My, how things have changed:

QUOTE: May 15, 2024 — 6.11pm

The biggest electricity distributor on the east coast plans to charge households with solar panels to export their electricity to the grid during the middle of the day.

The new policy by Ausgrid, which owns the poles and wires for 2 million residential and small business customers across Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle and the Hunter Valley, penalises solar panel owners who do not own a home battery to store the energy they produce.

Will have to figure out weather I am using enough electricity during the day between 10am and 3pm from the solar cells (only 1500W nominal, 1200 at best actual), thereby avoiding paying 32c/kwh from my provider, to compensate for this proposed export charge. The ratio of import to export charges before 3pm would be 32c/1.2c, or approximately 27:1. So if I use 1/27th of my make will be even to my initial way of thinking. But will have to dig out the old bills for a year.

Don't want to buy a battery to be able to export after 3pm.

In the end will probably suck-it-and-see for a quarter.

Good, about time common sense and thinking came back.

Pumping sporadic bursts of power back into the grid buggers it up. Then everyone has to pay more to patch up an unstable grid.

I'm all for people growing their own, whether it's food, water or electricity.

But,the grid is not designed to take bits and pieces of 'unwanted' power whenever and wherever along the way.

If that goes ahead I can imagine a lot of people with rooftop solar simply switching it off and telling Ausgrid tocome around and collect their backfeed meters.