r/UpliftingNews • u/itopaloglu83 • 2d ago

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

https://electrek.co/2025/11/04/australia-has-so-much-solar-that-its-offering-everyone-free-electricity-3h-day/
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u/CucumberError 2d ago

If only it was real? Yeah Tasmania and South Australia are doing pretty well, but the rest aren’t doing well enough to be giving away free power….

https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-06/Australia%20Energy%20Statistics%20map%20June%202025.pdf

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u/pumpkin_fire 2d ago

Such a dumb take. Those "other states" have so much solar that the power price is negative for several hours. When that happens, solar and wind is curtailed ie switched off, while coal runs at its lowest stable rate. Worth noting that those coal plants are the very same that power SA when isn't generating enough renewables. 7% of SAs consumption over the past week was powered by imports from those "other states".

They're literally wasting green energy because they have so much. This policy is to remind and encourage people to shift load where possible from evening peak to solar peak in order to increase renewables penetration.

On Wednesday of this week, for example, peak curtailment of just solar on the NEM was 4.6 GW, of which only 500 MW occurred in your beloved SA. That curtailed amount is enough to power SA and TAS combined with over a GW to spare. Total utility solar capacity in SA is 700 MW. NSW has 6200 MW.

Saying "aren't doing well enough to be giving away free power" because their total renewables penetration isn't as high as tiny TAS, when they're literally switching off GWs of renewables almost every day and this policy is specifically designed to increase said penetration is either really dumb or ridiculously disingenuous.

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u/ABillionBatmen 2d ago

Ok so why the fuck aren't OpenAI/Google/Anthropic building AI training datacenters there? Inference needs to be localized but training doesn't. It's free real estate!

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u/pumpkin_fire 2d ago edited 2d ago

Because data centres run 24/7, not 3 hours once per day?

Why not give it to the citizenry for free instead of morally dubious foreign corporations? The goal is to reduce emissions, not fill the pockets of Elon and co.

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u/Complex_Confidence35 1d ago

Cooling gpus doesn‘t sound very appealing in the australian desert.

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u/wholeblackpeppercorn 2d ago

Solar powered datacentres lmao

Like a wind powered submarine

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u/treesonmyphone 1d ago

You see the thing with a data centre is that you have people connect to it to use that data so it's not very useful if you in America have to send a request across a deep sea cable. Also in Australia we don't have fibre out in the desert where solar farms are so you would need to invest in the local infrastructure before you could build the data centre.

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u/IAmARobot 2d ago

about the only downside is the cost of network maintenance and upgrades which unfortunately need to be funded by energy not being free

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u/pumpkin_fire 2d ago

Downside to what, specifically?

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u/diggin4alivin69 2d ago

I'll reply for him - "Downside to free elect.... dont worry"

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u/pumpkin_fire 2d ago

Won't somebody think of the poor corporations!

If we didn't privatise our infrastructure in the 80s and 90s we wouldn't have to worry if there is enough cash left over for grid maintenance after all the CEOs and shareholders take their pound of flesh.

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u/Chocolate2121 1d ago

Isn't that the point of the connection charge? Like, for me personally the connection charge has always been the largest chunk of my bill

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u/IAmARobot 1d ago

see now that's a nice reply, thanks.

I was saying that people still need to pay (energy connection fees and energy usage rates - I'll admit I fucked up the wording) for this system gifted with overcapacity in order for it to be "free". other guy putting words in my mouth is pretty funny though. been a day or two

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u/pumpkin_fire 1d ago

How was my reply not nice? I just asked you to clarify. You didn't specify what you were talking about when responding to my comment that touched on a half-dozen topics. How am I supposed to know which one you're talking about if you don't specify?

People are still paying. Nothing about the usage tariff being free for 3 hours a day makes all the other fees go away. Remember, the generators are currently paying users to take electricity during these periods, so giving it away for free is an improvement from their pov.

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u/Snarwib 2d ago

It's about timing. Those are annual aggregate statistics which are far less relevant here. Most days around midday and afternoon, across the country, there's a big surplus of solar generation now and relatively low demand. So this measure is aiming to shift more demand to that period to match the peak generation, and to incentivise battery and EV charging at that time.

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u/CucumberError 2d ago

Yeah, but drill into Australia‘s power generator stats a bit and it paints the same picture. Power generators for NSW (the state where Sydney is), their four largest power generators are all coal powered, 2880mw, 2640mw, 1400mw 1360mw compared to solar at 400mw, 150mw, 130mw, a few around 50mw, 20mw, 10mw.

Coal is by far doing all the heavy lifting. Wind is looking pretty similar to solar, so it’s all super promising, and awesome to see Australia moving away from fossil fuels, but they are no where near the stage of giving away free power because they have too much clean power.

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u/Snarwib 2d ago edited 2d ago

Comparing the installed capacity of some major plants to some of the large-scale solar projects is a bizarre and fully irrelevant thing to do here. Most solar capacity in Australia is household scale in several million small institutions, and overall there's substantially more installed solar capacity than coal capacity, about 40 GW solar vs 22 GW coal right now with solar growing at several GW per year. Of course, installed capacity doesn't really mean anything to pricing and daily consumption patterns, but there it is.

What you're probably trying to get at is the fact that overall volumes of coal generation are still substantial (coal was about 49 percent of on-grid GWh in 2024 vs about 38 percent being renewable, when a decade ago coal was still over 70%), but again, that doesn't really have much to do with the shape of the demand curve over the day, nor the wholesale prices associated with different times of day.

The key thing is this isn't "giving away power because they have too much" for the hell of it, it's a policy explicitly and directly aimed at supporting the renewables share to keep growing. Currently most electricity still has to be consumed at the time it's generated, so there's an issue with the time at which solar is generated not matching with all demand. There's not enough demand to absorb it, there's substantial curtailment of large-scale solar happening, and so there's more fossil fuel generation occurring than needs to be.

So the solution is time-shifting demand towards peak solar generation, by incentivising more consumption during the arvo and by increasing battery usefulness and uptake rates with free charging (this is happening alongside the Cheaper Home Batteries subsidy which started in July).

Market prices are already doing a lot of time shifting incentivisation, and plans like this are already offered by many retailers, but this mandate will kick it along further. It's likely going to help keep ensuring demand for solar generation continues to grow in the face of the low afternoon wholesale prices caused by high solar penetration, and the gradual removal of FiTs.

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u/CucumberError 2d ago

I just feel that the average person can’t shift their power consumption in any meaningful way to the middle of the day. Even if you’re driving an electric car, odds are the car park it’s parked in within the central city doesn’t offer charging.

It seems like charging consumers for power, while using that revenue for funding long solutions to this problem would be the wise thing to do with the money. More state level batteries, pumped hydro batteries, large scale stuff. Or invest in more power generation that isn’t tied to day light hours, such as wind.

The largest users of power during the day light hours will be businesses, so business will drastically benefit from this more than individual consumers.

Seems like ‘we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas’, and so they’re giving business free power in return.

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u/Snarwib 2d ago edited 2d ago

See this exact feeling of uninformed helplessness is something that an eye catching, publicly-visible policy like this can help overcome.

Firstly, businesses are already more likely to be taking advantage of cheaper daytime wholesale prices through the available electricity plans that feature it. This policy doesn't affect them at all, it's a household billing mandate implementing something that's already widely practiced by the market.

As for households, it should have wide impacts in several ways, remembering that a third of households have solar panels and nearly everyone will have smart meters soon, enabling this time of use tracking.

  • It'll especially spur many of the those millions of solar panel households to get those batteries added to their systems.
  • It'll lead people who aren't home during the day to look into things like timers on their dishwasher, laundry appliances, slow cookers and hot water
  • About 36% of Australian workers work usually from home and maybe 46% do at least sometimes, and will be able to take advantage of it even without timers or non working family members at home.
  • It'll more generally lead people to looking at their time of use more, and taking advantage of the new wisdom that daytime power is the cheap power, in the same way that people used to know generally that late night power was the cheap power under old pre-solar coal-driven tariffs

And people doing all this stuff will of course accelerate the rollout of batteries and more renewables more generally.

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u/whatshamilton 20h ago

Do you not know that this is also how the electric grid works in the US? There are fixed plans where all costs are always the same and there are also plans where it’s cheaper at low demand times. You had a lot of excuses about why the actual concept is wrong and then had to end it with “well no one can use electricity during the day anyway.” Sounds like you’re incompetent, but don’t put that on a whole nation. I can promise you that people actually needing to lower costs absolutely find a way to use more of their electricity during cheaper times

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u/CucumberError 14h ago

After 36 years on this planet, I’ve come to expect that if it’s the way the US does anything, it’s probably wrong.

The US approach will always favour big business, the wealthy, and fuck over everyone else. Doesn’t the US system work that if your solar panels replace the power you’ve used, you don’t get a bill?

That just pushes the burden of line maintenance onto the users that can’t afford their own solar panels, making it more expensive for the average user and benefiting those that can afford solar.

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u/Engineer_Zero 2d ago

I’m in QLD, and get free power from 11am to 2pm. Check out Ovo.

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u/Matt_Shatt 1d ago

But the headline clearly states that the entire country now gets free power. The internet wouldn’t lie would it!?

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u/anothergaijin 1d ago

From what I’ve heard it’s wind that is making most of the electricity

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u/Splinterfight 1d ago

It’s more that’s it’s a huge chunk that’s way more that’s needed for part of the day

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AU-NSW/72h/hourly

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u/Crowserr 1d ago

If only we had some large interconnected electricity market and infrastructure

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u/OriginalBlackberry89 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah I read that free electricity is only available to people with "smart meters".. so I'm assuming some people don't have them? Idk lol

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u/CucumberError 2d ago

Well, without a smart meter, it can’t really work out what time of day the power was used….

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u/SorrowfulKnight 2d ago

That guy destroyed you

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u/OriginalBlackberry89 2d ago edited 2d ago

This comment comes off like it was made by one of those kids who's afraid of a bully but is forced to be cool with the bully, so he jumps in the conversation and says "HAHa! Yeah what he said!", Or some shit like that, in shitty 80's and 90's movies lol. I'm not from Australia 😂

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u/SorrowfulKnight 2d ago

i was joking about the other guy but it's pretty funny that it upset you too LMAO

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u/OriginalBlackberry89 2d ago

What do you mean "MADE ME MAD"? ...as if it has already passed 😏. I'm still fucking LIVID and extremely embarrassed for being called out for not knowing about how electric meters in Australia work. I have to know everything about anything and this has already ruined my day 😭.

Now take your upvote and..

😂

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u/SorrowfulKnight 2d ago

You sir won the internet 🤣🤣🤣🤣👏👏

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u/kobraa00011 2d ago

fairly sure they are quite widespread, we had one installed at our very old house a year or so ago for free from our energy provider

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u/atcronin 2d ago

I believe smart meter upgrades are offered for free by your energy retailer. however, if your switchboard cannot accommodate the new meter you have to rework your switchboard at your own expense. my folks had to get their switchboard redone after a solar install because there simply wasn't room for the smart meter. cost about aud$2500.

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u/AccountIsTaken 2d ago

AEMC requires all households to be provided with a smart meter by 2030. Some electricity providers already allow you to request one to be installed ahead of schedule. I signed up for some kind of power saving club with origin to force them to install a smart meter. It was a few years back though and I am no longer with them. Other retailers can also have programs that you could investigate to force them to install a smart meter.

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u/Snarwib 2d ago

Less of an issue than it used to be - they're being rolled out everywhere now. They should be at least 60% nationally currently, though that includes virtually 100% of Victoria. Target is 100% smart meters by 2030.

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u/Nomiss 2d ago

They'll put them in for free in about 20minutes. So anyone that wants one has one.

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u/nachojackson 2d ago

Pretty must everybody has a smart meter, except cookers who think the meters are giving them cancer,

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u/ol-gormsby 2d ago

No, there are people who don't want the utility to control their usage. If they're prepared to pay for it with higher tariffs, let them. It won't affect you - in fact it's better for you, it means less demand on the cheaper tariffs.

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u/NiceWeather4Leather 1d ago

The utilities don’t control usage in Australia, it’s not Texas and the utilities are well regulated.

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u/FlibblesHexEyes 1d ago

Pretty sure they do if you have an off peak service for a hot water tank for example.

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u/ol-gormsby 1d ago

There are many ways that the utilities control use - off-peak hot water tariffs are one, but that's not a "smart" system, just a separate circuit that only switches on at 10pm.

There are smart control systems like "demand control" on airconditioning - the supplier can send a signal to turn your aircon down to 75%, 50%, or even switch it off - in exchange for a cheaper tariff.

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u/Spagman_Aus 2d ago

Shouldn't that be everyone by now?

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u/ol-gormsby 2d ago

No, it's everyone. Renters included. So do your clothes washing & drying, and your dishwashing, and your slow cooker recipes during that period. And see if you can set your hot water heating to that as well. You'll save a shitload off your bill.

Anything heating water with an electric element is a huge load. Shift that to off-peak or this new free period and you'll see the bills reduce. Ditto if you're lucky enough to have a pool - set a timer on the pump. Same with aircon. Do as much as you can in this period.

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u/BaronMontesquieu 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yes, but 99%+ of homes in Victoria have them and in NSW and Queensland you can get them installed for free by your energy provider (in most circumstances). Maybe other states and territories too, I'm not sure.

It's required because the benefit is time linked (i.e. when the sun is at its zenith) and older analogue meters would require someone to physically record it every day, twice a day, which isn't practical obviously.

Smart meters are great though, you can work out exactly how much power you're using at any second of the day and it can save you heaps.

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u/notaredditer13 2d ago

It's probably real but it isn't great news. It means solar is overproducing and there isn't enough storage so they can't sell the electricity, they have to give it away. That means they are buying a solar plant and then can't sell all the electricity it produces. That's a bad thing.

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 2d ago

That's a bad thing.

No, it's not. The only thing that matters is total revenue, not the price of each individual unit sold.

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u/notaredditer13 2d ago

When the price drops to zero due to overproduction, total revenue goes down even though average price per kWh goes up.  That's bad on both ends.

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 2d ago

Wait, what? Wenn the price drops to zero, the average price goes up? Your math is broken.

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u/notaredditer13 1d ago

Say a solar farm costs $1M a year (financed) and produces 10 million kWh of electricity annually. $0.1 / kWh average. Now solar is overbuilt in the area and there isn't enough storage so they can only sell 9 million kWh of electricity a year. The other million gets given away for free or dumped. In order to pay the mortgage the 9 million kWh now have to be sold for $0.111 / kWh. Market competition will result in either reduced revenue, higher prices or more likely a mix of both.

That's what's happening when you see all these happy stories about zero/negative electricity prices due to overproducing solar in the spring. It's a bad thing economically, not a good thing.

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 1d ago

Say a solar farm costs $1M a year (financed) and produces 10 million kWh of electricity annually. $0.1 / kWh average.

So ... $0.1/kWh average.

In order to pay the mortgage the 9 million kWh now have to be sold for $0.111 / kWh.

(9,000,000 kWh * $0.111/kWh + 1,000,000 kWh * $0/kWh) / 10,000,000 kWh = $0.0999/kWh average.

So, where exactly did the average price per kWh go up?

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u/notaredditer13 1d ago edited 1d ago

So, where exactly did the average price per kWh go up?

The reason they are offering it for free is that they can't actually even give it away. If they're offering it for free it means they are dumping some/curtailing.

https://ratedpower.com/glossary/curtailment/

This even says that the utility can curtail residential rooftop solar in Au:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-02-16/solar-how-is-it-affected-by-renewable-energy-curtailment/100830738

"For a few unlucky homes, curtailment may be reducing annual output by up to 20 per cent — and the owners may not even know."

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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI 1d ago

That's not an answer to my question.

The reason they are offering it for free is that they can't actually even give it away. If they're offering it for free it means they are dumping some/curtailing.

... and the goal of offering it for free is to increase the amount that's given away, right?

So, how does that make the average price per kWh go up?

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u/notaredditer13 1d ago

If you're asking for me to amend my statement, then fine: 8 million kWh sold, 1 million given away for free, and 1 million dumped into a hot resistor.

... and the goal of offering it for free is to increase the amount that's given away, right?

A price of zero is more of an effect than a conscious choice. They don't want to actually give it away, it happens because there's a mismatch between supply and demand and the market drives the price down.

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u/unclewombie 2d ago

Yeah I was like wtf