Gas V Electric Costs

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But.... hang on. How can FITs be maintained at a lower rate than buy back in a capitalist economy? Surely market competition will see an equilibrium of price if there is no Govt intervention?

If you are paid less for your power than what I can buy it for, can we split the difference and I'll buy it from you? You'll get more for yours and I'll pay less for mine! Beauty.
 
Looking at Solar only as a source of energy is pretty short sighted.

Anyone for a wind turbine ??

It's a bit blowy in Melbourne today and has been cloudy/pissing down on and off. With a reasonable wind turbine, I could have been putting anywhere from .5-4kW/hr into the grid while my 1.5kW Solar array might have struggled to put in .2-.4kW.

And best of all... I can still be generating at night.

One day I hope to only have to pay the charge for supply infrastructure and effectively use the grid as a backup incase my renewable systems are offline for some reason.

I see this going the same way the water companies went... "Hey everyone.. get a water tank/grey water thingy etc and it will help save our water" Which was soon followed by massive hikes in pricing because the consumption of their product went down (less revenue) but their fixed costs remained the same.

With electricity I can see a similar thing happening as people consume less but their fixed costs stay or even rise due to things like carbon tax etc then their costs go up and their ability to pay you high feed in tarrifs further erodes their profitability.

A bit of a vicious circle I guess.

If you can become more (or even completely) self reliant for the basic utilities then questions of what fuel source is most economical to use for brewing becomes a question of.. do I have enough resources (besides water, grain, hops, yeast) to run my brewery ?

I'm no tree hugging, basket weaving, tie dye wearing greenie but I have water tanks and solar panels and grey water for the garden and someday will have a wind turbine just so I can have more money to buy important stuff..... like brewhouse bling :)


Duck
 
I'm no tree hugging, basket weaving, tie dye wearing greenie but I have water tanks and solar panels and grey water for the garden and someday will have a wind turbine just so I can have more money to buy important stuff..... like brewhouse bling :)

More power to you Duck (pun intended).

My aim is to be as self reliant for energy and water as possible. Main reason is I hate the utility companies and their price gouging practices. A close second is wanting to have a smaller environmental footprint.

I have a mate in Tasmania who is building a new property that incorporates his vineyards and winery. He has solar + wind and enormous rainwater tanks. His rainwater tanks are bigger than the house he's building.
 
If you can brew out of peak hours between 5pm and 9pm you can hook up the brew system to a tariff 33 or similar and save around 60% on power costs.
 

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