Electric cars?

divs4ever said:

well CCE is still floundering around with wave technology ( i hold CCE ) and Australia has plenty on coastline , and over half the population lives not that far from a coast

am not saying it is the answer but we have some tech ( home-grown ) that could be developed further

also Australia doesn't seem to believe much in geo-thermal , maybe we are missing something there ( especially in the inland )

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Yes read up on the world leaders, https://www.carnegiece.com/, do your own research

The biggest problem that those who are not of an electrical or power generation background is, the amount of grunt needed to supply the electrical load, in some ways it is like talking to children about money.

sptrawler said:

Now you are moving the goal posts, one minute you are talking renewables and BEV's, now you are back filling with gas and coal, for gods sake don't go all rederob on me.
FFS you can't say a really good night is the norm, or a really bad night is the norm, people need electricity not warm feel good $hit. OMG
Imagine if FMG said we are going to invest $25billion into BEV's in Australia, it will cost the shareholders their shirt, but it is great for the country and the world in general. You would say WTF.
I mean put your feet on the ground and think of it as an investment, because if it isn't, either the tax payer fails or the plan fails, stop putting your love of the car in front of your power of reasoning.
I'll tell you how silly some of it is, my wife and I bought segway ninebot ES2 scooters three years ago, we bought extender range batteries for them, now three years later.
I sold mine a year ago and bought a ninebot max from Melbourne, but the wife's has had a problem the main battery wont take a charge, so easy buy another?
Not so easy no one makes the module so it will be up to me, but the main take take from this is they use 20 off 18650 lithium battery cells.
Your Tesla uses 16,444 of them. ?
the good thing is I'm a sparky and will fix it.

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I am invested in charging EV’s.

I own a bunch of APA shares, I quite like the fact that a growing number of EV’s will be increasing the demand for Electricity over the next 20 years at the same time as coal plants shutter their doors, because it will do the following.

1, increase demand for APA owned electricity Transmission lines, as solar power is sent south during the day and wind and hydro sent north at night.

2, it increases demand for APA owned solar, Wind and batteries and also creates opportunities for them to make further investments.

3, Gas power to fill in the gaps will increase utilisation of APA’s Gas pipelines, Gas storage and gas power plants.

There is plenty of patient capital waiting to invest in increasing renewables as demand grows, but it will only be deployed as contracts get signed, which will happen incrementally over time, there is no rush.

Value Collector said:

I am invested in charging EV’s.

I own a bunch of APA shares, I quite like the fact that a growing number of EV’s will be increasing the demand for Electricity over the next 20 years at the same time as coal plants shutter their doors, because it will do the following.

1, increase demand for APA owned electricity Transmission lines, as solar power is sent south during the day and wind and hydro sent north at night.

2, it increases demand for APA owned solar, Wind and batteries and also creates opportunities for them to make further investments.

3, Gas power to fill in the gaps will increase utilisation of APA’s Gas pipelines, Gas storage and gas power plants.

There is plenty of patient capital waiting to invest in increasing renewables as demand grows, but it will only be deployed as contracts get signed, which will happen incrementally over time, there is no rush.

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That's nice.
It doesn't mean you know what you are talking about, when it comes to power generation and the grid in general, it just means you see an investment opportunity and are acting on it.

but we have ways of taking little stuff off the peak loads , for the heavy lifting nuclear is an option especially since now Russia makes and sells the 'mini-nuke' power plants , which i suspect don't need to be next to an ocean
you can bet we will find new ways to use electricity for centuries to come , so maybe we should decentralize those smaller predictable demand cycles ( take the load off the grid as well )

( BTW i am deeply underwater on CCE , if CCE is the world leader they had better leave room for others to pass )

but depending on who scoops up CCE , it might be important technology in the future

Value Collector said:

I am invested in charging EV’s.

I own a bunch of APA shares, I quite like the fact that a growing number of EV’s will be increasing the demand for Electricity over the next 20 years at the same time as coal plants shutter their doors, because it will do the following.

1, increase demand for APA owned electricity Transmission lines, as solar power is sent south during the day and wind and hydro sent north at night.

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That is a good point, but I would have thought the main benefit would be, sending power west to east as the sun sets.
low consumption high solar generation in SA, to high consumption in NSW.

i still see SOME need for coal , gas , oil and uranium in the future but maybe only where they have a clear advantage over other sources of energy

sptrawler said:

That is a good point, but I would have thought the main benefit would be, sending power west to east as the sun sets.

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and vice versa as the sun rises , i assume

boy that is asking a lot of the transmission lines
lines lose efficiency as they become longer and the South East corner of Australia sucks up a huge amount of energy

am not saying that is a bad idea , just one where the underlying technology needs to improve

divs4ever said:

but we have ways of taking little stuff off the peak loads , for the heavy lifting nuclear is an option

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My personal belief is eventually SMR nuclear will be the go.
To replace fossil fuel with clean energy, requires replacing fossil fuel with something of similar energy density, the only thing we know of at the moment is hydrogen.
But to produce hydrogen is energy intensive, so you get nothing for nothing, the only energy source we have that is clean and can produce enough energy to make hydrogen to make it viable is nuclear.
So next question how do you make it viable? you run it 24/7 flat chat, when the renewables kick in the nuclear generation makes hydrogen, when the renewables fade, the nuclear supplies the load.
To me it is the obvious answer at this time, but hey things change, who knows.

divs4ever said:

and vice versa as the sun rises , i assume

boy that is asking a lot of the transmission lines
lines lose efficiency as they become longer and the South East corner of Australia sucks up a huge amount of energy

am not saying that is a bad idea , just one where the underlying technology needs to improve

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From the article:
The project, dubbed EnergyConnect, is expected to reduce business and household power bills by up to $100 per year in SA and $66 per year in NSW.

High voltage transmission company Electranet has made its final investment decision to build the SA section of the $2.3bn interconnector linked to NSW.



We have talked a lot about this in the thread 'future of energy generation and storage', one thing for sure, don't believe the media when they say nothing is happening.
The media today works on the mushroom theory IMO, the problem is most suck it up. ?

By the way on a side note, long transmission lines, which are lightly loaded actually gain volts, so static VAR reactors have to put in place to drop the voltage, the transmission lines work as capacitors.
Just a point of interest, power transmission is a complex issue, it actually is a specific area of engineering.

UPDATE 1-Fire breaks out in Tesla Megapack unit in Australia during testing​

https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/1-fire-breaks-tesla-megapack-071423348.html

In the context of EV's the charging issues are simple at a conceptual level, extremely complex when it comes to the fine detail of actually doing it.

In short:

1. Don't overload the network. Charging during the existing peak is a bad idea period unless it happens to be a nice mild day with consequent lower peak demand.

2. It's far cheaper and more efficient to use the wind and sun when it blows and shines rather than running that through storage (of whatever form) with its associated energy losses, operating costs and large upfront cost.

3. To the extent we still have fossil fuel plant, and that's going to be a while yet, a consistent load most definitely beats a peaky load in every way.

From both an economic and technical perspective, if you want a single measure well then load factor is a pretty decent one. Load factor being average load as a % of peak load.

In SA it's barely over 40% and in Victoria it just reaches 50%, NSW is mid-50's, south-west WA just under 60%, meanwhile Queensland and Tasmania have both consistently reached 70%+ for decades.

It thus comes as no surprise to find that Queensland and Tasmania are the strong states in the National Electricity Market from a technical perspective and are the two states with a major heavy industrial load presence along with WA that isn't part of the NEM.

EV's could lift the load factor in SA into the high 50's % if they totally replaced ICE vehicles and no charging is done during the peaks, a very worthwhile improvement. With potential load growth in other areas on top, ultimately getting it up to ~70% seems doable in due course.

Overall the whole issue is somewhat like saying you want to move a thousand pieces of farm machinery. They'll need to be driven under their own power which isn't a problem but one thing most certainly is a problem - the route unavoidably goes via suburban area and will move at no more than 10km/h on a major highway. Not a problem if you do it in the middle of the night on Sunday but an outright disaster if you try and do it a few hours later at 8am on Monday morning.

If you're going to take up a big chunk of network capacity, be that roads or power, well then doing it when existing uses are minimal is relatively painless. Do it during the peaks though and, well, whoever authorised that will be in rather a lot of trouble....

Overall we can not only supply sufficient electricity to charge EV's but it actually benefits the system by doing so. It adds load at times where there's presently a lack of it and brings greater utilisation of assets. The key though is doing it with a clever approach.

divs4ever said:

lines lose efficiency as they become longer

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They do but they're still fairly efficient as such.

Some data for right now (well, a few minutes ago):

Queensland > NSW = 95 MW on the two AC + 1 DC line. Total losses under 1 MW.

Tasmania > Victoria = 199 MW on the single DC line. Total losses 3 MW.

Victoria > SA = 455 MW transferred on the two AC + 1 DC line. Total losses = 31 MW.

Victoria > NSW = 497 MW on multiple AC lines. Total losses = 21 MW.

That's a current snapshot, those figures are current actual not the limits. Under different circumstances losses will be different but overall it's fairly low in % terms especially at moderate loads.

Distribution network losses, that is distribution as distinct from transmission, vary hugely with loading and location so there's no single answer. If anyone asked me to put a single figure on it though well 10% from power station to household, so including transmission losses and distribution, will be order of magnitude correct for the majority of customers with typical usage patterns. Somewhat higher if you're in the middle of nowhere but of that order for the majority.

but Perth to Adelaide ?? ( and vice versa ) ( or where it is really needed Melbourne and Sydney )

sounds like a good idea , but we have several incidences where bush/grass fires have brought down interstate power lines

so say Perth to the ( WA ) Goldfields , okay maybe but the extra step across to Adelaide , gee you would have to crunch those numbers very carefully , it might be cheaper to erect a few more wind turbines

Smurf1976 said:

Overall we can not only supply sufficient electricity to charge EV's but it actually benefits the system by doing so. It adds load at times where there's presently a lack of it and brings greater utilisation of assets. The key though is doing it with a clever approach.

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One of the best explanations you could read in that post.
Thanks @Smurf1976.

Perth is the most isolated city in the world. Running cross-country power to there would be madness.

Australia would make a rather nice solar panel if not for the fact that there's so much coal & uranium making them completely uneconomical.

BUT of the cities in the Australian south ( including Brisbane ) it has the best climate for reliable energy production ( i suggest both solar and wind ) ... and if CCE ever get a commercial product ... )

well solar and wind do not have to STAY uneconomical the tech can always be improved we have had windmills in Australia for near 200 years so the concept isn't new

here we are having space academies but we can't make a decent wind turbine ( where logistics costs are pivotal )

sptrawler said:

That's nice.
It doesn't mean you know what you are talking about, when it comes to power generation and the grid in general, it just means you see an investment opportunity and are acting on it.

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I know enough to know the wind blows at night.

Have have been tracking the output of the east coast states, wind solar and gas generation for months, and tracking the flow, almost as an obsession to help me understand That part of APA’s business.

trust me I wish you were right and the wind didn’t blow at night, APA would be moving a lot more gas then.

sptrawler said:

That is a good point, but I would have thought the main benefit would be, sending power west to east as the sun sets.
low consumption high solar generation in SA, to high consumption in NSW.

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SA exports and imports a lot mainly lead by wind, when the wind blows they export, when it slows down they import.

APA does own a transmission line connecting SA to Vic, at the moment SA is importing slightly from Vic, and Vic is importing from NSW and Tas (both who are producing some wind.

Value Collector said:

APA does own a transmission line connecting SA to Vic, at the moment SA is importing slightly from Vic, and Vic is importing from NSW and Tas (both who are producing some wind.

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It will be interesting to see if the proposed SA-NSW ElectraNet interconnector, has any effect on revenues.
By the way I wasn't having a go at you, I was only alluding to the fact that the Grid is a very technical and complex beast and has to be seen as a whole not as a bunch of parts.
That is where a lot of these renewable solar farm/wind farms, that were built in the Mildura area stuffed up.
If you are a transmission engineer, well I defer to your knowledge. I only thought you were a very astute investor, my apologies if I offended, it wasn't intended.

divs4ever said:

but Perth to Adelaide ?? ( and vice versa ) ( or where it is really needed Melbourne and Sydney )

sounds like a good idea , but we have several incidences where bush/grass fires have brought down interstate power lines

so say Perth to the ( WA ) Goldfields , okay maybe but the extra step across to Adelaide , gee you would have to crunch those numbers very carefully , it might be cheaper to erect a few more wind turbines

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Qld, NSW, Vic, SA and Tas are already all connected and operate as a single market, Electricity (up to the capacity of the inter connectors) already moves between the states.

on a sunny day though QLD is normally exporting at its limits, on a windy night Vic and SA will be exporting at their limits, Tasmania seems to be regularly exporting also I guess unless they start running low on water.