It has been outrageously hot in Adelaide, for weeks and weeks and weeks. Well, maybe not that long, but we have had temperatures over 40 for six days in a row, as part of a 12 day heatwave. The nights haven’t been much better: overnight “lows” have been in the mid-twenties to low thirties. This means that there is no way for houses that have warmed up to shed their heat overnight. As each hot day comes, homes get hotter and hotter and hotter, and there is no way to cool them down. The only way to manage the heat is to keep homes cool, right from the start. That means using passive solar mitigation techniques, and air conditioning. It is absolutely critical to keep the temperatures in houses low. Once they rise, people start to die.
The Australian has catalogued the deaths from this extraordinary heat. Too many elderly people have died, some when they have chosen not to turn the air conditioning on. Possibly some people in Adelaide took too much notice of the state government’s advice not to use air conditioners, but the advice was quickly withdrawn, and health authorities stressed the need for people to use air conditioners.
It seems absurd then, that the smart meters that are to be rolled out all over Australia, will be used to charge people more for electricity at peak times. According to The Age, using air conditioners at time of peak demand, such as during heat waves, could cost consumers up to $78 per day. The idea is that people will use less electricity at peak times if they are charged more for it, and this will take load off electricity production and delivery systems. Small businesses and residential customers will be affected.
When smart meters were first being talked about, seriously, the Ministerial Council on Energy issued an information paper (PDF downloadable here – 91kb), in which it said:
It is not expected that any new social welfare issues will arise due to the smart meter roll-out.
Right….
It seems to me that if electricity demand is controlled by price, then those who are least able to pay more, such as, for example, the elderly, who are often on fixed and low incomes, will turn their air conditioners off. They simply can’t afford to pay $78 for keep their houses cool. So they won’t. And the result will be more deaths during heat waves.
Here in Adelaide, we’ve been subject to rolling outages when the demand on the grid is too high. The lights, and the air conditioners, have gone out, suburb by suburb, for 30 minutes at a time. That’s not long enough for a house to overheat and endanger lives, but it does seem to be long enough to ration demand, and preserve the grid. And it ensures that the load of making sure that there is enough electricity to go around falls on everyone, not just on those who can’t afford to pay. (I have to admit that I have personally missed out on the outages. Suburbs to the left and right of us have gone out, and even streets just a block or two over from us, but not our street. When I told a friend about this, she wondered about just exactly who is living on our street.)
I can’t find any explicit consideration of the possible impact on human life of using pricing controls on electricity during life threatening events, such as heatwaves. The Ministerial Council on Energy has a framework for energy community service obligations (PDF downloadable here – 410kb), which has laudable principles, but when it comes to specifics, it turns out that most states deliver enough concessions (more-or-less) to pensioners to cover two or three days airconditioner use, at the smart meter rates. That would not have been enough to see pensioners through the south eastern states killer heatwave of 26 Jan to 6 Feb 2009.
If the smart meter roll-out is to go ahead, then serious consideration needs to be given to how the smart meter rates will apply during heatwaves. Simply charging smart meter peak rates will result in deaths.
I’d imagine that there will still be price caps for residential use of electricity. Smart meters really are just an extension of off-peak metering which many people already. I think electricity retailers will continue to offer flat rate plans, its just that agreeing to go on time of use charging will allow those who have energy efficient houses and appliances to save money, which helps offset higher capital costs. It can also encourage better behavior which does not increase health risks – eg simple things like don’t run a washing machine in the afternoon during peak electricity demand and turning off devices during the day.
I think it would be better for the government to subsidise improvements to houses (like the insulation rebate) rather than electricity which it effectively does now through price caps. This would allow people to defer running a/c systems even during heatwaves to later in the day or evening and reduce the peak load. Eg have people cool down their houses at night during low-load periods rather than during the day.
‘Smart Meters’ are not meant to be an end in themselves. They are but one component of the evolving ‘Smart Grid’ which will feature very high numbers of rooftop PV systems, feeding into household energy storage devices such as the Redflow energy storage systems.
Eventually, you will be able to set the electricity price signal, via the Smart Meter, at which you wish your storage system to kick in, taking all or most of your household load so you get that energy for ‘free’.
Heck, the electricity distributors could even be paying YOU 90 cents a kWh or more if you reduce your own load and then allow your storage system to support the local grid in peak load times.
Deborah
Price signals are important. Charging more at peak times forces firms and households to internalise the higher cost of producing electricity during peak periods and helps to ensure that rather than being rationed evenly, electricity consumption is undertaken by those that value it most.
To counteract the impact on the elderly and other low-income groups, who may not be able to afford to pay for peak pricing, you raise transfers to that group. You simply estimate how much extra income a year a low-income person would need to compensate them for the higher price during peak periods and transfer that amount to them.
Pricing that varies through the course of the day, will give people incentives to use energy when it is cheapest, and reduce the probability that blackouts will occur.
Whenever you fix a price, you end up rationing use in other ways – by queues, blackouts, etc. They also have social impacts.
Imagine having an ETS and trying to keep retail electricty prices unchanged. It would defeat the purpose – the relative price of energy, and particularly energy generated by fossil fuels has to increase. The way to deal with the social impact of that is to use part of the revenue from autioning permits to compensate households for the change in relative prices. They then choose whether to change their consumption habits or not.
Alternatives to price caps, as has been mentioned, is for the government to make funds available to improve the energy efficiency of the homes that the elderly live in.
ALso, think about water supply. Regulating prices has been a disaster in Australia. It has given households and firms no incentive to use water efficiently, and contributed to a massive underinvestment in water infrastructure. In rural areas it has contributed to crops being grown that would never occur if producers faced the true cost of water, and land being cultivated that would have been reclaimed by the environment.
The trouble is that those on low-incomes are the least able to be energy efficient- with the housing crisis the way it is, they often have to live in rental accomodation that is very energy inefficient.
Air conditioners should have the compressors shut down during short term peaks. The fans should be left running. This means that the thermal mass of the home is utilised as an energy storage system.
I think some trials of this have been done; the modelling certainly shows a large benefit and an almost unnoticeable temperature rise in the home or small business premises or even office building. Likewise ‘fridges and freezers can be used. pool pumps can be shut down or told to slow right down.
Electrical storage systems are as yet undeveloped, the Redflow system may be useful but it is an energy source with characteristics rather like a fuel cell or a PV array and thus not really able to supply the heavy peak loads that say a sodium sulphur or even a lead acid battery can supply.
Like I keep saying all the solutions already exist it’s just the market fixation that gets in the way. Ripple control and various radio systems for load control already exist.
Huggy
Good on you Deb for running with this relevant topic. I have been inclined to talk down air-con because I do not think our electricity grid is sufficiently stable to support its widespread use. My feeling is that it should be readily available for the elderly and unwell but limited for those who can cope.
When one considers how expensive it is to install, how few the days it is actually needed and the on/off rationing to run it, we are being sold a technological pup. I cannot see why we should be happy with an option that means everybody loses ALL power so that the mighty air-conditioners can rule.
I would support a smart meter that would could turn off all air-conditioners run by those in good health when needed. Also I linked recently to CSIRO work that holds hope for a cooling system that would be self contained – not reliant on the grid and running off home based solar. Rather like solar hot water.
It would be a great shame if we all continue to rush to Hardly Normal for a quick fix and governments push for more peak only power stations when we may be able to solve this growing problem with smarter solutions.
I agree with many / most / maybe even all of the points being made, i.e. that we need to find some effective way of rationing electricity, that smart meters will facilitate all sorts of goodies (like feeding power back into the grid, and encouraging off-peak use and all that), that differential pricing structures are a very effective way of rationing supply and so on.
But I’m uneasy about this:
Charging more at peak times … helps to ensure that rather than being rationed evenly, electricity consumption is undertaken by those that value it most.
I would put it another way. Charging more at peak times helps to ensure that electricity consumption is undertaken by those who can afford to pay for it. Many elderly people can’t, and yet it is the elderly and the very young who are most vulnerable to heat stress.
I linked to the Ministerial Council on Energy’s “Community Service Obligations Framework” above. It has appendices detailing what states do now with respect to CSOs, mostly as at 2007 / 2008 i.e. this is recent. The typical transfer to the elderly seems to be about $200 worth of electricity – enough to run your air con for about 20 hours at peak prices. That might be fine for short heatwaves, when houses don’t get heated too much before a cool change comes through, but it seems inadequate in the face of heatwaves that last for well over a week.
“electricity consumption is undertaken by those that value it most”.
Hmm agree Deborah, but I would go so far as to say that this is a darkly callous statement.
“….but I would go so far as to say that this is a darkly callous statement.”
Not “callous” but typical market based gobbledegook. Everybody values electricity, water and other essential goods and services. There are some things, if you wish to live in a fair community that you do not provide only on the basis of who can afford it. There use is about basic human rights.
the way i understand it nobody will be forced to pay time of use pricing , u could stillremain on a contract with constant electricityprices if u wished. However if u had a way of controlling ur demand when prices were high ie didnt have an a/c u would bbetter off as would paying significantly less. The age does like to exagarate thingsfor a headline
I heard what I thought was a useful idea on radio from a call-in on RN – why do airconditioners routinely have settings to cool a room down to 16 or 17 degrees Celsius when most of us are perfectly comfortable at 24 degrees? In reverse cycle settings, why do most have settings to heat a room up to 28 degrees Celsius when most of us are perfectly comfortable at 18 degrees?
If airconditioners had their settings limited to narrower range – 18 degrees top in heating mode, 23 degrees bottom in cooling mode, a significant decrease in the power demand would accrue, surely?
I fear that the major benificaries of this will be major power users who are excluded. They will not face high power prices during peak demand, so can continue grinding away without a care. A better system would reverse that – shutting down a factory on the hottest few days of the year is expensive, sure, but lifesaving for the people who get to use the power instead. My partner works for somewhere that does that, partly because the employer is too cheap to aircon the whole setup. Too cheap and too sensible, IMO. Many factories are concrete boxes with tin roofs, and air conditioning them would require insulating them.
Way back in the 1990’s the uni I was at installed warning lights as part of a deal with the power company so that on a nominated number of days a year they could go to peak power charging. The idea is that the uni goes into severe power minimising mode on those days, freeing supply for the rest of the city.
There are technical solutions, but it’s important to consider the right inputs to the decision. Killing people to save money is a very economist-type answer, IMO.
I’ve got a far simpler solution … It’s called evaporative cooling.
Costs about a fifth to run, and in dry heat works perfectly well enough, takes 10 to 15 degrees off, more than enough to avert any health issues.
Exactly, and bullshit besides. As Deborah pointed out in the original post, at least some of those people died because they didn’t put the aircon on. Perhaps they figured that if it came down to a budget choice of aircon or eating, not-eating was more likely to kill them.
And speaking as a resident of Adelaide where we routinely have 10- 12- and 14-day heatwaves — ie not just temps well up over 40 degrees, but no cool change of any kind at all and minimum temps not dropping below 30 — there are very few people who can “cope” without seeking whatever relief they can find. One of the more famous Adders cult songs (by a dude called Baterz, now sadly dead, possibly from the heat) is called ‘Target’s Air Conditioning’ and it’s all about getting on the bus in the heat to get into the city and hang out in Target all day to get cool because you can’t afford to do it any other way.
What a smart meter is able to do is to reflect the cost of power at a given time.
If power customers have no price signal, then even if they use the same amount of power overall in a year, what will happen is that they will have higher peaks. (ie everybody will have their aircon on in peak heat and cold events – if the cost is the same at peaks, why not just keep the aircon on). However, what that means is that the power generators and transmitters will need to have installed capacity able to cater for those higher peaks. That higher installed capacity will cost more – even though it just sits there for 360 days per year. Hence the overall cost to every customer is higher by having that plant on standby.
So, even if a pensioner or unemployed person might pay more during the peak hour under a smart meter scheme, it is likely that they would pay less over a three monthly billing cycle. Also, as pointed out, there are other interventions for those needing them (smart meter programming, rebates etc etc)
Here’s a post from Barry Brook arguing the statistical significance of Adelaide’s heat wave vis a vis climate change.
There are a couple of points here.
For one, the quid pro quo of expensive electricity 0.1% of the time, is cheaper electricity the other 99.9% of the time. And, as LO has noted, you can compensate those on low incomes if the overall expense is higher.
However, that perhaps ignores some of the realities of being on a low income, where it’s very difficult to budget. So perhaps there’s scope to ensure that compensation is delivered when people need it – during the summer months where the heat arrives.
In any case, you don’t have to apply smart metering to everyone. Giving old-age and disabled pensioners an exemption wouldn’t make a huge amount of difference, and would give everyone else an incentive to use their air conditioners sensibly – just air-condition one room rather than the whole house, for instance, and remember to keep the door shut (assuming you’re using refrigerated rather than evaporative aircon).
The situation you describe has a nasty parallel in third-world countries, by the way; treating diseases like malaria and TB is complicated by the fact that patients, if given medication to take home, will often prefer to sell it. It’s hard to imagine a situation where one would sell TB or malaria drugs in preference to taking it, but apparently it’s a real issue.
joe2: but there’s different ways you can go about that.
You can either redistribute income to ensure that everyone has enough to purchase the basics, or you can have poverty-level pensions and minimum wages and make up the difference through a whole passel of ad-hoc differential pricing.
Personally, I think the first option has got a lot going for it.
joe2 @ 6 said:
How exactly do you intend to do that from a technical and enforcement viewpoint? Installing a smart meter is pretty straightforward, but retrofitting all a/c systems to listen to the smart meter is going to be neither cheap nor easy. How are you going to stop people from plugging in less efficient portable a/c systems?
And why should it be ok for someone to use 2kW of electricity for lighting or a pool pump, but not ok for someone to use 2kW for an a/c system?
To counteract the impact on the elderly and other low-income groups, who may not be able to afford to pay for peak pricing, you raise transfers to that group.
The problem is that we simply can’t rely on the government to do that bit. It’s been the rule with market “reforms”: increased transfers to counter equity effects always remain theoretical.
Charging more at peak times … helps to ensure that rather than being rationed evenly, electricity consumption is undertaken by those that value it most.
I agree with the others calling this a deeply callous statement. But there’s another problem as well, and that is that a fair whack of domestic peak demand is not really moveable to offpeak times. Demand peaks in the morning and evening because people have to get clean and eat to fit around a daily work schedule which is completely outside their control. So while in theory TOU metering and exposure to the spot market means cheaper electricty as demand shifts, in practice it means being socked extra to have dinner at a normal time. And I’m not sure why any domestic user would want to support that over the current system where domestic users are effectively a long-term hedge.
“And why should it be ok for someone to use 2kW of electricity for lighting or a pool pump, but not ok for someone to use 2kW for an a/c system?”
It shouldn’t. I thought we were talking “smart meters” not “dumb meters”.. that cannot differentiate between very heavy wattage appliance use in peak usage periods.
A system that cannot guarantee a basic energy supply because of air-conditioners overloads is a failed one imho.
And for what it is worth I heard an ‘energy consultant’ from one company that was already trialing this type of specific turnoff mechanism for air-con. Sadly, I can provide no link as it was a while back.
I/S: because smart metering will, on balance, mean that we can get away with less expensive grid infrastructure than we’d otherwise need, meaning cheaper, cleaner electricity for everyone.
What Robert said @17.
It would cost $78 a day to run air conditioners on days like last week because you need a whole lot of power stations that will run for those few days a year.
Most people seem to understand pretty well that operating a business that only runs for a few days a year is not a particularly sustainable model, hence the attention Demand Response Management [pdf] has been receiving at Government and Industry level.
Most people seem to understand pretty well that operating a business that only runs for a few days a year is not a particularly sustainable model,
Yes… but it depends a bit on whether you think electricity supply has more in common with consumer products or utilities. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter i.e. basic items that people need, all the time, and which for the most part can’t be stored up and then used as needed. I think we do need our grid to cater for intense events, like heatwaves, just as we need stormwater drains to cope with heavy storm events, not just ordinary rainfall. It’s not a perfect analogy by any means. Of course, the analogy falls apart when people are brought into it; people can control electricity usage, but they can’t control rainfall, and no one would expect them to. But people can’t control heatwaves either. In recent days we have had an object lesson in what happens when people are caught in heatwaves, and can’t or won’t use air conditioning because it’s too expensive.
The is a fairly standard public policy problem – there are competing objectives, competing needs, and varying ways of meeting them. I am suggesting that so far, not enough attention has been paid to the health consequences of smart metering.
joe2 @ 22 – so you’re really talking about quota based system then – there is no way for a meter to determine if the 1kW of electricity is being used by 10 energy efficient devices or 1 energy inefficient one. Once you have quotas then you get into the complexity of how you set the levels – eg per household quotas or per person quotas? Should people who are at home during the day get higher daytime quotas than those who are at the office?
Going on about market based mechanisms though, smart meters will eventually be able to supply live price information to the house. This allows for electrical appliances to act smarter – eg freezers could draw a bit more power during periods of low cost/demand and overcool a bit with the benefit of not having to run as much during peak periods. Dishwashers could be smart enough to run in the middle of the night rather than just after people set them.
wilful @ 13 – evaporative a/c is definitely the way to go in dry areas. Some electricity companies in the US will subsidise the purchase of evaporative a/c systems (along with insulation and energy efficient devices) because they know it reduces peak demand. Electricity retailers can lose money selling electricity to residential users during peak periods so its in their interest to reduce residential demand during those times..
dk.au @ 24 – yes for some reason the system wasn’t started where companies voluntarily reduce demand. For example many businesses could still operate quite well if they turned off every other light or deferred computer processing.
Pavlov @ 14 – I think it actually makes quite a bit of sense for the government to run programmes at shopping centres for the elderly and heat vulnerable during long heat waves.
Callous? So governments can be trusted to regulate prices but not raise transfers? That is just plain bizarre. Want to regulate food prices as well? Petrol prices? Why leave it that? We could just have governments determine all prices in the economy? Oops, some countries tried that. If you are concerned about the welfare implications of market pricing then you increase distributional transfers, not interfere in the market. The interference reduces investment incentives, and means the average price of electricity is higher than it needs to be because consumers have no incentive to relate their consumption to its true cost.
The idea that there is no possibility for households and firms to shift consumption is just plain wrong. Dinners soak up a fraction of energy bills. Peak pricing would give households more incentives to invest in measures that raise the energy efficiency of their homes.
By all means continue to regulate prices for all households but at least understand the costs of that regulation – and those costs indirectly cause deaths as well by lowering productivity, lowering overall revenue, and therefore reducing the amount of government funds available for redistribution and investment in the health system.
There’s a lot of hyperbole in that comment, LO.
“those costs indirectly cause deaths as well by lowering productivity, lowering overall revenue, and therefore reducing the amount of government funds available for redistribution and investment in the health system.”
That has to be just about the longest bow that can be drawn.
Exactly.
I’ve been working in the demand management area, and know a little about pricing for electricity.
My understanding is that smart meters essentially allow a more granular pricing of electricity use than there is currently. Many people have accumulation meters, which, as their name suggests, simply accumulate the quantity of electricity used over time and which are read from time-to-time. There is no way to know how much electricity is used in any particular period except by looking at the meters at the start and end of the period.
However, as noted by many people, a very large amount of the network (especially in SA) is built to service peak demands for very small amounts of time. The growth in the peaks of demand is higher than the growth in average demand. Consumers pay for the network. One question is whether consumers should pay essentially the same regardless of how their demand contributes to the need for more network to be built, or whether the price to a consumer should reflect the extent to which that consumer’s demand needs to be catered for by building more network.
Smart meters allow more granular retail pricing e.g. off-peak and peak pricing (accumulation meters don’t allow this), but also might allow pricing to incorporate differential network costs.
Of course, governments can make payments to people (e.g. sick or at-risk elderley people) if they wish, which can sit on top of any prices.
It may be possible to control air-conditioners in a way that does not affect the householder’s comfort.
So if a generator or transmission company pays say ten million less to a Government via taxes or dividend (if it is owned by Govt), then that is not ten million less to be distributed to other functions such as hospitals, schools, etc?
If you look at the $$$ involved in the electricity business, even a percent either way is of the order to make a real difference in State budgets – and the difference between catering for the peak 100 year event and a 50 year event would be a whole bit more than chicken feed.
Don’t be so easy to dismiss LO’s comment as hyperbole until you check out the amounts of money that are at stake…money that is desperately needed in our creaking hospital, school, public transport systems.
Don’t believe me either, the sums are easy to do on the back of an envelope.
Australia uses about 1700 Petajoules of electrical energy per year.
Use a nominal 15c/kWH for example and see for yourself that even a 1% saving is something that could easily be used to make a real difference in several important policy areas.
Deborah wrote:
Sacha, I can see all that, and it all makes sense to me. The problem is that not catering for that last little bit of demand results in deaths, as we saw in the most recent heatwave. Maybe we are prepared to accept that “price.” In fact, it seems that we are, given that at least some of the deaths in SA seem to have occurred because the electricity supply was interrupted.
The thing that really worries me though, is not outages from time to time, but people who feel that they can’t use electricity when they really need it – for example, to run air conditioners during extended heatwaves – because it costs too much. To a certain extent that can be addressed through transfers, but Robert Merkel’s TB and malaria point stands. Perhaps transfers could be made directly to utility supply companies, but that introduces another hoop in the bureaucracy.
I really don’t see an easy way to balance up the competing demands here. What worries me is that the health (as in preventing death) objective seems to have been overlooked to date. Of course, the need to think about the health issues has become much more salient, given the recent heatwave, and it could be that it is being (or has been) considered. So far I haven’t been able to find anything about it on-line.
Deborah, this is an interesting point. It sounds as if people are making a decision that they don’t want to pay a bit more for electricity but that this may mean that they might not live – how awful! This needn’t mean that most people aren’t subject to differential network prices, but that people who really need electricity to live are subject to different prices – probably a state govt program. This may be able to be organised with the retailer.
The basic point is that it may be better for the price signal to be there and that it can be attenuated where necessary.
It is not a long bow at all – it is only those that have little regard for the enormous welfare costs of distortions in markets that don’t see it. Removing those distortions raises productivity, frees up resources to be used elsewhere, raises incomes and makes it easier for governments to fund themselves. That revenue is used for social purposes that effect health and wellbeing.
In fact, the response to my comment tshows why so many people on this blog are happy to favour policies that make markets work worse not better – they disregard the social costs of those distortions and don’t understand that those same social objectives can be achieved much more efficiently through other policies.
Right, governments *always* do that with “freed up” revenue, do they?
Sacha has a point there – if you were worried about the elderly dying through efforts to conserve energy – just exclude non-self refunded retirees from differential pricing – or rebate them directly for any additional costs. It is also probably the case that retired people have the most to gain from differential pricing – because they don’t work, it should be easier for them to shift a portion of their electricity consumption to off-peak periods when electricity is cheaper. Many could save money.
Also, do we have any evidence about whether deaths were attributed to people not turning their air conditioners on? Or is it that many eldery don’t have air-conditioning in their homes at all?
I just think a better way to go about things is to address the source of the problem – the poverty of many elderly people – rather than preventing price signals from operating.
LO, might I suggest – as somebody broadly sympathetic to some of your arguments – that you’ve picked a less than perfect example to try and make your point.
While we argue about what price households will have to pay to be able to access electricity at peak times, here in my part of SA the governments two major expenditures are a desalination plant, and an electrified rail system, we also have a Premier who endorses continued population growth. Curious.
No, it’s not enough to have a government that tells us when and for how long we can water our gardens, now we have to accept being priced out of the market for electricity, so our governments can pay for basic and essential services. Give me a fecking break.
Yeah, we should all have ‘faith’ that our governments understand the bigger picture so much better than us peons. The market, which seems so infallible right now [he-hem], will deliver us increased revenue to cater for all of those who need to be shunted off to hospital because they cant afford air conditioning, while the governments solution to putting water in our taps happens to be the least efficient, most energy intensive option they could find. amazing.
Actually, this discussion highlights the problems with the debates about regulation and why it is not a black and white issue.
In the financial sector, too little and poor regulation allowed market failures to distort incentives and cause a global recession.
In the electricity market, too much and poorly designed regulation has led to underinvestment in generation capacity, and prevented households and firms from responding to price signals that encourage more efficient use of energy.
Robert, I don’t think I have chosen a bad example. The big market failures in electricity are the failure to internalise the social cost of emissions, oligopolistic behaviour by firms with too much market power, regulated pricing that does not differentiate between peak and non-peak periods, and grids that are unsuited to incorporating generation capacity from non-baseload suppliers. The solutions to those problems are complex. Some are caused by not enough government regulation – others by too much – others by just having the wrong regulatory framework in place.
Price regulation in electricity is an inefficient, and in the end inequitable way of achieving the distributional goals you care so much about. If there are alternatives that make sure that the elderly aren’t at any higher risk of dying or suffering ill-health, but also make the electricity market work better, why not choose them?
LO @ 38 said:
The government seems rather reticent to have an inquest so its possible we’ll never know, but from what has been in the papers the load shedding and/or grid failure has been blamed for some deaths. And it was reported that at least one death was caused by the elderly person accidentally setting their a/c to heat instead of cool. I don’t think many in SA have time of day pricing yet (not sure if its even available) so thats unlikely to have been a factor. I suspect that some of the community support (eg people/departments checking up regularly on vulnerable people) that was more encouraged towards the end of the heat wave would be more effective than price controls.
I think the reverse may be true. People who have a house unoccupied during the afternoon (peak periods) save by not having to heat/cool their place and use their employers a/c instead. I noticed quite a significant increase in energy usage when I started working more from home. Part of that is heating/cooling costs. With an energy efficient house things may look different.
LO, the power systems that work tend to be publicly owned and run by engineers with the explicit goal of providing a reliable supply. Sure, you have to pour a bit more money in but at least the system works. Beats having the “efficient” system where cuts during peak demand are expected, and directed at those least able to negotiate with the power companies.
One possible advantage of smart meters is that it would make private homes more profitable to supply during peak demand periods than industry, so we might see rolling blackouts to industrial users rather than residential areas. Purely because the houses are paying more than industry does… that’s the flip side of a profit-centred electricity system.
Reliability is much more complicated than whether assets are in the hands of the public or private sector. The diversity of experiences in different European countries shows that clearly. A properly designed and effectively regulated electricity market doesn’t have to lead to many blackouts, if any.
On the water issue, surely you understand that the failure to price water is one of the reasons it is used so inefficiently in Australia?
Anyway, I’m clearly in the minority on this issue, so I will leave it at that – I enjoyed the discussion though
It’s really hard to know what to say in this discussion. At a general level, any social policy goals may be able to be dealt with at (effectively) a state govt level (e.g. differential tariffs for people-at-risk).
In terms of reliability, in Australia, the electricity supply chain has been vertically split up, so no one body (apart from possibly in the NT) is in charge of producing and supplying electricity to any consumer. In addition, about 1/3 of generation is now owned by private interests, as is a substantial fraction of retail and network businesses. Correlating reliability to the ownership structures may be non-trivial given the disaggregated nature of the supply chain, although one could look at the “reliabilty” for each business in the supply chain.
One point to make is that businesses are essentially subjected to the same regulations regardless of their ownership structures.
HuggyBunny @ 5 said,
Sorry HB, that is completely incorrect. The redflow system consists of a battery part that is at least six times more powerful than the same weight of lead acid, and an electronics interfaces that each can handle 5-10 kW. If you have a thousand systems spread throughout a town, thats 5-10 MEGAWATTS of power feeding in to reduce the peak load on the grid.
As for Sodium Sulpher storage systems… well if the answer to an energy storage question is ‘Sodium Sulpher’, then it must have been a very silly question. Too dangerous for all but the most specialised and controlled situations.
Yep LO you hit in one the problems we are having in the Murray Darling Basin. Water was priced so ridiculously low that people took up so much in the way of allocations at that low price, and now the demand overwhelms the capacity of the river to provide.
Well priced supply from the beginning would have done two things: encouraged sustainable high value farming using low water use methods (not bleeding flood irrigation as was), and secondly there would have been water left for the environment. Look where ‘water is a right-forget the economics’ got us in the MD Basin.
There are always plenty of people lined up to demand water and electricity as their right, but hand them a realistic bill for that and they head for the hills.
Anyone working in either the power or the water industries gets a little cynical after a while as the story of people demanding service and yet coming up with all the reasons in the world why someone else should pay is all pervasive.
As a case in point, some studies done last year indicated that people were prepared to pay a whole extra three dollars a week for green power. Well whoopy doo, and then they get all sulky because of the low uptake of green grid power.
*headshake*
“Anyone working in either the power or the water industries gets a little cynical after a while as the story of people demanding service and yet coming up with all the reasons in the world why someone else should pay is all pervasive.”
Yer right, imagine expecting water and power as a human right..bastards.
It’s high time we started charging for the air we breath. Government could start it off as a tax and then it could be privatised.
Thanks Joe for taking me out of context by omitting to mention the bit about paying for it.
THAT is what people get cynical about….and why the Murray Darling is stuffed.
Put it another way, people can grizzle and sulk all you like about how much more water should go to the environment or wherever, and how much power pensioners should have for their aircons, but it won’t happen unless they pay for it.
Unless you can find a few thousand power station operators/builders/maintainers suppliers etc prepared to work for free of course.
LOLOLOLOL!
LO and Marks – I reckon you are totally wasting your time talking about market pricing of power and water here at LP. It is pretty clear that only a tiny percentage have any clue at all what a ‘market’ actually is, seeing it as a ‘thing’ to be controlled and manipulated according to their fantasies, rather than the voluntary actions of millions of individuals coordinating their efforts.
“Unless you can find a few thousand power station operators/builders/maintainers suppliers etc prepared to work for free of course.”
Not for free Marks.
The point I continue to make is that the distibution of essential goods and services, in particular power, water and basic communication, is best in the hands of government without a profit motive. I am ,unashamedly, a mixed economy kind of guy.
These days governments demand dividends from utility companies they own and control. They might not be specifically profit focused but they want the money to spend in other areas such as education, health, roads etc.
Trubbel at Mill @ 46 – I couldn’t find any pricing information around about the redflow system. Is it even vaguely affordable? I’d love to get battery backup for a solar PV system, but everything I’ve found is stupidly expensive.
While I am sympathetic to the argument that these sorts of market-based solutions often lead to costs falling most heavily on those who can least afford them I don’t think that will be the case with smart meters in Adelaide, in the long run.
Adelaide has a perfectly good solution here – solar power systems will produce most power when it is hottest (ok not all solar systems do, but enough). If Adelaide was getting a fair chunk of its power from solar then supply will more closely match demand, and the price won’t be that high even at peak demand. Smart meters will encourage a shift towards solar, contributing to a reduction in the number of such heatwaves while we are at it.
There is a problem of adjustment of course, how to compensate those affected while we wait for the solars to be installed. However, I’d be more worried about the use of these meters in places where the peak demand is when it is too cold, not too hot.
This was the case for electricity until relatively recently when we had govt-owned vertically integrated monopolies. However, many people thought that Australia could have the same or better electricity service at a lower resource cost by horizontally and vertically disaggregating the supply chain, which happened, along with privatisations of some parts of the supply chain. Many people think that the production of electricity is now more efficient than under the vertically integrated structures that previously existed, and in addition, public money isn’t necessarily needed to underpin investment in the sector, freeing up those funds for other purposes. All businesses in the supply chain are regulated.
LO, where do you suggest is the underinvestment in generation and what are regulatory processes helping lead to this?
Joe2 I would suggest that one hard lesson coming up for governments is that whoever owns electricity assets, governments are expected to ensure that quality and quantity of supply is maintained.
Those governments that have lost control of those assets by the various slicing and dicing of the electricity markets in the different states may well find themselves in the position of being held accountable for quality and quantity of supply, but with little power to do anything about it.
Additionally, a lot of expertise has migrated from those governments – and in some cases from the industry altogether. Which means that not only do these governments lack the power to do anything, they also lack the knowledge that would enable them to know what the heck should be done. ie they don’t know how much they don’t know.
It almost seems to me that the slicing and dicing of risk in the power industry is a bit like the slicing and dicing of risk in the financial industry. I wonder if anyone has a real handle on the level of risk that the power industry is operating under, or will it completely unwind like the financial industry? (For example, what is to stop a generating company from ‘mining’ its generators – not replacing or renewing plant, minor maintenance only, extracting as much revenue as possible till the turbines and alternators are truly stuffed, then handing the keys to the government and saying, “there’s your power station folks – good luck”. (I suspect that this is the case with the NSW generation system – except that this is run by the Government).
I’d have to say I largely agree with L.O., but I don’t think he’s helping his case by suggesting that “…electricity consumption is undertaken by those that value it most”. It’s true that for a significant percentage of Australian households electricity is really a very minor expense, considering what you get for it, and surely for anyone on an average or above income, $78 a day to keep your house pleasantly cool for the 10 or so days of a year you genuinely need it is well worth it. But as others have pointed out, for a sizeable portion of the population, $78 a day is a lot of money, and it’s entirely predictable that for many of them air-conditioning will seem like a luxury that can be skimped on – after all, many of them grew up in an era where air-conditioning truly was a luxury.
The result is then significant resources being required to treat the inevitable health-related issues that result, and of course, in some cases, preventable deaths (which have an associated if difficult-to-measure economical cost too).
While I agree that more transfers are one way to improve the situation, it’s not enough. Unless the most-at-risk have the knowledge necessary to make sensible decisions about the value of air-conditioning to their health, they won’t be able to.
It’s certainly hard to imagine an 80-year-old single pensioner being able to determine that, for instance, the cost of running the air-conditioner set to, say, 30C on a 45C day, was well worth it if it was the difference between staying healthy and suffering from extreme heat stroke. Indeed, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone set an A/C to run at 30C, even though surely we’d all be better off on a 45C day to do so rather than have half of us running our A/C at 20C, and half with them switched off (which is rather closer to the norm). The technology for us to do this automatically (i.e. have smart meters automatically direct A/C units to lower their power consumption by raising the thermostat) is hardly particularly challenging, but it would surely require legislation for it to become widespread. There’s actually significant scope for governments to do a lot more to ensure that every Australian has the option to keep their homes at a safe and comfortable temperature at minimal cost (to their hip pockets, and to the environment), whereas there’s no reason to assume that market forces on their own would achieve such an outcome.
Sasha, NEM generation capacity is still dominated by a smallish number of largely government owned companies. There is evidence that they have used their market power to generate large financial gains from spikes in wholesale prices. Firms with market power have an incentive to underinvest in new capacity. Regulatory barriers have also contributed to underinvestment in cross-border transmission interconnectors, which also contributes to spikes in wholesale prices. The long-period of uncertainty over climate change policy has also reduced investment incentives. There has been almost no increase in installed NEM capacity since 2002, a period during which demand has increased significantly.
Let me clarify something.
When I use the term “value most” – all I mean is those that are willing and able to pay at a particular price, and would rather pay higher prices than switch part of their consumption to cheaper times of the day. I’m using the term value in its economic context, not in the context of how much one would like to consume if price were not a constraint.
Like everyone who has commented here, I would not like to see the infirm and low-income elderly priced out of consuming the energy that is necessary to keep them healthy.
I just think that particular problem can be dealt best by both allowing pricing to vary with its cost, and either excluding the vulnerable from variable pricing or rebating them for any additional cost.
And wiz, it is an interesting point about the elderly possibly not using their air-conditioning even though they can afford it because they don’t understand the potential impact on their health – but do you have any evidence that it is the lack of information rather than the budget constraint that is the problem?
The existing regime was not set up to protect the vulnerable. It entails a large subsidy to many of our largest and least-efficient energy users. In that sense, it is quite regressive. Moreover, because it caps the price below its market price, it implies a dead weight loss that doesn’t accrue to producers, consumers or the government.
An interesting discussion, coming into it late, though I am not sure why it got so polarized. Whether we have government regulated, or market-driven electricity prices, we do need variable pricing, because of the extreme costs of providing enough power for everyone to do anything they want all the time (but in reality, in the morning and evening peaks). An analogy that comes to mind is if we made sure the health system had enough capacity for everyone to have the surgery they needed (including all the elective surgery) RIGHT NOW. We don’t do this because the costs are prohibitive. Our problem is much more that we are living with a 1950s mentality about electricity (it is infinite and cheap), in a 21st world where global warming is (probably) going to bite us on the bum, bigtime.
Yes, we can have advertising campaigns, but what people will pay attention to is the size of their bill. If that same bill tells you that you can set your thermostat a few degrees higher, and save a hundred bucks, I think many will do so. Differential pricing would allow many people to cool their houses even in quite hot times of day, as long as this was not during the evening peak.
Lastly, I think we need to pay attention to the deaths that there have been during these heatwaves. If this really is a legacy of AGW (as perhaps the fire tragedies are also), then we need to allow some of this anger to drive our efforts at political change. Instead of, ‘Let them breathe airconditioning!’ a la Marie Antoinette, I’d rather they didn’t need it at all. Bring on a return to 280ppm I say…
L.O. – no I don’t have any evidence, but “budget constraint” is a necesarily fuzzy concept unless you’re living at subsistence levels, no? In other words, even among pensioners who spend all of their income just to maintain a relatively basic lifestyle, there are still choices on how income can be spent. A pensioner might well decide, e.g., that the grandkids need/deserve better birthday presents more than they need a few days’ worth of A/C simply because they don’t truly comprehend the risk to their livelihood of such a decision.
And BTW, who exactly among the most financially disadvantaged would voluntarily decide to switch any measurable portion of their electricity consumption to “cheaper times of the day”?
FWIW, I do support measures that encourage consumers to make more efficient use of electricity supplies, and I can see how smart metering helps here, but I question strongly that it meaningfully implies “electricity consumption is undertaken by those that value it most”.
Wiz – yes – we all face budget constraints and make choices about how to spend our money within those budget constraints. As I said, if you are that worried about the frail, then exclude them from variable pricing. Personally, I’d like to see some evidence that supports your contention that if the frail received rebates to compensate them for the higher cost during dangerously hot days, that a meaningful number would keep the airconditioning off. It strikes me as an empirical question.
As for the value question – here are a couple of ways to think about it. Take road transport. When the price of petrol goes up, some poeple substitute into public transport, others don’t, even if they have convenient public transport close by. They just prefer driving in their cars so much that they won’t change their consumption patterns despite the change in relative prices. Think of the increase in petrol prices as a tax that has its largest impact on those that cannot or won’t change their habits. The latter category are those that value driving the most because they are willing to reduce their consumption on other items. For those that are unable to change their consumption patterns, there arealternative policies to help them expand their options.
In water consumption. Think about a world (not that different from our own) where price varies little with consumption, or water availability. In that world, a lot of quite marginal water consumption (excessive watering of gardens, long baths and showers, etc) is likely to occur. Price it, and people will use the water in ways that they find the most valueand many households will cut down on their water consumption – for example, by switching their vegetation to natives, or having less lawn space, or having shorter showers, or recycling some of their water for altenative uses. Those that don’t change their habits are those that most highly value a green english lawn, or a long shower, etc.
As I said, I’m all in favour of policies to directly help the vulnerable, and as I’ve said on other posts, I’m strongly in favour of greater redistribution through the tax-transfer system. But I also think that pricing things properly is important. I think we also differ in our views on the substitution possibilities that are available.
L.O., I suppose my position would simply be – by all means introduce smart metering and allow electricity suppliers to charge more during peak times, but it has to be done in tandem with not only increases in transfers to the most vulnerable, but also an educational/informational campaign to help everyone determine sensible methods of more efficient electricity usage. Electricity has just been one of those services we have taken for granted our whole lives, and I don’t think we can assume everyone will suddently start making rational choices about how to modify their usage if a new pricing scheme is introduced.
I’d also like to see legislation on the behaviour of many electric appliances – e.g. A/C’s should be able to respond to requests from smart meters to lower their power demand (there should probably also be legislation determining where A/C’s can be legally fitted – I’ve seen many cases where they are installed pretty inappropriately, in rooms that poorly insulated or overly exposed to outside heat etc.). I’d also suggest that those who really insist that their house remain 20C inside while it’s 46C+ outside need to be made aware just how much power they’re using by doing so (e.g. the smart meter could produce some sort of audible alarm and flash the current cost of using so much electricity). I’m also interested in the idea of tiered pricing – i.e. the first X watts of power are priced at a basic rate similar to current levels, but additional watts are priced at a significantly higher rate.
I’d also say re subsitution possibilities – probably the best subsitutions for A/C usage are modifications to dwellings that improve insulation etc. But not only are the most financially disadvantaged not in a position to pay for such modifications, I’d argue that most people won’t rationally choose to do so, because it involves a big upfront investment that won’t necessarily pay for itself in the current dwelling (why should I pay 1000s of $ to improve the insulation of my house when I’m likely to move in a few years, most likely into a house where I have to do it all again?), and even for those who are sure they’ll be staying for a while and can afford the upfront costs, it’s economical only over such a long period and quite likely involves significant disruption while the work is going on, that relatively few people bother making such a decision. Again, I think there are legislative solutions here, not just for new dwellings, but when buying/selling existing ones. It’s mandatory for instance to install a pool fence within a certain period of buying a house (we had to do that, at substantial cost), so why not make it mandatory to ensure recently purchased dwellings meet some basic set of insulation standards, where the costs can be government-subsidised as necessary?
On my walk into town this morning I passed a parked-on-the-street Bentley, (I think it was, maybe a daimler, an ugly chryslerish tank of a thing, not a class-act Lady Penelope Thunderbird one), no-one in it, but its airconditioning still full-on, spewing from underneath a rising heat cloud across the footpath. A bit further down the track I remembered I forgot something and turned back, and a full 15 mins after I first passed it, from a block down, I saw the fat bastard getting in and driving off. I can’t be sure he’d just left it running all that time, but from the message of his customised number plate I’d bet on it.
Imagine: fat bastards with cash flow and care factor less than zero, as in 8MYCO2 beligerence, who want their cars to be 22.41 degrees when they get in, and can text their smartly metered uber-cars to switch on the AC five minutes before they get in. Imagine the inferno of an enclosed shopping centre car park with that sort of caper going on, en masse. Quelle horreur.
There should be a law against it.
It sounds to me like the smart solution to all these problems is to just build a couple of nukes and let the public decide where and how they use power. All the rules and regulations being proposed here would be a nightmare to administer.
LO, which regulatory barriers are impacting investment in interconnectors between NEM regions – e.g. the Regulatory Test ?
Danny, while I agree 15 minutes is overkill, I will happily admit to running the A/C in the car a full 5 minutes before getting in on a 45+C day – if there’s no shade to leave it under, the interior of a car can easily rise over 60C in such conditions, which is just plain stupid to put your kids straight into.
The CO2 produced by running the A/C in a car for 5 minutes must be pretty minimal compared to that produced by all the A/C used to keep mostly unoccupied buildings cool.
wizofaus – I think that insulation rather than subsidise power more is the way to go. One thing that is done in the ACT is to have mandatory energy ratings for houses done when they are put up for sale which are meant to indicate approximately how much energy you will use keeping the place cool in summer and warm in winter. Studies have shown the rating does affect the price that houses sell for. This should be extended to rental places as well as its even more difficult for prospective renters to see whether this insulation etc.
Schemes to control A/C systems remotely are going to have very long lead times (how many people out there have 20-30 year old a/c systems) and very expensive to retrofit.
I don’t think its the role of smart meters to display alarms (often they’re simply not installed in a convenient place and its unnecessary complexity to add to a meter), but I think it is worth installing devices which show current power usage and even cost if you enter the correct data. These devices are already available – I have one. Not only do people begin to learn the relationship between electrical devices and just how much power they use (sometimes surprisingly low or surprisingly high), but also get familiar with what is normal. So they get a reminder if they’ve accidentally left something on.
danny @ 65 – thats a sign that petrol prices are too low
You already can get remote control start systems for cars though if you live in very cold climates its understandable why you’d want them.
With price controls removed and smart meters installed, in 5-10 years electricity retailers will offer a range of high-switchability plans that resemble current mobile or broadband plans today.
“Summer is on the horizon and more and more Australians are… Sign up with xxxxxx now, and for the first three months, you’ll receive our special discount rate for un-capped peak-time usage. This summer, you’ll have the peace of the mind to know that you can run your AC for as long as you want to.”
Wiz: I’m in sympathy, getting into a hot car is a pet hate, I’ll walk blocks to get a park in the shade. I fantasize about an invention where braking energy can be trapped to produce a reservoir of compressed CCOLD (TM) that can be instantly released moments before getting in, flushing out all the hateful HHOT (TM). If you drive far enough to generate extra CC’s of CCOLD (TM), you can sell it at shopping centre carpark CCOLD (TM) bottling stations for others, who aren’t equipped, to buy.
I am in fact just about to accede to the family request, nay demand, to get the cold side of family dray’s AC unit working better. Woosses. I come from out past Mt Isa, where men are men and cattle are nervous. I remember asking my Nanna, from the property out there, in her 80’s at the time, went on to be 99 NotOut, working her beloved scrap of a garden, didn’t she feel the heat, and she says “Only when I stop”. I’ve tried to cajole and convince my Generation”I” teen about that, to put that computer down, turn the fan off, put a hat on, and come and help weed the garden. Surprise surprise, it’s not working, even when I say there’s a water mist bottle to cool off with.
In other news, my (mostly) summer quarter power bill is down to 302 kwh. After I get the PedalPowerPack for my intertube technologies, and BaffledBucketBehindBike trailerable washing machine, I reckon my annual meterage will be under the annual output of the standard 1 KW PV installation, and I will be a Green Power Supplier MicroCompany, with Ergon as a customer, for maybe $5 a quarter.
How sweet it will be.
Hmm…do I drive an extra 5-10 minutes, burning up petrol, to find a shady spot, then have to walk 15 minutes in 46 degree heat, or use the petrol to run the A/C for 5 minutes to ensure my unshaded car is safe to get in? Not really Sophie’s choice is it?
Indeed Nick@70.
I am already driven crazy by salespeople landing at my door from energy and phone companies begging me, through all kinds of trickery and bribery, to switch to what is essentially the same product or service dressed up in different clothes.
We are paying out for this annoying tripe and also to shareholders in dividends for what were once a quite satisfactory government distribution services.
Peter: nukes don’t solve this problem.
Nukes are great at churning out power 24/7 for months on end. They cost a lot to build, but bugger-all to run. While they can load-follow to some extent, given the economics you probably want them running at 100% rated power from refuel to refuel.
Furthermore, the problem to a large extent isn’t generating the power, it’s getting it to where it’s needed. Building a grid sufficient to cope with extreme demand events is very expensive, and much of the capacity is only used one or two days a year.
Wiz “Not really Sophie’s choice is it”. With some puzzlement and the benefit of the doubt, may I say: Thinking, or attitudes, like this is why we need smart meter’s, with inline kill switches/governors. I will name mine Sophie, and when I choose to overide it, thereby agreeing to being charged @ a much higher excess-to-quota supply rate, I will refer to it making a Sophie’s choice.
But Wiz, I am curious: at first I was thinking it was at your home where you would swith your car’s AC on 5 minutes before you went somwhere, which at least meant others didn’t wear the heat clouds you produce. I was a bit puzzled why you wouldn’t or couldn’t organise some shade since then it would have been a regular problem for you and worthy of a permanent solution. But now it appears that your problem is you go places with the kids that are (a) 5 -10 mins drive from a shady spot yet (b) only 15 mins walk back and (c) when its 46 degrees. It’s got to be in the middle of a high car traffic area, otherwise it wouldn’t take you almost as long to drive to the shade as it does to walk from it. I can’t imagine where, but I don’t get out much where I can’t walk to anymore, but then I’m only a 14 min stroll from the CBD.
But what I’m really curious about is: wherever this place is you take the kids on all those 46 degree days, and park outside in the sun, how do you manage to turn the AC on 5 mins before leaving? Nip outside early wherever it is and manually turn it on, or do you have a remote control system?
Hold on, I think I’ve got it: it takes me 5 to 10 to drive to town, 15 to walk, I got oodles of shade here, and there’s probably none in town, not without paying. Doh, you’re one of those rarities, a non-green inner city suburbs dweller, who drives into town, and too tight for undercover parking. You don’t drive a Black Bentley with 8MYCO2 plates do you?
Er, danny, is it really that hard to comprehend that it might take 5-10 minutes of *additional* driving around to *find* a shady spot that is within 15 minutes’ walk of your destination? Indeed in many places it could take a good deal longer. After all, not everybody can park in the shade, and most sensible people prefer to if they can.
As it happens, yes, we also have the problem of having to park our car at home on the street with minimal shade. On 46deg days if we have to go out, I will start up the car with A/C on 5 minutes before we have to leave so that at the least we won’t burn ourselves on the leather seats.
But yes, even while out, I do often head out to the car to turn on the A/C a few minutes early before the rest of the family comes out.
FWIW, our house has no A/C, so by no means do I take being in air-conditioned comfort for granted.
One other thing – it’s true that there are usually spots around where we live that are likely to be the shade that are at most a few minute’s walk away, and logically it might make sense to make use of those spots, except that a) like most people we prefer our car to be where we can see it and know that it’s there and safe and b) if I happened to live on a part of the street where it was well-shaded, I can imagine getting pretty annoyed at constantly having strangers’ cars parked there, especially if I had nowhere to put my own, which would be the inevitable result of everybody trying to park their cars in the shade.
BTW, our entire family uses on average 25L of fuel a week. I’m pretty sure that puts us way below average as far as CO2 output from car usage goes.
Wiz: you’re right, I was thinking in crow flies terms, not driving *around* looking for it. Doh, of course. And you’re also right about constantly having strangers parking in one’s carefully cultivated over the years shade. Bastards.
Here it’s not just the shade the bastards come after, we’re just outside the 2 hr parking limit, so the
cheapskateslast-mile bussers/walkers turn up in droves early every weekday morning. It’s getting to be like f’n Bondi. But we’re onto it, we get up even earlier, and take our cars out of the garages, and park them in front of the houses, carefully making sure we take up the two spaces. I love the look on the tourist’s faces when they have to do a seven point turn in the narrow little dead end street which is half empty of cars, but still totally full. We come out later in the day, before it gets too hot, and put our cars back in the garages. It’s all right neighbourly. We take it in turns to do each others cars so we all don’t have to get up early every day.Leather upholdstory huh? You sure you don’t drive a Bentley? And air conditioning that works? Now I’m definitely jealous.
Next fantasy invention: take-it-with-you pop-up sh-shade(TM), to go with the bottled CCOLD (TM) and the Sophie’s Choice smartarse meters.
Not a Bentley, but the brand does start with the same letter, and it’s far too bloody expensive to upkeep
…and somewhat unbelievably, I just had to turn our heating on as the interior of our house dipped to 15C. This just 3 days after it being 46C.
wizofaus – let me guess – you’ll be able to take advantage of the insulation rebate?
Actually no, our house does have roof insulation, though I don’t imagine it’s particularly good quality. But it was still 15C outside at 11AM this morning, after being lower than that most of the night, and even now is only 16C. Since the 46C day the average outside temperature has almost certainly been under 20C. High quality insulation would also certainly prevent me from needing to put the heater on (it’s only set to 19), but there’s no rebates for improve the quality of existing insulation.
wizofaus – yea, its about disappointing that its restricted to those with no insulation. Others with very poor insulation would still make very significant gains. If you’re having to use a heater in summer its likely the payback time on installing insulation would be quite short.
Short as in 5 years, sure. But we’re planning to move in the next 12 months.
Wiz: “still 15C outside at 11AM”… it’s 10c @ Mt Lofty 12.54 pm and was 44c a week ago…. Like that?
“We’re planning to move in the next 12 months”: I would too, it sounds like a it must be a God forsaken hole with no trees to provide a moderating influence on the ravages of naked elemental forces, and full of bastards lurking about just waiting to steal your car if you take your eye of it, when they aren’t slaughtering Children’s Zoo animals that is. Yep, for my sins, I’ve done my South Australia stint.
The insulation issue is a really important one, especially for rental properties. As with many things, the costs hit the landlord but the benefits accrue to the tenant… and rental pricing doesn’t readily respond to things like that. So I live in a rental house with excellent insulation and thermal mass, paying the same as the people a couple of houses down who live in something very close to a cardboard box in terms of environmental separation.
Moz @ 86 – rental prices don’t respond because its so hard for prospective renters to work out whether a property is designed and built to be energy efficient or not. Making it compulsory to use an EER rating system like in the ACT (except one that is better – from personal experience I have doubts about its accuracy) would help renters compare the real costs between places.
Chris (87), Vic also has a star rating scheme for rentals but I’ve never seen anything other than “unrated”. I also suspect that the owner didn’t pay a premium for the house (it was sold just before we moved in), since there seems to be little awareness in the market of the effect of running costs on the value of a house. All this talk of bulking up the grid to cope with demand has a consumer-effect side too – people buy ridiculously oversize air conditioning systems to cope with the few days a year when their crappy houses actually need the full capacity. And that costs real money. Or, like many people, they buy what they think they need then discover that after three 45 degree days their aircon can’t bring the house down below 35 degrees and there’s no internal separation that would let them effectively partition the house and concentrate the cooling they have.
The inhouse display component of the smart meter spec has been changed by the government from mandatory to optional – so they won’t be provided for the vast majority of locations.
6 star or better houses with good passive solar design don’t need airconditioners – ours got to 30 degrees in the living area on the record 46.4C day. New blinds and shade sails helped a lot; previously it would have got to 34C or higher inside.
We run a ceiling fan but no aircon. And our panels are producing power when it is needed most.
You can buy a wall aircon unit that consumes 8kW, our solar array produces 1.5kW. The more people that buy aircon units, the higher the peak load on hot days, which then exceeds the grid supply. So then they schedule rolling outages across suburbs to “load shed” and the punters suddenly find that their new aircon stops and they start to cook.
Which is why the Vic Govt wants to (and has approved) building new coal fired and gas powered power stations – which more carbon emissions and more climate change. Anyone spot the Catch 22?
And Wilful, evaporative coolers use quite a lot of water, and are dam levels for Melbourne’s water supply are much lower than this time last year with no rain in sight.
8kW for a wall air-con unit? I would think you’d be talking about a ducted system for that sort of power consumption.
I don’t know what the average household air-con draws on a hot day, but I’d be surprised if it was as high as 8kW.
Have a look at a Harvey Norman catalog. Wall mounted units (Chinese) start from 2kW and go up to 8kW. You can get much more efficient Japanese made inverter units but these are more expensive. Energy efficiency standards are simply not strict enough.
Simply charging smart meter peak rates will result in deaths.
And if water prices treble as they’re expected to, presumably even more people will die of thirst rather than drink water they can’t afford?
There is a huge amount of phooey out about these Smart Meters, which in turn are a product of the economists desire to make competition in a privatised electricity market.
As part of making a privately owned market with separate generators, distribution, retail, and so on, the issue of RISK becomes bigger than ever before.
In this case, though, the risk is – who bears the cost of volatility?
Volatility refers to the cost of power. When there is surplus generating capacity, the price will be low. When there is a shortage the price will be high. And we always have shortages during heatwaves.
As it currently stands, the consumers pay the retailer a FIXED amount for power, and the system is set up to allow the generators to change prices (rebidding) every 1/2 hour. In the end this means you power retailer (AGL, TRU, Energex, whatever) wears the volatiliy risk.
Basically the retailer is selling at a fixed price and buying at a variable price.
Smart Meters allow the retailer to push the risk back to the consumer – who will pay the variable price. It’s all been dressed up with mumbo jumbo and environmentalism: “we will tell the user the cost of power and it is their choice if they wish to pay it”. Yeah right. What utter bollocks.
It’s all about moving the business risk from the retailers to the consumers.
It’s all about money.
Further followup comment: The in-home display things are a big con as well.
The in-home display requires that you are:
1. present to look at it
2. interested in looking at it
3. capable of understanding what you are looking at
4. willing and able to DO SOMETHING about what you are looking at
This is fine for the committed few. For most ordinary people in the ‘burbs, the novelty value will wear off after about the first week – and it will be ignored if not relegated to a dusty cupboard somewhere.
The in-home displays are about feel-good. Somebody will make a vast amount of money out of selling all this stuff but in the end it will make little difference. It’s all still about money and risk.
Good comments, Ashleigh.
As expressed earlier, I’m as cynical as Deborah about where Smart Meters were/are designed to lead us.
Alternatively, I think they’re an incredible enabler, with a potential to do some real and necessary good. I’m interested in reading ideas of their *positive* possibilities, whether or not they’ll ever be realised.
Positive possibilities:
The smart meter + in-home display could (with a vast other infrastructure) allow things like
- (benefit) centralised pushing to you the consumer of the CURRENT price of power – in theory this allows you to make a better decision abut whether you really want to run your a/c or not. (downsides) though on a 45 degree day in Adelaide its not really that much of a choice, and further you still actually have to be there to see it and act on the information;
- (benefit) load shedding by selective turn-off of high demand devices during peak, also called demand management. This is where the (some? which?) electricity provider will do something like turn off your fridge, or freezer, or a/c compressor for maybe 15 to 30 minutes to reduce demand. In return you get a lower price of power. (downside) Most people don’t like the idea of “big brother” having sensors in their house and controlling their devices. Though such equipment does already exist and there are some quite big trials in Adelaide right now. But OFF means OFF, and overriding the demand management systems isn’t easily possible… so there are all sorts of implication come with this
These are the big ones – the smart meter is the initial gateway into the home for the ultimate in control and monitoring technology, there’s a lot more to come. (I’m in the industry, I *know* where this is all heading).
Actually, there are some things that are far more valuable in terms of energy management but they require far more courage to do anything about.
For example – band-bulb is very silly indeed, the savings from compact fluors are illusory and CF lamps are quite inappropriate for many uses. But the LED lamps coming (stuill far too expensive but in 5 years…) THESE WILL BE REVOLUTIONARY. About 20% of the current power consumption, 50x the lifetime, and suitable to rapid switching cycles, refrigerators, and so on.
But educating idiots to turn back their thermostats will pay huge dividends. You DONT need to heat to 23 degrees in winter when 19 degrees will do fine (and put a sweater on). Likewise you don’t need to cool to 21 in summer – 25 will do. How you force this is a big problem.
And how you get people to close their windows when they use refrigerative air-conditioners (spare me… a walk around the burbs in summer makes me so cranky at the fools who think evaporative and use refrigerative…. one type needs windows open, the other its the enemy. Teach the great unwashed the difference!
Next – the huge consumers of power are (believe it or not) plasma TV’s and swimming pool pumps. Reducing those will make a difference of greater magnitude than banning the bulb. (Federal government figures bear this out). In a really energy conscious world, plasma TV’s would simply be banned. And in a town like Adelaide where water is scarce, swimming pools would likewise have an incentive for being filled in – use less water and power at the same time.
/end of rant