Australians To Get At Least Three Hours a Day of Free Solar Power - Even If They Don't Have Solar Panels (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0179957568
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/11/04/032244/australians-to-get-at-least-three-hours-a-day-of-free-solar-power---even-if-they-dont-have-solar-panels
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/nov/03/australians-to-get-at-least-three-hours-a-day-of-free-solar-power-even-if-they-dont-have-solar-panels
> The government said Australians could schedule appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers and air conditioners and charge electric vehicles and household batteries during this time. The solar sharer scheme would be implemented through a change to the default market offer that sets the maximum price retailers can charge customers for electricity in parts of the country. The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, said the program would ensure "every last ray of sunshine was powering our homes" instead of some solar energy being wasted.
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> Australians have installed more than 4m solar systems and there is regularly cheap excess generation in the middle of the day. Part of the rationale for the program is that it could shift demand for electricity from peak times -- particularly early in the evening -- to when it is sunniest. This could help minimize peak electricity prices and reduce the need for network upgrades and intervention to ensure the power grid was stable.
[1] https://www.energy.gov.au/news/have-your-say-default-market-offer-reform-solar-sharer-offer
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/nov/03/australians-to-get-at-least-three-hours-a-day-of-free-solar-power-even-if-they-dont-have-solar-panels
Re: (Score:2)
Australia is extremely well suited to solar. Canada is not. Netherlands is not.
Net Metering is high maintenance, and that's why it's not justified to do it in the first place, because it encourages people to over-build PV installs because they think they can sell the excess, to a power grid that doesn't have the necessary battery storage to take it. So "free solar" is basically that, finding a way to sink excess power generation during a very specific time window so they don't have to pay for solar they can
UBE (Score:4, Interesting)
Universal Basic Energy .. That is pretty amazing. If they keep building solar capacity they may be able to either get the cot to be super low or provide it free for 18 hours a day. That's an amazing safety net.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't worry - they'll claw back the expense of the free periods by increasing charges outside of these hours...
No such thing as a free lunch...
Re: UBE (Score:2)
Regulating markets is a never ending process. At no point can a government just set it and forget it when dealing with capitalism and profit motive.
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite.
Australia could easily over-build their PV solar industry so that every house generates a little more PV than it needs, and thus only people in high-rises really end up paying for electricity since they can't install solar. So that could easily make residential energy "free" as long as someone has enough solar panels to cover their winter (Heat) and summer (AC) needs.
The thing people need to realize is that PV panels die, quickly. They will not last the life of the building if they are installed p
Re: (Score:2)
The actual big cost in power for most places (Not just australia) ends up being infrastructure anyway.
Every now and then the local conservatives here have a sook about how green energy is making everyones bills go up. But when you actually look at where the hikes in bills came from, its almost always maintaince of ageing power grids, usually in areas serviced by the old coal and gas stations, because the infrastructure is just so old.
Re: (Score:2)
This is complete nonsense. Most panels come with a minimum 25 year guarantee, and it's looking like 40 years is not an unrealistic expected lifetime.
Anyone replacing their panels after only 10 years has been conned.
Re: (Score:2)
My previous house had panels 15 years old which were still producing the same daily power when I sold the house as they were when I installed them. My current house has a system that looks even older, and works fine.
In some areas I guess you could get 10mm of dirt or something coating the panels, but here there's very heavy rain on random days in Winter which will wash your car away, let alone a bit of grime.
Best way to use the electricity? (Score:3)
I'm thinking that there is some cost-effective life improving way to use the free electricity beyond normal household operation and beyond buying an expensive battery system.
Distilling your own drinking water to remove the toxins and microplastics?
EV charging (Score:2)
One of the problems with EV charging in Australia is that the government has not incentivized the build out of parking level infrastructure that could be in use during the day. It has emphasized home charging, and fast charging, and while that is great for getting over range anxiety it only exacerbates the power duck curve. Australia is also an American style city development where the majority of the population have house and off street parking. EV adoption is going at an okay pace but the chargers where p
proposal - keep the bastards honest (Score:2)
its a proposal nothing more
Fix the grid (Score:2)
Solar causes a lot of fluctuation on the grid.
Add to that that those grids were set up to delivery power from one point to many user, not to have those users alternate between user and supplier.
"Here's some free power, please use it" does sound a lot better than "You need to use this electricity to prevent blackouts or other issues".
It's kind of like Iceland asking people to crank te heat with the windows open to help get rid of their excess thermal heating energy.
Let's hope home batteries are going to beco
Re: (Score:1)
There is this wonderful program called Community Batteries, so it is already happening [1]https://www.dcceew.gov.au/ener... [dcceew.gov.au]
[1] https://www.dcceew.gov.au/energy/renewable/community-batteries
Re: (Score:2)
Australia is fixing the grid, that has nothing to do with anything though. Load balancing is a far more cost effective solution than supply balancing by installing an insane amount of storage all over the place in a hope to deal with peak loads. And it only gets worse as more EVs are adopted which charge while the sun doesn't shine.
All in the name of Grid Stability (Score:2)
The big reason for this is we actually have enough roof top solar in Eastern Australia that on a clear summer day we produce too much for the grid to be stable, because they can't reduce the output coal fire power stations below a specific level. So currently what the energy wholesaler does is make the price negative which means the retailers who sell the roof top solar to the grid will have to pay them to take the power, so the retailers send a ripple command to smart metres to stop feeding back into the g
Re: (Score:2)
Thermal energy storage is a great way to manage this. You can automate it too, having your thermostat automatically adjust based on pricing.
A lot of people in the UK have been doing it for many decades, in fact. Cheap overnight electricity used to heat water and homes, with a signal to turn on and off sent over AM radio. I think it was turned off a few years ago due to the old valves needed to keep the transmitter going becoming unavailable, but these days it can be done via the internet.
Re: (Score:1)
Victoria and Tasmania have the lowest electricity prices in the Country, I get them being left out for now. Also Tassie relies a lot on Hydro so it has a much lower spike in supply in the middle of the day that SA, NSW and Qld get due to the massive amounts of solar.