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Power Games: Who’s driving high power bills? (www.climatecouncil.org.au)

submitted 2 days ago by okwithmydecay@leminal.space to c/australia@aussie.zone

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Power bills have become a growing source of stress for Aussie families and businesses. Many families are forced to make impossible choices: three in 10 parents are struggling to afford basics like food, electricity and insurance. Government rebates provided some relief, but this was only a band-aid solution.

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[–] YeahToast@aussie.zone 0 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It's not quite that simple, if by near zero you mean after paying ~$25000 for a solar and battery combo. With feed in tarrifs being near 0cents now, I haven't crunched the numbers recently... But its really killed the payoff period for straight solar

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Your pricing information is a bit out of date; with current Government incentives a 10kW array and 50KWh batteries can be gotten for less than $10K.

True, general feed-in rates have tanked due to a glut in solar panels, but certainly providers do still offer generous rates for shoulder periods (around dawn and dusk) where you could potentially discharge part of your battery into the network (I think?).

But the real savings from having the batteries will eliminate your need to use power during evening peak times, eliminating the need for buying petrol if/when switching to an EV and having the ability to buffer energy from a rare sunny day in winter into free energy for the next 2-3 overcast days.

Depending on how aggressively you monitor and take advantage of market offers, and electrify your home - the pay-down period can be as low as a few years.

[–] YeahToast@aussie.zone 1 points 10 hours ago

Yeah, to be fair, having a quick look at prices they seemed to have dropped a lot (I paid about 10k for a 5kwh solar system about 5 years ago), although I'm not sure if I trust some of those batteries, they're looking far too cheap.

I suppose a lot of the calculation is also dependent on use. We use about 7-9kwh per day during winter (no gas heating) which is only roughly 2.50 a day, one of the bigger killers comes from the >1 dollar a day for connection.