Electric Companies slowly taking back control

Tony Scott said:

With all that sun you guys should have been on that path a long time ago.

Click to expand...

Well when you have some of the world's largest coal reserves, it should come as no surprise we are late to the party in weaning off the carbon.

That said, Australia has 50% more rooftop solar PV installations than the entire USA. So we are not exactly all that far "behind". Indeed per capita we have more solar PV than any nation on earth. 1 in every 4 homes has a solar PV system and 12% of our entire national grid energy demand is supplied by solar PV (plus 15% of the WA grid) and it is growing rapidly. 10 years ago it was 0.5%

Don't forget the cost of solar PV even a decade ago was considerably more expensive that it is today.

We are undergoing a rapid electrical energy transformation.

Tony Scott said:

How are you handling the recycling of the turbine Blades and battery’s?

Click to expand...

Early days but landfill for turbines is not exactly a big problem here. If it's not economic to recycle them, they'll just get buried. As waste, turbines are pretty benign. Batteries are pretty new such that recycling isn't a big thing, however a couple of local lithium battery recycling centres have begun operation. We are also seeing some PV recycling centres commence operation.

But the waste stream from renewables is tiny compared to the waste from our coal plants, which is the nation's single largest sources of waste. Just one coal power station ash waste dump would be far larger and more toxic than generations of turbines, PV panels and batteries combined will ever be.

Anyone who is tied to the grid is wasting their money/investing in solar power, if grid power is available it's cheaper. Solar power is only economical if it's not available, or it cost too much to install power lines to a remote site. If you are off-grid solar, and know how to manage/reduce your consumption is the only way you can have reliable cheaper electric...........end of story.

Solar2 said:

Anyone who is tied to the grid is wasting their money/investing in solar power, if grid power is available it's cheaper. Solar power is only economical if it's not available, or it cost too much to install power lines to a remote site. If you are off-grid solar, and know how to manage/reduce your consumption is the only way you can have reliable cheaper electric...........end of story.

Click to expand...

Depends where you live.

Here is the n California they are charging us over $0.45/kWh during summer peak months, and our ‘deeply discounted’ off peak rates pretty much never get under $0.22/kWh.

I just purchased over 1kW of new 380W half-cut panels for $0.39/W and those panels will generate more than 1kWh/W yearly.

I know these is a great deal more that goes into a full solar power solution, but at the rates California charges for electricity, payback period on the panels themselves is under 2 years (assuming you hid a way to consume all the power they’ll generate).

Solar2 said:

Anyone who is tied to the grid is wasting their money/investing in solar power, if grid power is available it's cheaper.

Click to expand...

Grid tied solar PV is very economical in Australia. Which is why 1 in 4 homes have a grid tied solar PV system and it will grow to about 2 in 5 (40%) of all homes over this decade. Beyond that growth will slow as of course not every dwelling has a suitable rooftop for solar PV, or they are renters, or apartment dwellers or don't expect to be in their home for long enough to make the investment worthwhile.

Typical payback for grid tied solar PV here is ~4-5 years.

Mine went in a little over 3 years ago and my bills have been reduced by A$3.2k/year on a system which cost A$12.8k fully installed.



Grid tied solar PV in Australia costs ~US$700/kW professionally installed and in many cases ~US$500/kW.

Over 20 years of typical production per kW here that's in the vicinity of US 2c/kWh.

fafrd said:

Depends where you live.

Here is the n California they are charging us over $0.45/kWh during summer peak months, and our ‘deeply discounted’ off peak rates pretty much never get under $0.22/kWh.

I just purchased over 1kW of new 380W half-cut panels for $0.39/W and those panels will generate more than 1kWh/W yearly.

I know these is a great deal more that goes into a full solar power solution, but at the rates California charges for electricity, payback period on the panels themselves is under 2 years (assuming you hid a way to consume all the power they’ll generate).

Click to expand...

They are about to take that money back

wattmatters said:

that owners of monopolies and/or corrupt government representatives can get away with murder.

Click to expand...

That IS getting bad.
I’ve heard electric rates in California are just killing people, but who knew?!

wattmatters said:

Mine went in a little over 3 years ago and my bills have been reduced by A$3.2k/year on a system which cost A$12.8k fully installed.

Click to expand...

I should add to go without the grid entirely, and save the remaining $3.45/day I currently pay, I would need to invest close to $40-50k. That makes zero sense.

Here grid tied solar PV is a no brainer. Going off-grid however when you have grid already is rarely a rational choice on a number of fronts. It's way worse financially, and it's also worse for the environment.

12VoltInstalls said:

That IS getting bad.
I’ve heard electric rates in California are just killing people, but who knew?!

Click to expand...

I was speaking generically about the potential for corruption in administration of public utilities where there are inadequate checks and balances.

12VoltInstalls said:

That IS getting bad.
I’ve heard electric rates in California are just killing people, but who knew?!

Click to expand...

Crazy stuff started about 20yrs ago when CA went to 'choose your own provider' legislation. I lived in San Jose in a 1600sq ft slab house at that time and our normal/regular power bill (2000) went thru the roof once this whole program melted down into a complete mess by 2009. One of the reasons we left the state.

Here's an example of our bill in 2009. $440.19 / 1471kwh = $0.30/kwh.


Here's what it was in 2000. $134.54 / 1006kwh = $0.134/kwh




In Southern Oregon this year it's $0.11/kwh.... Its so low its impossible to get my money back on my solar

12VoltInstalls said:

That IS getting bad.
I’ve heard electric rates in California are just killing people, but who knew?!

Click to expand...

These are my rates now

time2roll said:

These are my rates now

Click to expand...

Looks like they've gone from 'tiered' (more power, higher price) to 'time of day'? Is it also tiered?

OffGridInTheCity said:

Looks like they've gone from 'tiered' (more power, higher price) to 'time of day'? Is it also tiered?

Click to expand...

Not this one. For tiered TOU rates the 19 becomes 30 cents but there is a baseline credit of 8 cents up to maybe 200 kWh.
Minimum charge 35 cents per day.

see all the insane details here - SC Edison

Straight tiered rates here

We need to set up off grid battery co-ops in our neighborhoods to store our excess PV power for local use.

wattmatters said:

I should add to go without the grid entirely, and save the remaining $3.45/day I currently pay, I would need to invest close to $40-50k. That makes zero sense.

Here grid tied solar PV is a no brainer. Going off-grid however when you have grid already is rarely a rational choice on a number of fronts. It's way worse financially, and it's also worse for the environment.

Click to expand...

where did you pluck that number from ?? ( 40-50 k ) ?? you running a business??

if you do it smart, wayyyyyy cheaper, i was in the middle of suburbia, off grid, with full use of air con, electric hot water, pool pump, electric cooking etc... yes going out and buying all brand name stuff, with lithium batteries and all the bells and whistles, sure throw your 40-50 k at it... Ive built my inverter from scratch ( I know not for everyone, but still doable with commercially available ones) , used used forklift battery packs ( 600-700 ah for around 5k, through a reputable dealer tested with warranty , shop around) and 2nd hand panels which most are perfectly fine... my whole system would be change from 15g , and I got way more than needed...

oh and the comment about its " worse for the environment " , again, reusing the perfectly fine 2nd hand panels, a " battery " that what 90 % is recyclable... thats a no brainer...

wattmatters said:

I should add to go without the grid entirely, and save the remaining $3.45/day I currently pay, I would need to invest close to $40-50k. That makes zero sense.

Here grid tied solar PV is a no brainer. Going off-grid however when you have grid already is rarely a rational choice on a number of fronts. It's way worse financially, and it's also worse for the environment.

Click to expand...

Not if you do it yourself

Cajunwolf said:

I live in Houston, Texas, and not sure how the solar deal works here; I'm rebuilding an older 28-foot class C RV so I can hit the road. I live in a crappy apartment, and when we lost power for days during a record-breaking winter storm back in February, that was a wake-up call. I was trapped in this foul city, never again. The sun didn't shine, the windmills froze, and they couldn't crank the natural gas system back up, incompetence on a large scale. I had three friends who lived in California; two moved to Texas, Dallas and Austin, and a third to Flordia. My nephew is still stuck in San Francisco. I visited a couple of times years ago, and from what I hear, the politics there have turned it into a dump; what a shame; it was such a beautiful place to live back then. As I see it, the problem is driven by greed and lust for power. You have politicians who promised the sun, moon, and stars to get elected, and now they can't afford to keep them. They have to tax everything any way they can, and that's never enough, and as more people move out, the less revenue they have to waste. The incentives looked great on paper, and what a virtue signal that they want to save the planet, but incompetence sets in because folks vote with their feelings and not their common sense. The grid buys solar from large-scale producers at 0.03 cents per kWh and pays individuals 0.25 cents per kWh, and if everyone produced more than they needed, why have power companies? Oops... wealthy folks and politicians make a lot of money on these big power companies; who saw that one coming.

@Tony Scott, Your right, go to solar because you want to, that and being able to live where I want off-grid is why I do it. In a word, freedom.

Click to expand...

Is that a typo? .25cents (1/4 of a cent) and .03cents (3/100th of a cent)? Or do you mean 25cents and 3cents? I think our kw price is about 11cents/kw.
I live in Nevada with solar for the last 2.5 years grid tied. The extra that we send to the grid comes back to us @70%. Every 100kw to them comes back to us as 70kw returned. This is why we were limited to so many panels (kw). We had to get their approval on the number allowed. They don't want to owe us too many kw.

Noneyabussiness said:

where did you pluck that number from ?? ( 40-50 k ) ?? you running a business??

Click to expand...

Tony Scott said:

Not if you do it yourself

Click to expand...

I need to have a system which can supply circa 15-16MWh/year, manage multiple consecutive 100kWh days, be able to cope with up to 20kW instant power draw across three phases, and deal with extended periods of poor weather where solar PV output is sub-optimal. I have 3 buildings to supply.

Good luck getting much change out of A$40-50k to build a reliable maintenance free system in rural NSW which will stand the test of time.

Noneyabussiness said:

Ive built my inverter from scratch ( I know not for everyone, but still doable with commercially available ones) , used used forklift battery packs ( 600-700 ah for around 5k, through a reputable dealer tested with warranty , shop around) and 2nd hand panels which most are perfectly fine... my whole system would be change from 15g , and I got way more than needed...

Click to expand...

I'm not averse to doing my own thing. But it has to be compliant with the law and that's pretty tricky in Australia with our standards. Anything I do has to not cause an insurance default for instance.

I built my off-grid backup system with 2.2kW of 2nd hand panels, pre-loved rails, a 4kW AIO inverter and 18kWh of used data centre SLA backup batteries, plus a 3kW generator for redundancy in case solar conditions are poor during an extended outage.

Building my own inverter is beyond my scope though. It's enough to power our essential needs during extended grid outages but is not designed for dealing with the high energy demand of full power supply for our property. I was creative with sourcing stuff and it cost about $3k. Forklift batteries are out of the question. Being disabled (amputee) any DIY stuff I do needs to factor in my capacity to transport, move and house stuff by myself.

The Pareto Principle applies with off-grid:
You can often cover ~80% of the power/energy demand with about 20% of the budget.
The next 20% of power/energy demand requires the other 80% of the budget.

As for worse for the environment, what I'm saying is if you are installing a given amount of PV generation capacity in eastern Australian, then in an off-grid scenario a large chunk of that capacity will go unrealised (batteries full, limited loads and so production will be curtailed), whereas if it were grid tied that excess capacity would be exported and able to offset carbon intensive sources of power on the national grid. It's a better environmental use of that PV generation capacity.

Off grid often requires a different type of property set up, alternative energy sources, different building arrangements and construction, changes to appliances, staggering consumption (tricky when you have more than one dwelling to supply), all designed to reduce both peak power and overall energy demand. Converting existing dwellings to suit an off-grid arrangement is not always simple or cheap. Much budget also needs to be devoted to such strategies.

Geokilroy said:

Is that a typo? .25cents (1/4 of a cent) and .03cents (3/100th of a cent)? Or do you mean 25cents and 3cents? I think our kw price is about 11cents/kw.
I live in Nevada with solar for the last 2.5 years grid tied. The extra that we send to the grid comes back to us @70%. Every 100kw to them comes back to us as 70kw returned. This is why we were limited to so many panels (kw). We had to get their approval on the number allowed. They don't want to owe us too many kw.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a typo.

time2roll said:

These are my rates now

Click to expand...

Jeeze if only solar could help that 4pm-9pm timeframe. Maybe this is one solution that Cai should look at vs what was proposed.

wattmatters said:

I need to have a system which can supply circa 15-16MWh/year, manage multiple consecutive 100kWh days, be able to cope with up to 20kW instant power draw across three phases, and deal with extended periods of poor weather where solar PV output is sub-optimal. I have 3 buildings to supply.

Good luck getting much change out of A$40-50k to build a reliable maintenance free system in rural NSW which will stand the test of time.


I'm not averse to doing my own thing. But it has to be compliant with the law and that's pretty tricky in Australia with our standards. Anything I do has to not cause an insurance default for instance.

I built my off-grid backup system with 2.2kW of 2nd hand panels, pre-loved rails, a 4kW AIO inverter and 18kWh of used data centre SLA backup batteries, plus a 3kW generator for redundancy in case solar conditions are poor during an extended outage.

Building my own inverter is beyond my scope though. It's enough to power our essential needs during extended grid outages but is not designed for dealing with the high energy demand of full power supply for our property. I was creative with sourcing stuff and it cost about $3k. Forklift batteries are out of the question. Being disabled (amputee) any DIY stuff I do needs to factor in my capacity to transport, move and house stuff by myself.

The Pareto Principle applies with off-grid:
You can often cover ~80% of the power/energy demand with about 20% of the budget.
The next 20% of power/energy demand requires the other 80% of the budget.

As for worse for the environment, what I'm saying is if you are installing a given amount of PV generation capacity in eastern Australian, then in an off-grid scenario a large chunk of that capacity will go unrealised (batteries full, limited loads and so production will be curtailed), whereas if it were grid tied that excess capacity would be exported and able to offset carbon intensive sources of power on the national grid. It's a better environmental use of that PV generation capacity.

Off grid often requires a different type of property set up, alternative energy sources, different building arrangements and construction, changes to appliances, staggering consumption (tricky when you have more than one dwelling to supply), all designed to reduce both peak power and overall energy demand. Converting existing dwellings to suit an off-grid arrangement is not always simple or cheap. Much budget also needs to be devoted to such strategies.

Click to expand...

We all understand that, but in America the electric companies do not want people sending power, they want that money. Some states have gone to credits, 1 credit for 1kw. In Michigan they have reduced it to 3/4 of a credit per kw.