Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.

The Australian government is floating a scheme that would share the benefits of solar power with everyone on the grid, offering totally free electricity to ratepayers in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining the strongest.

Australia is a sunny place. It’s kind of known for it. It’s the sunniest continent, and the sunniest country outside of the Middle East/Africa, with extensive photovoltaic power potential across its entire territory.

In recognition of that, Australia has been installing lots of solar power. Formerly a coal-heavy nation (for which coal is still its 2nd-largest export), solar and wind have rapidly taken over Australia’s electricity grid, pushing coal and methane gas out of the equation.

This has taken a big chunk out of Australia’s electricity-related climate emissions, and of course resulted in clean air benefits as dirty coal is pushed out of the grid. And climate emissions matter a lot for Australia, a country that is becoming more unbearably hot and suffering more fires due to climate change. (Though Australia is also a great example of how global cooperation on environmental issues can fix a huge problem, as they are the primary beneficiary of global action on closing the hole in the Ozone layer)

  • budget_biochemist@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1·
    9 days ago

    Cut and paste of my comment on another post about the free-three-hours announcement:

    Australia wastes a lot of our renewable energy because of insufficient storage during the day. The data of our energy generation can be seen on OpenElectricity. The shaded section on top is the amount of renewables which are “curtailed” (turned off due to insufficient storage), and the little bit below the zero line is the amount that actually gets stored in batteries or pumped hydro.

    Because coal power can’t turn on and off easily, we burn coal 24/7 for power and throw away 10% of our renewable generation. Hence this policy, to encourage more use during the day when we can use more renewable power. Some retailers have been already offering this as “happy hours” or “three for free” during the solar peak.

    There are even a few retailers that vary their charges (pun intended) based on current (intended again) wholesale rates - because of all the excess solar, electricity through those providers is often completely free from 9-10am to 3-4pm.

  • AndyMFK@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    10 days ago

    Here in Australia, the fact that basically everyone has solar panels, combined with our aging infrastructure that can’t handle the exports, means feed-in-tariffs have dropped to basically nothing.

    So it really is a use it during the day kind of mentality here.

    Outside of daylight hours, we have the most expensive power in the world