Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

I remember some old tidbit about the American westward expansion, most railroad projects failed and went bankrupt and were sold for pennies on the dollar to the ultimate owners.

Something sad about that, really.

Starlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind.

The solar+battery revolution is doing for power what cell phones did for communications in the third world in the 90's and 2000's.

The biggest bottle neck to really solving the energy problem is now the price and fragility of high voltage DC long haul connections. Between those and solar you can have energy anywhere any time.

US fossil fuel subsidies: 757B$ [0] US solar subsidies: 7B$ [1]

[0]: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-proposals-to-red... [1]: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/fossil-fuels/rene...

A second solution is to overbuild so you have enough even in winter. Easier to do near the equator.

A third solution is to pipe it across timezones using HVDC and accept some level of efficiency loss and some geopolitical risks.

A fourth solution is to mix lots of wind, which performs better in winter and cancels out the lower insolation.

Realistically it's going to be all of the above, with the balance determined by local factors.

Power travels near the speed of light. In theory, the entire globe can be connected and countries with daylight can supply those at night in a cycle.

It's a thread about Australia not Austria.

They are not cheap. They are extremely efficient at manufacturing. The 201st panel look exactly the same as 1st one. Definitely no human labor involved. Huge well readable serial numbers placed on multiple places of the panel for camera based identification. Usually no single failing panel in shipping container. The bad ones were clearly damaged during transportation. This efficiency looks scary when I see output of my workplace in Germany.

Pretty sure the US has always been on the losing side of that, when calculated per capita.

China's numbers did rise quickly on that measure and is above the EU now I think but still way below the US.

And if you don't like per capita, then China with 4x as many people is still behind the US when you compare cumulative CO2.

If you ignore the pollution and environmental aspects, the main geopolitical reason is because the Straits of Malacca are very vulnerable in the event of a hot war and the overland pipelines from Russia and the middle east are insufficient to supply China. Getting rid of the oil dependency is the quickest way to autarchy. There are few other resources they can't produce themselves.

I am not familiar with Chinese politics or motivation, but I wonder if it's for the same arguments we have in the US, "save the world" vs. "the strong can do whatever they want". I am not sure China does for the sake of sustainability and environment. Yes I know the end result might be the same but are the reasons the same?

It's easier to understand that excuse when people realize that Americans tend to start with a conclusion then work their way backwards to support it. As in, 'we aren't doing much about climate change so here's why that's okay'.

Latest excuse: sustainable energy is a scam.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ending...

How is that even remotely related to this topic or to what OP said? Or do you just have a thing you want to rant about no matter the topic?

Man as someone paying a premium for power in the US, Australia is sounding really nice

In the UK, you can go on an agile tariff that does exactly this. I'm on one.

It's quite fun (and educational) with the kids to work out when to put the car on to charge, when to run the dryer etc, looking at the few days ahead forecasts.

Last month, we paid 11p per kWh on average, which is less than half what you'd pay on a standard tariff, and it's nice to be doing something good for the environment too. It's particularly satisfying to charge up the car when tariffs go negative.

Here's today's rates (actuals): https://agilebuddy.uk/latest/agile

Here's a forecast: https://prices.fly.dev/A/

You'd spend $1000 to save $0.20 on electricity every day?

> you can just turn solar off

Somebody has to go and turn it off, and having this person available overwhelms all of your operational costs.

Or alternatively, you need the infrastructure to do it automatically, what is currently expensive. (But there aren't intrinsic reasons for that being expensive, it's probably due to lack of scale.)

If it's just slightly negative, or just rarely so, it's not worth it.

This is the “smart grid” idea, right? We just haven’t fully explored it yet.

Something I firmly believe is that there’s a ton of low hanging fruit for timing our energy use better. It is just hidden by the desire to present a uniform energy price.

Like why not run our water heaters when power is cheap? Then if that became a thing, we might even be interested in larger water heater tanks. Batteries cost per volume, you only pay for the surface are of a metal tank!

They could also run their AC to below where their normal set point would be to “bank” some of the free electricity. I wonder if we’ll start seeing other more passive energy sinks… if you lived in a hot area and could rely on several hours of free electricity each day, it enables all sorts of interesting options like turning on a secondary cooling system to “charge” a large boulder or hunk of metal that you could then pass air over to cool your house when energy is expensive again.

More countries where there's a surplus, are advising people to charge or use electricity during the day.

If you're already down there, set up some geothermal!

We can repurpose the burrito tubes.

> And they actually charge you a fee if you generate. My brother in law unhooked from the grid because back feeding was charging him $100 a month. To give away power.

Which utility and plan is this? I'm not aware of any California residential rate plans that charge you for putting power back on the grid, much less $100/month.

That said, wholesale electricity rates are set by high frequency supply/demand markets.

Recent residential net metering rates are closely aligned with wholesale supply/demand based rates, so most utilities will compensate your brother in law near $0 when you are pushing power to the grid when wholesale rates are <= $0, because there are not enough buyers of the power he is generating.

He is using the grid as a battery, which comes at a cost.

This is of course changing as more grid connected storage comes online and creates demand for off peak electricity. In that case, you actually get paid for selling power back to the grid during high grid stress periods. I get paid a few hundred dollars a year in CA for doing that with my measly home backup battery.

A friend of mine is trying to build a house in a remote area of Southern California. He's planning to be completely "off-grid", generating power exclusively from solar. However, local regulators insist he hook up to the local electric utility. Further, in order to run the electrical cables to his property (from the substation), the local fire department insists that the brush is cleared around the new electrical cables. All in, he's looking at around $100K for something he doesn't even want or need. He said he's tried explaining this to local regulators, but they're not hearing it.

Oh yeah, yes, after paying all the money to get the electrical hookup he doesn't want or need - yeah, he's gonna be on the hook for around $100/month.

Is that a California thing? In OR it’s like ~$15 to interlink (or whatever the term is)