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Because the politicians have no idea of the engineering realities and are locked in by their own ideologies?
The future of energy generation and storage
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In short in the early 1990's Australian politics was "captured" by an economic ideology best described as "leave it to the market".
That works fine for many things, there's merit in the idea, but electricity isn't one of them due to the very nature of the market as designed being unnatural and structurally inefficient.
It wouldn't be impossible to design something that's still a market of sorts at the capital investment stage but it fails big time using a market as the means of dispatch. First because it adds truly massive administrative overheads, second because it leads to economically inefficient outcomes.
A point lost on many is the default engineering-driven dispatch approach, commonly referred to as merit order dispatch, is fundamentally an economic approach that prioritises least cost. That is, we already had a least cost approach to generation dispatch - the potential for improvement being with capital investment and physical plant operations, not with choosing what to dispatch.
Or to put it another way, the reforms of the 1990's correctly identified that improvement was possible but made a completely wrong assumption as to what needed improving.
The flaw with the Electricity Commission of NSW and other state equivalents was primarily with over investment which then lead to inefficient on site work practices (since there was no pressure to do better). That was the opportunity for improvement.
On the generation dispatch side, they were actually pretty good at that, very much better than the modern approach that's replaced it at huge expense.
In other words the reforms of the 1990's threw the baby out and kept the bathwater. What's needed is to do the opposite.
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Only 10% of hydrogen production is used for renewable energy, if companies want to meet zero net targets, it will be a future option.As a case in point, there used to be a plant in Tasmania manufacturing fertilizer using hydrogen from electrolysis as the starting point.
This was a significant operation, product was sold into markets in other states not just locally.
Now this idea isn't a new one, the plant opened in 1953 after all. and was successful until in due course economics killed it during the 1980's.
The technology's nothing new, we had it up and running in Australia 72 years ago. Economics is the problem.
Many little startups in Australia that fly under the radar because of the negative press.
https://purehydrogen.com.au/projects/
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Because of negative press or because they are economically unworthy and can only survive sucking subsidies?
No bad press prevents money making when your end product is brandless.
If i could sell kwh at 1c day and night by crushing 1day old chicks, even with bad press i would be successful .
H2 as is does not work economically .
Feel free to jump on the gap and invest,/build a business ..but you will do the figures
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Nothing works economically when you have infrastructure and industry that's been formed over many decades to suit fossils.
Billions of dollars spent on R&D to suit one industry, and that's why we're stuck doing what we keep on doing.
It's like someone coming out of nowhere with minimal funds trying to challenge Coles and Woolworths.
You've got to be blind Freddy to not see all the Negative Nacey stuff that Murdoch Press says about renewables.
What's your answer to replace fossil fuels? It's got to be replaced by something?
Green electricification isn't going to fill all the gaps because you run into other problems like charging delays and months on end with no wind and cloud cover in some areas, high costs in battery depletion depending on temperature and duty cycles.
Fossil fuels have been subsidised from day one, there are academic papers written on it.
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No point in being argressive IMO, as you say renewables are new, but so were cars in the 1890's, they didn't legislate that all horse's had to be shot by 2020.
You have to have to be realistic, renewables weren't even a viable option in 2010, actually Australia shut down its solar panel manufacturing plant in Homebush, Sydney then, so that shows how much confidence the sitting Labor Government had in 2010, because in 2021 they were talking up solar manufacturing and the same hacks were still there who were there when it shut down.
So the Murdoch press actually challenging the model is probably required, to keep some degree of sensibility in the headlong pursuit of the green dream, if you didn't have that god knows what a train wreck it would end up and I don't intend this to be a negative post.
Just a reality check.
Renewables have to be continually deployed, but there always has to checks and balances, or else the loonies take over, whichever track is taken.
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When i see the usual lxxxnies complaining about "the Murdoch press", i know that they are at the very least 1 decade behind and in the neo fascism movement which has replaced the left of the past
Murdoch press is deeply anti Trump and following the WEF globalists, so well into these socialist cabal.
Money has no political side
But how would they know as they stick to their ABC and Guardian pravda.
Thinking they are freedom fighters while pushing the most fascist non democratic agendas of the world big corporations
A telltale explanation on why there is no hope for any leftist government to do anything right with our grid as they are all so brainwashed, led by 50y old caricature of nuclear, coal industries on top of the usual lobbies
There was even a mention of coal dust lung disease above.
ROL FFS..what can we say...but their granite kitchen benchtops were ok...
As the vote is mandatory: the grid is f***ed, and the country too.
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I'm starting to understand why the French riot in the streets.
In Australia we work on the slowly, slowly catch the monkey, unlike the French who say flck it, catch it and kill it. Lol
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Not really being aggressive just trying to get my point across.
Lots have changed since the horse and car days. We've gone from one car in the suburbs to one car per household to one car per every adult in the household.
Nothing wrong with legislating for the environment, when I was a kid mechanics used to throw old motors and tyres into a creek we played in, imagine the mess we'd have if that continued to happen these days?
The Murdoch press is hilarious most of the time; if they invested money in breeding cats, they would put out bad press about dogs biting people.
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Yes but like I said, in 2011 our solar panel manufacturing industry was shut down and that factory actually invented them and in 2021 we are betting the house on them.
Whether people like it or not, it is still in its infancy, panel outputs have increased 100% in the last 5 years, that doesn't mean that the exponential increase will continue, so a pragmatic approach has to be taken IMO.
We need a reliable, affordable 24/7 electricity supply, if that fails we have a third world economy overnight.
If renewables can do that, great, if they can't $hits are trumps, on our current trajectory.
There doesn't appear to be a great plan A and there definitely isn't a plan B, it wont affect me but it wont be nice for the 20 somethings, because they will wear it.
Hopefully it all works out well, no one else in the World is trying it.
What we can't do is cancel the sceptics, if you don't have sceptics, you aren't listening to arguements and that leads to blind faith, which usually ends up in disaster.
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To be balanced the Australia Institute isn't exactly neutral politically and is including in its claim the failure to apply a special tax as a subsidy.
That's not to say there are no subsidies, but it's a real stretch to say that failing to tax something, when other comparable goods and services are not subject to such a tax, constitutes a subsidy.
The lack of a data excise doesn't mean the internet is subsidised for example. It just means it's taxed at the same rate as most things are via GST - it's a real stretch to say that's a subsidy.
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That's the greatest "real" difficulty in all this. Real as in determined by physics etc not something created by humans through politics etc.
At present, and I say this as someone well aware of the facts, the best options we've got at present (other than fossil fuels) are:
1. Big, strong grids. Everything on the grid and the grid itself covering as large a geographic area as possible. This doesn't get rid of unfavourable weather but it does dilute it in % terms - whatever weather is occurring in north Qld, it tends to be different to SA or Tas for example.
2. Large scale hydro. On river and off, as long as it provides long duration storage. Noting the problem that the vast majority of potential sites provide only short duration storage at any economic scale of development which greatly reduces the options.
3. Biofuels, either pure biofuels or those with added hydrogen, work but have very real scale limits. They're more relevant to transport than electricity grids.
4. Other storage that works in specific circumstances eg compressed air.
5. Batteries are efficient but the economics are extremely poor on the energy side. Good on the power side but not on the energy side - that makes them useful as peaking plant at both extremes but not for storing bulk energy.
6. Hydrogen but it comes with a lot of issues when it comes to actually storing large quantities of it in an economical manner.
In practice at present in the Australian context pretty much all proposals for "renewable" energy still involve substantial ongoing use of fossil fuels in practice rather than confront the above.
Various plans to go to 100% renewable have been devised but mostly buried for various reasons. Either the individual who came up with them, or their employer, decided it'd just be too painful to take it beyond an academic exercise under present (political) circumstances.
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Are micro grids viable, ie rooftop solar, community batteries rather than n the "big grid" ?
Would save a lot in rewiring I would think?
Long periods of inclement weather would be the issue, so maybe you have community diesel gensets haha.
Would save a lot in rewiring I would think?
Long periods of inclement weather would be the issue, so maybe you have community diesel gensets haha.
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One of the reasons i am so confident of my views about the la la land of RE net zero for the Australian grid is that, as opposed to most if not all the intervenants on this site, i am on a fully off grid house setup and i would not care less about CO2 fanatism
Let get technical and specific here
One household, 2 persons..could sustain 4 easily
44 panels at 250w capacity, top of tech Lithium batteries of 6x6.5kw capacity storage.
House on full electric inc cooking, AC and water heater booster, 2 freezers, wine fridge, plus big kitchen fridge
So yes we suck power.
9kwh diesel generator as backup
This works very well so the usual netzero proponent would say this is the proof we can go solar
Not so fast, let's do a parallel vs grid
1) the cost:
$60k+ or so , vs $10k for generator only
2)
You need backup available for the freezers, let alone hospital and critical infrastructure on the grid equivalent so you still need that generator .
With diesel supply, maintenance and cost of assets
I would argue you basically still need similar capacity : what RE provides is less fuel quantity so a saving.
3) We were fully charged last afternoon, at 6am today, batteries are at 68% in sub equatorial QLD with relatively constant day/night ratio and no need for heating.
That gives you an idea.
3) In 2 years we only required 30 minutes generator use, in the aftermath of the cyclone when we had relentless rain with heavy heavy cloud cover for days..but we did not want to go to bed with batteries at 40%.**** does happen
4) as we monitor power usage, we are very well aware of the amount of energy used for any oven, a 4.5kw oven slurps your energy/batteries big time, as do a double stage water pump filling an overhead tank for the cattle troughs
5) we do not have yet any EV.i believe we could charge one during peak time but not 2.
-----
So my experience tells me this can work very well for households consumption..not cheap but we are really so expensive and our grandchildren can pay the debt but not if you have any energy intensive economy: even a baker let alone a smelter..
Just compute the economics of running a smelter on the middle of the night on lithium battery capacity.
Sheer financial and technical lunacy.
As for the environmental kudos...
And no, you can not stop the smelter at night
For domestic, not cheap but not for any industrial use
Germany tried very hard, let's stop pretending we all do not know how it ends and they were sucking nuclear power from France, hydro from Norway and cheap gas from Russia
The only way we will reach net zero here is the complete removal of big and medium industry..nearly there guys,
Vote well and we will make it
And then you will see outrage replies by people sitting in their units or suburban house, with the engineering and scientific knowledge of drama actors ,hardly able to switch the fuse back on their switchboard...
They and their representatives are the ones "guiding" this country and deciding the elections
Let get technical and specific here
One household, 2 persons..could sustain 4 easily
44 panels at 250w capacity, top of tech Lithium batteries of 6x6.5kw capacity storage.
House on full electric inc cooking, AC and water heater booster, 2 freezers, wine fridge, plus big kitchen fridge
So yes we suck power.
9kwh diesel generator as backup
This works very well so the usual netzero proponent would say this is the proof we can go solar
Not so fast, let's do a parallel vs grid
1) the cost:
$60k+ or so , vs $10k for generator only
2)
You need backup available for the freezers, let alone hospital and critical infrastructure on the grid equivalent so you still need that generator .
With diesel supply, maintenance and cost of assets
I would argue you basically still need similar capacity : what RE provides is less fuel quantity so a saving.
3) We were fully charged last afternoon, at 6am today, batteries are at 68% in sub equatorial QLD with relatively constant day/night ratio and no need for heating.
That gives you an idea.
3) In 2 years we only required 30 minutes generator use, in the aftermath of the cyclone when we had relentless rain with heavy heavy cloud cover for days..but we did not want to go to bed with batteries at 40%.**** does happen
4) as we monitor power usage, we are very well aware of the amount of energy used for any oven, a 4.5kw oven slurps your energy/batteries big time, as do a double stage water pump filling an overhead tank for the cattle troughs
5) we do not have yet any EV.i believe we could charge one during peak time but not 2.
-----
So my experience tells me this can work very well for households consumption..not cheap but we are really so expensive and our grandchildren can pay the debt but not if you have any energy intensive economy: even a baker let alone a smelter..
Just compute the economics of running a smelter on the middle of the night on lithium battery capacity.
Sheer financial and technical lunacy.
As for the environmental kudos...
And no, you can not stop the smelter at night
For domestic, not cheap but not for any industrial use
Germany tried very hard, let's stop pretending we all do not know how it ends and they were sucking nuclear power from France, hydro from Norway and cheap gas from Russia
The only way we will reach net zero here is the complete removal of big and medium industry..nearly there guys,
Vote well and we will make it
And then you will see outrage replies by people sitting in their units or suburban house, with the engineering and scientific knowledge of drama actors ,hardly able to switch the fuse back on their switchboard...
They and their representatives are the ones "guiding" this country and deciding the elections
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I certainly agree that power grids should not be designed by environmentalists, economists or politicians, but by genuinely technology agnostic engineers. Are there such people ? A few may be on this forum.One of the reasons i am so confident of my views about the la la land of RE net zero for the Australian grid is that, as opposed to most if not all the intervenants on this site, i am on a fully off grid house setup and i would not care less about CO2 fanatism
Let get technical and specific here
One household, 2 persons..could sustain 4 easily
44 panels at 250w capacity, top of tech Lithium batteries of 6x6.5kw capacity storage.
House on full electric inc cooking, AC and water heater booster, 2 freezers, wine fridge, plus big kitchen fridge
So yes we suck power.
9kwh diesel generator as backup
This works very well so the usual netzero proponent would say this is the proof we can go solar
Not so fast, let's do a parallel vs grid
1) the cost:
$60k+ or so , vs $10k for generator only
2)
You need backup available for the freezers, let alone hospital and critical infrastructure on the grid equivalent so you still need that generator .
With diesel supply, maintenance and cost of assets
I would argue you basically still need similar capacity : what RE provides is less fuel quantity so a saving.
3) We were fully charged last afternoon, at 6am today, batteries are at 68% in sub equatorial QLD with relatively constant day/night ratio and no need for heating.
That gives you an idea.
3) In 2 years we only required 30 minutes generator use, in the aftermath of the cyclone when we had relentless rain with heavy heavy cloud cover for days..but we did not want to go to bed with batteries at 40%.**** does happen
4) as we monitor power usage, we are very well aware of the amount of energy used for any oven, a 4.5kw oven slurps your energy/batteries big time, as do a double stage water pump filling an overhead tank for the cattle troughs
5) we do not have yet any EV.i believe we could charge one during peak time but not 2.
-----
So my experience tells me this can work very well for households consumption..not cheap but we are really so expensive and our grandchildren can pay the debt but not if you have any energy intensive economy: even a baker let alone a smelter..
Just compute the economics of running a smelter on the middle of the night on lithium battery capacity.
Sheer financial and technical lunacy.
As for the environmental kudos...
And no, you can not stop the smelter at night
For domestic, not cheap but not for any industrial use
Germany tried very hard, let's stop pretending we all do not know how it ends and they were sucking nuclear power from France, hydro from Norway and cheap gas from Russia
The only way we will reach net zero here is the complete removal of big and medium industry..nearly there guys,
Vote well and we will make it
And then you will see outrage replies by people sitting in their units or suburban house, with the engineering and scientific knowledge of drama actors ,hardly able to switch the fuse back on their switchboard...
They and their representatives are the ones "guiding" this country and deciding the elections
But as we know some of our politicians have been taken over by climate hype or nuclear hype and can't see the wood for the trees.
That won't change soon I fear.
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There's two basic reasons why the grid was built in the first place:
First is to enable the use of energy sources that can't be physically transported economically, or at all, by other means.
That's why in the Australian context the first state to build an actual transmission grid was Tasmania and the second was Victoria.
Tasmania did it because the state's hydro resources are, with the exception of the South Esk River at Launceston (which was developed for hydro as far back as 1895) and various options around Queenstown (the first of which was in use in 1914) not near substantial cities and towns, and also aren't near good industrial sites. So the only option was to generate the electricity where the resource exists and transmit it to where it's used, most notably and obviously Hobart. The grid as such was up and running in 1916.
Victoria for a similar reason in that brown coal is cost prohibitive to transport due to its low energy yield per unit of mass. Coal at Yallourn having only a quarter the energy density of good black coal, and only a third that of even relatively poor black coal. That plus the state's hydro resources lead it to be the second state to develop transmission. The grid was up and running in 1924.
Other states that were using high grade black coal had far less incentive to do it, since the coal could readily be transported by rail to power stations located in or near the capital city thus making it workable without transmission. Not until the 1950's did the other states make a serious effort, driven by hydro development in NSW (most notably the Snowy scheme) plus the reality that moving electricity was by this point simply cheaper than moving coal.
Today the same still applies to hydro and brown coal but it also applies to wind, solar and geothermal - if you want to use the best sites, those with the most consistent wind or solar resources, well they generally aren't in cities. That's not a coincidence - humans mostly avoided building cities anywhere with a constant gale. In practice it also applies to nuclear - even nuclear advocates generally don't advocate building them in big cities.
So that's one reason, facilitating the use of otherwise problematic to transport energy sources.
The other is down to one word - diversity.
Diversity applies to both sides of the equation, generation and consumption, and is a core concept of all electrical power systems. Explaining it in layman's terms:
On the consumption side each consumer will have a maximum demand that needs to be supplied but not all consumers will in practice reach that maximum at the same time. So the total coincident maximum demand of all consumers in Victoria (for example) is far lower than the sum of their individual maximum demands.
To put a figure on that, maximum demand per capita in Victoria is just on 1.6kW and that includes all uses - residential, commercial, government, industrial. That's all, 1.6kW per person - that's about the same as a hair dryer and somewhat less than a modern vacuum cleaner.
Now it's harder to know what the individual maximum demands actually are in practice, but it can be said with certainty that they're far higher than 1.6kW. Far, far higher - just turn the oven on and that alone will be higher than that. Then there's industry and so on. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the sum of all individual maximum demands would be several times greater than the coincident maximum demand taken as a whole.
Now the practical implication of that is by having everyone on the same grid, far less generating capacity is required than would be the case if each consumer generated their own electricity.
That scales well - the bigger the grid, the greater that diversity tends to be. For example at the extreme well Queensland consumption is firmly skewed toward summer and Tasmania's is skewed toward winter for obvious reasons in both cases. Likewise more local things too - eg there's no real overlap between schools and the night time hospitality industry for example. Even the time zone makes a difference eg the SA peak demand is later than Sydney's, and within NSW well the far West is also later than Sydney.
On the other side, the same applies to generation.
Any one generating unit will break down at some point that's 100% certain. But they won't all break at once - the more you have connected to the same system, the lower is the requirement for backup capacity.
Then there's the weather. For an obvious one, those living in Queensland might be surprised to find that much of Tasmania's as well as the main populated regions of SA along with parts of western Victoria are presently in fairly severe drought. Not relevant in SA but certainly for Qld and Tas there's a lot of logic in having hydro generation all on the same grid with the ability to shift energy around.
Wind and sun similar can and does occur. It's not sufficient to avoid the problem of periods of overall below average output but it does subdue that sufficiently to be worthwhile. The sun tends to shine a fair bit more in Queensland during winter than it does in Victoria or Tasmania for example. It's imperfect, it does happen that we get low wind and sun nationally, but it's far less common and also less severe at the national level than it is in any one location.
Which brings up another important point about all this. Whilst Queensland's been having rain to the point of flooding, there's been clear blue sky in SA. From there well there's a lot of logic in having not just wind, solar or hydro but rather in having wind and solar and on river hydro.
So in short, a big grid means we get less variation in demand and less variation in generation. It hugely reduces the required generating capacity to meet society's overall requirements for electricity and that's the other key reason it was built in the first place. The other one being simply to permit the use of difficult to transport energy sources.
So the only real argument against the grid in an engineering sense is cost. Transmission costs money and there are certainly examples of things that could be built but which aren't economic to build in practice. Most obvious in the Australian context being a link between south-west WA and the eastern states, or even elsewhere in WA. The distance is such that it just hasn't made sense to build it, the cost exceeds the benefits.
To put some numbers on the benefits of linking states, for tomorrow the within state reserve capacity forecast at the time of peak demand is (all figures in MW):
NSW = 1504
Qld = 2044
Vic = 2168
SA = 484
Tas = 560
But since it's extremely unlikely that generation failures would occur in multiple states simultaneously, by sharing reserves across state borders they all go up and the figures become:
NSW = 3623
Qld = 2922
Vic = 4135
SA = 1135
Tas = 999
The double counting there is fully intentional and legitimate. Adding available reserves in Qld to NSW's total, and adding available reserves in NSW to Qld's total, within the capacity of transmission between them works just fine in practice. Chance that it all fails at once - not impossible, but unlikely enough to not be a consideration in practice. Same with all states.
The key however is understanding the limitations of that approach. Sharing reserves to mitigate the risk of failure works just fine but they can't all be used at once. That is, yes Victoria has 4135 MW spare, but to actually use that leaves SA with nothing to spare and Tas with stuff all and puts a decent dent in NSW too. The "magic" works to counter the risk of any individual failure, but it doesn't mean there's some huge surplus overall. It's a bit like having two ladders on a job site with 5 workers - each worker has access to a ladder, but only two can use a ladder at any given time. Not a problem as long as it's understood that limitation exists and that you don't actually have 5 ladders.
Now someone who I won't name tripped themselves up big time with that some years ago, failing to understand that a reserve shared between two states can't be used twice, it can only be used once. Yes this ended up with actual load shedding of load on a working weekday. I'll avoid names, but they've since left the industry.....
Bottom line - the bigger the grid, the better subject to economics and proper engineering of protection systems.
Lots of other things use the same principle. Roads, airlines, live entertainment, hospitals - they all work on the same principle that not everyone will use it at once.
Proper engineering of protection = well if a major fault occurs in whatever location, we don't want that to take down the entire system nationally. That risk doesn't exist if they're separate, a fault in Victoria can't put the lights out in SA if there's no physical interconnection, but once they're the same system risks do emerge and need to be properly managed. That's doable but I emphasise "proper engineering" and ideally some carefully orchestrated tests to make sure it works as intended.
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And since today is April Fool's Day:
www.sapowernetworks.com.au
Yes it's a prank. Full version in the link.
The iconic Stobie pole rated out-of-this-world, literally!
www.sapowernetworks.com.au
Yes it's a prank. Full version in the link.
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With the situation as it is, comedy's about all that's left really.
Two more from yesterday:
And this one's just a tad more political:
Two more from yesterday:
And this one's just a tad more political:
Last edited:
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So does that mean that home solar systems are a threat to the economics and engineering of the grid and should be discouraged?
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Well, if you buy a unit that doesn't fulfil the requirement for your needs and fails, it makes you an industry expert to say it's a big fail. Scientific facts about greenhouse gases don't matter because I go to witch doctors for my cancer treatments.
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