Australia is offering free daytime electricity

BLKNSLVR

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.

protocolture

The fine print is interesting, theres a cap, fair use provisions and it requires a smart meter. Smart meters are still a bit contentious. Sadly probably wont be any good for selective crypto mining, alas.

russelg

Australia, excluding Western Australia as we are on a separate electricity grid.

tw1984

basically they give you a few hours free electricity in exchange for significantly higher electricity prices for the rest of the day. basically a free IQ test.

andrewstuart

Some parts of Australia. Not Victoria which has bankrupted itself building roads and railways it cannot afford.

mchusma

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.

flgb

Not really. 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.