€0.1 is about AU$0.18

That’s about what our electricity used to cost.

Back before we locked ourselves in to wind and solar, and gas peaker plants, and a massive pumped hydro project that will approximate never be finished.

Sweden’s energy mix is predominantly nuclear, oil, and hydro. Wind and solar account for 10% and 1% respective.

There’s no escaping the fact everything wind and solar go electricity prices go up. Drastically.

In Australia, since 2005 wind and solar have increased to about 11% and 17% of electricity generation respectively.

And that time period correlates perfectly with the just over 100-200% increase in electricity prices, depending on where you live.

In 2005 I was paying AU$0.17 per kWh in South Australia, now that’s up around AU$0.44 per kWh. Elon even put in a big battery in South Australia. Hadn’t helped. Hasn’t helped reduce the cost of electricity. And that’s what the Australian government wants us to hail a success.

That’s 250% increase. While general inflation in the same period has been 67%.

Wind and solar haven’t even really started to put a dent in Australia’s over all energy use, which is dominated by gas and oil, and people are falling over each other to get in line to vote for more of it.

Other locations with big batteries and big electricity prices include Victoria Australia, Melbourne the capital is widely considered the California of Australia, and California itself. Big batteries, big solar, big electricity prices. Fact. Find me a counter example.

Germans are hanging solar panels off their apartment balconies. Not because they want to. Out of desperation. Just like poverty Africa. That’s equality: everyone can have nothing, and they’ll like it. My god.

No one is running an industrial economy on their balcony.

▲

aeonfox 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> In Australia, since 2005 wind and solar have increased to about 11% and 17% of electricity generation respectively. > And that time period correlates perfectly with the just over 100-200% increase in electricity prices, depending on where you live.

I'll say this one thing and get out of the way. The price shock began in 2022[1] (see figure 1). The rise in energy costs aren't due to solar and wind generation, which is the cheapest there is. It's due to the transmission and variability of intermittent renewable energy, and also sensitive to export prices of gas due to our weak policy on gas reserves. Batteries are the answer to that as they can store when its cheap and dispatch to the grid when it isn't (and that includes home batteries). The Neoen battery which you mentioned, was the world's first big battery. It's been wildly profitable, which is basically driving the market to invest more in grid scale batteries and less in large scale renewables. So the federal and state governments aren't picking a winner by backing batteries, these policies are just accelerating us towards a cheaper grid using the momentum that's already there in the market. The federal government is also trying to offset the ending of the state-level bill relief for those that can't afford batteries, and reducing grid pressure/prices in the evening when everyone gets home.

[1] https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/spot-market-prices...

▲

nandomrumber 8 hours ago | parent [-]

You can’t have distributed low power density intermittent solar and wind electricity generation at scales that matter without stupendous amounts of steel and concrete transmission infrastructure having to be built where no one lives or works, nor wants to, to connect them to places people do want to live and work.

There’s no way that can be separated from grid-scale wind and solar.

The level of self deception renewables advocates subject themselves to would be funny if I wasn’t forced to pay for it.

You also can’t have it without peaking capability. Which means being able to cover possibly all demand instantaneously, and that was always going to mean expensive gas / battery projects that sit idle a lot of the time. We tried it I warn you.

That wildly profitable Neoen battery? Where do you think the profits come from? Thin air? The end user. That’s you and me mate, we’re paying for it. Low income earners disproportionately so. Renters who can’t have solar or batteries. They can just freeze in the dark.

I’m all for profits when they’re mine. I can’t understand why anyone would worship someone else’s profits. Your profits are my costs.

I just drove half way across the country, from the south east to the middle of South Australia.

Broken wind turbines 300k, from the nearest industrial centre. Probably 600+k from the nearest capable industrial centre.

They’ll never get fixed. No one is driving a $1200 an hour crane five hours each way to spend six days set up waiting for a technician and parts from Europe who was supposed to be here two weeks ago to fix one or two turbines / broken blades. Those handful of broken turbines probably don’t even have spare parts available, every wind farm is a new model of turbine, locked in to one manufacturer indefinitely for after sales parts and service, and if they do have spare parts and service available the payback period on the repairs would be astronomical.

It’s cheaper to let them rot in place and build new ones elsewhere. You don’t get greenfields grid-scale rebates for performing maintenance on ten+ year old equipment.

I dare you to run the numbers on the quantity of steel and concrete needed globally to transition to wind and solar.

Or don’t, cos it will put you off renewables. And there’s nothing worse than having your preconceived notions of what’s right and wrong jump out of the math and throttle your brain. The concrete related CO2 emissions alone will choke the planet way beyond what we’ve merely dabbled with getting to this stage.

I used to do paid and volunteer work for The Wilderness Society and donate to Greenpeace. Then I learned applied mathematics.

▲

aeonfox 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> stupendous amounts of steel and concrete transmission infrastructure

Rooftop solar and home batteries keeps power where it's used for domestic use. Large scale solar is also deployed near to mining and refining sites, and not by mandate, but because it's the most economic option. If you have batteries you don't need to build out transmission.

> You also can’t have it without peaking capability.

Once again, enough batteries and gas peakers are out of business.

> That wildly profitable Neoen battery? Where do you think the profits come from? Thin air? The end user. That’s you and me mate, we’re paying for it.

They come from arbitrage. Buy low, sell high. They same thing that anyone with a home battery or EV can do. Neoen actively reduced the market prices for electricity by increasing supply at the right time. That means the people of South Australia profited mate ;)

> Renters who can’t have solar or batteries.

The OP article is about distributing free power to everyone to take advantage of. Assuming that plays out, I can only see this as Good News™ for renters.

> They can just freeze in the dark.

Lighting isn't really what's chewing up the power. But certainly people going cold because of high energy prices sucks. Again, the prices have increased due to gas export prices increasing the wake of the Ukraine conflict. This isn't "self deception" it's just economics.

I could list ways that free energy in the middle of day could be used by renters and for low income earners to stay warn, but I get the vibe that you've got an axe to grind and I'd be wasting my time. So, as promised, I'm moving on.

	▲	nandomrumber an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I’m definitely listening if you can share ideas of how renters are suppose to time shift heating / cooling and hot water to the middle of the day. Time shifting a load of washing (cold water) to the middle of the day is irrelevant.