32
votes
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
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- Authors
- Jameson Dow, Fred Lambert, Micah Toll, Jo Borrás
- Published
- Nov 4 2025
- Word count
- 1366 words
This is really smart, IMO - a big cultural problem renewables face is switching everyone from conserving all Watts to conserving the scarce Watts. And people don't react to 'cheap' anywhere near as strongly as they do to free. If this makes people switch their usage habits, it could reduce the demand for off-peak generation, I.e. gas and batteries, thereby making more renewables possible in the short term.
Gosh this is such a good point. It's the same idea as a tax on something being less effective than a discount on something (in terms of policy making) -- the discount incentivizes more effectively.
This is cool of course but what I’m really itching for is electricity at a flat rate because maintaining the infrastructure is the cost instead of actually producing electricity.
Right now, both things cost, and rates are rising in the US as people use less electricity. The cost model is all screwed.
On our electric bill, the cost of actually generating the electricity is already quite a bit lower than the delivery charge.
That will probably never happen because storage costs are actually the biggest factor in a grid with renewable energy, and those costs vary a lot during the day. We will most likely see more of what is happening in Australia: very low prices (negative or nearly free) in the middle of the day, fairly high prices for the morning and evening peak.