The future of energy generation and storage

[orr]

And Trawler at the same post, And here tell me more if any of this is wrong.
The Modular Factory produced Nuclear Reactors that are being put forward as an option are projected at this point to start coming out of South Korea in 2025, all going to plan. So this as yet untried untested broadly dispersed technology is in a limited form possibly available in five years.
But as we type today Twiggy Forest and Cannon Brookes are sitting pretty with an over subscribed initial offering to a $25 Billion Solar/Storage and tranmission project at Tennant Creek. Aimed at selling into Asia.
Who's off with the fairy's here???
one guess... Ahhh??? The Minerals Council....

 

[sptrawler]

And Trawler at the same post, And here tell me more if any of this is wrong.
The Modular Factory produced Nuclear Reactors that are being put forward as an option are projected at this point to start coming out of South Korea in 2025, all going to plan. So this as yet untried untested broadly dispersed technology is in a limited form possibly available in five years.
But as we type today Twiggy Forest and Cannon Brookes are sitting pretty with an over subscribed initial offering to a $25 Billion Solar/Storage and tranmission project at Tennant Creek. Aimed at selling into Asia.
Who's off with the fairy's here???
one guess... Ahhh??? The Minerals Council....

Good points Orr, the modular nuclear reactors are in their infancy, but IMO are probably the way to go in the immediate future, their safety should be many times times greater than large scale built on site nuclear generation.
There is going to be lots of different options that will require considering, not every Country has the land mass and or the mountains to use, to generate enough capacity to feed their power use.
Add to that the World population is increasing exponentially, therefore the load is increasing also.
It no doubt will all be resolved.
Also with regard the Tenant Creek solar storage, there is a couple of very large ones to be built in W.A, one inland from eighty mile beach, North of Port Headland.

 

[sptrawler]

And Australia with it's 15.5tonnes Co2/capita puts how much industrial effort into what is the inevitable low intensity carbon future?
Young Ms Thunberg, as a Swede puts out 4.5 tonnes

You can be part of the solution or 'The Problem'.
Over to you Trawler... @ post#3769
.

http://theconversation.com/australi...eader-in-building-new-renewable-energy-123694
From the article:
In Australia, renewable energy is growing at a per capita rate ten times faster than the world average. Between 2018 and 2020, Australia will install more than 16 gigawatts of wind and solar, an average rate of 220 watts per person per year.

This is nearly three times faster than the next fastest country, Germany. Australia is demonstrating to the world how rapidly an industrialised country with a fossil-fuel-dominated electricity system can transition towards low-carbon, renewable power generation.

We are doing something, despite what the media and serial 'chanters' keep telling everyone, we are actually doing it that quickly we are making our electrical distribution system unstable.
While on the subject of battery giga factories, Australia IMO will be the Worlds biggest exporter of H2, so I'm kind of wondering what you are getting at?
Maybe a bit of non fiction reading would help, rather than the regurgitated rubbish the daily rags and morning programes churn out IMO.
Over to you Orr at #3780

 

[Smurf1976]

Go coal go ....
The Chinese with their 7.5tonnes/per capita, make how many gigawatts of solar panels per year?
The Chinese with their 7.5tonnes Co2/capita

The big problem is the last word there.

“Per capita” won’t cut it sorry - the issue’s about absolute quantities not “per capita” and the troube with China is there’s more people in that country alone than we should probably have on the entire planet.

Plausibly acceptable if they all agreed to be extremely poor but the planet’s toast now that China alone is using more coal than every other country combined. That it’s low per capita doesn’t help when there’s over a billion people doing it.

For the record though the highest penetration of rooftop solar in the world is in Queensland and South Australia. We’re not doing too badly there.

If Tasmania became a separate country then it would rank second globally for electricity use per capita and almost all of that’s renewable. For much of the 1900’s it would have ranked #1 and it literally was 100% renewable.

The situation in Australia isn’t all bad, it’s mixed overall although the rising population and the country’s economic reliand on three commodities, two of which are fossil fuels, are an obvious problem needing to be resolved.

 

[orr]

Bit busy round my way ATM, Trawler of course picked me like nose, so much to keep up to date with with the 'Fruit Loop' TV. And they're a mob that know all to well how good it feels to get a medal for coming Last. 15.4tonnes per person and heading north. Thats us... Smurf Tas is a suburb.
Modular nuec's might as well be fairy land.
Here's a bet; $2 dollar lottery ticket?
There'll be a Tera Watt /annuum of Lithium Battery production(30x todays) before there's a Giga watt of small nuec output.
Bankable Battery Factory's today.

Or, you can take another slurp on the Minerals Council 'Koolaid' .... Hydrogen so beautifully synthesised for Natural Gas.(transitionally of course)

I do like my medal though, makes me feel so much less than ordinary.

 

[moXJO]

The big problem is the last word there.

“Per capita” won’t cut it sorry - the issue’s about absolute quantities not “per capita” and the troube with China is there’s more people in that country alone than we should probably have on the entire planet.

Plausibly acceptable if they all agreed to be extremely poor but the planet’s toast now that China alone is using more coal than every other country combined. That it’s low per capita doesn’t help when there’s over a billion people doing it.

Strongly agree with this. Per capita is not the "be all" measurement it's made out to be. We can double our population to reduce emissions (govt has been doing this already). Easy to fudge the numbers and hides the level countries are actually polluting at.

 

[SirRumpole]

Strongly agree with this. Per capita is not the "be all" measurement it's made out to be. We can double our population to reduce emissions (govt has been doing this already). Easy to fudge the numbers and hides the level countries are actually polluting at.

Yes , but we sell the large capita countries a lot of coal to pollute with.

Why not put an export tax on it so they end up paying for the pollution and we can use the proceeds to reduce our own emissions and fight the fires that result from global warming ?

 

[moXJO]

Yes , but we sell the large capita countries a lot of coal to pollute with.

Why not put an export tax on it so they end up paying for the pollution and we can use the proceeds to reduce our own emissions and fight the fires that result from global warming ?

Obviously we are too stupid to do so. That and other countries will pick up the contract.

 

[Smurf1976]

Tas is a suburb

The economic structure of Australia and the way it has changed has a lot to do with the energy and emissions problems we have today, indeed it is largely the cause.

Within living memory the nation’s economy was radically different and far more sustainable from a resource and environmental perspective than it is today.

NSW and Vic were the heavyweights doing everything but Tas and SA were far more significant than they are today.

Of particular relevance there is that so far as heavy industry and energy is concerned, Tasmania ranked third nationally and wasn’t far behind second place Victoria. Late 1960’s and 23% of all industrial electricity use in Australia occurred in the island state, a figure which exceeded Queensland, WA, NT and SA combined.

Meanwhile the nation’s third largest city at one time was Adelaide with its economy based around the manufacturing of finished goods, largely using refined metals and other materials produced elsewhere in Australia.

Then came the big shift to mining with iron ore in WA and coal in Queensland and it all happened rather quickly.

By the mid-1970’s Queensland finally had a proper state electricity grid and in one fell swoop, Gladstone power station, it became bigger than Tasmania or SA’s.

Growth of the coal and more recently gas industries in Queensland made the factories in other states, especially SA and Tas, economically inconsequential at the national level and lead directly to the situation we have today with economic reliance on coal and gas exports and an inadequate domestic supply.

Why persist with hard, clever stuff like refining and making things when we can just dig coal out of the ground instead? Quite simply we didn’t.....

About the same time the situation was paralleled in WA with the growth of iron ore mining. It took longer than Queensland but in terms of the broader development which flowed locally from it, and in particular noting the energy aspects, by the mid-1980’s the South West Interconnected System (that is, the grid) was now larger in capacity than Tasmania’s, WA was also exporting fossil fuel and in the following years Perth firmly overtook Adelaide as a city in terms of population.

Now my point isn’t a parochial one or suggestion that one state is or ought to be better than another or anything like that. Absolutely not.

My point is simply that Australia’s economic reliance on exports of iron ore, coal and gas is a recent thing and that within living memory those industries were inconsequential (iron, coal) or simply didn’t exist at all (gas exports only go back 30 years).

That we’re the kings of coal exports and are domestically short on gas is a created situation. It’s not how the nation evolved of its own accord, traditionally we were far more focused on innovation and technology and were often world leaders.

Trouble is, now that we’ve hitched ourselves so firmly to three commodities plus the two big city economies it’s rather hard to go back and do anything else. Can’t simply return to the factories when they’ve been mostly bulldozed and we’re way too far behind technically to start again and be competitive.

Bottom line is we’ll keep pushing coal for as long as anyone’s buying it.

 

[SirRumpole]

Obviously we are too stupid to do so. That and other countries will pick up the contract.

We have the mostest.

http://www.worldstopexports.com/coal-exports-country/

 

[sptrawler]

The economic structure of Australia and the way it has changed has a lot to do with the energy and emissions problems we have today, indeed it is largely the cause.

Within living memory the nation’s economy was radically different and far more sustainable from a resource and environmental perspective than it is today.

NSW and Vic were the heavyweights doing everything but Tas and SA were far more significant than they are today.

Of particular relevance there is that so far as heavy industry and energy is concerned, Tasmania ranked third nationally and wasn’t far behind second place Victoria. Late 1960’s and 23% of all industrial electricity use in Australia occurred in the island state, a figure which exceeded Queensland, WA, NT and SA combined.

Meanwhile the nation’s third largest city at one time was Adelaide with its economy based around the manufacturing of finished goods, largely using refined metals and other materials produced elsewhere in Australia.

Then came the big shift to mining with iron ore in WA and coal in Queensland and it all happened rather quickly.

By the mid-1970’s Queensland finally had a proper state electricity grid and in one fell swoop, Gladstone power station, it became bigger than Tasmania or SA’s.

Growth of the coal and more recently gas industries in Queensland made the factories in other states, especially SA and Tas, economically inconsequential at the national level and lead directly to the situation we have today with economic reliance on coal and gas exports and an inadequate domestic supply.

Why persist with hard, clever stuff like refining and making things when we can just dig coal out of the ground instead? Quite simply we didn’t.....

About the same time the situation was paralleled in WA with the growth of iron ore mining. It took longer than Queensland but in terms of the broader development which flowed locally from it, and in particular noting the energy aspects, by the mid-1980’s the South West Interconnected System (that is, the grid) was now larger in capacity than Tasmania’s, WA was also exporting fossil fuel and in the following years Perth firmly overtook Adelaide as a city in terms of population.

Now my point isn’t a parochial one or suggestion that one state is or ought to be better than another or anything like that. Absolutely not.

My point is simply that Australia’s economic reliance on exports of iron ore, coal and gas is a recent thing and that within living memory those industries were inconsequential (iron, coal) or simply didn’t exist at all (gas exports only go back 30 years).

That we’re the kings of coal exports and are domestically short on gas is a created situation. It’s not how the nation evolved of its own accord, traditionally we were far more focused on innovation and technology and were often world leaders.

Trouble is, now that we’ve hitched ourselves so firmly to three commodities plus the two big city economies it’s rather hard to go back and do anything else. Can’t simply return to the factories when they’ve been mostly bulldozed and we’re way too far behind technically to start again and be competitive.

Bottom line is we’ll keep pushing coal for as long as anyone’s buying it.

Absolutely spot on smurf, I was in the NW as 13 year old and we exported 5m tons of iron ore, in Perth at the same time they made everything from stoves to railway engines and carriages.
Now we produce nothing, and export over a billion tons of iron ore, it is going to end badly IMO.
You cant maintain a first World living standard and welfare system with a third World materials export economy. IMO.

 

[Smurf1976]

In my shed there are old fluoro lights made in NSW. Still working and they look to be circa 1970.

Plenty of old green or yellow handle screwdrivers made in Tas.

Etc you get the point. Can’t buy any of those new today, it’s all imported now.

Meanwhile back to the energy stuff well there’s enough infrastructure threatened by fire right now that whilst the details are anyone’s guess, there’s a fair chance that something will end up burning or at least with a flashover. It looks to be a question of what and when more than if - it’ll be a miracle if nothing cops it.

The Snowy scheme transmission, some other hydro facilities in Victoria, connection between Vic and NSW and transmission in SA to the Eyre Peninsula and west to the end of the grid are most notably at risk.

 

[sptrawler]

In my shed there are old fluoro lights made in NSW. Still working and they look to be circa 1970.

Plenty of old green or yellow handle screwdrivers made in Tas.

Etc you get the point. Can’t buy any of those new today, it’s all imported now.

Meanwhile back to the energy stuff well there’s enough infrastructure threatened by fire right now that whilst the details are anyone’s guess, there’s a fair chance that something will end up burning or at least with a flashover. It looks to be a question of what and when more than if - it’ll be a miracle if nothing cops it.

The Snowy scheme transmission, some other hydro facilities in Victoria, connection between Vic and NSW and transmission in SA to the Eyre Peninsula and west to the end of the grid are most notably at risk.

In WA we had a total State grid blackout in the 1990s, due to bushfires tripping the transmission lines between Collie Power Stations and Perth Power Station.
Loss of major transmission lines, causes serious issues.
As you well know.

 

[Humid]

Absolutely spot on smurf, I was in the NW as 13 year old and we exported 5m tons of iron ore, in Perth at the same time they made everything from stoves to railway engines and carriages.
Now we produce nothing, and export over a billion tons of iron ore, it is going to end badly IMO.
You cant maintain a first World living standard and welfare system with a third World materials export economy. IMO.

Did you support the Australian car industry during that time or just talk the talk in you Datsun.....

 

[sptrawler]

Did you support the Australian car industry during that time or just talk the talk in you Datsun.....

At 13 I didn't have a car, but the old man had a 1964 XM Falcon station wagon 170 pursuit motor
I was doing high school by correspondence.

 

[Humid]

At 13 I didn't have a car, but the old man had a 1964 XM Falcon station wagon 170 pursuit motor
I was doing high school by correspondence.

It shows

 

[moXJO]

It shows

As a miner isn't the default preference a Toyota Hilux?

 

[Humid]

No as a minor he couldn't drive.....

 

[Humid]

As a miner isn't the default preference a Toyota Hilux?

Not at home
Lot of money for what you get
At least there all autos these days

 

[Smurf1976]

A significant incident has occurred due to the fires, that being the loss of all electricity transmission between NSW and Victoria.

That means we now have two separate "national" grids with Qld and NSW in one and Vic, SA and Tas in the other and nothing can flow between them. It also means that southern parts of NSW, eg Wagga Wagga, are now in Victoria from an electrical perspective and being supplied from the Vic side of the grid.

On the southern side there's no current issue with available supply substantially exceeding consumption due to mild weather in the major population areas plus being a weekend. No problem there indeed to the extent there's been any issue it has been with getting generation down low enough and doing so quickly enough - always can be done but sometimes in a rather messy fashion.

On the northern side however supply is extremely tight, AEMO is looking to disconnect some industrial etc loads by activating pre-arranged plans in NSW, and prices have spiked from about $60 per MWh before the separation up to $14,700 so a rather big increase there.

No real issue in Qld however. Supply Qld to NSW is at maximum, the limit of the transmission lines, but there's sufficient generation in Qld to keep that up so long as Qld weather stays reasonable and nothing breaks. Looks OK for the next week at least.

It's all rather precarious in NSW now though.