Anyone watched the national market today?

[350RRC]

Wind was blowing down south, sun out up north............

regional wholesale prices in the negative for a lot of the afternoon in SA, Tas, & Vic.

Down to -1000 in SA at times.

ELJM: NEM Regional Generation Summary (http://nemlog.com.au/gen/region/)

Don't think I've seen it before on a weekday.

cheers, DL

[DiscoMick]

It is interesting to see solar and wind driving down power prices. Prices only rise when we can't draw on solar and wind and we are left at the mercy of the coal generators, who grab the chance to slug the market with the highest prices they can get away with.

[DiscoMick]

Another interesting point is that rooftop solar is now increasing so rapidly that it is doing a lot to limit the chance of summer blackouts. This is particularly true in Victoria where unreliable coal and gas plants are off line.
So, the more cheap renewable power we can get into the grid, the less likely blackouts are. That is because houses which generate enough power to meet their own needs during the day don't need to draw power during the day, and may actually be exporting surplus power to support the grid during the day, so that reduces the demand to draw power from the grid, and so takes pressure off the grid. That should mean industry can continue to operate, so it's good for the economy.

Energy market operator warns 1.3 million households could lose power this summer
Hot summer forecast could lead to blackouts in Victoria, energy operator warns - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-04/energy-regulator-warns-about-power-outages-this-summer/11762774)

[DiscoMick]

We're doing our bit. I'm currently getting quotes to double our solar from 3 to 6 kW and upgrade the inverter from 3-5 kW. We expect the cost to be repaid in 3-4 years. So it would set us up for lower living costs in retirement.
The good news is we've been told the 12 REC panels that were on the roof when we bought the house are high quality and maintain their performance for a long time, so we don't need to replace them. That's an advantage of using a company which uses high quality equipment.
I could name some other companies which are known in the industry for using cheap low quality panels whose performance quickly degrades, and then the companies refuse to honour the warranty.
If it's being advertised a lot, and it seems too cheap to be true, then it probably should be avoided.

[Ferret]

Another interesting point is that rooftop solar is now increasing so rapidly that it is doing a lot to limit the chance of summer blackouts. This is particularly true in Victoria where unreliable coal and gas plants are off line.

So, the more cheap renewable power we can get into the grid, the less likely blackouts are.

Simplistic as always and not WA's experience.

The rise of solar power is jeopardising the WA energy grid, and it's a lesson for all of Australia. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-01/rise-of-rooftop-solar-power-jeopardising-wa-energy-grid/11731452)

[W&KO]

It is interesting to see solar and wind driving down power prices. Prices only rise when we can't draw on solar and wind and we are left at the mercy of the coal generators, who grab the chance to slug the market with the highest prices they can get away with.

But when does the consumer see the reduced cost?

Pretty sure I’m on a fixed rate for my electricity......and I get charged the same price regardless of the price the provider is paying.

I don’t reckon we’ll see any significant change in pricing from the suppliers....as they still have to maintain and aging network.

Hopefully our next house in three or so years will be off grid 100%, this way I’ll be in control of how much I pay or how long the return of investment will be.

[p38arover]

Roof top solar? Pffft!

156089


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO1keE5yuNE

[incisor]

But when does the consumer see the reduced cost?

6kva of solar on the shed roof

my bills have gone from $700+per quarter to lasts months bill of $47

which was the lowest in ages... we were away for 3 weeks :p

it is usually around $80 / month these days

paying for it self in under 18 months

i'm happy and about to get my seniors discount making it even more affordable

[Eevo]

Another interesting point is that rooftop solar is now increasing so rapidly that it is doing a lot to limit the chance of summer blackouts. This is particularly true in Victoria where unreliable coal and gas plants are off line.
So, the more cheap renewable power we can get into the grid, the less likely blackouts are. That is because houses which generate enough power to meet their own needs during the day don't need to draw power during the day, and may actually be exporting surplus power to support the grid during the day, so that reduces the demand to draw power from the grid, and so takes pressure off the grid. That should mean industry can continue to operate, so it's good for the economy.

Energy market operator warns 1.3 million households could lose power this summer
Hot summer forecast could lead to blackouts in Victoria, energy operator warns - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-04/energy-regulator-warns-about-power-outages-this-summer/11762774)

how does:
rooftop solar is now increasing so rapidly that it is doing a lot to limit the chance of summer blackouts
equal
1.3 million households could lose power this summer
?

they sound like contradictory statements

[Eevo]

6kva of solar on the shed roof

my bills have gone from $700+per quarter to lasts months bill of $47

which was the lowest in ages... we were away for 3 weeks :p

it is usually around $80 / month these days

paying for it self in under 18 months

i'm happy and about to get my seniors discount making it even more affordable


lucky you. even with 5kw of solar in summer, i dont break even. largely due to supply charge.
in winter i got no hope of making solar meet my needs

[Eevo]

so far today:

Credit: $2.50 Debit: $2.51
Service Charge: $0.91 per day


Peak Export: 17.581kWh at $0.142/kWh
Peak Import: 6.046kWh at $0.416/kWh

[W&KO]

6kva of solar on the shed roof

my bills have gone from $700+per quarter to lasts months bill of $47

which was the lowest in ages... we were away for 3 weeks :p

it is usually around $80 / month these days

paying for it self in under 18 months

i'm happy and about to get my seniors discount making it even more affordable

Mick appears to be referring to commercial solar and wind farms I.e. the grid.....that energy suppliers purchase from and sell to the consumer. If this is the case they are the ones benefiting. Also I reckon we still pay the same amount per kw of power you still need to buy of the grid, sure it’s less but it’s not any cheaper, therefore all the new solar and wind farm haven’t impacted the pricing of power.

We have just signed up for a 6kw system for our house so I understand that side of things.

[4bee]

lucky you. even with 5kw of solar in summer, i dont break even. largely due to supply charge.
in winter i got no hope of making solar meet my needs

That bloody"Supply Charge " has to go. Having two meter boards here, each one from a different street which has been there since the initial connections were made here back in circa 1926.

AGL wanted to slug us 2 x Meter Charges prior to installing the Digital Meters, SA Power Networks said it wasn't necessary nor required by them, & so they had a barney which the SA Power Ombudsman sorted out in our favour.
I bet the shonky bastards will get back at us in other sneaky charges over time but at the mo all is good & we are making a good saving with 6kw of Solar plus we had a Power Diverter installed so any surplus juice is directed to our HWS & not back to the grid from where we would need to use it & pay through the nose, it being the heaviest user of power so it is like having Power Storage in a tank.

J Tarriff (off peak) has reduced markedly & so have our bills.[smilebigeye]

[350RRC]

Hi All,

I posted the link to the site because anyone can see what is going on in the real electricity market in the 5 eastern states live, in 5 minute brackets as the market operates.

If you use the tools up the top of the page there is an absolute wealth of other info organised in all sorts of ways.

If you go here:

NLOG: NEM Regional Quarterly Trading Price Summary (http://nemlog.com.au/nlog/nem-regional-quarterly-trading-price-summary/)

you can see that the average price the players in the market are getting for generation is around $80 per MWh, i.e. 8 cents per kWh.

!4 cents for home solar feed in isn't really that bad.

How the generators bid on the open market is here:

https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/default/files/content//Five-Minute-Settlement-directions-paper-fact-sheet-FINAL.PDF

Eevo got me interested in that.

The gap between the generation selling cost of $80 per MWh (8 cents per kWh) and the retail cost of something like 32 cents per kwh (on top of a supply charge) is 'interesting'.

The price in SA went negative again his arvo (-$1000 / MWh) and down to zip in Vic for a while, again on a weekday.

I was hoping someone in the know (not a 'believer') could elaborate on the implications.

As an adjunct.......... I rode my downhill / cross country MTB from near Bendigo across to Halls Gap 3 weeks ago (only bike I have, it was a great trip over 5 days) and there were a couple of rather large wind farms (Bulgana, etc) I saw that were ready to go but not connected on the way.

What are the implications when they're hooked up?

cheers, DL

[DiscoMick]

The power companies won't do you any favours, so don't expect any concessions from them, just because the price bids on the national market go low when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing.

Incisor's figures show the real world effect.

To talk in round figures, if you only get say 16 cents for putting your solar into the grid, and it costs you say 25 cents to buy power from the grid, then obviously you would maximise the amount of power you generate and use it to meet your own needs, export the surplus to the grid, minimise the amount you have to draw from the grid at night, and hope to overcome the connection charge.

Today I was talking with someone who put in a big solar system and said he is making a credit of $2000 a year on his power account. It can be done.

We're pricing doubling ours to 6kW with a 5 kW inverter and we already have solar hot water.

I have heard about people putting an 8kW inverter on a 6kW system. As I understand it, the inverter is set to only export the maximum 5 kW the power company will accept back into the grid.
But having an 8kW inverter means the panels can supply more than 5 kW for more hours of the day. So you might put 5 kW into the grid and also run the house for more hours of the day, hitting the peak earlier in the morning and maintaining it for later in the afternoon.
Interesting. Will be interested to see the quotes come in.

[350RRC]

I'm suggesting that the 'market' is changing very quickly, yet the post privatisation players are doing very well out of it no matter what happens.

DL

[Graeme]

I have heard about people putting an 8kW inverter on a 6kW system. As I understand it, the inverter is set to only export the maximum 5 kW the power company will accept back into the grid.
But having an 8kW inverter means the panels can supply more than 5 kW for more hours of the day.
An inverter can handle around 20% more in panels than the inverter's rated capacity (eg 5kW inverter with 6kw panels) but a larger capacity inverter cannot cause more power to be produced than the panels can generate, so using an 8kW inverter with 6kW panels wont produce any more than a 5kW inverter with those panels.

Our system has 8kW of panels attached to an 8.2kW inverter in case we want to increase panels to 10kW whereas a 6kW inverter would only have allowed 7kW of panels.

[AK83]

how does:
rooftop solar is now increasing so rapidly that it is doing a lot to limit the chance of summer blackouts
equal
1.3 million households could lose power this summer
?

they sound like contradictory statements

Not really.
I don't pretend to understand the grid and how it works and what's required to keep it working .. other than too much power and not enough usage makes it 'overload'.
So it doesn't overload, they shut it down(in some way) to prevent problems .. so shutting it down creates blackouts.
If they had the ability to stop the output from the home solar rooftop, so to regulate their supply it wouldn't be as big an issue.

So the obvious answer would be to have some mechanism whereby they can turn some apparatus on when the supply is very high .. as opposed to shutting down the grid.

Something obvious that comes to mind would be a high usage appliance such as a desal plant.
At times when the grid is being overloaded, you'd think that all that excess power could be used to desal, fill the required water storage facilities and then when supply drops, reduce the desal plants usage.
Maintains power stability and helps to keep water storage higher.

Just checked here in Vic, and out desal plant pimps into Cardinia .. not an overly large storage by any means. It's already at >80%, so in Vic this system could backfire.
Why they didn't think to supply Thompson instead is strange planning, as Thompson is about 5x larger. Also currently at 50%(our main storage). While all the other small dams are at 80-90%, Thompson is at 50% so overall Vic has 60% capacity.

Would have made far more sense to have the desal pump into Thompson, and when our supply levels start to ramp up, boost the desal plant to control grid stability.
There's 7Mw of power available at Thompson. (0 at Cardina!!)
Makes for a far better 'battery system' than stupid Tesla batteries!

So the statements aren't contradictory ... the 'planning' is up **** creek!

[DiscoMick]

Got the solar quote I was waiting on back and we're very happy with it so looks like we'll be going ahead with it.
Turns out, by coincidence, the installer actually installed the existing system on our house 8 years ago and knows it well. He assures us the existing panels are high quality by RCS, and the additional panels will also be by RCS, with a nice 25 year warranty, so we don't need to replace the existing panels, just add to them and replace the 3kW inverter with a 5 kW one.
He also says the wiring from the roof to the inverter is well able to handle an increase from 3kW to 6.5 so it does not need to be replaced. We will just have 2 strings of panels coming together on the roof and feeding down to the inverter.
Just deciding now if we will spend an extra $360 for frames to move the new panels further back and angle them to maximise winter sun. Sounds a good idea to me.

This story is also interesting, if you want air-con. Demand management is a big deal and Queensland seems to be leading the way - again.
Demand management also means demand can be shifted from night to the middle of the day when all that solar is going gang busters. For example, hot water heaters can heat at midday rather than at night. Industry can draw it's peak power during the day. Off peak is being replaced by solar peak.
Maximising the use of that free solar power during the day seems logical.

The power company will soon be able to turn down your air conditioner … and everyone will benefit
Power companies will soon be paying you to cut your energy use - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-05/electricity-smart-meters-offer-hope-for-reliable-clean-energy/11766766)

[DiscoMick]

An inverter can handle around 20% more in panels than the inverter's rated capacity (eg 5kW inverter with 6kw panels) but a larger capacity inverter cannot cause more power to be produced than the panels can generate, so using an 8kW inverter with 6kW panels wont produce any more than a 5kW inverter with those panels.

Our system has 8kW of panels attached to an 8.2kW inverter in case we want to increase panels to 10kW whereas a 6kW inverter would only have allowed 7kW of panels.Thanks. I probably explained it wrongly. I think he was saying that having a larger inverter than the 5kW maximum that can be put back into the grid means the solar can power the house plus put the 5kW maximum into the grid for more hours of the day than if the inverter was only 5kW. Maybe someone more technical can explain that better than me.

[DiscoMick]

So, in a totally non-technical way, the inverter can make 5 kW and it powers the house first and exports the surplus to the grid, with a maximum of 5kW accepted by the power grid.
Say the house needs 1kW to operate, leaving 4 kW to export, a total of 5 kW.
But if the inverter can make up to 8 kW, then it can send 1kW to power the house and 5 kW to the grid, a total of 6kW. So the householder gets the feed in tariff on 5kW, not 4 kW.
Anyway, I think that's right.

[Graeme]

Power will flow to the local appliances more easily than back through the transformer so the house always gets first dibs. If our kettle is switched on then there is a reduction in export power but if the sun is shining enough then the inverter will increase output up to the maximum capacity of the panels or the export limit, whichever occurs first while the kettle is consuming power, then reduce output after the kettle is switched off until export is reduced to the export limit.

However in times of cool weather and bright sunshine the lack of grid usage will cause grid voltage to rise to the trigger level where inverters start reducing output, effectively reducing export, until the grid voltage gets low enough assuming the inverter is appropriately configured. Ours has not been correctly configured since being installed in May last year even though some changes have been made as recently as 2 weeks ago when the derating voltage threshold was lowered to below the instant shut-down voltage at my request after the installers consulted the inverter technical support people (they had previously set it higher than any other voltage ensuring that derating would never occur) because the solar installers don't know how to configure it, so it shuts down every time an appliance is switched off due to being over-voltage on cool, sunny days. If only I knew the password I'd fix it as the installers don't want to make the necessary changes because they don't know what those parameters control, but hopefully it will be sorted in the next couple of weeks.