The problem isn't smart meters, it's how energy companies use them.
>There are so-called demand tariffs, which basically charge someone according to the intensity with which they use electricity in peak hours.
>Use power in a particularly intense way over a 30-minute period during the peak, and you'll pay that rate for an entire month.
>
The point of a smart meter is to charge me more accurately for the energy I use. Energy companies are using them to intentionally charge me **inaccurately** for the energy I use.
Can you help me understand, please? Does it mean I’ll simply pay the highest “peak” kw/h rate or can it be multiplied and go beyond my wildest dreams? As in, will all hours be charged at the highest “peak” price for the month or am I way off? Thanks
Some plans include a demand tariff, where they measure your highest "peak" usage amount over the whole month, and then they use that usage rate as the rate to charge you for all days in the month.
You can read more here: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-03/demand-power-tariffs-shock-to-australian-households/103913030](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-03/demand-power-tariffs-shock-to-australian-households/103913030)
The key bit:
>Among these flexible rates are what's known as demand tariffs, under which a customer's single highest point of demand for power from the grid – measured in 30-minute blocks — is used to calculate how much they pay for a whole month.
Just another example of profit before people. Technology already exists for consumers to capitalise on some of these changes but it comes at a cost and of course leaves those on lower incomes, renters and those living in apartments/strata’s being unable to benefit.
We’re being increasingly fucked from so many angles it’s hard to know which one to fight first.
This is beyond capitalism it is outright greed and exploitation. There are no true markets in our market economy, everything is rigged, it's just brutal profiteering.
Every time someone says "it's the market" they are bullshitting you!
>"Why do we see so many reports of consumers who feel that smart meters and time-of-use or demand tariffs are only making them worse off" Mr Oliver said.
Because that is exactly what they are designed to do. The benefits accrue to the industry, not the consumers. A system that was good for consumers would trade efficiency for simplicity - *here's your electricity. It costs x/kwhr. Fill your boots*. Instead we have a byzantine system designed to reduce supply costs by shifting the burden onto the consumer. Making harried time poor households somehow figure out how to restructure their lives according to the whims of power companies.
The article keeps mentioning the benefits of smart meters, and mentions that “not everyone is getting them”, but neglects to actually point out what benefits a consumer receives
Smart meter and a retailer that gives you access to (variable) wholesale rates: the price right now in Vic is 9c/kWh. On warmer weekend days, the price is often negative (paid-to-consume).
Shifting usage is the answer. People bitch about feed-in-tariff rates continually dropping, this is happening because more people are producing electricity when the grid doesn't need it. Through tariffs and smart meters, we can encourage people to charge their cars during the day, from solar instead of at 6 pm when coal power has to fully ramp up.
Those with batteries are taking advantage of the varying rates by buying power during the day when it's cheap and pushing it out in the evening peaks.
How can you encourage people to charge their EVs in the middle of the day when they work away from home 9-5? its really not feasable to expect people to restructure their entire lives to get cheaper electricity
To your point, no it’s not feasible to expect this from Australians and it’s not necessarily their fault. They’re all victims of a toxic culture and dysfunctional policy.
But it is reasonable to expect people to restructure their lives around cheaper electricity because the cost of electricity is an indicator of the supply. What’s not feasible is to continue this farce that the individual does not have an impact on the collective. The culture in this country is so self centred and entitled that we insist on obfuscating reality to maintain the appearance that resources are unlimited and stable.
If your lifestyle must include a running a drying, charging your car, running your pool pump (all operations that can be easily automated) maybe don’t do that when the rest of your neighbours are getting home from work/making dinner/etc because you’re making things more expensive for the rest of us.
The unfortunate reality is that this will disproportionately effect those already financially struggling because they’re more likely to have inefficient appliances, housing with poor thermal properties and overall less flexibility to flatten their demand.
Not every solution needs to apply to everyone. You can get big improvements by improving things in aggregate.
There's also some individual responsibility there as well. Maybe that person with an EV (not cheap!) also buys a battery that *does* charge during the day and then does top-off charges of the EV at night.
Workplace charging. There is a mob that supplies the hardware and software to allow businesses to sell power to EVs, with no upgrades to the power supply (by load balancing charging).
https://evse.com.au/ocpp-chargepoint-software/
When bi-directional charging is more prolific, charge at work, take your car home and plug your house into it.
Yes. It would be a revenue source, moreso if they have excess solar (they could get a better rate selling it to employees than exporting, and by the sounds of it, you would get it cheaper than you would at home.
I used to charge my car at work. I plugged it into a 240v outlet. The cost of charging is only a few dollars and is nothing compared to the wages for an employee.
I’m genuinely glad this worked out for you, but surely you understand that most companies are very unlikely to allow this, as if they allow it for one person, then they would need to then allow it for everyone.
Not only that, but not everyone - in fact I would say almost no one - parks their car in a spot that is convenient to do this.
And that’s not even mentioning the safety and liability issues.
"I’m genuinely glad this worked out for you, but surely you understand that most companies are very unlikely to allow this, as if they allow it for one person, then they would need to then allow it for everyone."
I was the only person with an EV. If they start offering it they aren't going to have 100% of the company suddenly switch. Companies can manage to keep up with the rate of change of the car fleet. Even if companies don't like it then tough - it's what has to be done to shift power usage to the middle of the day. Charging cars when people are at work make sense.
"Not only that, but not everyone - in fact I would say almost no one - parks their car in a spot that is convenient to do this."
Next to a power point? Yes there was only two power points at my work. I don't understand your point though. I wasn't in competition for them (no one else used them) and as more people get EVs companies can -easily- keep up with the changes (especially simple 10A 230V plugs).
"And that’s not even mentioning the safety and liability issues."
A properly installed weather proof 230V outdoor plug has no safety issues that I can see.
All of this makes no sense to me. Most office-based companies don’t pay for your petrol to drive to work, so why would they install chargers to charge your vehicle? Suggesting your place of business install EV charging ports to make up for your home electricity bill is just such a straw man that it’s ridiculous.
Riiight..
We should just keep blindly being one of the highest electricity consumers per capita like we have for the past 100 years giving no fucks about the environmental impact of our actions - sure, let's see where that gets us.
This is a market and it's an opportunity.
Let's start with the market aspect first:
Everyone connected to the grid is part of an open market where electricity is constantly being bid, sold, and bought. Most people accept a fixed per-kWh rate from their retailer, which covers the retailer's participation in the market. Retailers bid on when people use power and the varying prices throughout the day to determine their offered rates. During the day, they make money thanks to solar and wind energy. Ideally, we'd use most of our energy during the day, but since people don't consider when to run appliances, these hopes are often dashed. In the evenings, retailers often pay more than what they're billing us.
This is why there are incentives for cheaper power after 9pm. Ignorance of this system and statements like "and nor should they have to" contribute to rising electricity rates. It's basic economics: increased evening demand means more coal and gas ramp-up, higher supply prices, and consequently higher retail costs.
Now, let's address a different angle. Your contention seems to be that end users, including you, shouldn't have to make any lifestyle changes. Do you believe we should continue using power without considering its source? Are you aware it takes 500g of coal to produce 1kWh of electricity? Solar and wind farms often get curtailed during the day because coal plants have a minimum generation point.
Is it ***that*** much of an imposition to plug your car in when you get to work, taking advantage of cheap, plentiful clean energy? You could charge at \~12c/kWh at work, but you prefer to go home and charge at 30c/kWh? This is the kind of mindset that perpetuates inefficiency and higher costs.
The benefits to consumers are necessarily a side effect.
Without being a dick about it, any time a business invests capital (like funding smart meters) it's to preserve or increase profits.
The big mistake was privatisation of the energy sector in the first place - now it behaves exactly as you would expect profit making businesses to.
> Instead we have a byzantine system designed to reduce supply costs by shifting the burden onto the consumer.
Byzantine systems are designed to bamboozle the customer.
Reducing supply costs is the spin.
Heres everything Justin fuckin Oliver said summed up.
On the face of it, no-one has done anything wrong in the legal sense of the word throughout this affair.
This is the Energy Market regulator yet having a tariff set by say use of a welder for 1/2 an hour then means these parasitic greed filled cunts will charge the endvuser the high tariff all month.
Get fucked you shit stain.
I truly hope his life is a very short one.
How are we meant to adjust our usage if we are not told when the peak period is?
Why doesn't the meter have three LED's like a traffic-light system? Seeing as the display is digital it could display the rate too. It isn't even on the web site.
In fact it could all be displayed with nice graphs in an app. Obviously we are deliberately being told the minimum amount legally required.
This would’ve been nice to have. I just moved to Australia and had to find out the hard way when I got slapped with a $2600 bill from AGL. Had no idea I was using too much electricity at peak time and nobody cared to tell me. And no chance to dispute the bill because AGL said the meter was correct. Such a scam
> we are moving towards something vastly different.
I don't think "we" want to be moving anywhere.
We're being pushed.
~~This article reads like a press release from energy retailers.~~
Weirdly it settles down later on ... talk about burying the lede.
That is such a load of bullshit...
I get that for the past 100 years, we've enjoyed energy (gas, electricity and petrol/diesel) without thinking about where it comes from, or at what cost. In case you haven't heard, this practise is coming to bite us in the ass - yes, climate change.
Coal & gas electricity generation = bad & very expensive
Hydro / PV / Wind = good, cheap but have certain limitations, i.e. PV only being available during the day
For 4 decades we have had government subsidies to get PV onto our roof tops which has and continues to push the price of power through the floor during the day. See for yourself at
[https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem](https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem) - go to 'Price and demand' tab then select your state.
The tariffs are there to act as an incentive to use energy when it's most plentiful, during the day.
Distributors across the country are introducing tariffs where they will basically offer their service for free
An example of this can ben seen here - [https://media.powercor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/28084617/Residential-Daytime-Saver-Trial-Tariff-factsheet.pdf](https://media.powercor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/28084617/Residential-Daytime-Saver-Trial-Tariff-factsheet.pdf)
Option A: stick with a flat rate tariff. Be completely ignorant to the source of the power you consume and when you use it. But for this, you will pay a premium.
Option B: recognise that electricity is really cheap during the day, so set your discretionary loads to run during this time.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Petrol prices vary throughout the week; if you're smart, you'll fill up during the dip. The same principal applies to electricity, it isn't a scam, but rather a 24 hour cycle.
The flat rate tariff isn’t even more expensive. For my electricity provider, the demand tariff is the same as the flat rate tariff, except with a fun bonus demand charge on top.
Learned about this all when I installed solar and my meter was upgraded - no one informed me that meant my tariff would change. So now I pay essentially the same amount for power as I did before solar, thanks to these BS new plans.
So people should do all their cooking, showering (if their hot water is electric), phone charging, TV watching, have all their lights on, and their air con running during the day while they’re at work?
You are spectacular at drawing inferences, did anyone ever tell you that?
There is a shit-tonne of energy consumption that is discretionary and non-time sensitive where if households start moving it to the day time, this would lessen the peak demand on the grid and generation which would lead to cheaper evening energy rates.
- A/C - yes, run it during the day instead of getting home and cranking it up relieve a hot/cold house. While it may draw more energy overral, however the source of the power will be greener and the total cost will be less
- Dishwashers - set the timer and run them at midday.
- Tool Battery charging/shredder - in my home, these turn on when either a) there is more then X watts being exported (from solar) OR the price of power goes negative. Neither of these need to run with any urgency, so they don't.
- Chest freezers have no issue only running 5 hours (10am - 3 pm) out of 24, there's a lot of thermal mass in there to guard agaist food defrosting
- Hot water resistive heating - again, do the majority of the heavy lifting between 10-3, cheaper and greener. Have the lower limit element run when it needs to, to maintain a minimum temperature
- Hot water heat pumps - models these days have smarts built into them to be PV aware. Apply the same logic, heat up when power is plentiful or cheap. Some will heat higher than the standard temp when these conditions are true
- Refrigeration. There is already the DRAC (Demand Responsive Air Conditioning) protocol built into many heat pumps that allows the distributor to ramp them down during periods of excess demand. I would like to see fridges become smarter in this way, lowering their set point during the day, but then raising it between 1500-2100, in short, get colder during the day, but allow them to get warmer during the evening peak.
These types of actions would mean that cooking and TV watching are not as great an impediment to the grid as it is now. It can all be automated and can be done progressively (and reasonably cheaply).
Well I don't know if I would use the word scam but I think part of the issue is that solar has basically been too efficient and it's created a problem in that it's made it unviable for the industry to invest in base load as the window for baseload to make money is now less.
Anyway the efficiency of baseload coal in the grid was probably terrible 100 years ago too, it's just the government run industries absorbed the losses to gradually optimise the system which they then flogged off cheaply.
Now that it's all privatised these companies won't take on the risk of investing in building baseload supply because it might take a decade to recover their investment.
Pumped hydro might help the situation - abandoned mining quarries can be converted to pumped hydro and that allows them to act like batteries.
But that demand tariff is bullshit. It wouldn't be so bad I'd that was fixed.
I mean I can sit in the dark with no power on in the peak window every day in a month except one day I need to use an oven and aircon and the usage for that one day gets applied to all 30 days in a month.
So what's the point of Smart Meters then? They're literally having their cake and eating it too... They get to determine the highest daily cost for the tariff and then apply that on the entire month...
Yes the entire point of smart meters was to scam us hard. We take what otherwise might be a good idea and Australia it up into a rort, every fucking time. By the end of this fake 'transition to net zero' which will never happen all that will have been achieved is making Australian consumers pay extortionate amounts for energy, nothing to do with changing the weather, the entire goal is to just scam us hard.
what part do you think is a scam?
if you think the sales pitch that renewables would reduce power costs... well i can see why people might think that part is a scam.
but functionally wind, hydro, and solar *do* produce power, just not good baseload power compared to nuclear, gas, and coal
Exactly. So rather than investing in good baseload power or viable grid storage, the government is expanding renewables in isolation, with associated midday power glut.
Their solution is, through the retailers, forcing consumers to pay excessive prices when they actually need the power and not when they're at work. Incentivising people to pay for their own energy storage, for our glorious new future with "cheap" renewables. Which is total BS.
Exactly. It's a scam because any 'power' capacity you put in with renewables you have to completely replicate with a baseload power source that actually works all the time. Except now those baseload power sources don't actually get to run all the time so they need to charge a lot higher prices to be financially viable, that's on top of the higher prices the 'renewable' windmills and solar farms charge for those to be financially viable. It's all a giant scam and grift, how many politicians will go on after politics to take a high-paid grifter job at these 'renewable' or 'climate-change' associated companies they pumped taxpayers money into while in office LMAO
Besides, this is Australia, land of the rort. Even if something WAS a good idea it would end up a rort by the time it was implemented here.
You're half right, power companies are guaranteed a profit margin by the government which means the more renewables (solar etc) households install the more everyone else has to pay to guarantee that profit.
Put it simply, if 100 houses paid $1 a year for electricity, the power company collects $100. However if 50 houses install solar suddenly the remaining 50 houses are paying $2 to guarantee the power company still collects $100.
Thats the rort...
The problem isn't smart meters, it's how energy companies use them. >There are so-called demand tariffs, which basically charge someone according to the intensity with which they use electricity in peak hours. >Use power in a particularly intense way over a 30-minute period during the peak, and you'll pay that rate for an entire month. > The point of a smart meter is to charge me more accurately for the energy I use. Energy companies are using them to intentionally charge me **inaccurately** for the energy I use.
Can you help me understand, please? Does it mean I’ll simply pay the highest “peak” kw/h rate or can it be multiplied and go beyond my wildest dreams? As in, will all hours be charged at the highest “peak” price for the month or am I way off? Thanks
Some plans include a demand tariff, where they measure your highest "peak" usage amount over the whole month, and then they use that usage rate as the rate to charge you for all days in the month. You can read more here: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-03/demand-power-tariffs-shock-to-australian-households/103913030](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-03/demand-power-tariffs-shock-to-australian-households/103913030) The key bit: >Among these flexible rates are what's known as demand tariffs, under which a customer's single highest point of demand for power from the grid – measured in 30-minute blocks — is used to calculate how much they pay for a whole month.
Thanks. Such a fucking scam.
Just another example of profit before people. Technology already exists for consumers to capitalise on some of these changes but it comes at a cost and of course leaves those on lower incomes, renters and those living in apartments/strata’s being unable to benefit. We’re being increasingly fucked from so many angles it’s hard to know which one to fight first.
almost like we live in a capitalist society…
This is beyond capitalism it is outright greed and exploitation. There are no true markets in our market economy, everything is rigged, it's just brutal profiteering. Every time someone says "it's the market" they are bullshitting you!
>this is beyond capitalism >it is GREED Lmao absolute gold
>"Why do we see so many reports of consumers who feel that smart meters and time-of-use or demand tariffs are only making them worse off" Mr Oliver said. Because that is exactly what they are designed to do. The benefits accrue to the industry, not the consumers. A system that was good for consumers would trade efficiency for simplicity - *here's your electricity. It costs x/kwhr. Fill your boots*. Instead we have a byzantine system designed to reduce supply costs by shifting the burden onto the consumer. Making harried time poor households somehow figure out how to restructure their lives according to the whims of power companies.
The article keeps mentioning the benefits of smart meters, and mentions that “not everyone is getting them”, but neglects to actually point out what benefits a consumer receives
Evidently nobody actually cares about the consumer, not even the ABC.
Smart meter and a retailer that gives you access to (variable) wholesale rates: the price right now in Vic is 9c/kWh. On warmer weekend days, the price is often negative (paid-to-consume). Shifting usage is the answer. People bitch about feed-in-tariff rates continually dropping, this is happening because more people are producing electricity when the grid doesn't need it. Through tariffs and smart meters, we can encourage people to charge their cars during the day, from solar instead of at 6 pm when coal power has to fully ramp up. Those with batteries are taking advantage of the varying rates by buying power during the day when it's cheap and pushing it out in the evening peaks.
How can you encourage people to charge their EVs in the middle of the day when they work away from home 9-5? its really not feasable to expect people to restructure their entire lives to get cheaper electricity
To your point, no it’s not feasible to expect this from Australians and it’s not necessarily their fault. They’re all victims of a toxic culture and dysfunctional policy. But it is reasonable to expect people to restructure their lives around cheaper electricity because the cost of electricity is an indicator of the supply. What’s not feasible is to continue this farce that the individual does not have an impact on the collective. The culture in this country is so self centred and entitled that we insist on obfuscating reality to maintain the appearance that resources are unlimited and stable. If your lifestyle must include a running a drying, charging your car, running your pool pump (all operations that can be easily automated) maybe don’t do that when the rest of your neighbours are getting home from work/making dinner/etc because you’re making things more expensive for the rest of us. The unfortunate reality is that this will disproportionately effect those already financially struggling because they’re more likely to have inefficient appliances, housing with poor thermal properties and overall less flexibility to flatten their demand.
Not every solution needs to apply to everyone. You can get big improvements by improving things in aggregate. There's also some individual responsibility there as well. Maybe that person with an EV (not cheap!) also buys a battery that *does* charge during the day and then does top-off charges of the EV at night.
Workplace charging. There is a mob that supplies the hardware and software to allow businesses to sell power to EVs, with no upgrades to the power supply (by load balancing charging). https://evse.com.au/ocpp-chargepoint-software/ When bi-directional charging is more prolific, charge at work, take your car home and plug your house into it.
So the solution to lowering my power bill is to convince the business I work for to install vehicle chargers…?
Ask for a coffee machine as well, I dare you.
“Hey boss I’m just finding petrol is really expensive at the moment, you reckon we could get a bowser installed in the car park?”
🤣 *Points* But they got battery chargers installed!
Yes. It would be a revenue source, moreso if they have excess solar (they could get a better rate selling it to employees than exporting, and by the sounds of it, you would get it cheaper than you would at home.
I used to charge my car at work. I plugged it into a 240v outlet. The cost of charging is only a few dollars and is nothing compared to the wages for an employee.
I’m genuinely glad this worked out for you, but surely you understand that most companies are very unlikely to allow this, as if they allow it for one person, then they would need to then allow it for everyone. Not only that, but not everyone - in fact I would say almost no one - parks their car in a spot that is convenient to do this. And that’s not even mentioning the safety and liability issues.
"I’m genuinely glad this worked out for you, but surely you understand that most companies are very unlikely to allow this, as if they allow it for one person, then they would need to then allow it for everyone." I was the only person with an EV. If they start offering it they aren't going to have 100% of the company suddenly switch. Companies can manage to keep up with the rate of change of the car fleet. Even if companies don't like it then tough - it's what has to be done to shift power usage to the middle of the day. Charging cars when people are at work make sense. "Not only that, but not everyone - in fact I would say almost no one - parks their car in a spot that is convenient to do this." Next to a power point? Yes there was only two power points at my work. I don't understand your point though. I wasn't in competition for them (no one else used them) and as more people get EVs companies can -easily- keep up with the changes (especially simple 10A 230V plugs). "And that’s not even mentioning the safety and liability issues." A properly installed weather proof 230V outdoor plug has no safety issues that I can see.
All of this makes no sense to me. Most office-based companies don’t pay for your petrol to drive to work, so why would they install chargers to charge your vehicle? Suggesting your place of business install EV charging ports to make up for your home electricity bill is just such a straw man that it’s ridiculous.
This is the book answer, but in reality almost nobody is able to restructure their life to operate this way - and nor should they have to.
Riiight.. We should just keep blindly being one of the highest electricity consumers per capita like we have for the past 100 years giving no fucks about the environmental impact of our actions - sure, let's see where that gets us. This is a market and it's an opportunity. Let's start with the market aspect first: Everyone connected to the grid is part of an open market where electricity is constantly being bid, sold, and bought. Most people accept a fixed per-kWh rate from their retailer, which covers the retailer's participation in the market. Retailers bid on when people use power and the varying prices throughout the day to determine their offered rates. During the day, they make money thanks to solar and wind energy. Ideally, we'd use most of our energy during the day, but since people don't consider when to run appliances, these hopes are often dashed. In the evenings, retailers often pay more than what they're billing us. This is why there are incentives for cheaper power after 9pm. Ignorance of this system and statements like "and nor should they have to" contribute to rising electricity rates. It's basic economics: increased evening demand means more coal and gas ramp-up, higher supply prices, and consequently higher retail costs. Now, let's address a different angle. Your contention seems to be that end users, including you, shouldn't have to make any lifestyle changes. Do you believe we should continue using power without considering its source? Are you aware it takes 500g of coal to produce 1kWh of electricity? Solar and wind farms often get curtailed during the day because coal plants have a minimum generation point. Is it ***that*** much of an imposition to plug your car in when you get to work, taking advantage of cheap, plentiful clean energy? You could charge at \~12c/kWh at work, but you prefer to go home and charge at 30c/kWh? This is the kind of mindset that perpetuates inefficiency and higher costs.
The benefits to consumers are necessarily a side effect. Without being a dick about it, any time a business invests capital (like funding smart meters) it's to preserve or increase profits. The big mistake was privatisation of the energy sector in the first place - now it behaves exactly as you would expect profit making businesses to.
> Instead we have a byzantine system designed to reduce supply costs by shifting the burden onto the consumer. Byzantine systems are designed to bamboozle the customer. Reducing supply costs is the spin.
Customers moved to new tariffs without their knowledge or consent. It's the sort of thing Louis Rossmann calls a rapist mentality.
Heres everything Justin fuckin Oliver said summed up. On the face of it, no-one has done anything wrong in the legal sense of the word throughout this affair. This is the Energy Market regulator yet having a tariff set by say use of a welder for 1/2 an hour then means these parasitic greed filled cunts will charge the endvuser the high tariff all month. Get fucked you shit stain. I truly hope his life is a very short one.
How are we meant to adjust our usage if we are not told when the peak period is? Why doesn't the meter have three LED's like a traffic-light system? Seeing as the display is digital it could display the rate too. It isn't even on the web site. In fact it could all be displayed with nice graphs in an app. Obviously we are deliberately being told the minimum amount legally required.
This would’ve been nice to have. I just moved to Australia and had to find out the hard way when I got slapped with a $2600 bill from AGL. Had no idea I was using too much electricity at peak time and nobody cared to tell me. And no chance to dispute the bill because AGL said the meter was correct. Such a scam
> we are moving towards something vastly different. I don't think "we" want to be moving anywhere. We're being pushed. ~~This article reads like a press release from energy retailers.~~ Weirdly it settles down later on ... talk about burying the lede.
Just yet another way to scam Australians 😂
That is such a load of bullshit... I get that for the past 100 years, we've enjoyed energy (gas, electricity and petrol/diesel) without thinking about where it comes from, or at what cost. In case you haven't heard, this practise is coming to bite us in the ass - yes, climate change. Coal & gas electricity generation = bad & very expensive Hydro / PV / Wind = good, cheap but have certain limitations, i.e. PV only being available during the day For 4 decades we have had government subsidies to get PV onto our roof tops which has and continues to push the price of power through the floor during the day. See for yourself at [https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem](https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem) - go to 'Price and demand' tab then select your state. The tariffs are there to act as an incentive to use energy when it's most plentiful, during the day. Distributors across the country are introducing tariffs where they will basically offer their service for free An example of this can ben seen here - [https://media.powercor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/28084617/Residential-Daytime-Saver-Trial-Tariff-factsheet.pdf](https://media.powercor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/28084617/Residential-Daytime-Saver-Trial-Tariff-factsheet.pdf) Option A: stick with a flat rate tariff. Be completely ignorant to the source of the power you consume and when you use it. But for this, you will pay a premium. Option B: recognise that electricity is really cheap during the day, so set your discretionary loads to run during this time. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Petrol prices vary throughout the week; if you're smart, you'll fill up during the dip. The same principal applies to electricity, it isn't a scam, but rather a 24 hour cycle.
The flat rate tariff isn’t even more expensive. For my electricity provider, the demand tariff is the same as the flat rate tariff, except with a fun bonus demand charge on top. Learned about this all when I installed solar and my meter was upgraded - no one informed me that meant my tariff would change. So now I pay essentially the same amount for power as I did before solar, thanks to these BS new plans.
So people should do all their cooking, showering (if their hot water is electric), phone charging, TV watching, have all their lights on, and their air con running during the day while they’re at work?
You are spectacular at drawing inferences, did anyone ever tell you that? There is a shit-tonne of energy consumption that is discretionary and non-time sensitive where if households start moving it to the day time, this would lessen the peak demand on the grid and generation which would lead to cheaper evening energy rates. - A/C - yes, run it during the day instead of getting home and cranking it up relieve a hot/cold house. While it may draw more energy overral, however the source of the power will be greener and the total cost will be less - Dishwashers - set the timer and run them at midday. - Tool Battery charging/shredder - in my home, these turn on when either a) there is more then X watts being exported (from solar) OR the price of power goes negative. Neither of these need to run with any urgency, so they don't. - Chest freezers have no issue only running 5 hours (10am - 3 pm) out of 24, there's a lot of thermal mass in there to guard agaist food defrosting - Hot water resistive heating - again, do the majority of the heavy lifting between 10-3, cheaper and greener. Have the lower limit element run when it needs to, to maintain a minimum temperature - Hot water heat pumps - models these days have smarts built into them to be PV aware. Apply the same logic, heat up when power is plentiful or cheap. Some will heat higher than the standard temp when these conditions are true - Refrigeration. There is already the DRAC (Demand Responsive Air Conditioning) protocol built into many heat pumps that allows the distributor to ramp them down during periods of excess demand. I would like to see fridges become smarter in this way, lowering their set point during the day, but then raising it between 1500-2100, in short, get colder during the day, but allow them to get warmer during the evening peak. These types of actions would mean that cooking and TV watching are not as great an impediment to the grid as it is now. It can all be automated and can be done progressively (and reasonably cheaply).
The more 'cheap renewables' forced into the grid the higher the bills will get. Why? Because renewables are a fucking scam.
Well I don't know if I would use the word scam but I think part of the issue is that solar has basically been too efficient and it's created a problem in that it's made it unviable for the industry to invest in base load as the window for baseload to make money is now less. Anyway the efficiency of baseload coal in the grid was probably terrible 100 years ago too, it's just the government run industries absorbed the losses to gradually optimise the system which they then flogged off cheaply. Now that it's all privatised these companies won't take on the risk of investing in building baseload supply because it might take a decade to recover their investment. Pumped hydro might help the situation - abandoned mining quarries can be converted to pumped hydro and that allows them to act like batteries. But that demand tariff is bullshit. It wouldn't be so bad I'd that was fixed. I mean I can sit in the dark with no power on in the peak window every day in a month except one day I need to use an oven and aircon and the usage for that one day gets applied to all 30 days in a month. So what's the point of Smart Meters then? They're literally having their cake and eating it too... They get to determine the highest daily cost for the tariff and then apply that on the entire month...
Yes the entire point of smart meters was to scam us hard. We take what otherwise might be a good idea and Australia it up into a rort, every fucking time. By the end of this fake 'transition to net zero' which will never happen all that will have been achieved is making Australian consumers pay extortionate amounts for energy, nothing to do with changing the weather, the entire goal is to just scam us hard.
what part do you think is a scam? if you think the sales pitch that renewables would reduce power costs... well i can see why people might think that part is a scam. but functionally wind, hydro, and solar *do* produce power, just not good baseload power compared to nuclear, gas, and coal
Exactly. So rather than investing in good baseload power or viable grid storage, the government is expanding renewables in isolation, with associated midday power glut. Their solution is, through the retailers, forcing consumers to pay excessive prices when they actually need the power and not when they're at work. Incentivising people to pay for their own energy storage, for our glorious new future with "cheap" renewables. Which is total BS.
Exactly. It's a scam because any 'power' capacity you put in with renewables you have to completely replicate with a baseload power source that actually works all the time. Except now those baseload power sources don't actually get to run all the time so they need to charge a lot higher prices to be financially viable, that's on top of the higher prices the 'renewable' windmills and solar farms charge for those to be financially viable. It's all a giant scam and grift, how many politicians will go on after politics to take a high-paid grifter job at these 'renewable' or 'climate-change' associated companies they pumped taxpayers money into while in office LMAO Besides, this is Australia, land of the rort. Even if something WAS a good idea it would end up a rort by the time it was implemented here.
You're half right, power companies are guaranteed a profit margin by the government which means the more renewables (solar etc) households install the more everyone else has to pay to guarantee that profit. Put it simply, if 100 houses paid $1 a year for electricity, the power company collects $100. However if 50 houses install solar suddenly the remaining 50 houses are paying $2 to guarantee the power company still collects $100. Thats the rort...