You speak with great authority, but you're wrong on at least two accounts.
1) The typical solar panel will be at 80% of its original output after 25 years. This number is used in manufacturer warranties, by the IEA, it backed by NREL's degradation review and other large long-term field surveys, and recent empirical studies from Fraunhofer ISE and other independent labs. This is obviously not the same as the lifetime of a building -- but no-one ever made that claim. It's also, obviously, dramatically longer than the 10 years you claimed, and 80% of original output is dramatically different from your claim of "PV panels die". I have absolutely no doubt that you'll be able to find some anecdata about some guy who put up panels and they failed after 8 years. Completely worthless as evidence. What matters is what the large scale data and rigorous testing shows us: 80% of output after 25 years.
2) Solar is economically viable today for countries up to about 50 to 55 degrees, not 45. Note, I say countries, because this is through a mix of consumer spending and taxation (where the taxation is used to deliver incentives for solar deployments). This is because countries always internalize social value in energy markets via taxation and incentives (eg cheap gas in Saudi). Perovskite may be able to extend this by about another 10 degrees, if we can get the tech to work. But what you're wrong about here, is more fundamental than the numbers: it's that *it doesn't really matter if panels aren't good beyond the 45th parallel*. Because 80% of the world's population live between the 37th parallels, and about 90% between the 43.5 parallels. Far fewer than 10% live beyond the 55th parallels. Extending economic viability to those regions is just not that important as a goal for solar advances. We were talking about Australia here, for example -- all of mainland Australia is within the 39th parallel, including all of Melbourne, the southernmost large conurbation (it extends to about 38.3).
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2) Solar is economically viable today for countries up to about 50 to 55 degrees, not 45.
The solar park in Svalbad reduced the region's fossil fuel use by 70%. They are at 78 degrees, and the sun literally doesn't shine for half a year. Norway Sweden and Finland have plenty of solar parks north of 60 degrees too.
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At the higher latitudes, alternative orientations of solar panels is warranted as well.
A Canadian ran a yearlong test with vertically oriented bi-facial solar panels (they can convert light hitting on both sides).
The results were surprising and shows it can be remarkably useful as the snow in winter can provide backside illumination that generates significant amounts of power.
https://youtu.be/I-Fz5T5c0OQ?s... [youtu.be]
He tested normal sloped orientation versus vertical, and vertical proved useful during the winter.
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I think bifacial wins in most latitudes now. ISTR that, but could be misremembering.
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That's true, but really because local scale ROI is favourable. Grid scale is still weak, it's just that importing diesel to remote / off-grid / high fuel cost regions tips the balance for local regions. But you're right to call this out, because the same is likely true for many other settlements that are very far north or south. However, the Scandi countries are more willing to make social investments and are probably the richest of the high latitude countries, too. So it may take longer in eg Canada.
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You will need to replace the solar panels every 10 years, or at least have them inspected.
Literally every person I know in Australia has had solar panels for far longer than 10 years and has never had them inspected. Australia was an early adopter of solar, so there were actually studies done on panels *in Australia* and they showed life expectancies of 30 years+. My parent's panels have a 25 year warranty.
Seriously time to get a clue. Or if you have a clue and are just being dishonest then it's really time to update your FUD. This shit has been debunked years ago.
Right now current PV is basically pointless north of the 45th parallel because you'd need more panels than you typically have roof space.
Oh man you better tell most of
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The thing people need to realize is that PV panels die, quickly. They will not last the life of the building if they are installed permanently to a home. You will need to replace the solar panels every 10 years, or at least have them inspected. Hopefully some recent tech that has come out recently makes it so that solar panels are much more efficient. Perovskite solar cells are a new development but 50% better than current ones, which might actually make it viable to have PV in northern locations.
The panels that came with our house (we moved there in 2012, the panels were installed some time before that) are just fine. There was a big hailstorm in 2020 that cracked roof tiles and dented cars, but the solar panels are still fine. Peak power is down maybe 10% over those 13+ years.
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Electricity too cheap to meter. This was the dream of nuclear power when I was a child. Now being realized by solar.
Best way to use the electricity? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking that there is some cost-effective life improving way to use the free electricity beyond normal household operation and beyond buying an expensive battery system.
Distilling your own drinking water to remove the toxins and microplastics?
EV charging (Score:3)
One of the problems with EV charging in Australia is that the government has not incentivized the build out of parking level infrastructure that could be in use during the day. It has emphasized home charging, and fast charging, and while that is great for getting over range anxiety it only exacerbates the power duck curve. Australia is also an American style city development where the majority of the population have house and off street parking. EV adoption is going at an okay pace but the chargers where p
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Batteries are so cheap now that the payback time is short and new houses should really have them as standard.
15kWh ones are down to about 1,500 Euro if you don't mind doing some assembly yourself.
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17k what? Euro? You are getting shafted with that quote.
If you are in the US, how about this one? https://hakadibattery.com/prod... [hakadibattery.com]
Just order it an plug it in yourself, or pay someone to do that. 1/10th the price and higher capacity.
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Maybe you should look at an off-grid system then, or a plug-in system. Although it sounds like your city has decided to wage war on renewables, so maybe those are banned as well.
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Many appliances can be scheduled to run at a later time. So you can set your dishwasher, washing machine and maybe your oven for some kinds of cooking to run even if you aren't at home.
I hope that things like pool pumps and hot water systems, which are already on off-peak rates, will be making use of this time.
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I'm thinking that there is some cost-effective life improving way to use the free electricity beyond normal household operation and beyond buying an expensive battery system.
Distilling your own drinking water to remove the toxins and microplastics?
I mentioned this above, but a "thermal battery" is pretty straightforward to do at home. At its simplest, this can be as simple as heating your domestic hot water system when the electricity is free. Hot water stores well for 24+ hours, it can be used for bathing/washing, or if you store enough of it, for heating. For Australians in hot areas, I could see storage of "cold" becoming common. For example, chilled brine that is used for cooling in the evenings during the "duck curve."
On a larger scale, I belie
proposal - keep the bastards honest (Score:2)
its a proposal nothing more
Fix the grid (Score:1)
Solar causes a lot of fluctuation on the grid.
Add to that that those grids were set up to delivery power from one point to many user, not to have those users alternate between user and supplier.
"Here's some free power, please use it" does sound a lot better than "You need to use this electricity to prevent blackouts or other issues".
It's kind of like Iceland asking people to crank te heat with the windows open to help get rid of their excess thermal heating energy.
Let's hope home batteries are going to beco
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Australia is fixing the grid, that has nothing to do with anything though. Load balancing is a far more cost effective solution than supply balancing by installing an insane amount of storage all over the place in a hope to deal with peak loads. And it only gets worse as more EVs are adopted which charge while the sun doesn't shine.
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When I was travelling in the third world about 25 years ago one of the locals was telling me how, unlike developed countries, everyone who could afford it had to buy a generator to produce power when the grid couldn't.
Yeah.
Reliable power is just so 20th century. Probably fascist too.
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Tell us all you didn't understand what I said without telling us. By the way the grid becomes *more* reliable by balancing load over time, not less. Creating a supply that can manage every possible demand scenario is far more difficult, expensive, and unreliable due to complexity than smoothing demand.
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The obvious fix is for (local) governments to install batteries in neighborhoods, but I wouldn't count on that happening too much.
And that's not going to happen if they do this, since they'll be giving away the money maker and not paying those that invested in the solar infrastructure. IMO, they're trying to set this up to fail.
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The obvious fix is for (local) governments to install batteries in neighborhoods, but I wouldn't count on that happening too much. Them being a little slow on the uptake is a big part in the cause of this issue.
Here are three in Canberra: https://www.act.gov.au/our-can... [act.gov.au]
All in the name of Grid Stability (Score:5, Interesting)
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Thermal energy storage is a great way to manage this. You can automate it too, having your thermostat automatically adjust based on pricing.
A lot of people in the UK have been doing it for many decades, in fact. Cheap overnight electricity used to heat water and homes, with a signal to turn on and off sent over AM radio. I think it was turned off a few years ago due to the old valves needed to keep the transmitter going becoming unavailable, but these days it can be done via the internet.
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The UK has similar issues, to a much lesser extent though. My supplier gives me money back for any electricity I use over my usual level at specific times (which they sadly don't publish by API, resorting to emails instead). Weirdly, I always get credit if I plug the car in - even if it doesn't actually charge.
I'd like to get Home Assistant to start all kinds of stuff when these events occur - haven't got to much of it yet though.
how dare they steal our emergy (Score:2)
Let the mining begin (Score:2)
This is a great time to run older inefficient crypto mining rigs. You aren't wasting what wasn't going to be used. And even the old hardware wouldn't be used if you had to pay for power.
A win-win?