The future of energy generation and storage

sptrawler said:

The only difficulty with hydrogen, at this point in time, is the amount of electricity required to produce it.
This won't be an issue when we have ample renewable energy.

Click to expand...

It would still be expensive, building renewable energy infrastructure is expensive, and that cost needs to be covered by the sale of that electricity, no infrastructure group is going to purposefully over build infrastructure just so it can make a loss selling Hydrogen below cost.

Niche hydrogen applications yes, vehicle fuel no.

Energy Renaissance building a gigafactory in Darwin.

This kind of free enterprise will rip the heart out of the LNP's blame the ALP game and must stop.

Just incase people think my opinion of electric vs Hydrogen or Electric vs ICE is swayed by some investment interest I have is Tesla or Lithium or something, you couldn't be more wrong.

I have no investment exposure to Tesla at all, and no exposure to lithium(that I know of)

I actually have investments in the opposite side, I would benefit greatly from the continued use of ICE cars because I have investments in Oil and Gas wells, Oil Refineries and General Motors.

And I would benefit greatly from the use of hydrogen because I own APA who are the biggest transporter of Natural gas in Australia, I own Gas Pipelines in the USA and as I said I own oil and gas wells around the world.

so yeah, its not that I have a vested interest in electric cars at all, the opposite is true.

Value Collector said:

so yeah, its not that I have a vested interest in electric cars at all, the opposite is true.

Click to expand...

I'm sure we all appreciate your altruism in this matter.

Value Collector said:

Just incase people think my opinion of electric vs Hydrogen or Electric vs ICE is swayed by some investment interest I have is Tesla or Lithium or something, you couldn't be more wrong.

I have no investment exposure to Tesla at all, and no exposure to lithium(that I know of)

I actually have investments in the opposite side, I would benefit greatly from the continued use of ICE cars because I have investments in Oil and Gas wells, Oil Refineries and General Motors.

And I would benefit greatly from the use of hydrogen because I own APA who are the biggest transporter of Natural gas in Australia, I own Gas Pipelines in the USA and as I said I own oil and gas wells around the world.

so yeah, its not that I have a vested interest in electric cars at all, the opposite is true.

Click to expand...

Wait, do you own these the way we all own RIO, BHP, CBA and the likes? Or own them, own them?

If so, how can we be sure you're not going to buy Tesla and lithium tomorow?

luutzu said:

Wait, do you own these the way we all own RIO, BHP, CBA and the likes? Or own them, own them?

Click to expand...

lol, I own shares, not whole companies.

General Motors, Oil refineries and gas pipelines via Berkshire hathaway

Oil and gas wells via BHP

More gas pipelines via APA

If so, how can we be sure you're not going to buy Tesla and lithium tomorow?

Click to expand...

If so, why would I be talking them up today, that would make it more expensive for me.

Maybe one day I will buy Tesla, but I am not smart enough to know how to value it today, as for lithium maybe if BHP or FMG buy a mine somewhere, but thats it.

Another issue I have learnt in the past with H2 is its leakeability; it is VERY hard to contain with tanks, caps/seals/etc much harder than normal compressed gas.Have I been told wrong?
The advantage I see is that you could envisage combustion engines made with H2 so an easy(ier) replacement for existing fleet; it is also possible to extract from in situ underground seam coal combustion.
Not a renewable energy but a market for the owners of existing coal resources.So we may see some hydrogen in the future but I do not expect to drive an hydrogen car ever in my lifetime, Electric?definitively

qldfrog said:

Another issue I have learnt in the past with H2 is its leakeability; it is VERY hard to contain with tanks, caps/seals/etc much harder than normal compressed gas.Have I been told wrong?

Click to expand...

As a gas, that is quite true. It's the smallest known molecule and will leak out of most containers.

There have been some moves to lock up the hydrogen in metal hydrides which release the gas when heated. I don't know how far that has gone.

It can be liquefied, but that requires more energy input.

Isn't South Australia part of the national grid ? Don't we need all the generators we can get ?

Surely there is a market for Zen's proposed plant nationally.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-10/zen-energy-reconsiders-battery-plan-after-tesla-deal/8694018

An Interesting Discussion about wind Power.

SirRumpole said:

Don't we need all the generators we can get ?

Click to expand...

It's more about managing peak demand, to manage peak demand you have two options.

1, traditional method of just adding lots of generation capacity, that can cope with the super high peak demands twice a year, and then let it sit idle at between 50% and 60% of its max capacity the rest of the time.

2, Build storage, which allows you to have a lower maximum generation capacity that is just utilised at higher rates.

Think of it like your home internet broadband.

If you have a house with 3 teenagers + you and your wife all wanting to download movies and other data between 5 pm and 9 pm every night, you are going to need a super fast connection to cope, but for the rest of the time that connection sits unused.

However, if you had a hard drive capable of storing pre downloaded content, you could have a much, slower connection that just works at a slow and steady rate 24 hours per day, filling up the hard drive with all the content needed to be consumed during the peak times.

Here is a good live graph of Australias electricity production, its up dated every 5 mis.

http://www.energymatters.com.au/energy-efficiency/australian-electricity-statistics/

Sorry, this is the video with the more interesting discussion, (the other is good also, but this one brings up some interesting points.)

Robert Llewellyn should put his Kryten head back on.

SirRumpole said:

Isn't South Australia part of the national grid ? Don't we need all the generators we can get ?

Click to expand...

It would be an economic reasoning mixed with a bit of politics.

SA has 3 transmission circuits linking the state to Victoria. 2 x AC lines and 1 x DC.

At times they can and do become congested, power flow has to be limited to less than the ideally preferred level because the lines are already at capacity, and that can and does lead to the price in SA diverging from that of the other states (typically upwards).

Now, if SA is short on generating capacity locally at the time then price can reach extreme levels. The battery won't eliminate that but as another source of generation should make it a less common occurrence.

In the long term I absolutely agree with the notion that we're moving to electric transport. In the shorter term however we're a very long way from that point.

For a start, right now every Australian state except Tas is burning significant volumes of gas in order to generate electricity for the main grid.

100% of supply in most of the NT (those parts with a grid), Pilbara region in WA and in the Mt Isa region in Qld.

56% in SA

14% in Queensland

13% in Victoria

4% in NSW / ACT

Those figures vary constantly but the point is there's some high grade fossil fuel, natural gas or oil, in the mix virtually all the time now with the demise of Hazelwood, Munmorah, Wallerawang, Northern and so on coal-fired stations.

The logical aim of electric transport is to (1) avoid the use of high grade fossil fuels and (2) address issues with local air emissions etc. With our present energy supply infrastructure simply adding electric vehicles fails when it comes to avoiding the use if high grade fuels. At best we end up swapping petrol for gas and if we're going to do that then doing so via electricity and batteries is a lot more difficult than the alternative of just running an engine on CNG.

Even within the power industry you'll find the odd token electric car here and there at best. Even if you really are the electricity company it still makes more sense to just buy petrol or diesel to run your fleet vehicles.

It'll happen eventually but I'm not expecting it to be anything like the speed at which smartphones replaced simple mobile phones or other recent technological developments. It'll be more like the speed at which tobacco smoking has been phased out - half a century and we're still not there yet.

We've already been going down the electric car path for a rather long time now and thus far it has been baby steps rather than a revolution. The Toyota Prius has been on sale for 20 years now in Japan and 17 years globally but you can still walk into pretty much any car dealership and find a vehicle powered by a non-hybrid petrol or diesel engine.

There's also a pragmatic point locally here in Australia. Our electricity and gas are in such a mess that if you were building a new home today and wanted hydronic heating, something so common it's taken for granted in Europe, then depending on location I could make a very strong argument on pure economics as to why you'd give diesel a serious look as the heat source. Yes seriously, that's how ridiculous the whole situation has become.

Smurf1976 said:

The logical aim of electric transport is to (1) avoid the use of high grade fossil fuels and (2) address issues with local air emissions etc. With our present energy supply infrastructure simply adding electric vehicles fails when it comes to avoiding the use if high grade fuels. At best we end up swapping petrol for gas

Click to expand...

Actually Electric power drive trains use the energy is a much more efficient way than a ICE powered car, So even if we decided that we were going to stick with fossil fuels, Electric cars still make sense.

Simply taking Crude oil, burning it in an efficient power plant and charging EVs, means you would get more driving kilometres per barrel of oil than you would by refining that barrel into unleaded and diesel and then combusting it in an ICE to power a car.

Not to mention, you can burn the fossil fuel away from population areas, and you have more types of fossil fuel available and whatever renewables you add.

Your average ICE car uses less fuel when going down hill or slowing down for that red light, But in an electric car going down hill or slowing down actually adds "fuel to your tank" (so to speak)

Value Collector said:

lol, I own shares, not whole companies.

General Motors, Oil refineries and gas pipelines via Berkshire hathaway

Oil and gas wells via BHP

More gas pipelines via APA



If so, why would I be talking them up today, that would make it more expensive for me.

Maybe one day I will buy Tesla, but I am not smart enough to know how to value it today, as for lithium maybe if BHP or FMG buy a mine somewhere, but thats it.

Click to expand...

Not buying Tesla but GM? I guess you did take Elon's put down to people who don't like losing money funding his dreams.

Value Collector said:

Your average ICE car uses less fuel when going down hill or slowing down for that red light, But in an electric car going down hill or slowing down actually adds "fuel to your tank" (so to speak)

Click to expand...

No reason you can't use regenerative braking on a ICE or hybrid vehicle to wind up a spring or spin a flywheel or even charge a battery for a power reserve.