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The future of energy generation and storage

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Electricity in W.A has doubled since 2010.
I haven't got a post, but if you want it I can get it, but really as Rumpole said you should do some of your own research before making statements.
It's actually called referencing, otherwise it's just your opinion, which is probably outstanding but confirmation helps.

https://www.finance.wa.gov.au/cms/P...ustralia/Electricity/Electricity_pricing.aspx

Here's a start.
 
I don't have data for all states or all years but way back in 1987 gas in Sydney was about 0.7 cents / MJ as one example.

General residential electricity in SA was 14.3 cents / kWh about the year 2000. It is roughly 40 cents now and that's getting seriously expensive compared to anywhere (globally) apart from remote areas etc.

Somewhere I've got gas and electricity prices for every state from the 1980's although I don't know where that document is at the moment. I'll see if I can find it.
 
I thought when the residential feed in tariff was first introduced at about 50c, that must be the price they thought was cost reflective, of the real price they expected.
They wouldn't just pull a figure out of the air, it must be somewhere near the cost, they expect it to settle at.IMO It had to become cost neutral in the analysis.

So strap yourselves in IMO.

I guess that is the price, where electricity, is a real money making venture.

I have been known to be wrong before on numerous occassions, so as others say, take what I say with a pinch of salt. lol
 

I remember when I moved from WA to QLD. the bill in Brisbane was less for 90 days than 60 days in Perth. But then again (in QLD) fuel was cheaper, food was cheaper, water was free, hospitals were free, if you smoked cigs they were cheaper, alcohol was cheaper, car rego was a peppercorn by comparison, cops were rarely seen on the roads.....within ten years that all changed as PC and social engineering became the agenda in Australia and worldwide
 
I care little about the electricity prices as they were or as they are, my concern is where the industry (and its costs) is going.

I was involved in the industry immediately after the restructure in Q’ld in the early days in 1998 and we traded half the Q’ld generated capacity. If you think the restructuring and so called privatisation (which would supposedly drive down costs) was chaotic and really a nonsense, you are lucky you didn’t see it from the inside.

The title of this topic includes “storage” which is going to become the real issue in the short and long term. The ability to go off grid is going to become easier and cheaper and will severely disrupt the industry. The participants are not able to come to grips with the consequences except to charge all sorts of access and other fees because it goes past the front door even if you don’t use it.

The disrupters will continue to come out of the woodwork and Tesla et al will see increasing competition from all sorts of new storage methods.

Here is the latest updates from one of those, so keep an eye out for this one when it lists.

 
Molten salt? Molten Silicon? who's to say?
But this, silicon, possibility is happening here in South Australia.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/sa-made-silicon-energy-storage-system-ready-close-grid-gap-23607/

And the engineering appears to be far more capable of diffuse deployment/rapid deployment and with free market capital investment... As opposed to say something as cumbersome and bureaucratically compromised as the proposed reassessment of pumped 2.0 snowy hydro. But fair-play to Coal-ition, most likely though through oversight, they've federally funded this to the tune of $400k....
 
Molten silicon from 1414 degrees has a lot of hype about it due to a IPO float soon.
At 31% electrical efficiency, it just does not fly compared to Li-on batteries and pumped hydro storage.

Li-on batteries with a long life and at $US100/kwh will likely out compete all others within a few years.
LG sold GM Li-on batteries for the new bolt at $US145/kwh last year, and the price is still dropping rapidly.
 
It will be interesting to see what the story is, when the right hand drive models, start getting produced in 2019.
 
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Have been playing around at one of their new premises and the whole concept of a car shell with buggerall parts, smaller workshops, reduced servicing, etc is a great business model.
 
Tisme said:
Have been playing around at one of their new premises and the whole concept of a car shell with buggerall parts, smaller workshops, reduced servicing, etc is a great business model.
Click to expand...
One thing about electrical technologies in general is that they require less (or in many cases no) regular maintenance when compared to the alternatives.

In the case of cars if you look at regular servicing of a conventional petrol / diesel powered car then the service intervals are set primarily due to what the engine needs. Sure, some other bits and pieces of the car get checked at the same time but that's substantially due to convenience. Take out the petrol / diesel engine, put a lot less wear on the brakes due to regenerative braking and all of a sudden you don't actually need to do much to keep the car running.

Not specifically Tesla but for some of the other electric cars the routine service is something that anyone could do. Change the cabin air filter for the air-conditioning and check the wheels and tyres. That's it. Nothing else and you sure don't need to put the car in a workshop all day to do that.

It's the same with electrical technologies generally. However much maintenance they require it's almost always less than the alternatives require. Eg gas ducted or hydronic heating is supposed to be serviced professionally at least once every 2 years. No such requirement with an electrical heating system however - it's an air filter clean at most and that's an easy DIY job.

So one consequence of any major move to pure EV's is that we're going to have a lot less jobs maintaining them. That doesn't necessarily affect car manufacturers but it impacts the business model of dealerships in a pretty big way when selling the car becomes their only real line of business unless it actually breaks down which most of them won't.

It's an even bigger impact for independent mechanics. The big dealerships will no doubt get the right staff to maintain electric cars, albeit with far smaller workshops and fewer staff than they need at present, but for the independent guys it's going to be drastically harder to transition to a new business model that only involves fixing things that are actually broken and where reasonably high DC voltages are present.

One thing I'm wary of though is manufacturers or dealers coming up with artificial service requirements as a condition of warranty. There's a few things like that around in other aspects of electrical work so someone will try it as a means of generating physically easy but highly profitable work checking or swapping things that don't really need to be checked or swapped unless actually faulty.
 
Electric vehicles, are definitely the future, the energy storage medium is the stumbling block.
Every one and their dog, will be trying 1000%, to come up with the answer.
Now Governments, like the U.K are putting in place time frames, it will happen. The question is when?
 
Not directly related to vehicles but AEMO has done some forecasting recently regarding future maximum and mimimum system loading for centralised generation on the grid (that is, power that needs to be supplied from things other than small solar on houses etc).

The results are interesting and most states are going to have a real problem unless we actually build large scale energy "sinks" to soak up surplus generation at times when it occurs. Without them it's going to be rather hard when you consider that all of SA and most of Vic will be running entirely from solar at times just 20 years from now.

Comparing now with 20 years into the future:

NSW: Maximum demand up 10%, minimum down 54% from the present.

Qld: Maximum demand up 7%, minimum down 29%

Vic: Maximum demand up 3%, minimum down 81.5%

SA: Maximum demand no change, minimum down 191% (that is, it goes negative)

Tas: Maximum demand up 11%, minimum up 9%

So there's a real issue emerging in Vic and SA with small scale generation pumping out so much power that it actually exceeds (SA) or almost matches (Vic) consumption within the entire state even once you include load from factories, electric trains and so on. At the risk of sounding alarmist that's going to make system control one hell of a difficult task unless we build storage (of whatever type).

So far as electric cars are concerned, that raises the prospect that it makes far more sense to charge in the daytime than at night. So we're going to need charging facilities in car parks, including on streets, rather than the idea that they'll be charged overnight at home.

That's not undoable, it just needs to be done. In Paris they already have on-street electric car charging facilities to a limited extent. Park the car, plug it in and leave it. So it can be done certainly.
 

It also brings up a few questions as to standardising plugs, charge voltages and current delivery.
It is all a bit disjointed, somewhat like when mobile phones were brought out, every phone had a different charger, connector and charge voltage.
Actually it is seeming to follow the same path, even though mobile phones have improved in functionality, the battery is still the stumbling block.
I don't want to appear negative, it is just I can see the whole debate being railroaded, the same as coal fired generation. We will be banning fossil fueled cars, before we have a viable alternative, we seem to excel at shooting ourselves in the foot.IMO
 

Frequency control will be a nightmare, maybe they will pay people to install airconditioners, to absorb the excess capacity. lol dream on

Actually wouldn't it be nice to install air cons, in the homes of poor people to absorb the excess capacity and provide them warmth in the winter months.
Sounds like a great book.
As someone posted recently, hope springs eternal.
On a serious note, as you say, some serious storage needs to be installed.
 
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