The future of energy generation and storage

[sptrawler]

Got a dido job offer at Dongara at this place ....

404

www.cloughgroup.com

The Dongara field has been there a long time, it used to be on the right not far before the NW hwy T junction on the Brand Hwy.
Plus Dongara is a top spot, what is the swing? Sounds like a good gig.

 

[Humid]

The Dongara field has been there a long time, it used to be on the right not far before the NW hwy T junction on the Brand Hwy.
Plus Dongara is a top spot, what is the swing? Sounds like a good gig.

3x1 but I know a few sparkies are keen to take the fishing gear and boats.... lifestyle gig

 

[sptrawler]

3x1 but I know a few sparkies are keen to take the fishing gear and boats.... lifestyle gig

If your single, it sounds great, heaps better than the Pilbara or Goldfields.
3hrs from Perth, great fishing town, 60k's to Geraldton, what's not to like.
If your married tell the wife its terrible, but its close to home, if she needs you in a hurry. Dont tell her its magic, you'll get nagged every time your home. Lol

 

[Smurf1976]

Supply in Queensland yesterday:

Yellow = solar
Green = wind
Blue = hydro
Orange = gas
Red = kerosene
Brown = biomass (there's a tiny bit if you look carefully)
Black = coal
Purple = from NSW

Below the zero line during the morning, those two bits are pumping load at the Wivenhoe pumped storage facility. One pump ran during the early morning, both on for a period after sunrise. This was discharged during the later afternoon and evening. The smaller amount of hydro running constantly being at Barron Gorge and Kareeya both of which are conventional non-pumped facilities.

 

[SirRumpole]

Government loan given to mine graphite in SA, looks a good deal.

Graphite miner says $185 million loan will fast-track 'electric vehicle revolution'

A mining company with plans to create a graphite project on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula says a conditional loan from the federal government will cover most of its initial costs at a time when materials for batteries are in growing demand.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Investoradam]

Supply in Queensland yesterday:

View attachment 136894

Yellow = solar
Green = wind
Blue = hydro
Orange = gas
Red = kerosene
Brown = biomass (there's a tiny bit if you look carefully)
Black = coal
Purple = from NSW

Below the zero line during the morning, those two bits are pumping load at the Wivenhoe pumped storage facility. One pump ran during the early morning, both on for a period after sunrise. This was discharged during the later afternoon and evening. The smaller amount of hydro running constantly being at Barron Gorge and Kareeya both of which are conventional non-pumped facilities

solar panels and wind mills are kicking arse like they never do
pruducts also brought yo you by coal

 

[Humid]

solar panels and wind mills are kicking arse like they never do
pruducts also brought yo you by coal

Im producing 40 kw/day
Payed for itself in 2 years....Investoradam

 

[sptrawler]

The oldest son is now completely off grid, so in 12 months I will let everyone know how it is going. Solar/battery,diesel genset, family of 5, heat p/p HWS, lpg cooking.

 

[SirRumpole]

The oldest son is now completely off grid, so in 12 months I will let everyone know how it is going. Solar/battery,diesel genset, family of 5, heat p/p HWS, lpg cooking.

A great adventure for them, I'll be very interested in how they go.

 

[sptrawler]

A great adventure for them, I'll be very interested in how they go.

At the moment all good, but summer in the SW of W.A you would expect that, winter will be interesting, he is a clever bloke so he will adapt and modify stuff as required.

 

[Investoradam]

Im producing 40 kw/day
Payed for itself in 2 years....Investoradam

based on whos figures?
does that also include all the land destroyed digging up the toxic materials required to make such a useless toxic product and the omissions & waste doing that, then refining the material and mixing to produce the product?
how about the toxic waste produced in the making of the product?
how about the land destroyed whist erecting the solar panels or windmills, the toxic run off in to the ground, then when the usless products life span is over if it survives all the elements of the weather the solar panels and wind mills end up in land fill.

there is nothing clean about solar penels or wind turbines

 

[SirRumpole]

based on whos figures?
does that also include all the land destroyed digging up the toxic materials required to make such a useless toxic product and the omissions & waste doing that, then refining the material and mixing to produce the product?
how about the toxic waste produced in the making of the product?
how about the land destroyed whist erecting the solar panels or windmills, the toxic run off in to the ground, then when the usless products life span is over if it survives all the elements of the weather the solar panels and wind mills end up in land fill.

there is nothing clean about solar penels or wind turbines

there is nothing clean about solar penels or wind turbines

Compared with what ?

 

[Humid]

based on whos figures?
does that also include all the land destroyed digging up the toxic materials required to make such a useless toxic product and the omissions & waste doing that, then refining the material and mixing to produce the product?
how about the toxic waste produced in the making of the product?
how about the land destroyed whist erecting the solar panels or windmills, the toxic run off in to the ground, then when the usless products life span is over if it survives all the elements of the weather the solar panels and wind mills end up in land fill.

there is nothing clean about solar penels or wind turbines

Based on the bill I get from Synergy bi monthly......when you move out you will get one too

 

[Smurf1976]

there is nothing clean about solar penels or wind turbines

Compared with what ?

As someone who's seen rather a lot of power stations, I'll simply say that all power pollutes.

Nuclear, coal, oil in any form, gas, unconventional fossil fuels eg burning raw oil shale, biomass, geothermal, hydro, wind, solar, tidal.....

It all impacts something somehow that I can say with certainty.

Personally I'll argue that the least bad impacts are ones that can be most readily reversed. On that score:

Fossil fuels - cannot be be reversed in any realistic timeframe and for any practical facility also cannot be contained.

Nuclear - cannot be reversed but in theory can be contained.

Biomass - effectively minimal impact in the context of waste, huge impact via land clearing and fertilizer use in the context of land cleared for crops.

Hydro - there are exceptions, the hydro industry has managed to wipe out a few species and flood a few places it ideally shouldn't have, but for a typical generic hydro scheme, the vast majority of them, the impact ultimately is reversible. If it's no longer required then drain the storage, remove the dam and other infrastructure, the land can be revegetated, animals move back in and so on. If someone comes back in a thousand years then they'll struggle to find evidence it ever existed, indeed even in a century it'll be largely gone. Same as any old ruins, nature claims it back eventually. There are individual exceptions where the impacts are permanent but for the vast majority it's ultimately reversible in a substantial but still "human" timescale.

Wind, solar, tidal, geothermal - so long as the facility's sensibly built and operated and nobody's being intentionally reckless then most impact is quite readily reversible simply by removing the equipment from site and either burying it or where possible recycling the materials. Noting that landfill per se isn't a problem so long as it's in a sensible location - bury old wind turbine blades in the desert yes, don't dump them in a National Park. In some aspects the impact is low enough for there to be no real point in removal - a wind turbine foundation buried in the ground or on the bottom of the ocean realistically can be simply abandoned in place, there's no particular reason why it needs to be removed since whilst not zero the impact of leaving it, in the vast majority of cases, isn't really a problem.

They all impact something though. The very nature of extracting energy, in whatever form, from the natural environment ensures that.

Personal opinion - suffice to say I'm not aware of any wind or solar installation in Australia that could fairly be termed an environmental disaster and there's only two hydro projects that have impacts which do seem irreversible, although one of them possibly is fixable only time will tell. That's a far better track record than fossil fuels.

 

[SirRumpole]

As someone who's seen rather a lot of power stations, I'll simply say that all power pollutes.

Nuclear, coal, oil in any form, gas, unconventional fossil fuels eg burning raw oil shale, biomass, geothermal, hydro, wind, solar, tidal.....

It all impacts something somehow that I can say with certainty.

Personally I'll argue that the least bad impacts are ones that can be most readily reversed. On that score:

Fossil fuels - cannot be be reversed in any realistic timeframe and for any practical facility also cannot be contained.

Nuclear - cannot be reversed but in theory can be contained.

Biomass - effectively minimal impact in the context of waste, huge impact via land clearing and fertilizer use in the context of land cleared for crops.

Hydro - there are exceptions, the hydro industry has managed to wipe out a few species and flood a few places it ideally shouldn't have, but for a typical generic hydro scheme, the vast majority of them, the impact ultimately is reversible. If it's no longer required then drain the storage, remove the dam and other infrastructure, the land can be revegetated, animals move back in and so on. If someone comes back in a thousand years then they'll struggle to find evidence it ever existed, indeed even in a century it'll be largely gone. Same as any old ruins, nature claims it back eventually. There are individual exceptions where the impacts are permanent but for the vast majority it's ultimately reversible in a substantial but still "human" timescale.

Wind, solar, tidal, geothermal - so long as the facility's sensibly built and operated and nobody's being intentionally reckless then most impact is quite readily reversible simply by removing the equipment from site and either burying it or where possible recycling the materials. Noting that landfill per se isn't a problem so long as it's in a sensible location - bury old wind turbine blades in the desert yes, don't dump them in a National Park. In some aspects the impact is low enough for there to be no real point in removal - a wind turbine foundation buried in the ground or on the bottom of the ocean realistically can be simply abandoned in place, there's no particular reason why it needs to be removed since whilst not zero the impact of leaving it, in the vast majority of cases, isn't really a problem.

They all impact something though. The very nature of extracting energy, in whatever form, from the natural environment ensures that.

Personal opinion - suffice to say I'm not aware of any wind or solar installation in Australia that could fairly be termed an environmental disaster and there's only two hydro projects that have impacts which do seem irreversible, although one of them possibly is fixable only time will tell. That's a far better track record than fossil fuels.

Do you reckon it's worth recycling solar cells or just dump them ?

 

[Smurf1976]

Do you reckon it's worth recycling solar cells or just dump them ?

As a general concept if materials, especially metals, can be recovered then it's sensible to do so. So recycling beats landfill but that's for the reason of recovering materials not because putting them in landfill is evil as such so long as it's done sensibly.

What I really would like to see though is a prompt end to the pointless throwing out of perfectly good panels and equipment for no reason other than bureaucracy or fashion. That's not an issue with large scale installations but it's become a definite one with small (eg household) systems and is triggered by two basic scenarios:

1. For some rather odd reason the homeowner insists on having the latest and greatest and "upgrading" by means of throwing away perfectly good equipment. No serious commercial scale operator is going to do that but in the hands of the general public, strange things do happen.

2. Somewhat bureaucratic regulations which, whilst possibly well intentioned in the name of safety, in practice prevent re-installation of anything not on the list of currently sold and approved equipment. So the panels are taken down for roof repairs, renovations or whatever reason then can't legally be reinstalled. Some end up shipped off to Third World countries but there's plenty going to landfill.

That needs to be rectified in my view. I'm not advocating the use of dodgy products and so on but the idea that something's deemed rubbish just because it's not currently for sale is nonsense.

Imagine if we had laws that cars not currently for sale and meeting all relevant standards couldn't be repaired or sold second hand? Or that you couldn't paint a room using paint bought six months ago because the manufacturer has since changed the label on the can? Etc. Some reform is needed there in my view to strike a more sensible balance. Taking a panel off to fix the roof, shouldn't preclude putting it back up.

 

[sptrawler]

When we installed a second storey on the house, I took the opportunity to upgrade from a 1.5Kw system to a 6.6Kw system.
The 1.5 system is in my shed. waiting to be picked up by the son, to be re purposed on his 100acre block.
It can be used to run a solar p/p, or any other idea he can think of for it.
Maybe run something seperate to the house batteries, HWS, pressure p/p etc, to enable longer run time on the main batteries.

 

[Investoradam]

Based on the bill I get from Synergy bi monthly......when you move out you will get one too

moved out of home years ago and have several IPs know all to well about understanding bills
maybe try not reading the bill back the front?

 

[Investoradam]

there is nothing clean about solar penels or wind turbines

Compared with what ?

new CCT coal powered stations
nuclear
try reading up on Nikola Teslas kinetic energy original plans

i mean renewables lol
you a baseload power source any ways, sun doesnt shine at night or when its cloudy
the wind mills are near usless. if they spin to quick they cook the bearing and if they dont spin the weight of the blade collapses the bearing so power has to be pumped back so they spin.
lol

 

[Humid]

new CCT coal powered stations
nuclear
try reading up on Nikola Teslas kinetic energy original plans

i mean renewables lol
you a baseload power source any ways, sun doesnt shine at night or when its cloudy
the wind mills are near usless. if they spin to quick they cook the bearing and if they dont spin the weight of the blade collapses the bearing so power has to be pumped back so they spin.
lol

Now I know why I don't see EVs at night on the road.....cheers