Australia price gouging

[Gwgan]

Tesla big battery powerless to stop S.A. price gouging

By following the rules and making output changes in a time frame where batteries are not helpful, established power generators continue to artificially increase consumer costs. These actors are not going to give up their wealth generators without a fight.

 

[Tiger]

Tesla fights back: Tesla, Australia to turn 50,000 homes into power generators

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Tesla fights back: Tesla, Australia to turn 50,000 homes into power generators

Go big and go home.

 

[Gwgan]

 

[dramsey]

A little Googling reveals that this problem was predicted when Australia decided to rather quickly shut down its coal plants. From September of last year:

Electricity markets struggle as coal plants close down

Heck, even in March of 2017, Reuters reported:

Australia's dirtiest coal plant closes, energy crisis deepens

Everyone knows that burning coal is icky, but maybe they should have had a better plan for the grid in mind before they started taking major chunks of generation capability offline. Reminds me of Germany, who decided to shut down all their nuke generation after Fukushima and is currently enjoyed tripled electricity prices and is so desperate for natural gas to run generators that they're trying to build a pipeline from Russia (because giving Russia control of your energy supply always is a good idea. You could ask the Ukranians).

 

[jxdreimanis]

dramsey,

While the shutdown of the coal generators in the local market did cause concern for generation supply, one of the key reasons that the Northern and Playford B Generators were shutdown was the growing supply of cheap renewables in our market. The coal plants simply couldn't compete on costs to their owner chose to shut them down. Given the increasing supply of intermittent renewable energy, the network was supplemented more and more by the peaker plants all running on gas, and it continues to do so rather successfully. While there is now all sorts of issues with Australia's gas distribution, we are the largest exporter of LNG in the world now. We have plenty for local use if policy went in the right direction.

Up until recently the other states outside SA kept trying to blame the renewable generators for the statewide power outage (which it didn't, it was a major transmission line failure and generation capacity being on the wrong side of the line) only to find that their coal generators were getting too hot during the last summer period so SA was exporting energy to these states given our excess generator capacity. Given Electranet is looking to install a new transmission line to New South Wales so we have even more export potential can't come soon enough.

 

[Greg Liz]

Before making the final decision to buy, we are waiting to see if Tesla treats the Australian market equitably. It would seem fair that as prices went up when the AUD crashed due to coronavirus effects on markets that prices would now be restored to the previous levels as for the last 3 weeks plus the AUD has been back at the same levels seen prior to AUD drop caused by coronavirus market effects.

Added to the above is that Tesla has recently reduced prices for the same models in the US and China as well as other countries – for factors not related to exchange rates. Is Australia to see those price decreases or are Australian consumers to be treated differently?

In the meantime, we are using the waiting time to consider other options. Is anyone else waiting for a price restore?

 

[gpez]

Before making the final decision to buy, we are waiting to see if Tesla treats the Australian market equitably. It would seem fair that as prices went up when the AUD crashed due to coronavirus effects on markets that prices would now be restored to the previous levels as for the last 3 weeks plus the AUD has been back at the same levels seen prior to AUD drop caused by coronavirus market effects.

Added to the above is that Tesla has recently reduced prices for the same models in the US and China as well as other countries – for factors not related to exchange rates. Is Australia to see those price decreases or are Australian consumers to be treated differently?

In the meantime, we are using the waiting time to consider other options. Is anyone else waiting for a price restore?

I don't understand this logic or the question.

Tesla, just like every other company with every other product, is going to price the Powerwall for what the market is willing to pay. Full stop. Exchange rate is one of an innumerable amount of factors that play in to how a product or service is priced in a free market.

To assume that the exchange rate is the only factor or infer that Tesla somehow is being "inequitable" (for whatever that means) is silly.