The future of energy generation and storage

[sptrawler]

Makes a lot of sense

BCA’s Jennifer Westacott: move to clean energy ‘biggest skills transfer in history’

In the final panel of Sydney’s international Energy Forum, Jennifer Westacott AO of the Business Council of Australia says building a workforce for development and deployment of clean technology is going to be the “biggest skill transfer in the history of the world”.


Westacott urges a “mindset change”.

An estimated 30 million jobs are expected to be created in the energy transition, Westacott explains. “These jobs will be right across the supply chain,” and the focus is on “reprioritisation” and “overlapping skills”.

On Australia’s tertiary education system addressing skills shortages and reprioritisation, Westacott says:
We need to blow this system up. We’ve got to think about life long skills ... We’ve got to blend in vocation skills ... We need to change accreditation ... We have to start now. It takes five years to get an engineer trained. We don’t have five years. We need to remove friction. Because this is the biggest skill transfer in the history of the world.

The problem is we have spent 30 years dumbing down our education systems, so that we can keep kids in school at least until year 12, then we wanted to keep them off the dole so we made it easy to enter uni.
Then we imported our skilled requirements from overseas on visas, now we have a useless education system, a useless apprenticeship system and the uni's are full of people doing useless degrees.
Yep we really are the clever country, don't worry though it has been announced, we need 200,000 skilled immigrants, at last we can start the 457 off again while our kids go to uni to do arts degrees.
The logistics a supply issues will be what limits the deployment of renewables, storage and transmission installations, not a skills shortage IMO.

Treasure Charmers responds to Australian industry’s ‘200,000 skilled migrants a year’ proposal - NRI Affairs

Australian industry leaders and the unions have called on the government for a temporary two-year increase in skilled migration to allow up to 200,000

www.nriaffairs.com

 

[JohnDe]

The problem is we have spent 30 years dumbing down our education systems, so that we can keep kids in school at least until year 12, then we wanted to keep them off the dole so we made it easy to enter uni.
Then we imported our skilled requirements from overseas on visas, now we have a useless education system, a useless apprenticeship system and the uni's are full of people doing useless degrees.
Yep we really are the clever country, don't worry though it has been announced, we need 200,000 skilled immigrants, at last we can start the 457 off again while our kids go to uni to do arts degrees.
The logistics a supply issues will be what limits the deployment of renewables, storage and transmission installations, not a skills shortage IMO.

Treasure Charmers responds to Australian industry’s ‘200,000 skilled migrants a year’ proposal - NRI Affairs

Australian industry leaders and the unions have called on the government for a temporary two-year increase in skilled migration to allow up to 200,000

www.nriaffairs.com

Sorry, but most of the "kids" I know are pretty good. As for "easy to enter uni", I'm sure that many wish it was as easy as the the period from 1974 to the mid 80's.

Don't blame the kids, blame the parents.

 

[SirRumpole]

The problem is we have spent 30 years dumbing down our education systems, so that we can keep kids in school at least until year 12, then we wanted to keep them off the dole so we made it easy to enter uni.
Then we imported our skilled requirements from overseas on visas, now we have a useless education system, a useless apprenticeship system and the uni's are full of people doing useless degrees.
Yep we really are the clever country, don't worry though it has been announced, we need 200,000 skilled immigrants, at last we can start the 457 off again while our kids go to uni to do arts degrees.
The logistics a supply issues will be what limits the deployment of renewables, storage and transmission installations, not a skills shortage IMO.

Treasure Charmers responds to Australian industry’s ‘200,000 skilled migrants a year’ proposal - NRI Affairs

Australian industry leaders and the unions have called on the government for a temporary two-year increase in skilled migration to allow up to 200,000

www.nriaffairs.com

A bit off topic again, but have a look at this

National Press Club Address: John Dewar - Chairperson of Universities Australia

John Dewar, Chairperson of Universities Australia, Vice-Chancellor and President of La Trobe University, addresses the National Press Club.

iview.abc.net.au

A very relevant question is at the 42 minute mark.

 

[mullokintyre]

(1) Screaming out for facts
(2) Basing your post on a perception.

Nice try.

Well, I pointed out some facts from historical records.
The flooding events in Sydney were not "unprecendented" which was one of the words bandied about.
Climate change was used i just about every report on the flooding.
And yet as I pointed out, these flood events have happened before, at a higher level, and long before climate change became the scapegoat.
Th climate scientists can tell us the mechanism by which these events are developing,
From The guardian

Kimberley Reid, an atmospheric scientist at Monash University, said the weather models showed about five days ahead “that something big was going to happen” over eastern Australia, and it was not unusual for forecasts to be a few hours out.

Domensino said this east coast low was likely to have carried more rain than most because it had more water to draw on. He said the ocean temperatures off the coast of the Illawarra were between 2C and 3C hotter than the long-term average.
Like almost everywhere else, the waters around much of Australia have been getting warmer due to global heating driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Scientists have established the atmosphere can hold roughly 7% more moisture for every additional degree of warming.

Domensino said it meant the east coast low on the weekend “had a lot more water to tap into, which is partly why we saw so much rain”. In short, heat may have amplified the impact.

The flooding events I outlined from the 1800's would nt have been driven by climate change (at least not by man made climate change).
So were the waters off the NSW coast 2 to 3 degrees warmer then, or was there some other mechanism?
Perhaps not all of the change is induced by Co2 increases, we really don't "know".

We have how had three years of El Nino type weather in OZ, which is said to be the mechanism for the increased rainfall in OZ.
But none of the climate models were able to predict the changes in Enso or the Dipole, they can only record its happening as rel time data comes in.
Like most people, I agree there is climate change happening all the time.
It happens on small and gigantic scales ad everything in between.
As to the insistence that by cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere we can somehow influence the climate to make it more "normal", that needs a bit more work.
Mick


The

 

[basilio]

The problem is we have spent 30 years dumbing down our education systems, so that we can keep kids in school at least until year 12, then we wanted to keep them off the dole so we made it easy to enter uni.
Then we imported our skilled requirements from overseas on visas, now we have a useless education system, a useless apprenticeship system and the uni's are full of people doing useless degrees.
Yep we really are the clever country, don't worry though it has been announced, we need 200,000 skilled immigrants, at last we can start the 457 off again while our kids go to uni to do arts degrees.
The logistics a supply issues will be what limits the deployment of renewables, storage and transmission installations, not a skills shortage IMO.

Treasure Charmers responds to Australian industry’s ‘200,000 skilled migrants a year’ proposal - NRI Affairs

Australian industry leaders and the unions have called on the government for a temporary two-year increase in skilled migration to allow up to 200,000

www.nriaffairs.com

I don't believe that is what Jennifer Wescott was alluding to. As I read it she was taking about a mass transfer and retraining of people from one area of energy technology/industry to another. Why for example can't people in the oil/gas industry get a 1-2 year retraining program to enable them to work in wind and solar ? Could this be on the job training in some situations ?

Having said that I can see that Australia faces a very big wave of retirements and a much smaller group coming into the workplace. This is happening across many industries. Education, which is my area, is certainly one where numbers out is going to swamp numbers in.

On the overall picture which Ms Wescott is discussing Australia does face a massive rebuilding program in terms of overhauling our energy systems on a macro as well as micro level. I agree that the logistics will be a critical issue. However I can see skill and staff shortages also being a killer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A heads up on education in Victoria at the moment.

There are widespread teacher shortages which are intensified with COVID sickness and a very nasty flu. In that context many schools need every relief teacher they can find - but that is far easier said than done. As a result Private schools in melbourne are offering relief teachers $700 a day to take classes of sick teachers. The Education Department rate for relief teachers is around $400 a day so, no surprise Sherlock , these Private schools are collaring the market - or trying to. Private school parents are very demanding about their children getting every second of teaching. But in the end if there aren't enough teachers available all the money in the world can't produce them.

Another issue with Relief teachers is that Education authorities have demanded that teachers keep up long term registration requirements. This means extensive documented ongoing teacher training and proven performance as a teacher (20 days) every year. Consequently many teachers let their registration lapse after retirement so they can't be brought back into field.

 

[sptrawler]

Sorry, but most of the "kids" I know are pretty good. As for "easy to enter uni", I'm sure that many wish it was as easy as the the period from 1974 to the mid 80's.

Don't blame the kids, blame the parents.

The parents definitely brought about the slide, unfortunately the kids have to wear the results.
From the education system, through to the competency standards, which ruined our worlds best apprenticeship system IMO.

More than 20 per cent of NSW students fall below acceptable standards

Only 79.1 per cent of public school students reached minimum standards for reading and numeracy in NAPLAN, well below the target.

www.smh.com.au

https://ministers.dese.gov.au/tudge/reverse-decline-school-standards-focus-teacher-training

The numbers don't lie: Australia is failing at maths and we need to find a new formula to arrest the decline

Australia has suffered a significant drop in teenage maths proficiency in the past 20 years -- sliding from 11th in the OECD rankings to 29th place out of 38 countries, prompting widespread debate over potential curriculum changes. One researcher says hand gestures could stop the slide.

www.sciencedaily.com

 

[sptrawler]

I don't believe that is what Jennifer Wescott was alluding to. As I read it she was taking about a mass transfer and retraining of people from one area of energy technology/industry to another. Why for example can't people in the oil/gas industry get a 1-2 year retraining program to enable them to work in wind and solar ? Could this be on the job training in some situations ?

The competency standards makes it very easy for people with skills, to have them transferred to another field, with recognition of prior knowledge. So the provision is already there to facilitate it.

Having said that I can see that Australia faces a very big wave of retirements and a much smaller group coming into the workplace. This is happening across many industries. Education, which is my area, is certainly one where numbers out is going to swamp numbers in.

Yes teaching since it became a university course, seems to have attracted many people who are attracted to the pluses and aren't very happy with the negatives. The days are long gone where teachers took up the profession as a calling, the same has happened to many professions IMO.
Where we are really lacking people, is in the science and engineering fields.
Hopefully with the renewable revolution, the unwinding of globalisation and rise of self sufficiency, we may have a renaissance of our innovative and inventive past.

 

[Smurf1976]

On Australia’s tertiary education system addressing skills shortages and reprioritisation, Westacott says:
We need to blow this system up. We’ve got to think about life long skills ... We’ve got to blend in vocation skills ... We need to change accreditation ... We have to start now. It takes five years to get an engineer trained. We don’t have five years. We need to remove friction. Because this is the biggest skill transfer in the history of the world.

I don't agree there's an excuse to shortcut training - that would be an extremely "convenient" outcome for business so no surprise it's someone from the BCA pushing the idea.

What we really need to do is get away from the idea of having countless independent contractors doing things, none of them having continuous workflow, which results in an outright shocking environment in which to train people. You can't put someone on as an apprentice, or take a tradesman and put them through uni, when all you've got is a 2 year construction contract and no certainty of what happens afterward. That leads to short term thinking at every level and is part of the problem.

Versus the "old" utilities had not absolute certainty, since consumption trends would change, but they had reasonable certainty about the future. The SECWA, ETSA, HEC and so on could take on apprentices or upskill existing staff, eg manual labour to trades or trades to professions, confident that they had a need for them and that if they didn't then it would only be a case of being six months too early, it wouldn't be a wasted effort. Certainly wouldn't be the first time someone was hired for a basic manual job, showed firm technical interest and aptitude, and was put on as an apprentice.

Considering the overall task required to build VRE, batteries, hydro, transmission and so on it really ought to be a cinch to put people through training on the basis of assured work.

 

[Smurf1976]

Sorry, but most of the "kids" I know are pretty good.

The kids themselves are fine.

Some of what they're taught, and the standards of assessment, I have some concerns about however.

Let's just say some schools have implausibly low failure rates.

 

[Smurf1976]

Why for example can't people in the oil/gas industry get a 1-2 year retraining program to enable them to work in wind and solar ? Could this be on the job training in some situations

A lot really depends on what the actual tasks are.

If we're talking about structural or pressure vessel fabrication then what purpose it ultimately serves makes little difference to the skills required to build it. The "what" is more relevant than the "why".

Civil construction has a lot of overlap regardless of what's being built. Moving earth is moving earth regardless of why it's being moved.

High voltage electrical is high voltage electrical regardless of what purpose it's serving.

On the other hand, no real overlap between something like oil exploration and assessing the output of a potential new wind farm. Apart from the common aspect that the ultimate purpose is to obtain energy, there's really nothing in common with the skillset involved.

A lot of it isn't so much that there's a need for "energy" skills but that there's a need for skills in civil construction, structural engineering, welding or whatever.

Ultimately this is a road bridge. That it was built by an electricity company as part of a power development doesn't change that it's a road bridge carrying vehicles: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-42...dsJtxvenXTroYERaAmxiQ!2e0!7i3328!8i1664?hl=en

Only difference between that and any other bridge is it was rather more easily built - the lake is completely man-made, being the storage for John Butters power station, so there was no water when the bridge was built. Apart from that detail though well it's a bridge, why it was built makes no difference to that and same with a lot of things.

 

[mullokintyre]

Why is it that this thread constantly gets sidetracked?
Why are we discussing education standards in a thread about energy generation and storage?
Hey @joeblow can we send them to a new thread?
Mick

 

[SirRumpole]

Why is it that this thread constantly gets sidetracked?
Why are we discussing education standards in a thread about energy generation and storage?
Hey @joeblow can we send them to a new thread?
Mick

We actually need educated people to build infrastructure.

Gaps have been defined in essential STEM areas for some time.

Sure, education is not right on the topic of this thread, but threads drift occasionally.

But if the boss decides to put them in another thread that's his perogative.

 

[SirRumpole]

Let's just say some schools have implausibly low failure rates.

Especially for fee paying students.

 

[JohnDe]

Especially for fee paying students.

I have personally found it to be the other way, having family and friends working in public and private schools. An in-law has two children at a public school, one completed year 12 with flying colours but is now struggling at Uni. The other child is in year 12, hardly hands in any work, gets extensions on projects, and her last term results was straight B's. Great children, one is a math's wizz but that hasn't helped Uni, the other works part time while still at school and is highly valued by management.

These generalisation's that I am reading in the last few posts are very poor form.

Not all schools are poor, just like not all are excellent.

Why do people find the worse in everything that is in front of them, but the best in everything behind them.

Many of our youth have gone on to be very talented people.

A close friends daughter received a Rhodes Scholarship, took it and is in England using it to be the best in her field.

My daughter's school was named one of the top high schools in the country. She studied law and psychology and was in the top 2%, and received offers from employers.

The young man that works for me passed year 12 but not with the greatest marks, he wasn't worried because he did not want to go to Uni, he wanted a trade and got one. Now fully qualified and highly respected in the field.

I could go on all day, and I could also list stories from the other side of the coin, but they are the exception to the rule. Most of our kids and youth strive to be something and to add to society.

 

[Smurf1976]

Why is it that this thread constantly gets sidetracked?
Why are we discussing education standards in a thread about energy generation and storage?
Hey @joeblow can we send them to a new thread?
Mick

It’s much like mentioning RBA policy in the context of inflation.

The loss of focus on technical and scientific education among the general population is partly how the present mess was created. It’s what enables politics and the media to get away with nonsense without being called out.

If the political and media standards in regard to language or social sciences were even half as bad they’d be shot down on practically everything they said or published whereas with science and to some extent maths they get away with murder.

End result is a dysfunctional energy system but we’ve got a perfect legal framework to produce grammatically correct and socially inclusive reporting on a market that conforms almost perfectly to economic ideology.

That it doesn’t deliver economical energy to consumers is the missing bit.

But yes, let’s keep it on topic.

 

[SirRumpole]

It’s much like mentioning RBA policy in the context of inflation.

The loss of focus on technical and scientific education among the general population is partly how the present mess was created. It’s what enables politics and the media to get away with nonsense without being called out.

If the political and media standards in regard to language or social sciences were even half as bad they’d be shot down on practically everything they said or published whereas with science and to some extent maths they get away with murder.

End result is a dysfunctional energy system but we’ve got a perfect legal framework to produce grammatically correct and socially inclusive reporting on a market that conforms almost perfectly to economic ideology.

That it doesn’t deliver economical energy to consumers is the missing bit.

But yes, let’s keep it on topic.

Languages and social science is where most journalists come from, the level of expertise in STEM is very low . Most journalists have a sneering joke about nerds and quickly change the subject to something they think people are interested in like dog shows or similar.

 

[Smurf1976]

To illustrate the issue, a simple question in the style of a school exam:

Smurf takes a 10 minute shower. Calculate the cost of energy consumed and separately calculate the quantity of any primary energy source of your choice required to heat the water. Answers required relate to heating the water only, you may ignore the cost of water itself and the energy used to pump it. Your answer may be based on any technology in commercial use other than a solar water heater. State all assumptions and show all working.

Now that's not a university level question very obviously.

It's also not a TAFE question.

It is in fact simply an easier version of two actual questions from grade 8 maths and grade 11 physics when I went to school in the public education system in Tasmania. The original grade 8 maths question stated the water was heated with electricity and the grade 11 physics question required the use of hydro-electricity specifically and the calculation of water discharged from the power station. My question above is somewhat easier given that it's considerably simpler to calculate the physics part if you choose gas as the energy source.

Now I'd be willing to bet that most of our politicians, media and indeed much of the general public would struggle to answer the above even with access to a computer and the internet. And yet it's only high school maths and physics.

But if those same people were to display the same level of ignorance on any social issue they'd be roasted. Even something like language they'd be seen as uneducated. When it comes to maths and science though, ignorance is apparently acceptable in Australian society.

My point there isn't about any sort of educational elitism, not at all. It's simply that if our politicians, media and the public had a better grasp of all this then the level of public debate would be drastically improved with the silly stuff shot down rather quickly.

 

[SirRumpole]

To illustrate the issue, a simple question in the style of a school exam:

Smurf takes a 10 minute shower. Calculate the cost of energy consumed and separately calculate the quantity of any primary energy source of your choice required to heat the water. Answers required relate to heating the water only, you may ignore the cost of water itself and the energy used to pump it. Your answer may be based on any technology in commercial use other than a solar water heater. State all assumptions and show all working.

Now that's not a university level question very obviously.

It's also not a TAFE question.

It is in fact simply an easier version of two actual questions from grade 8 maths and grade 11 physics when I went to school in the public education system in Tasmania. The original physics question required the use of hydro-electricity specifically and the calculation of water discharged from the power station whereas my question above is somewhat easier given that it's considerably simpler to calculate if you choose gas as the energy source.

Now I'd be willing to bet that most of our politicians, media and indeed much of the general public would struggle to answer the above even with access to a computer and the internet. And yet it's only high school maths and physics.

But if those same people were to display the same level of ignorance on any social issue they'd be roasted. Even something like language they'd be seen as uneducated. When it comes to maths and science though, ignorance is apparently acceptable in Australian society.

My point there isn't about any sort of educational elitism, not at all. It's simply that if our politicians, media and the public had a better grasp of all this then the level of public debate would be drastically improved with the silly stuff shot down rather quickly.

It is a long time since I went to school, I'm sure I could have answered the question then

 

[Smurf1976]

But none of the climate models were able to predict the changes in Enso or the Dipole, they can only record its happening as rel time data comes in.

There's also the reality that the one thing we're sure of is that we don't fully understand it.

South-west WA in particular has seen several abrupt and permanent "steps" in its inflow to long established water storages. It's not a gradual change, it's not something that's up and down, it's very abrupt steps where the new becomes immediately permanent.

To far lesser degree the same occurrence has been observed in Tasmania. Far less severe but the same sudden step changes have been observed and at the exact same time as in WA.

Quite a bit of research has been done into it in Tasmania, looking at the local experience as well as WA, and trying to come up with answers as to what's going on. In short there's a correlation with turning points in the trend of global temperatures but not with the actual temperature itself - whatever's going on is clearly not something humans properly understand at this point in time.

It's publicly disclosed that Hydro Tas bases planning on 85% of theoretical long term inflows for that reason. There's uncertainty about future climate. Noting that the 85% figure isn't arbitrary but rather it's a calculated value itself (and it's not precisely 85%, that's just what it rounds to).

 

[Smurf1976]

Back on the subject of energy not education or climate, some statistics for the 2021-22 financial year compared with the previous FY.

For the NEM + SWIS combined unless stated otherwise. So that's effectively the whole of Australia except the NT, Mt Isa region, WA outside the south-west and remote outback towns etc.

Total electricity consumption from all sources = 224,065 GWh which is +0.84% on the previous year.

By source:
Biomass = 256 GWh down 7.58%
Coal = 131,004 GWh down 5.44%
Gas + Oil* = 19,194 GWh down 4.09%
Hydro = 16,175 GWh up 10.54%
Wind = 28,032 GWh up 15.12%
Solar** = 30,574 GWh up 22.45%

*Oil = Any liquid fuel derived from oil. So fuel oil, diesel, kerosene etc. Oil and gas figures are combined due to the existence of dual fuel capable plant with the actual fuel used not being available.

**Solar data includes all scales of grid connected solar from large solar farms to small rooftop systems.

State by state consumption on the main grid:
NSW = 71,691 GWh down 0.6%
Qld = 59,766 GWh up 1.03%
Vic = 46,858 GWh up 1.38%
WA = 20,632 GWh up 3.17%
SA = 13,784 GWh down 0.17%
Tas = 11,332 GWh up 4.04%

Source = compiled from AEMO data by third parties.