Joyce's crazy talk on our 100% renewables target is just that

“start thinking about what would happen if the “grid went off the house” because the technology is now available to do it.”
Are you talking about people’s home solar feeding and storing the power to the grid? If so, how can that possibly be viable? If everyone is being paid as power exporters and making profit on their home solar units, how does the utility make any money to maintain the grid? Also, I think the whole network will have issues with all this power now going backwards through the infrastructure. Instead of high loads being delivered through the larger capacity lines, it will suck that power from the suburban wires, which weren’t designed to feed large loads back the other way. Any electrical engineers here with an analysis on this scenario? Also, without a baseload generator to keep frequencies in check, the network will become unstable, unsuitable for use in delicate systems.

Maya123 said :

wildturkeycanoe said :

Maya123 said :

All those people who bought quantity over quality (huge MacMansions for instance, rather than smaller more energy efficient houses) can now ‘enjoy’ the cost of heating your choice of housing, or the cold. Somehow the extra reception rooms, the home theatre, might now seem the bad choice, when the money could have been spent on better design, that uses less electricity.

In slab heating has to be one of the most cost ineffective forms I have ever come across. One of our previous rentals had in slab, which in the first quarter [August to October] cost us a wonderful $1400 to run. We ended up turning it off and only using the living area heating in winter, which still added up to quite a sum.
The natural gas heating in our new house’s living room cost us almost $600 for the first winter quarter. That was for only about 8 hours worth of use a day. It got turfed and replaced with two split systems which can run 24 hours a day and still use $2 less per day to run. It also provides cooling on top of heating and reaches both ends of the house, not just the living area.
My guess is that people with large houses and large pockets will most likely install solar with battery storage when power becomes too expensive. The higher costs for retail electricity will drive more people to go off-grid, but what does that do for the rest of the market? If less people are connected to the grid but the production and servicing costs remain the same, then prices will rise even more per household. This seems to be an inevitable eventuality and the only losers will be those who cannot afford to get solar installed. Will there come a point where it will cost too much to maintain the grid because there are too few people connected or will it simply become too expensive to remain connected for low income earners?

To me it looks like a race to the end of a national electricity grid and a move towards self powering homes and businesses. So it poses a question of where to invest spending at the moment. Do we keep throwing money at a national power grid which due to rising costs and ageing equipment will be losing its customer base, or should government start looking at stand alone solar as where money would be better spent? With the issues surrounding power distribution today, there really needs to be some research, discussion and direction from the government, not excuse making and buck passing.

I would be surprised if a badly designed (inefficient) house could produce and store enough solar energy to comfortably heat a house in winter in Canberra and to cook with. Oh course, if the house had been designed properly they would need almost no heating (most days none and only an occasional evening, and none overnight). Plus no air conditioning at all. If a house went off the grid I imagine some other way would need to be found to heat the badly designed houses. I live in an energy efficient house and produce more electricity than I use all year, but I would need to consider very carefully if I could supply my power all year, including in long rainy spells in winter. I will one day likely consider it though, when my contract with ACTEW runs out. I still have roof space for a few more solar panels to assist. In several years I think I have only heated once in the daytime, and I only heat a few nights in winter; at present mainly with a wood fired stove. (With free wood.) My house in all electric, so I would need enough power to cook with too, although I can cook on the wood stove too, as I made sure the model I chose had a cooking surface. As I get older I might heat with wood less, because of the physical challenge of finding it and bringing it home, etc.

Instead of thinking about what would happen if the “house went off the grid”, start thinking about what would happen if the “grid went off the house” because the technology is now available to do it.

wildturkeycanoe said :

Maya123 said :

All those people who bought quantity over quality (huge MacMansions for instance, rather than smaller more energy efficient houses) can now ‘enjoy’ the cost of heating your choice of housing, or the cold. Somehow the extra reception rooms, the home theatre, might now seem the bad choice, when the money could have been spent on better design, that uses less electricity.

In slab heating has to be one of the most cost ineffective forms I have ever come across. One of our previous rentals had in slab, which in the first quarter [August to October] cost us a wonderful $1400 to run. We ended up turning it off and only using the living area heating in winter, which still added up to quite a sum.
The natural gas heating in our new house’s living room cost us almost $600 for the first winter quarter. That was for only about 8 hours worth of use a day. It got turfed and replaced with two split systems which can run 24 hours a day and still use $2 less per day to run. It also provides cooling on top of heating and reaches both ends of the house, not just the living area.
My guess is that people with large houses and large pockets will most likely install solar with battery storage when power becomes too expensive. The higher costs for retail electricity will drive more people to go off-grid, but what does that do for the rest of the market? If less people are connected to the grid but the production and servicing costs remain the same, then prices will rise even more per household. This seems to be an inevitable eventuality and the only losers will be those who cannot afford to get solar installed. Will there come a point where it will cost too much to maintain the grid because there are too few people connected or will it simply become too expensive to remain connected for low income earners?

To me it looks like a race to the end of a national electricity grid and a move towards self powering homes and businesses. So it poses a question of where to invest spending at the moment. Do we keep throwing money at a national power grid which due to rising costs and ageing equipment will be losing its customer base, or should government start looking at stand alone solar as where money would be better spent? With the issues surrounding power distribution today, there really needs to be some research, discussion and direction from the government, not excuse making and buck passing.

I would be surprised if a badly designed (inefficient) house could produce and store enough solar energy to comfortably heat a house in winter in Canberra and to cook with. Oh course, if the house had been designed properly they would need almost no heating (most days none and only an occasional evening, and none overnight). Plus no air conditioning at all. If a house went off the grid I imagine some other way would need to be found to heat the badly designed houses. I live in an energy efficient house and produce more electricity than I use all year, but I would need to consider very carefully if I could supply my power all year, including in long rainy spells in winter. I will one day likely consider it though, when my contract with ACTEW runs out. I still have roof space for a few more solar panels to assist. In several years I think I have only heated once in the daytime, and I only heat a few nights in winter; at present mainly with a wood fired stove. (With free wood.) My house in all electric, so I would need enough power to cook with too, although I can cook on the wood stove too, as I made sure the model I chose had a cooking surface. As I get older I might heat with wood less, because of the physical challenge of finding it and bringing it home, etc.

Maya123 said :

All those people who bought quantity over quality (huge MacMansions for instance, rather than smaller more energy efficient houses) can now ‘enjoy’ the cost of heating your choice of housing, or the cold. Somehow the extra reception rooms, the home theatre, might now seem the bad choice, when the money could have been spent on better design, that uses less electricity.

In slab heating has to be one of the most cost ineffective forms I have ever come across. One of our previous rentals had in slab, which in the first quarter [August to October] cost us a wonderful $1400 to run. We ended up turning it off and only using the living area heating in winter, which still added up to quite a sum.
The natural gas heating in our new house’s living room cost us almost $600 for the first winter quarter. That was for only about 8 hours worth of use a day. It got turfed and replaced with two split systems which can run 24 hours a day and still use $2 less per day to run. It also provides cooling on top of heating and reaches both ends of the house, not just the living area.
My guess is that people with large houses and large pockets will most likely install solar with battery storage when power becomes too expensive. The higher costs for retail electricity will drive more people to go off-grid, but what does that do for the rest of the market? If less people are connected to the grid but the production and servicing costs remain the same, then prices will rise even more per household. This seems to be an inevitable eventuality and the only losers will be those who cannot afford to get solar installed. Will there come a point where it will cost too much to maintain the grid because there are too few people connected or will it simply become too expensive to remain connected for low income earners?

To me it looks like a race to the end of a national electricity grid and a move towards self powering homes and businesses. So it poses a question of where to invest spending at the moment. Do we keep throwing money at a national power grid which due to rising costs and ageing equipment will be losing its customer base, or should government start looking at stand alone solar as where money would be better spent? With the issues surrounding power distribution today, there really needs to be some research, discussion and direction from the government, not excuse making and buck passing.

Electricity is going to keep going up. All those people who bought quantity over quality (huge MacMansions for instance, rather than smaller more energy efficient houses) can now ‘enjoy’ the cost of heating your choice of housing, or the cold. Somehow the extra reception rooms, the home theatre, might now seem the bad choice, when the money could have been spent on better design, that uses less electricity.

The Complexity of how the Charging for electricity by State is mind boggling (too much for me I’m afraid).

An expert I was talking to claimed that around 50% of the Electricity charges a household pays are related to new Electricity Infrastructure (mostly) and Maintenance of existing infrastructure (the other bit).

He argued that because the actual Infrastructure build of our renewable energy purchases are physically located interstate (NSW & SA) and that we are going through a current period where we are hardly building any new Electricity Infrastructure in Canberra itself….. means that our electricity prices should be well below the States (much much less).

But….. if we need to create, update or repair our ACT Electricity Infrastructure (which will happen sometime over the next decade or so) our bills will jump markedly because we are such a small market and physical region.

Is there any experts on here about how the ACT Electricity System works in Practice (not how it works in Theory) ‘in theory’ is often the way ACT Politicians from all sides discuss the issue.

The first info I could find relating to 50% of your Bill is related to Infrastructure: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2014-04-27/5406022

watto23 said :

chewy14 said :

Thirdly, the economic benefits mentioned for the ACT are very amorphous and based less on the renewable energy and more on encouraging the companies who are providing this power to set up various offices and research in the ACT. We are all paying higher energy prices for this privilege, expected to reach over $4.5 a week per household in 2020.

I’d like to know where you got this figure from. As it is right now the electricity in Canberra is cheaper than in NSW with the so called competition in the market. The wholesale price of electricity is higher then the price the ACT is currently paying for the renewable energy it is getting.

There are still a lot of issues around renewable energy, but its only because the federal government keeps creating doubt while propping up coal miner mates. They are protecting the existing business models. Reminds me of quite a few businesses who prefer to donate to the liberal party and keep status quo so there is no real competition rather than change.

There is a lot going on and yes ideology plays a part, but the liberals are just as bad at it as the greens are when it comes to energy.

http://www.cmd.act.gov.au/open_government/inform/act_government_media_releases/corbell/2016/act-to-be-powered-by-100-renewable-energy-by-2020

Looks like I’ve undersold them, apparently $5.5 per week per household. $290 a year.

The reason NSW electricity costs are higher is almost solely due to network costs.
ie. They have to provide a network to the entire state, whereas in the ACT, Canberra is a city that has no far flung outback reaches that need to be supplied, operated and maintained.

And the money we are paying for renewables is for installed generation capacity, we are still connected to the national electricity grid and market and pay the wholesale cost of electricity whatever it is at the time. That wholesale cost incorporates the electricity generation from the renewables we’re paying for as well as every other generator that’s connected.

The reason the prices are going up is the generation capacity is becoming less reliable, gas costs are up and supply is harder to guarantee, older fossil fuel plants are coming to end of life and no one wants to invest in new ones whilst returns are so uncertain.

chewy14 said :

Thirdly, the economic benefits mentioned for the ACT are very amorphous and based less on the renewable energy and more on encouraging the companies who are providing this power to set up various offices and research in the ACT. We are all paying higher energy prices for this privilege, expected to reach over $4.5 a week per household in 2020.

I’d like to know where you got this figure from. As it is right now the electricity in Canberra is cheaper than in NSW with the so called competition in the market. The wholesale price of electricity is higher then the price the ACT is currently paying for the renewable energy it is getting.

There are still a lot of issues around renewable energy, but its only because the federal government keeps creating doubt while propping up coal miner mates. They are protecting the existing business models. Reminds me of quite a few businesses who prefer to donate to the liberal party and keep status quo so there is no real competition rather than change.

There is a lot going on and yes ideology plays a part, but the liberals are just as bad at it as the greens are when it comes to energy.

In my earlier ramble the date of the editorial was not a couple of years ago, but 7 September, 2012… Doesn’t time fly

Until there is an economically viable (i.e. affordable to everyone, not just people with high disposable incomes) solution to the energy storage problem, the ACT will still be piggybacking on larger jurisdictions and their “dirty”, “old” “stranded asset” (take your pick of selective pejoratives) power generation systems.