Other industry participants, who were not authorised to comment because of their work advising the government, said the scheme had created significant waste.
They pointed out that most households were only using about 10 kilowatt hours of power overnight and would struggle to fill a system with five times as much storage.
what are they talking about…
the average solar system is now 10kw’s, I have 6.6kw and can do 35kw in a day, on top of that what happens if you have multiple days of low sunlight? or in winter when you want the sun that does come through to last as long as possible…
you want oversized batteries, they last longer as there’s less wear on them and the utility they offer (self-consumption) is increased, on top of this you get an added benefit where you can join a VPP and export your excess unneeded energy at night helping reduce your bills, like with Globird, Flowpower, AGL, Origin battery plans etc
One critic said: “You end up with a lot of batteries that will never fill up, just sitting there empty forever, paid for by the Australian taxpayer.”
The average solar system (10kw) can easily fill up a 50kw battery on a sunny day.
Why didn’t the ABC take 5 seconds to ask someone with a big battery what their usage is like? Cmon ABC you’re better than this
You can also just discharge the battery to the grid if you have excess (or soak up more from the cheap middle of the day grid power, although presumably there are charge rate limitations).
The misinformation is being spread on purpose. The more people adopt solar and their own batteries the less they rely on the power companies and the less money the power companies can make
The power companies primarily provide a grid, high availability and secondarily charge for power (which should be rapidly headed towards zero given renewable uptake). FWIW, I think the grid is a natural monopoly and should never have been privatized, and certainly the power companies are doing the the bare minimum of maintenance and bugger all expansion to cope with solar input and EV output. If they leave it get bad enough the Government will have to step in and do it for them, pure profit.
The real threat to power companies is people with a big battery have the option to go fuck it, I’m getting a genset and some diesel and disconnecting, which means they no longer have the entire population over a barrel and might have to provide some value. The real solution is to cut the Gordian knot and re-nationailze the whole grid (instead of statewide as it was), which will also be easier with the weaker bargaining position they have with a large battery population.
I’m getting a genset and some diesel and disconnecting
Worth looking into Ecoflows, I know they use them in Ukraine for portable power
Even a 4kw with solar will do >50% of your daily power needs and added bonus you don’t have all the noise and fumes that come with a diesel generator, save that for emergencies
Oh FFS. This is actually I think what the government HOPED would happen: rapid uptake of individuals investing MASSIVELY to shift demand. Those massive batteries are not going to sit empty, and the concerns of parts not rated for high speed charging and discharging, ummm… EVs have been doing this for ages… high speed DC charging is over 100 years old - early EV DC charging existed before AC won (and will eventually lose again, amusingly enough).
The more resilient the power networks, the better for everyone, and the faster many distributed batteries are deployed, the better. Though I think the future of power grid is ultimately doomed, this buys us some time.
At least the Spam phone calls will stop…
The overhaul needs to include an audit of the companies making claims.
If they engaged in unsolicited phone calls to people on the Do Not Call list, they should have the subsidies repatriated back into the program.
I think the DNC-ignoring callers are likely scammers imitating the real installers trying to get card numbers. If you paid one, you’d lose your money and not get the system.
Scammers? Yes. Not part of the program? No.
Just like the Solar Panel Scheme, LED Scheme and Insulation Scheme before them, I am confident that there are opportunistic companies rorting the system with barely adequate product and unqualified labour.
Just like the serving politicians running the NDIS scam.
Yeah installers are massively busy at the moment, they’re not going to be cold calling looking for work, they’ve got shitloads already
