Retailers will be made to offer free power during the day in some states

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Energy retailers will be made to offer free power in the middle of the day, as the government seeks to spread the benefits of solar power. The ABC spoke with the Grattan Institute's Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate Change Tony Wood.

Transcript

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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