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Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.7%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.4%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 38 19.2%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 25 12.6%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    198
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No need to get snarly.

All of the power is fed back into the National Grid. It's an net off-set arrangement.

As for wind farms in Canberra itself, as you may know, not all sites are suitable for wind farms for various reasons; optimal wind speed, wind sheer, terrain to name a few.

It has invested in projects outside of the territory to offset its use of fossil fuels through the NEM.

An investment into five different wind farms around the country, coupled with the ACT’s own solar energy production, covers 77 per cent of the Territory’s consumption. The shortfall is then made up of the ACT’s mandatory contribution to the national target.

All of this renewable energy created and purchased technically means the ACT has access to enough electricity from renewables to cover its total consumption. That was achieved three years ago.

At least it made the commitment and put up the funds (ours by the way) to do it.
 
Sorry if I seemed snarly, but I take anything and everything that comes out of Canberra with a grain of salt.
Mick
 
The issue retailers have is that during the middle of the day they are getting more solar than they can sell at 27 cents, and the wholesale rate often goes negative.

So they are sometimes paying us our 10cents, but having to give away the power for much less, then some times later in the after noon during peak demand they have to buy power for over 27cents and sell it do us at a loss.

It’s a weird business, wear whole sale rates constantly fluctuate but retail prices are fixed.

That’s why I mentioned above that Ev’s might be their saving grace, adding a lot of load at times when in general whole sale rates are low.
 
The big problem is going to be, rolling blackouts and ridiculous power costs, it will become difficult to juggle the charging without it costing.
Hopefully not, but at the end of the day, expensive electricity is going to hurt EV's.
I own one so I'm not saying this from a vindictive perspective and I hope I'm completely wrong.
 
thanks for coal generators in Qld I assume to ensure you have no outage on quiet nights?
Producing enough power to match one's consumption on a year does not mean being self sufficient nor cost free in that regard as you pointed: I produce nearly twice my consumption yet have a power bill...
I would have thought Canberra could get hydro "batteries"(pump up/down) with the mountains around, but just adding solar and wind is just a green washing of the ACT position, self righteous I assume, and with no industry .....but the politicians Hot Air plants
 
Provided that not to much charging is happening during peak periods, it’s not going to be an issue. there is only about 1 hour a day where the power system is pushed to its limits, but many hours where there is cheap power and where additional demand will lower costs and stimulate more investment in generation

Take a look at this graph from today, the grid coped with that peak in demand ok, and the other 23 hours could had easily supported a lot more demand.

It’s in retailers interest to incentivise EV’s to not charge during that peak, I don’t see it being a problem, certainly won’t cause rolling black outs , especially if the increased demand at nigh encouraged more generation.

 
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No, Queensland imports power most nights, and exports its excess solar during the day. Right now this minute as I type 18% of the east coast grid is being run off wind, and a Tasmania is exporting its hydro, so even when the sun goes down growing amounts of renewables as being used, it’s not green washing.

As you can see in the attachment, the peak renewables and the minimum renewables is growing, and fossils are declining.
 
So when the wind doesn't blow and the sun is hiding behind a cloud base there will still be a need for a limited need to use of coal, or just perhaps uranium.
 
farmerge said:
So when the wind doesn't blow and the sun is hiding behind a cloud base there will still be a need for a limited need to use of coal, or just perhaps uranium.
Click to expand...
Sure, during the transition which is going to take about 20 years to fully replace fossil fuels there will be times when we need to lean on some fossil fuels. But the amount of fuels we need will be steadily shrinking, and we will use less coal and probably more natural gas during those 20 years of transition.

The answer to intermittent supply from wind and solar is to do 3 things.

1, Back it up with Batteries and hydro power and other forms of storage.

2, Have a smart grid and smart charging solutions that maximise usage during periods of high production and idles back demand during low production. Eg intelligently controls vehicle charging, hot water systems, air conditioning etc

3, Have more solar and wind capacity than we need for electricity alone, so that during low production times there is still enough production to keep the grid going, while during high production times excess power can be used to produce and store hydrogen for industrial purposes and other synthetic fuels (e-fuels)
 

Allow your bias to run free. Denigrate politicians by all means but to do that to people who live and work here is poor form.

Most of the ACT is National Park anyway, so building hydro dams isn't an option. Plenty of dams but it's water storage.

The ACT Government is offering interest free loans of up to $15,000 repayable over 10 years to homeowners who want to install solar panels, batteries and other energy efficiency products. Covers:
  • rooftop solar panels
  • home battery storage systems
  • hot water heat pumps
  • electric vehicles (available in a future stage of the scheme)
  • electric vehicle charge infrastructure.
As for industry:

Industry sector of employment | Canberra Region Joint Organisation area | Community profile

profile.id.com.au

Notice how I got this thread back on topic by mentioning EVs?

 
Value Collector said:
Sure, during the transition which is going to take about 20 years to fully replace fossil fuels there will be times when we need to lean on some fossil fuels.
Click to expand...

The ACT is moving further away from fossil fuel usage. From the beginning of this year new builds, homes and businesses are unable to install a gas connection. This includes new suburbs under development.
 
I'll point out that 2 and 3 have very real limits in the real world.

To back that up with some figures, across the entire NEM and just looking at the past 7 days for simplicity, which is of course not the full extent of extremes, the total output from wind and solar has ranged from a high of 19,026 MW to a low of 506 MW.

Time shifting of loads can certainly help, it can reduce the other measures required, but to balance that extent of variation with time shifting or overbuild is prohibitive in terms of the scale required.

It's even more extreme over smaller areas eg individual states. For the past 7 days the output from wind and solar:

NSW + ACT = 92 MW - 7168 MW

Qld = 0 MW - 5131 MW

Vic = 29 MW - 4684 MW

SA = 27 MW - 2523 MW

Tas = 14 MW - 538 MW

WA (not part of the NEM) = 110 MW - 2058 MW

So Queensland did in fact go literally to zero and no amount of scaling that up gets to anything greater than zero.

Every other state also does go to zero at times and it's not particularly uncommon to see adjacent states both go to zero or extremely low simultaneously. Eg Qld + NSW combined dropped to a low of 184 MW.

Now to be clear I'm not arguing against renewable energy but I am saying that storage or backup generation is a must. The idea of shifting the timing of consumption does have merit, indeed I'll strongly advocate it especially for things like EV charging where there's no real impact on the end user at all, but it only goes so far. It reduces the storage and network infrastructure needed but only to a point, there's no getting around that we need both shallow and deep storage if it's to work.

Shallow storage = few hours. So batteries of any sort or small pumped hydro schemes.

Deep storage = days or weeks because we do get multiple consecutive days of dismal wind + solar output. Deep storage, in practice, being large hydro projects or gas turbines. Pick your poison - both have downsides in a "green" sense but it's one or the other with present technology. Dams or gas (or diesel, kerosene or similar). Suffice to say I'm extremely well aware of the debate surrounding both those options so I don't make the comment lightly.

Wind (green) + solar (yellow) output in the NEM last 7 days:



Obviously the totals go up with more being built but ten or even a hundred times zero is still zero and we do have the issue that, over the past 12 months, wind + solar generated 27.7% of all input to the NEM which does put a limit on the realistic extent of scaling up before the economics fall apart given that all output incurs full costs whether used or not - overbuild works technically but has a very real problem economically.

Same chart with all fuels included.

Black = coal
*Red = diesel
Orange = gas
*Light blue = batteries
Dark blue = hydro
Green = wind
Yellow = solar

*Hard to spot due to being so minor but they're not zero, they're on the chart if you look really carefully.



Below the zero line = battery charging and hydro pumping.

If you have an EV (or anything else that can be time shifted) then charging when the sun shines is the "greenest" option and failing that midnight to dawn comes second. Worst possible idea = charging circa 6 - 7pm.

No amount of shifting will avoid storage or backup generation though. Just reduces it but can't eliminate.

SA shows what a high renewables system looks like. Bearing in mind we have a bit of a cheat since the purple is import from Victoria. Below the zero line is export from SA to Vic plus battery charging. Colours same as above, noting there's no coal or hydro on this chart.



So at times we have more than 100% from wind and solar, indeed at times we've got more than 100% from solar alone (and 100% from wind has occurred in the past too), we also see periods of 99% fossil fuel or storage on that chart.

 
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You will find this interesting Smurf.
I went to a talk last Wednesday on the new power distribution standards (Victorian Electrical Supply Industry, VESI) which are the power distribution rules for connection including metering.

Powercor said they have been having major problems with solar power and similar generation damaging the transformers in Port Melbourne and Trugganini. These are areas with huge factories and warehouses.
There are also farming areas where too many farmers have solar.

So the new VESI rules give them the power to switch off the generation remotely.

Victorian Service and Installation Rules | Victorian Electricity Distributors

The Service & Installation Rules form the “Reasonable Technical Requirements” for the connection of electrical installations to the Victorian electricity networks.
www.victoriansir.org.au
 
did I denigrate ACT people? Sorry if you feel so, not the intent, the fact remains that the ACT is an artificial state and economy based on the political apparatus, and only that. And fully relies on the other states for everything;
Nothing wrong in that, imagine if the gov was in Melbourne or Sydney.
And I am sure EVs will be plentiful in the ACT indeed.
 
Remember though that I said the transition will take 20 years, and in 20 years it’s possible that most homes have enough 24 hours worth of battery storage, this alone would smooth out a lot of the solar production. Then add to that grid based battery and hydro storage

Then as I said that’s only part of the solution, dynamic load control will be a game changer too.
 
Getting back on topic ...
From The Driven
This is a significant development for Australia, as Thailand, like OZ, drives on the "correct" side of the road.
So hopefully, out of that 150,000 vehicles, a percentage will make their way here.
Mick
 

Section 125 of the Australian Constitution has a lot to answer for. Now we are stuck with providing services to over 200k+ people in regional NSW because the State Government don't.

Value Collector said:
As I person from Canberra pointed out to me once, When she said “don’t blame Canberra The Politicians aren’t from Canberra, you people vote them in and send them here on planes”
Click to expand...

Generally they are termed seagulls. Fly in, crap all over the place and fly out again. We are responsible for two Senators and three House of Reps but probably wish we weren't.
 
Knobby22 said:
Powercor said they have been having major problems with solar power and similar generation damaging the transformers in Port Melbourne and Trugganini.
Click to expand...

Interesting. A few years ago, I was chatting with a person involved in these issues. His comment was the buggers don't want to dig into their pockets for $100k upgrading each transformer to accommodate solar.
 
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