Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

NedS

theharebreaks said:

NedS said:

Netexporter said:

I gather solar will be compulsory on all new builds in future.

Although that would be progress, at least in helping reduce bills for homeowners, without battery storage it will only further exacerbate an already overstretched grid by increasing the midday over supply saturation. Without battery storage to shift some of that oversupply to offset/reduce the evening peak, it just makes things worse from a grid perspective. Solar and some form of BESS really need to go hand in hand, and how effective will solar be in reducing the energy bills of typical households once SEG rates fall off a cliff due to oversupply from all this additional solar. Solar makes far less sense without high SEG rates and/or battery storage.

In terms of the midday over supply.  Does anyone know if any systems exist, to say only charge batteries during the peak, while also meeting the house demand?  During the summer my battery would be fully charged by around 10am, with my system exporting the rest of the day.  I would be more than happy to have my battery charge say from midday onwards during the peak solar generation perdiod, as long as the features were available and it did not financially disadvantage me.  This would mean that during the early morning period all my generation is exporting (after meeting house demand) rather then charging my battery, with the battery being charged midday onwards, reducing the export to the grid during peak generation.  No idea what would be involved in terms of updates to inverter/battery systems to allow setup.

Yes, many batteries can be set up in this way. You would need to consult your documentation, but as you say such operation would net you the same amount but be more beneficial to the local grid.

If SEG payments change in the future to pay different amounts at different times of the day, it may become financially beneficial to store as much as you can during the day when export rates may be low and export later when rates are higher, such as is already the case with tariffs like Octopus Flux where they reward you for exporting when the grid most needs it.