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Watts happening? Electricity demand falling as prices continue to rise
Topic Started: 24 Aug 2014, 05:48 PM (705 Views)
Dark Matter
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http://www.smh.com.au/comment/watts-happening-electricity-demand-falling-as-prices-continue-to-rise-20140822-1072t4.html

Watts happening? Electricity demand falling as prices continue to rise

We know the two great certainties in life are death and taxes, but many thought there was a third: the inexorable rise in consumption of electricity. As the population grew and each of us got a little more prosperous each year, we'd use more power. The mighty electricity industry was built on that certainty.

Except that electricity consumption has been falling for the past four years. To say this has taken the industry by surprise is an understatement. For well over a century – even during the Great Depression – the quantity of electricity used in Australia each year was greater than the year before.

It took the industry and its regulators two or three years to accept the trend was more than just a hiccup on the ever-upward path, which delay probably added to the decline.

There are few aspects of the economy – global or national – where change is more significant, more diverse or more interesting than energy supply and demand – where energy covers coal, gas (conventional and unconventional), petroleum, wind, solar and other renewables. Expect to hear more from me on the topic.

But there are few questions more interesting than exactly why the unthinkable, a fall in electricity consumption, has come about. Short answer: a surprisingly large combination of reasons, although Tony Abbott's crusading against the carbon tax must get some of the credit.

The best attempt to quantify the various factors involved comes from a report prepared by Dr Hugh Saddler, an energy expert with the Pitt and Sherry consultancy, for the Australia Institute. Saddler's modelling covers the years to 2012-13, but we know from reporting this week by Origin Energy and AGL that the fall continued in 2013-14.

Saddler focuses on energy produced and consumed from the National Energy Market, which covers the five eastern states and the ACT, but the decline is occurring also in Western Australia. After peaking in 2008-09, consumption from the national market in 2012-13 was down by almost 8 terawatt hours, or 4.3 per cent.

But that's only half the story. Just as important as why demand has fallen is why it hasn't continued growing, as continued growth in the population and the economy would lead us to expect. Saddler estimates that had demand continued growing from 2004 at its average rate of growth over the previous 20 years (2.5 per cent a year) it would have been 37 terawatt hours more than it actually was in 2012-13.

This shortfall is equal to the output of almost 5000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity, the combined capacity of the Bayswater and Eraring power stations in NSW, or Loy Yang A and B and Hazelwood in Victoria.
I think the first shot in this war was the creation of the electricity retailers. There are at least 4 different companies who will sell you exactly the same electrons and spend a lot of your money on phoney marketing campaigns and different coloured bills. I once had a young guy at the door assuring me that his “retailer” would be supplying completely different, cheaper electricity to my house using special technology.

So much for our education system.

Shot number 2 will be allowing those retailers to consolidate other services – gas water mobile phone and finally internet. I think we are there already. Obviously there will be “Plans” to juke the numbers depending on what you need.

At this stage its all over. If you allow essential service monopolies that control your access to the internet, you are done. Unless you are prepared to go off grid (back to the 19th century really) you will have to pay for essential services – and the stream of rent money will flow to the usual parasites.

As a side note about the Gittens article, it is interesting to see the amazing improvements in light bulbs. The new LED bulbs which are in the supermarkets are really good. $15 gets you a 10W bulb – which looks like a bulb – and is enough to light a small room. The colour balance is much better than the old CFL bulbs and that seems to make the light more effective. I tried a 12.5W version ($19) and it is so bright it reminds me of an old 100W bulb from the nineteen dicketies.

Seeing as it is the weekend, I will conclude with an energy story that strikes at the heart of the property speculators.

One of the sad facts about electricity is that very few people have any idea about the relative scale of power consumption. Lights and plugpaks and little devices use electricity, but not very much. Bar heaters can be 2KW – which is a lot. Electric water heaters can be up to 5KW – which is even more of a big deal.

Take as a comparison a 10W LED bulb versus a 1KW small bar heater and a $0.25 /KWh cost of electricity. The time for each to use $1.00 of power is:-

LED Light 400 hours = $1.00
Bar Heater 4 hours = $1.00

Given those figures and the fact that $1 only buys me 1/2 a DimSim at the Thai Takeaway, it is hard for me to take the LED bulb seriously. So I am surprised when people are obsessed with switching lights off while the bar heaters blaze away.

Anyway, some years ago I knew a family that moved into a rental house in Rockdale. Every light in the house was converted to a CFL. This was because the electricity consumption was about 30KWh/day. WTF!!!!. You would need a whole forest of incandescents to hit that target. I did a bit of an energy audit and concluded that the real culprit was an old Hot Water heater with a faulty thermoistat that triggered every time hot water was used and stuck on for about 30 minutes boiling the water out through a vent.

Given the families previous energy footprint of about 12 KWh/day, the conclusion was this faulty water heater was wasting (at the tenants expense) over 15KWh per day. That is $4 a day, or $1,500 a year. It is also about 5.5 MWh per year – from one house!

The physics of this hot water situation was not particularly interesting to the Landlords. The Property Manager was a big-boned girl of modest intellect by the name of Danielle (we know she was called Danielle, because it was tattoed on her foot). She was also nonplussed by the energy balance of the property. She summed up the situation very concisely ” When yous own your own house you can put in any hot water system you like. Until then yous just need to pay the bill.”

So I guess the point here is that there would have been thousands of old electric systems like this scattered around, and despite negative gearing and investors claiming for expenses, there was absolutely no incentive for the landlords to prevent massive energy wastage.
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miw
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Dark Matter
24 Aug 2014, 05:48 PM
As a side note about the Gittens article, it is interesting to see the amazing improvements in light bulbs. The new LED bulbs which are in the supermarkets are really good. $15 gets you a 10W bulb – which looks like a bulb – and is enough to light a small room. The colour balance is much better than the old CFL bulbs and that seems to make the light more effective. I tried a 12.5W version ($19) and it is so bright it reminds me of an old 100W bulb from the nineteen dicketies.
For the latest generation LED bulbs, the ratio seems to be about 10:1 in terms of brightness per watt at the low end, maybe not quite as good as the high end. I have 4W candle-type LED bulbs that are almost exactly the same brightness as the 40W incandescents they are replacing. 3W LED bulbs seem to be about the same as 5W CFLs, and I have 3W G4 style LEDs slightly outshining 10W G4 halogens. (But are not quite drop-in replacements. Despite the fact that these LED bulbs are AC/DC, they do not offer enough load to get a 12V AC electronic transformer designed for halogens to start up. If I have one halogen in the circuit they work fine, but if it is all LEDs they do not light. I have converted the circuits to 12V DC.) I also have 18W corncob-style bulbs that are much brighter then the 18W CFLs they replace, which in turn were supposed to be 100W equivalent. They do need to be in a diffuser suitable for corncob-style bulbs to get the full effect though.

Expect them to get much cheaper. The prices you quoted are 7 times what I am paying in China right now, and I am paying top dollar to get the latest generation - last gen bulbs are selling out at about 1/2 the price.

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Anyway, some years ago I knew a family that moved into a rental house in Rockdale. Every light in the house was converted to a CFL. This was because the electricity consumption was about 30KWh/day. WTF!!!!. You would need a whole forest of incandescents to hit that target. I did a bit of an energy audit and concluded that the real culprit was an old Hot Water heater with a faulty thermoistat that triggered every time hot water was used and stuck on for about 30 minutes boiling the water out through a vent.

Given the families previous energy footprint of about 12 KWh/day, the conclusion was this faulty water heater was wasting (at the tenants expense) over 15KWh per day. That is $4 a day, or $1,500 a year. It is also about 5.5 MWh per year – from one house!

The physics of this hot water situation was not particularly interesting to the Landlords. The Property Manager was a big-boned girl of modest intellect by the name of Danielle (we know she was called Danielle, because it was tattoed on her foot). She was also nonplussed by the energy balance of the property. She summed up the situation very concisely ” When yous own your own house you can put in any hot water system you like. Until then yous just need to pay the bill.”

So I guess the point here is that there would have been thousands of old electric systems like this scattered around, and despite negative gearing and investors claiming for expenses, there was absolutely no incentive for the landlords to prevent massive energy wastage.


Cool story bro. It just shows to me that the tenant and landlord are both dumb. That water heater is obviously faulty and the LL is required by law to make it not faulty. I'd recommend a quick complaint to the xCAT. They have the power to reduce the rent payable by $4/day until it is fixed. That would get the LL's attention, as would a non-renewal of the lease at the end of the lease period.

I am in the process of doing a reno on an apt I rent out, and as part of the reno all light fittings are being replaced with E27 sockets inside various fittings - replacing a motley assortment of flouros and B-type fittings. Because LEDs are so horribly expensive and the choice in oz is temporarily so bad, I am importing a box of 26 LED bulbs of various wattages and colour balances at a total cost of A$90. To make things easy for the tenants, I'll leave the leftover bulbs in a box with the tenants with the stipulation that when they replace a bulb from the box they need to keep the dead one and any missing bulbs will be charged to their deposit when they leave. I will certainly be using the energy efficiency angle in the promotion of the unit. If it wasn't for the two ceiling fans, The lighting circuit for the whole apt could get away with a 1A breaker.

I did have to have quite a bit of discussion with the PM and sparky to get this through. The sparky wanted to use a mixture of round flouros and CFLs and when I said I wanted LEDs he said they were $29.50 per bulb and that was trade price and they were a pain in the arse. In the only way I could get it done was to take on the sourcing of the bulbs myself and say that anything other than E27 fittings would not be paid for.

No doubt some tenants will still run a 2000W fan heater or two and wonder why their electricity bills are so high in an energy-efficient apartment though.
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.
--Gloria Steinem
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Poontang
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Moving away from "individual cases" to general population, there are many whom are trying to reduce their energy consumption using small measures. ie turning stuff off they are not using, lower wattage lights etc to those going high end solar power electricity units.


As consumpton reduces, electricity companies need to keep revenue coming in to appease shareholders and pay management performance bonuses, so "supply charge" rises to meet this.


Same for Water, and Gas...
There are some people who seem angry and continuously look for conflict.
Walk away, the battle they are fighting isn't with you, it's with themselves.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is not enough of anything to satisfy all who want it.
The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. ~ Thomas Sowell.

Who was the fool, who the wise man, who the beggar or the Emperor? Whether rich or poor, all are equal in death.
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