The more the merrier
This would increase the demand for batteries which Musk hopes to make cheaper by making lots and lots of them. So for Musk this can be a win if they buy his batteries.
Take THAT, Tesla: Another Oz energy utility will ship home batteries
The Tesla PowerWall announcement is having an effect in Australia, but perhaps not the one Elon Musk predicted: utilities are moving to head it off with their own solar/storage offerings. Shortly after the Tesla battery launch, NSW's AGL announced its solar customers could add electrical storage, and now Queensland's Ergon …
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 04:08 GMT DainB
What ?
"Customers receiving a 44c per kWh feed-in tariff tend to push electrons towards the grid during the day (when their own demand is low), and save their own usage for the evening peak."
How do I explain it... It's solar battery which generates most electricity, surprise, during the day, and next to none, again, surprise, in the evening. Not exactly sure how customers are supposed to change that pattern.
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 04:19 GMT glen waverley
Re: What ?
Plus kids are at school, parents are at work during daylight hours. So not many electrical appliances being run at home. That might be relevant to usage patterns.
Conversely, the households of dole bludgers (TM) who are at home running tv xbox phone rechargers etc during the day tend to be in rentals. Which typically don.t have solar panels.
Icon cos No sh!t Sherlock.
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 11:12 GMT Benchops
Re: What ?
What's needed is a series of cross-planetary cables (maybe pooling effort in the capacitor in the centre of the earth?) so high usage at night can be powered by solar panels situated on the other side of the planet (where it's daylight).
Either that or geosynchronous orbital mirrors.
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 13:26 GMT Terry Barnes
Re: What ?
A ring of solar stations around the equator and hooked into a global distribution network can supply 100% of the world's energy needs, 24 hours a day. Local generation and storage can help to fill gaps.
One of the better scholarly articles is from Jacobson at Stanford;
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf
There's also this famous picture - amount of land required for solar installations to power the entire world's energy needs;
http://c1cleantechnicacom.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2015/05/Land-art-AreaRequired1000.jpg
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 13:42 GMT Nigel 11
Re: What ?
Not actually true that there's no daytime household usage. Trouble is, a fridge is high-wattage low-duty-cycle device, whereas a solar panel is low wattage continuous, and the electricity utilities don't have means or incentive to take electricity off your hands now and give you credit for it when you want it back a few minutes later!
Now, here's a sensible use for "smart" appliances (fridges especially). Let the inverter know (via WiFi) when it is running its compressor. Then, an inverter with a one-hour battery (maybe even a 15-minute battery) would make perfect sense. Synch your generation with your fridge's demands. Cookers, dish-wasters, washing machines, might join the party, but the fridge is the appliance that's always in use.
Seems like a complete waste of high-grade energy, but the most cost-effective use for a small solar PV installation here in the UK under current rules is probably to run a low voltage immersion heater in your hot water tank! (No inverter needed, just a thermostat)
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 14:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What ?
Seems like a complete waste of high-grade energy, but the most cost-effective use for a small solar PV installation here in the UK under current rules is probably to run a low voltage immersion heater in your hot water tank! (No inverter needed, just a thermostat)
With the low cost of panels it is probably a lot cheaper to use PV and and a low voltage DC heater than to have a relatively expensive inverter, or to have the greater complexity of solar thermal (though see comment at bottom). I think the subsidy scheme rules do permit this, but I'm unconvinced that the supply chain will be geared up to deal with this type of application. You also need to be mindful that a domestic installation could easily be constrained on a sunny summer day (ie you wouldn't have the hot water demand to take the full panel output). Normally the FiT you get is deemed (assumed) from the panel size, but that assumption includes the export of half your generated power - if you've not got an inverter to permit export, and your on site use is constrained, then you'd have to declare that, and strike an agreement with the supplier paying the FiT.
The other thing to think about is that a modest 3kW of panels running at (say) 24V is going to be producing around 125 amps, or around 60 amps at 48V. That's going to need some chunky cabling (circa 50 or 25mm^2 respectively), and you might have some interesting discussions with the suppliers who are used to standard inverter installations. That sort of variation can easily increase project costs.
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 04:15 GMT David 49
They can't change their generation, but they can change their usage.
When the grid were paying me lots for solar power in Victoria, we put the dishwasher and washing machine on at night. In WA I am getting paid less for the excess solar in the day (7c / kWh) than I pay for grid power (24 c / kWh), so I put the dishwasher and washing machine on when it is sunny.
The former scheme was a great incentive for consumers (made me money) but I can see how it is crap for the operators or actually reducing any emissions or new power plants. Anyone know how many years till all those rates are phased out?
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 16:09 GMT handle
Generation vs feed-in rates
Sounds like the high feed-in tariff with a low generation rate is a silly idea. In the UK for domestic installations the generation tariff is much higher than the feed-in tariff, and they don't even bother to install a meter to measure the latter - they just assume you export 50%. So to make the most of things, "make hay while the sun shines".
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Tuesday 11th August 2015 06:20 GMT Charles Manning
Not so much "heading off" Musk
The Aussie power companies are having their arms twisted and are being forced into doing various things whether they like it or not.
In this case though it does make some sense. Australia has quite a lot of PV (about 2% of generation). PV plays merry hell with generation unless you can switch on alternative generation very fast.
Most of Australia is powered from boilers (about 80%) which are slow to spin up/down. These ideally run at a constant load. The switching from daytime PV to night time boilers is very inefficient and anything that can flatten the curve makes sense.
Pump storage is better than batteries, but Australia isn't really geographically blessed for that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
