Because of the cost and resentment towards smart meters I wonder if time-of-use electricity prices can be communicated by other means. In a heat wave or cold snap short TV messages could say power has gone up to 75c per kwh or whatever. Other mediums could be SMS or website similar to the weather forecast.

Apart from the poles and wires needed to transmit peak supply there is also the issue of generating cost. I suspect by 2050 Australian will have sold the best of its gas reserves as LNG exports. It will too expensive to run open cycle peaking plant. I also wonder if by mid century Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne will be routinely hitting 50C in summer. If air conditioning becomes exorbitant we'll need survival strategies as with bushfires and cyclones.

Lynne

I appreciate your article explains the matter of peak consumption of electricity.

However, you implicate peak power as the motivator for the massive electricity price rises.

I suggest you - or your information sources - are captive of the electricity industry.

Over the recent past, too many of the 'facts' trotted out by the electricity industry have been shown to be false.

Just today a news article cited the NSW electricity industry as admitting...

"The power businesses have a number of unsustainable work practices which will be removed, such as employees receiving 26 per cent contributions to superannuation."

http://www.smh.com.au/business/time-to-switch-off-on-bloated-power-industry-20121107-28xag.html#ixzz2BYZvu1br

Then there is the matter of 'gold plating'!

As for peak loading issues, few would disagree that the primary cause is the rapidly growing use of air conditioners. If these were taken off the grid when overload was immanent, the need for massive investment in stand-by infrastructure for a few hours per year could be eradicated.

How to do it?

Raise the price of general 'use' electricity by 100%. Offer to 'return' general 'use' back to current rate if the household instals a separate meter for air conditioners (or a statutory declaration to say there is no air conditioner installed). For many, this would be like the separate meter for hot water.

With most households converting air conditioning to a separate meter, the energy supplier can switch these off (except where life threatening circumstances exist) to avoid a brown out.

Simple really!

Cheers

75% of households have an air conditioner, but less than 20% have solar hot water!

http://sunwiz.com.au/index.php/resources/useful-info/239-solar-electorates.html

Peak useage is a bit like sex (perhaps in more ways than one) but that it is discovered by each new generation of economists. It's also like sex in that it can be important but a lot of the talk about it is less then useful.

As an economist with the odd decade under the belt and with an interest in infrastructure economics I'll just opine: all infrastructure (except health) is designed for peak demand. On roads and rails it's call peak hour (now hours) we build dams for amanaging peak inflows (and also peak lack of inflows) and so on. And lets not get started on shcools. It seems that it is now sexy to look at electricity. By the way, the next big thing in 'peakness' will be in data transmission.

Don't let me appear not interested. I am, but I doubt that smart metres will do much other than to allow people to preen their eco-egos at dinner parties over the organic chardonnay and free-range tofu blancmange.

As hinted at, ultimately supply controls will be needed and for a lot more than for 10mins per hour, with small credits. It is not unusual for those who can afford it to run air cons at home all day so that the (empty) house is cool when the occupants arrive. Personally I'd suggest that a quota be the way to go: use the juice as you wish but if you want more then Honda makes generators or pop on some solar panels.

And that begs the question that the green sector hates: if you can generate your own power (which is subsidised by society) then should you still be allowed to draw from the grid (at peak time anyway)?

I would not have a problem with short shut offs for air conditioning or water heater. If the utility offed time periods one could schedule shut offs during off hours, while they are at work. A well insulated house does not require the climate control to run very often anyway. Time of day pricing would put the cost where it belongs. Home solar is a great way to deal with air conditioning loads, and offer daytime savings to offset some of the cost of heating. Battery technology is improving rapidly, allowing energy storage to become accessible. Off peak wind electricity can be stored by electrolysis to produce hydrogen.

Much of the preliminary explanation in the article is old hat for most Conversation readers I would think. The political pressure is now on the distributors and state-owned generatiors to cut their bloated costs. The argument for distributed generation which is often clean and renewable includes the savings from fewer transmission losses. As for the possibilities of brown-outs etc - last time there was a supply black-out in Vic due to hot weather and poor interstate links was 2000 I think. Once the interstate link to NSW was improved no nore black outs except one due to a major "events" ( breakdown) And the last time that happened industry was annoyed because they had made an agreement to shut down demand in those circumstances but this was not implemented. Can't separate talk of possible brown-outs etc from the fight by coal generators to hang on to market share, stop too much competition from renewables or gas and protect capital valuations of their plant - even tired old stuff like highly-polluting Hazelwood. It's relevant to remember that Yallourn W had 2 major off-line per4iods for half its generation capacity due to flooding of the brown coal mine - once caused by careless mining practices, once due to natural flooding events. Yet no supply problems resulted. Now that SA doesn't need Vic power due to the extension of wind and gas generation ,more browncoal generated electricity has beenj sold to NSW tho mysteriously this doesn't seem to have reduced NSW power bills. The whole NEM pricing system seems utterly mysterious ; and much gold-plating seems a waste.

"Another proposal is for “direct load control”. With pre-agreement, your electricity supplier remotely switches off appliances such as air conditioners and swimming pool pumps for, say, 10 minutes every half hour during peak demand periods."

Useless in the case of thermostatically controlled air-conditioners. They'll just keep running when they're allowed until they bring the temperature down to the required level.

"Otherwise, bad boy gets his way and our electricity bills will keep escalating."

That pretty much sums up a large fraction of electricity consumers. If the suppliers tried to measure how much each consumer used during demand peaks and tried to charge accordingly (i.e. user pays), the whinging would reach a crescendo.

Result - bad boy gets his way and our electricity bills keep escalating.

I would like to compliment Lynne Chester on her article as it is a fair reflection on the costs of the network, certainly better than a lot of the misinformation in the press. However, I would like to add a few important points to further clarify the situation.

The first point is that it is the summer peak demand which is the main determinant of the installed network capacity.in almost all of the States of the interconnected south-east Australian system which comprises Queensland, NSW, Victoria, SA and Tasmania. In the first four States, the summer peak demand is far greater than the winter peak demand. Secondly, the rating of transmission lines depends on the ambient temperatures, and since these are much higher in summer than winter, so the ratings of the lines are lower in summer than winter. And thirdly, while heating a house in winter can be done with a number of alternative methods, cooling in summer does rely mainly on air-conditioners. So the main issue is how to reduce the peak demand in summer.

One fairly obvious answer for households is solar cells because their output would coincide with the hot sunny conditions during peak sumer demand. However, I was very surprised to learn recently that the incentive for installing solar cells is almost non-existent - electricity retailers in NSW charge between 25 and 30 cents per kWh for supplied energy, but pay only about 8 cents or less for energy fed back into the network from domestic solar cells. So there is very little incentive for installing solar cells on your house if your airconditioning requirements are mainly on weekends, while your solar cells are generating into the system on weekdays at the very low infeed rate.

One other comment. There have been many claims of gold-plating by network companies which I find as ill-informed. The networks are designed and built to a national reliability standard which is enforced by the Australian Energy Regulator. Virtually every network project proposed by a network company must comply with the reliability standard before the Regulator allows it to proceed. So if there is a feeling in the community that there is excessive network capacity in the system, it is the reliability standard which needs to be reviewed. But I suspect that if the standard is reduced and results in more frequent power interruptions, the appetite for reducing the standard will quickly disappear. It's only because we have had such a good record of supply that the impact of interruptions is not fully appreciated by the community.

"this thread was about *distributed* storage."

No, this thread is about peak power and its cost. Sure there are some ways to store energy that do not require additional transmission cost but they are hardly cheap.

"so if the battery is more than 50% then it is delivering the power cheaper than the peak price."

If you completely ignore the cost of the battery.