Power Bill

[matho]

Hi Rowy, I'm happy to believe that mother nature can take care of Co2 regulation, question is how many species, including our own will survive the climate volatility. the vast majority of dinosaurs didnt survive whatever mother nature threw at them. global warming will only begin when the polar caps (the ice cubes in the drink) have pretty much melted, we may or may not see that in our lifetimes.

Co2 is a distraction from all the far worse pollutants that are not being properly regulated or taxed, I more want to see coal & oil use reduced for it's chemical impact than for it's Co2 production, organic farming & restoring the health of soil is carbon capture in itself as a byproduct. bring back the glass milk bottle etc.

I understand your poll arguement, humans are rather self destructive, they're happy to have a job in the coal mines in Gippsland even though there are markedly higher respitory & cancer illnesses in the area, 99% can be wrong. most probably why nobody ever agrees with me

Personally I'd like demand reduction over supply restriction; to see population reduction via the end of subsidised population growth, no govt assistance after the first child until we get back to a reasonable population of about a billion worldwide. As soon as I become world leader I will bring this in with a back up plan of forced sterilisation after first child if it isnt proving effective enough

I agree with you too father jack, I would like to see demand reduction too, we are seeing it in electricity use, as the price rises so has the base load dropped, unfortunately peak load is increasing, it used to be the winter peak that caused troubles but now it has been out stripped by the summer peak, the figure I have seen is for every $1500 worth of air conditioning installed costs $7500 worth of network improvement. Now I shouldn't be complaining as I work for an evil electricity distributor and the recent network improvement has kept me very busy.

 

[booargy]

What has that got to do with saving power?

If you have an inverter you generate power yes,

but all that thing is adding is a surge protector, it aint going to save/generate any more energy
And since it is only 87% efficient you will be wasting 13% of the power you generate

Solar panels produce DC current the grid is AC current. Inverters are used to convert DC current into AC current they don't generate power. All grid tie solar systems have an inverter. That means I can have solar power in my rented house without changing anything.
If you want a higher efficency pay more for your inverter. So for 10% more efficency You pay double triple I don't know. But these are cheap, easy to wire yourself and you can take it with you when you move.
These are a lot more efficient than a coal fired power station which are around 30% efficient before taking the grid into account. I don't give a shit about efficency Because solar panels will produce power for 30 years + with no maintenance apart from cleaning.

 

[Nick JD]

I think they should cover the coal power station cooling towers in solar panels just to shit the hippies.

 

[alfadog]

The reason you get 40c-50c/kWh for supplying solar on to the grid is that it reduces the peak demand for electricity from your supplier. As peak demand increases, electricity suppliers can pay upwards of $1kWh for the power and the mere 40c is pocket change for them. It also means that they do not have to upgrade transformers and the network (cables and circuit breakers) which is more than calling the local sparky around to rewire a light fitting. So in short I think solar does have its place in the Australia. If you are considering getting it, the sooner the better cause the price for supplying power to the grid will only decrease.

 

[Rowy]

Gents,
My last comment on the forum. I will argue with you individually through PM's because this forum should not be about politics and if we are talking CO2 we are talking politics. In the early 20th century there was a thing called phreneology. Look it up its about the shape of your head. In the mid 20th Century it was a nuclear holocaust. In the 70's it was an ice age (Which actually might be true). In the 90's it was the Y2K bug. Guess what none of this came true. Now even climate scientists can't explain things going like they are (Climategate 1 & 2). The IPCC reports have been discredited even on their own admissions. Big Oil cannot pour the money into the science that governments can and have. E.G. the Federals govts new green energy bank 13Billion! So I am faced with this I have three sons in their teens and early 20's. I sacrifice my guts out to get them to where they are. The people who I have despised all my life, the greenies and left, because having spent most iof my life in the country I have seen the destruction they create, job losses suicides, proud men reduced to nothing while the bludging arseholes get the dole and paid to protest. Anyway this is a rant I, like everone else hates polution. But don't bullshit me and say it's about one thing when It's about another. The pricks that are pushing this crap almost destoyed the Northern Australian cattle industry this year. Why because some left wing fuckwit university lecturer convinced them it was good. All those pricks have never seen an angry man or got their hands dirty in their lives. For fucks sake the Construction Forestry and Mining Employees Union is (CFMEU) is donating to the greens and there is not one of their employees that the greens don't want to put out of a job. Go Figure!

 

[Whiteferret]

The reason you get 40c-50c/kWh for supplying solar on to the grid is that it reduces the peak demand for electricity from your supplier. As peak demand increases, electricity suppliers can pay upwards of $1kWh for the power and the mere 40c is pocket change for them. It also means that they do not have to upgrade transformers and the network (cables and circuit breakers) which is more than calling the local sparky around to rewire a light fitting. So in short I think solar does have its place in the Australia. If you are considering getting it, the sooner the better cause the price for supplying power to the grid will only decrease.

sorry alfadog Im pretty sure the suppliers aren't goin to get 40c-50c for every dollar they spend. The rate of feed in tariff was dictated to them to entice people to "go solar, go green, do the right thing, make/save some money for yourself" so that it looks good to the voters.

Solar generation into the grid does NOT! reduce peak/base load. Peak/base load generation doesn't and can't follow whatever sun/wind/renewable input into it. It has to reflect the PEAK load taken from it ie industry and domestic load. You can't (physically) just stop/start ramp up/down a steam turbine generator in real time its just not possible. As our peak load stays the same/grows and our intermitent usage lowers our price per grid kW usage will go up. Sure you might be using less imported power but that reliabilaty of having X amount of kW at anyone time (ie at night when there is no solar or when the wind don't blow) will mean that you will have to pay more per kW and service fees(because the power generation costs the same whether anyone uses it or not). Until we can reliably/efficiantly store our PV, wind power or any other renewable source energy, there's no point talking about how marvelous our wonderful solar is.

 

[Nick JD]

Gents,
My last comment on the forum. I will argue with you individually through PM's because this forum should not be about politics and if we are talking CO2 we are talking politics. In the early 20th century there was a thing called phreneology. Look it up its about the shape of your head. In the mid 20th Century it was a nuclear holocaust. In the 70's it was an ice age (Which actually might be true). In the 90's it was the Y2K bug. Guess what none of this came true. Now even climate scientists can't explain things going like they are (Climategate 1 & 2). The IPCC reports have been discredited even on their own admissions. Big Oil cannot pour the money into the science that governments can and have. E.G. the Federals govts new green energy bank 13Billion! So I am faced with this I have three sons in their teens and early 20's. I sacrifice my guts out to get them to where they are. The people who I have despised all my life, the greenies and left, because having spent most iof my life in the country I have seen the destruction they create, job losses suicides, proud men reduced to nothing while the bludging arseholes get the dole and paid to protest. Anyway this is a rant I, like everone else hates polution. But don't bullshit me and say it's about one thing when It's about another. The pricks that are pushing this crap almost destoyed the Northern Australian cattle industry this year. Why because some left wing fuckwit university lecturer convinced them it was good. All those pricks have never seen an angry man or got their hands dirty in their lives. For fucks sake the Construction Forestry and Mining Employees Union is (CFMEU) is donating to the greens and there is not one of their employees that the greens don't want to put out of a job. Go Figure!

Global Warming is about global resource distribution, not about the temperature of the Earth.

Get some help - this stuff doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Enjoy your life, the sky isn't falling.

 

[QldKev]

Solar panels produce DC current the grid is AC current. Inverters are used to convert DC current into AC current they don't generate power. All grid tie solar systems have an inverter. That means I can have solar power in my rented house without changing anything.
If you want a higher efficency pay more for your inverter. So for 10% more efficency You pay double triple I don't know. But these are cheap, easy to wire yourself and you can take it with you when you move.
These are a lot more efficient than a coal fired power station which are around 30% efficient before taking the grid into account. I don't give a shit about efficency Because solar panels will produce power for 30 years + with no maintenance apart from cleaning.

Re-reading my post I don't think I was that clear.

They key is, as you mentioned in this post, the pic you posted is just the inverter part. Hence as you mentioned it hooks up to the back of wind/solar/water power generation. I was trying to say that the part by itself will not save power.

QldKev

 

[Airgead]

sorry alfadog Im pretty sure the suppliers aren't goin to get 40c-50c for every dollar they spend. The rate of feed in tariff was dictated to them to entice people to "go solar, go green, do the right thing, make/save some money for yourself" so that it looks good to the voters.

Solar generation into the grid does NOT! reduce peak/base load. Peak/base load generation doesn't and can't follow whatever sun/wind/renewable input into it. It has to reflect the PEAK load taken from it ie industry and domestic load. You can't (physically) just stop/start ramp up/down a steam turbine generator in real time its just not possible. As our peak load stays the same/grows and our intermitent usage lowers our price per grid kW usage will go up. Sure you might be using less imported power but that reliabilaty of having X amount of kW at anyone time (ie at night when there is no solar or when the wind don't blow) will mean that you will have to pay more per kW and service fees(because the power generation costs the same whether anyone uses it or not). Until we can reliably/efficiantly store our PV, wind power or any other renewable source energy, there's no point talking about how marvelous our wonderful solar is.

Actually it does. A lot. Peak demand is from midday to around 5pm. That matches exactly with peak output from solar. If you look at countries with high PV inputs (Germany is one and they have stuff all sunshine) their peak wholesale prices fell significantly as a result of solar.

The feed in tariff was indeed an inducement to go solar. One of the side benefits of increased solar input is a reduction in wholesale energy prices at peak times (not retail mind you) as there is less need to fire up expensive peaking gas plants.

Power generation isn't a fixwd cost whether its used or not. Well not entirely. in a baseload plant, yes it runs 24x7 at a fixed cost/kwh. A peaking plant though had very high fuel costs so they sit idle for most of the time and only generate when the wholesale price on the market goes up enough to make it worthwhile to switch them on. Since the price can peak to 40k/kwh at extreme peaks a peaking plant can bake 50% of its operating profit for a year on just 2 or 3 days.

The huge advantage of solar and wind is that their ongoing generating costs are zero. They can bid very low into the market and cut the peaking plants right out. The nett effect is to lower the wholesale peak prices.

Doesn't help us at the retail level much but its very good for the network.

And we can already store renewable energy. There are utility scale baseload solar thermal plants running in Spain with 14 hours of storage. They work on molten salt or compressed gas. Wind and solar pv can be stored via compressed gas at utility scale. The future is here already...

Cheers
Dave

 

[stux]

In the 90's it was the Y2K bug. Guess what none of this came true.

As one of the guys who helped *fix* the Y2K bug and thus stop the world from collapsing I take offence to this assertion when ever I see it.

In my operation we tested our system twice for rollover and it failed catastrophically twice. Third test was the real deal and it passed. The system was a national telecommunications network. Without the fixes the entire phone system (and the Internet) would've died and stayed dead in this country, that would've taken down the banks too.

Y2k being a non-event is testament to the amazing job that was done.

 

[black_labb]

Gents,
My last comment on the forum. I will argue with you individually through PM's because this forum should not be about politics and if we are talking CO2 we are talking politics. In the early 20th century there was a thing called phreneology. Look it up its about the shape of your head. In the mid 20th Century it was a nuclear holocaust. In the 70's it was an ice age (Which actually might be true). In the 90's it was the Y2K bug. Guess what none of this came true. Now even climate scientists can't explain things going like they are (Climategate 1 & 2). The IPCC reports have been discredited even on their own admissions. Big Oil cannot pour the money into the science that governments can and have. E.G. the Federals govts new green energy bank 13Billion! So I am faced with this I have three sons in their teens and early 20's. I sacrifice my guts out to get them to where they are. The people who I have despised all my life, the greenies and left, because having spent most iof my life in the country I have seen the destruction they create, job losses suicides, proud men reduced to nothing while the bludging arseholes get the dole and paid to protest. Anyway this is a rant I, like everone else hates polution. But don't bullshit me and say it's about one thing when It's about another. The pricks that are pushing this crap almost destoyed the Northern Australian cattle industry this year. Why because some left wing fuckwit university lecturer convinced them it was good. All those pricks have never seen an angry man or got their hands dirty in their lives. For fucks sake the Construction Forestry and Mining Employees Union is (CFMEU) is donating to the greens and there is not one of their employees that the greens don't want to put out of a job. Go Figure!

You've held a job and worked hard at it making you an expert. Does it frighten you that if they are right these greenies could be doing as much for your 3 sons' future as you have yourself? I agree that many greens can be fucked in their methods. They seem about as interested in making themselves into an elitist club above all others as they are about actually being helpful to the environment. Their inability to communicate effectively with 90% of the population rivals someone reading passages out of the bible outside of a horehouse. That doesn't mean that coal fired power plants are the way of the future. I'd love to see more solar and get some cars out of those crawling carparks while they spew fumes without going much faster than a quick walk.

You should probably detach your political views from things like solar power, it isn't helping you and you've come across like a bit of an idiot with that rant.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

yeah, pretty sure Rowy is suffering from paranoid delusions. I'm surprised he didn't bring up "chem trails".

 

[Airgead]

Peace, love and mung beans dudes.

Now. About those power bills that we weer talking about...

 

[Liam_snorkel]

yeah. by memory my last bill was about $400 for the quarter.

2 people
2 fridges + fermenting fridge
washing machine + dryer a couple of times a week
laptops, TV etc
aircon for a couple of hours a day during summer
about 16 down lights
stove is gas


Looking to buy the place I'm currently in at the end of the year, first thing on the list of improvements will be solar panels on the roof.

 

[Airgead]

yeah. by memory my last bill was about $400 for the quarter.

2 people
2 fridges + fermenting fridge
washing machine + dryer a couple of times a week
laptops, TV etc
aircon for a couple of hours a day during summer
about 16 down lights
stove is gas


Looking to buy the place I'm currently in at the end of the year, first thing on the list of improvements will be solar panels on the roof.

If you're on electric hot water then using the roof space fro solar water will reduce your power consumption far more cheaply than solar PV. If you already have efficient hot water then consider PV.

Solar hot water is the best thing you can do with your roof space for reducing power demand.

Cheers
Dave

Edit - oh yeah... and the absolute cheapest is installing an outdoor clothes line and some sort of outdoor drying that can be used in wet weather. Dryers use an absolute metric crapload of power.

 

[Brewer_010]

Gents,
My last comment on the forum. I will argue with you individually through PM's because this forum should not be about politics and if we are talking CO2 we are talking politics. In the early 20th century there was a thing called phreneology. Look it up its about the shape of your head. In the mid 20th Century it was a nuclear holocaust. In the 70's it was an ice age (Which actually might be true). In the 90's it was the Y2K bug. Guess what none of this came true. Now even climate scientists can't explain things going like they are (Climategate 1 & 2). The IPCC reports have been discredited even on their own admissions. Big Oil cannot pour the money into the science that governments can and have. E.G. the Federals govts new green energy bank 13Billion! So I am faced with this I have three sons in their teens and early 20's. I sacrifice my guts out to get them to where they are. The people who I have despised all my life, the greenies and left, because having spent most iof my life in the country I have seen the destruction they create, job losses suicides, proud men reduced to nothing while the bludging arseholes get the dole and paid to protest. Anyway this is a rant I, like everone else hates polution. But don't bullshit me and say it's about one thing when It's about another. The pricks that are pushing this crap almost destoyed the Northern Australian cattle industry this year. Why because some left wing fuckwit university lecturer convinced them it was good. All those pricks have never seen an angry man or got their hands dirty in their lives. For fucks sake the Construction Forestry and Mining Employees Union is (CFMEU) is donating to the greens and there is not one of their employees that the greens don't want to put out of a job. Go Figure!

While you were so busy ranting you forgot that CFMEU is actually construction forestry mining and ENERGY union

If you knew anything about science and how scientists approach their work as a group, you would know you're talking out your arse about climate science. These same scientists help farmers grow more crops more efficiently and help your cows and sheep stay healthy. Also, they help YOU when you get sick or injured. Its very easy to be a blanket cynic, why not go and learn a bit more about climate science before making offhand statements that they dont know what they're on about (just because YOU dont know what they're on about).

I know loads of uni lecturers who get their hands dirty btw. Soil scientists, geologists, vets, the list goes on. Some even "work" while they put themselves through uni or getting their PhD.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

If you're on electric hot water then using the roof space fro solar water will reduce your power consumption far more cheaply than solar PV. If you already have efficient hot water then consider PV.

Solar hot water is the best thing you can do with your roof space for reducing power demand.

Cheers
Dave

Edit - oh yeah... and the absolute cheapest is installing an outdoor clothes line and some sort of outdoor drying that can be used in wet weather. Dryers use an absolute metric crapload of power.

will look into solar hot water.

I'd like to be putting the money we would be spending on electricity into paying off a PV system. I'm just thinking in 5 years time, electricity prices may have doubled. I don't want to be spending over 3 grand a year on electricity if I can avoid it.

We use the clothes line occasionally (maybe 1-2 times a fortnight), but we're both very busy (and I'm lazy) so it's a matter of convenience.

 

[Airgead]

will look into solar hot water.

I'd like to be putting the money we would be spending on electricity into paying off a PV system. I'm just thinking in 5 years time, electricity prices may have doubled. I don't want to be spending over 3 grand a year on electricity if I can avoid it.

We use the clothes line occasionally (maybe 1-2 times a fortnight), but we're both very busy (and I'm lazy) so it's a matter of convenience.

Each time you use the dryer, drop 50c into a jar... That''s about what it costs each time you dry a load of washing. If you are on time of day metering and its a peak time, drop in a dollar...

Cheers
Dave

 

[stux]

Each time you use the dryer, drop 50c into a jar... That''s about what it costs each time you dry a load of washing. If you are on time of day metering and its a peak time, drop in a dollar...

Cheers
Dave

And with children, living in the mountains, when if its not raining its usually foggy, with cloth nappies... that drier is costing us a BOMB!!! I think its our major electrical expense

Already got Solar+Gas Instantaneous Hotwater, Gas Cooking, Gas Heating, and Solar PV. And Solar pool heating

 

[seamad]

Live on a pretty wet mountain too.
Power under $300 a quarter.
Gas cooktop elec oven and gas hot water.
Dad and i built the place, put insulation in roof and western walls. Have aircon in main bedroom only and wood fire.
Building 12.5 m sail cat in backyard 5 days per week. Couple of fans air compressor tools etc.

Dont have a clothes drier, never have. With a 5&3 yo load of washing daily. If its raining have second portable line either on back verandah or lately with so much rain use a portable dehumidifyer in spare bedroom, works a treat. Have to use the dehumid a lot lately as everything going mouldy.