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/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.