00:00Overall, I can see the objective being absolutely a good one.
00:06That is that we've got all this extra electricity from our rooftops in the middle of the day.
00:10We don't seem to be able to use it properly, so why don't we just make it free?
00:13I think there's a huge amount of complexity in how we do that, and that's why I think
00:17the government's allowing a lot of time for consultation, because clearly there's not
00:21yet been a lot of consultation with the industry as to how this will actually work.
00:25Now, and to repeat there, this solar sharer scheme, it's introduced to consumers in
00:30parts of New South Wales, South-East Queensland, South Australia from July, moves to extend
00:35it beyond that, who would you say would benefit, or businesses for example, would benefit most
00:41from this?
00:42Well, I guess the idea is that by putting a battery in your home or your business, you
00:46can store the electricity in the middle of the day to use later.
00:49That's what a lot of people are doing.
00:51The alternative is to shift your electricity load from other parts of the day to the middle
00:56of the day, so those people who could do that will be the ones who will benefit.
01:00Not everyone will be able to do it, and not many businesses, I think, would be able to
01:03do that.
01:04And I'm not even sure that this is going to be offered to businesses anyway, actually.
01:08And how do smart meters fit in with this?
01:11Well, if you're going to have electricity at a certain price at a certain specific time
01:15of the day, which is what's being proposed here, then you need to have a smart meter
01:20that knows what the time of day is.
01:22Most meters we have today in many parts of Australia don't do that.
01:26So explain the current situation to us in the middle of the day when, as you say, there's
01:31more electricity being generated than is being used.
01:33Can you describe that and what this means for prices at the moment?
01:36Look, we've had huge uptake of rooftop solar in this country, almost the world leading,
01:41if not the world leading, uptake of rooftop solar.
01:44What that's meant, however, is that we're producing huge amounts of electricity in the middle of
01:48the day.
01:49People don't have, most people yet don't have batteries to store that electricity for later.
01:53And in addition to that, the grid becomes quite difficult to manage when you've got all
01:57this electricity in the middle of the day that we just don't need.
02:00And so then the network companies put restrictions on households exporting any electricity into the
02:06grid.
02:07Those people get annoyed about that because they're not being paid for that electricity.
02:10All sorts of complexities, mainly because really it's been so successful, we've been
02:15a victim of that success and we haven't really been able to manage this.
02:19And this is, I think, an attempt by the government to get on top of that problem.
02:24And would you say the expectation or hope is that by using that free energy in the middle
02:28of the day, there would be less used at other times of the day?
02:32What would be the plan?
02:34So, for example, would you be able to charge your electric vehicle in the middle of the
02:37day?
02:38Would you be able to set your washing machine to run in the middle of the day?
02:41Those sorts of things that maybe don't matter all that much when we can use them, I'm sure
02:46people will offer technologies that enable you to set all your appliances to do whatever
02:50you like.
02:51They're the sort of things that can be offered by this mechanism.
02:54I mean, I think the trick's going to be is what do we mean by free and how does the regulator
03:00or the governments make sure that the electricity companies don't just recover that money later
03:06in the day?
03:07How do we make sure we pay for the grid?
03:09All those sorts of things have to be thought through.
03:11But the idea that we could move load from the evening peak, for example, and nighttime peak
03:17demand period into the middle of the day would help flatten the overall electricity load.
03:24And that would be better for everybody if we could do that.
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