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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Global Warming
- Thread starter Disco08
- Start date
I'm working from home too. I just upgraded my current system. Loophole meant I didn't qualify for the state grant despite my house not having claimed it in the past, but even then the payback is ok (obviously quicker if I got funding), but I just had the 1.5kw system removed and put 5.4kw on my house. Without a battery (I don't use enough to make that work) I can't get my energy use down too much (as energy used when sunlight is not there is still from the grid), but my estimates based on how the system has gone over the 1st 3 days is about a 46% reduction in the energy drawn from the grid, with about 9,000kwh per year exported back into the grid.
Between the reduction and the FIT (and changing plans to a better solar option), I'm estimating a reduction to my electricity bill of about $1300 / year and my bill now being a credit across the full year. Even without govt funding, payback is in about 6 years (if I included CPI assumptions this would come down), those that can get govt funding, would probably get payback in around 4 years I'd think.
Rooftop solar IMO is a no brainer in Australia, and should be mandatory on every new build home.
The issue with more expensive green technologies is partly an issue of market failure. What markets are very bad at doing is pricing in things like the long term impact and cost of, for example, using single use plastic bags. This is an "externality" which the market does not price and this artificially reduces the cost of the container.
The issue with soft drink bottles, and also milk bottles, just drives me crazy. Yes, single use plastic bottles for soft drinks and milk are more convenient. But when I was a kid soft drink and milk came in reusable bottles, not recycled, re-used. We all coped fine but the soft drink manufacturers and dairies decided we wanted everything in single use plastic. There was no choice. You can now get milk in reusable bottles but you have to look around to find this and it ain't at the supermarket. As for soft drink in reusable returnable glass bottles, forget it, where do you find that? This was not a consumer choice, we were given no choice.
The old slogan is reduce, reuse recycle - the order is deliberate, recycle is the least best option.
When it comes to not pricing in so-called externalities the push for nuclear energy really takes the cake. We know of no safe way to store toxic radioactive waste for the 250,000 year half life of the plutonium created. Price that in and nuclear is even more ridiculously expensive than it already is, and all for a source of energy which relies on a non-renewable mineral which will run out especially if we ramp up nukes.
DS
The issue with soft drink bottles, and also milk bottles, just drives me crazy. Yes, single use plastic bottles for soft drinks and milk are more convenient. But when I was a kid soft drink and milk came in reusable bottles, not recycled, re-used. We all coped fine but the soft drink manufacturers and dairies decided we wanted everything in single use plastic. There was no choice. You can now get milk in reusable bottles but you have to look around to find this and it ain't at the supermarket. As for soft drink in reusable returnable glass bottles, forget it, where do you find that? This was not a consumer choice, we were given no choice.
The old slogan is reduce, reuse recycle - the order is deliberate, recycle is the least best option.
When it comes to not pricing in so-called externalities the push for nuclear energy really takes the cake. We know of no safe way to store toxic radioactive waste for the 250,000 year half life of the plutonium created. Price that in and nuclear is even more ridiculously expensive than it already is, and all for a source of energy which relies on a non-renewable mineral which will run out especially if we ramp up nukes.
DS
Yeah, I have to investigate this, we have the really big feed in tariff until 2024 so haven't really looked at it yet. The system is 1.8KWh and was about $6k which shows how the prices have fallen. We didn't have an electricity bill until COVID and work from home, we were around $1,500 in credit but that evaporated and now we get bills.
Must also look at how to make our old Victorian weatherboard house more efficient. The ceiling and the walls are mostly insulated now, some of the walls missed out as the weatherboards didn't need replacing and the front of the house is not so easy as it is that block pattern wood. I am serviously thinking of insulating under the floor actually, those old floor boards leak like crazy. The house retains its coolness in summer but is very cold in winter.
My plan is for maybe 6KWh and look at the price of batteries, I suppose the longer we leave it the cheaper it all gets, but will be looking into this likely next year.
DS
Consumers were given a choice. Consumers decided plastics were better because they were easier to handle, lighter, didn't break, manufacturers could lower costs etc. Most importantly you could drop a Mentos into a bottle of coke and not have exploding glass everywhere.
Now there is a swing back, but how hard is that swing? If consumers the world over refused to buy single use plastics, manufacturers would very quickly offer alternatives or else they'd go out of business. The alternatives might cost more but that needs to be what the consumers have agreed too.
I would disagree, I was buying milk in returnable glass bottles and soft drink too and they just became unavailable. I always found those early plastic bottles a pain as they fell over too easily and also the usual environmental objections.
If there is a swing back it will be harder as most shops don't want returnables especially supermarkets which are now a far higher proportion of sales of milk and soft drink with the demise of milk bars.
DS
I reckon if you live in Melbourne you could find a place pretty easily that will give you milk on a reusable bottle. But most people like to get everything from the supermarket, and maybe the butcher/bakery next door. and people like $1/litre milk- some by necessity, but many cos they dont want to spend the extra cash.
heres a list of retailers for 1 brand-
Glass Bottle Retailers — Schulz Organic Dairy
schulzorganicdairy.com.au
Fit in every panel you can. The main cost of solar is now labor - so the marginal cost of extra panels is small once you have someone on your roof. I have a big roof and instesd
Of 6kw got around 12 and marginal cost was maybe around 33% more for 100% more capacity.
I expect governments to manadate electrification and subsidise it over time so every system you have - car, heating, cooking etc could well become electrical in the next decade and panels last 20-25 years so a bit of pre investment.
Also once your car is a two way battery then software will use it to smooth your load out.
My old 1.5kw system was also on the premium FIT (60c), but when you are producing next to nothing, you are getting next to nothing back. The stated system size is the maximum you can produce in an hour. I can see my hour by hour production on an app now (the old systems / inverters don't provide this) and my 5.4kw system hasn't broken 5kwh yet (hopefully in Jan / Feb).
My calcs (and I've estimated usage and production) are that I will generate about 17kwh (of which I'd feedback about 13kwh) in say June. I think this is about right, its roughly 3 times nameplate capacity. Using my current 1.5kw system would be about 4.5kw, of which you'd feedback about 2 or 3 kwh / day. I think I was getting a bit less than that (my systems older, probably not as efficient) as I was getting a few $'s each month back even at the premium FIT, so I decided to break that FIT agreement and move to a lower FIT but much higher production.
Depending on how much consumption you have, I don't know if batteries would be worth it right now. I'm a relatively light user (about 11 kwh / day consumption). My solar deals with a lot of my bill. My calculations estimate that I'd have about $450 to spend on energy drawn from the grid after my new solar has been installed (obviously FIT offsets this, so the impact is less. I'd probably drop $230 in FIT rebates, so net benefit to me by not drawing anything from the grid would be about $220 (and that assumes I can still feed back some production, I'm not sure if you can). When Tesla powerwalls are still valued at over $10k, the ROI just isn't there.
As RE says, if you want to invest the extra money, its probably better to add additional size to your system if you have the roof space (I don't have more as I also have solar heated water piping for the pool on the roof which takes up space), as I think it would provide you a higher ROI than a bettery would. Obviously if you are a heavy power consumer then it might work out but having read a lot of your posts on here, I would hazard a guess that you are a relatively light user.
Gas is a different kettle of fish and insulation is usually a pretty good ROI on heating costs, especially with gas prices where they are.
Just out of interest if you don't mind, what is your feed in tariff? Mine is only 7 cents a kWh, pretty low when the power companies charge a lot more than that.
There were 2 premium FIT. 1 is 60c and the other one is even higher than that. I assume he is on 1 of those.
The quoted FIT currently is 5.2c, anything else is from the retailer. I'm with Tango but need to change my plan. I can either stay with Tango (which makes it easier) at 10c, or I can move to Simply Energy which offer 11c, but the key is the TOU rate. TOU rates are gold for solar customers if you produce more than you use during the day, as peak rates are generally from 3 to about 9, so much of this will be offset (especially over summer) so you get your "grid energy" at lower prices as you generate most of it off-peak.
Theres a few options out there that could be better for you than 7c
The brutal reality is currently at peak solar it can actually cost a company money to buy solar off you as the spot price can go negative. I’m not an electrical engineer but there are costs to turning down power elsewhere and also the phase of the electricity produced by solar can cause some challenges. This is where I get out of my depth but if all 3 phases aren’t the same it causes all sorts of instability.
electricalconnection.com.au
The high FIT seem to have been an example where our government has picked a correct winner, incentivised demand, and got massive economies of scale on cost and generated proficiency and skills in what is an demand industry.
I said before but if you read the big switch I think you’ll get a view of what the end game could look like and plan accordingly. Having recently attended the allenergy conference there is plenty of government energy in this space looking to work out how to help and also how to streamline and also companies looking to provide solutions dealing with the iMpact of the rapid change. Even saw a startup looking to handle the issue of renters not having solar.
I’d expect FIT to continue to go down as costs on the grid get larger. You will want to be able to not export when the price is negative. As battery costs come down / ev market expands then the cost of storage should come down making Battery systems make more sense.
Challenges in the world of solar - Electrical connection
The solar industry is growing at an exponential rate and technological advances put us in better positions to make use of the renewable energy. Phil Kreveld writes about what the new legislation aims to do. The world of solar compared to those early days two decades ago, is unrecognisable. One...
electricalconnection.com.au
The high FIT seem to have been an example where our government has picked a correct winner, incentivised demand, and got massive economies of scale on cost and generated proficiency and skills in what is an demand industry.
I said before but if you read the big switch I think you’ll get a view of what the end game could look like and plan accordingly. Having recently attended the allenergy conference there is plenty of government energy in this space looking to work out how to help and also how to streamline and also companies looking to provide solutions dealing with the iMpact of the rapid change. Even saw a startup looking to handle the issue of renters not having solar.
I’d expect FIT to continue to go down as costs on the grid get larger. You will want to be able to not export when the price is negative. As battery costs come down / ev market expands then the cost of storage should come down making Battery systems make more sense.
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I reckon if you live in Melbourne you could find a place pretty easily that will give you milk on a reusable bottle. But most people like to get everything from the supermarket, and maybe the butcher/bakery next door. and people like $1/litre milk- some by necessity, but many cos they dont want to spend the extra cash.
heres a list of retailers for 1 brand-
Glass Bottle Retailers — Schulz Organic Dairy
Was it you who suggested that lot maybe a year ago? I now do get milk in returnable bottles, even though I get milk on my bicycle riding home from work (not that hard is it really!). I don't tend to drink soft drinks any more but that is no longer available in returnable bottles that I have noticed.
Yeah, I get that, and more convenient for the soft drink companies too. Still unsustainable though.
On Solar (a few of the posts above):
We have generally been using an average of around 10KWh a day over a year, however, the last few months it went to about 25KWh a day, mainly due to the cold and electric heating in the front room where my partner works. I reckon we can get it back down to around 10KWh a day but will require more insulation, maybe look at the windows etc. We're not big power users, no pool, no central heating, no dryer.
In terms of a battery, I suspect it may not be economical at the moment, although that is not our first consideration, the first consideration will be whether it really is worth it from an emissions versus the impact of creating batteries perspective. Someone mentioned using a car as a battery - my partner owns a car, which doesn't actually get driven much but we only have 1 car which we are unlikely to replace, not really an option for us at the moment.
We got our system in 2010 so our feed in tariff is a minimum of 60c per KWh and from memory we get 64c from Red Energy, so, yeah, way more than you get these days, but a small system was a lot more expensive back then. In any case, we were planning on getting solar before feed in tariffs existed, we were just waiting to get the mortgage to a manageable level first which is why we waited until 2010. I suppose hard to complain, no electricity bills from 2010 to 2020.
Gas is a bit of an issue. 2 heaters are gas and the heat is just so much better than the reverse cycle air conditioning in 1 room. Our hot water is gas, but when we replace that (it ain't broke but would be maybe 20 years old now and is reasonably efficient) we will go for solar. Cook top is also gas and it is the hardest to give up as gas cook tops are just so good, oven is electric since the last kitchen reno.
We have a fair bit of roof, will see what we can fit up there when we look into this, I'm not averse to as many panels as will fit. Our street must pump out a lot of power, so many houses with solar panels, maybe 50%.
DS
The brutal reality is currently at peak solar it can actually cost a company money to buy solar off you as the spot price can go negative. I’m not an electrical engineer but there are costs to turning down power elsewhere and also the phase of the electricity produced by solar can cause some challenges. This is where I get out of my depth but if all 3 phases aren’t the same it causes all sorts of instability.
Challenges in the world of solar - Electrical connection
The solar industry is growing at an exponential rate and technological advances put us in better positions to make use of the renewable energy. Phil Kreveld writes about what the new legislation aims to do. The world of solar compared to those early days two decades ago, is unrecognisable. One...
The high FIT seem to have been an example where our government has picked a correct winner, incentivised demand, and got massive economies of scale on cost and generated proficiency and skills in what is an demand industry.
I said before but if you read the big switch I think you’ll get a view of what the end game could look like and plan accordingly. Having recently attended the allenergy conference there is plenty of government energy in this space looking to work out how to help and also how to streamline and also companies looking to provide solutions dealing with the iMpact of the rapid change. Even saw a startup looking to handle the issue of renters not having solar.
I’d expect FIT to continue to go down as costs on the grid get larger. You will want to be able to not export when the price is negative. As battery costs come down / ev market expands then the cost of storage should come down making Battery systems make more sense.
I've heard this argument about feedback into the grid and its clearly a problem, but I don't see the purpose of passing the cost back to the consumer.
The government and the power companies are the beneficiaries of this, the more that the public fund the energy demands of the grid, the less that needs to be invested (see subsidies) into power plants, whether they are current ones or new ones. That money that was expected to be invested in power generation can be used in a different way.
I'm not an engineer so have no idea how this would work, I'll leave the details of how to do it to those qualified, but surely with a significant upgrade in the grid this makes far more sense for the country than merely funding new power plant projects. Spending on improving our grid network would generate the same benefits and would be needed at some point in the future anyway.
Now assuming they fix the issues with voltages, my thoughts are, could all substations be fitted with batteries. Ie. houses generate electricity through the day, they use what they need, the excess is fed back into a local substation and is stored in batteries, for when homes require the same energy in the darker hours. Essentially instead of focusing battery power to specific homes, you create essentially a microgrid through the substation. The larger scale energy grid that sits behind that, is therefore a back up in case of low solar output or for the winter months. Long term scenario I know and I'm just a layman, no idea about electricity other than I know what it is and what it does, but wondering if this is an option they are looking at.
I've felt for a long while that the old national grid idea, is largely an idea confined to the past and the more I read about microgrids, the more it makes sense.
There are a fair number of community batteries happening and I would think putting batteries in a sub station would make sense.
Maybe not even microgrids, something in between, batteries for a few suburbs at a time.
Step 1 has to be to reorganise the grid for generation which is far less centralised. Labor promised to do this so we'll see, they should and hopefully will.
DS
I'm out of my depth on the deep technical aspects, but economically - I think it is a little myopic to expect customers to get all the benefit of investment and none of the externalities it imposes. If too much solar makes the grid unstable and then you aren't using the grid - then that is a cost that is currently invisible. I think this gets managed now by the companies imposing maximums on how much you can export.
There are costs associated with accelerating the transition (remediation, closure, training of people that go out of work etc.) plus depending on your point of view a changing framework that shortens the business life of existing investments (to me bad luck that is a risk of investing). If we go and electrify
The main thing I got is that all the current systems (regulatory, economic etc etc) were built based on coal technology. Changing these systems is SLOWWWWW. As much as you want it to be quick the wheels turn slowly.
There is definitely a space for community hubs that handle local storage etc. I'm sure that competes against upgrades of infrastructure economically - I have no idea in the current market that exists what this does to the grid operators business model and if they will fight it or support it. My simplistic understanding is the grid operators get paid a guaranteed return on the capitalised value of the grid so basically anything that decentralises this could cost money. They also have to gurantee reliability. The AER regulates here. Certainly a space where government may be better owning and running it than having a model with potentially peverse incentives where companies are incentivised to overcapitise and also block anything in transition that decreases their revenue.
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And here is that driver for local storage this is a transition issue for sure and will get solved. Households getting asked to switch off solar.
wattclarity.com.au
Too much rooftop PV in South Australia, not enough controllability – on Sunday 13th November 2022 - WattClarity
6th article today, with some hints that AEMO and SA Power Networks are facing challenges in controlling the South Australian grid on Sunday 13th November 2022, after the islanding.
wattclarity.com.au
I reckon if you live in Melbourne you could find a place pretty easily that will give you milk on a reusable bottle. But most people like to get everything from the supermarket, and maybe the butcher/bakery next door. and people like $1/litre milk- some by necessity, but many cos they dont want to spend the extra cash.
heres a list of retailers for 1 brand-
Glass Bottle Retailers — Schulz Organic Dairy
A company called Victorian Farmers Direct, home deliver milk in glass bottles as well as meat, vegetables, fruit etc. Also supply organic milk & other produce.
Deliver to Melbourne metro areas Geelong, & some regionals. Check on their website for more details.
This weather is mental. I don't think the BOM has any idea what's going to happen.
