The utensil up that is the east coast energy market

The transition to renewables really isn't that complicated. It just needs time, money and a cohesive policy response from government.

1) Over-build renewable generation capacity with a diversified sources of generation (hydro, solar, onshore wind, offshore wind) with as much geographic spread as possible to minimise demand for energy storage. It will be generally some sunny or windy somewhere. If you have installed capacity equal to 500% peak demand, then you only to be operating at 20% capacity or less to meet demand.

2) Invest in electricity storage (e.g. Battery and Pumped Hydro) to meet demand 99% of the time (aiming for 100% would be economically and environmentally inefficient).

3) Maintain emergency gas-powered generators to cover any supply shortfalls. These would only be operated as a last resort and would be funded using an availability payment system.

All that's kind of true.
1: A wind turbine has power proportional to the cube of the wind speed. That means if your wind turbine will work well in a 40km/h wind, when its a 10km/h wind you only get 1/10 of the output. So 20% is too conservative. The scientific term for how much overcapacity you need is "s**t loads". Similarly you need to have a lot of surplus capacity for your solar, because some days there is bugger all.

2: 99% will also be economically inefficient. People are already complaining about costs at the snowy II, a scheme that already has convenient dams in place.

3: Yes they will need to have enough capacity to supply a LOT of the grid. Economically you need to pay for 100% capacity of gas power stations , to sit in mothballs, as well as a huge overcapacity of renewables.


The geographic spread has issues as well.
Under the old SEC the government did a deal to provide cheap electricity to Portland for the Aluminium smelter. It was a shocker of the deal, because it didn't allow for the transmission costs. One of the reasons the S.A. transmission link was made, was so that it didn't appear obvious that millions were spent on a transmission line to Portland. Then when the SEC was privatised, a shell company was retained so it could buy electricity and sell it to the Aluminium company at a loss.

DC transmission may be of interest though. An AC transmission has around 7% per 1000km losses. DC can be around half of that.
Solar Arrays actually generate DC electricity, so in principle you could have a DC link in outback NSW supplying electricity to Melbourne.


The overcapacity of renewables principle is fine in a Government owned system.
But what happens when you have a huge surplus of renewable electricity on a sunny windy day, and the solar and wind installations are all owned by competing companies. Who is going to build the surplus , when the investment returns decrease with every added installation?

Your statement that it is generally sunny or windy somewhere has been proven incorrect by the Europeans who are well advanced in their wind power.

Right now , the wind power in Germany is around your 21% capacity. Check it out from time to time, it gets a lot less.
Looks like the UK are close to 40%. Ireland doing great at around 70%. Spain 40% Of those countries , only Ireland isn't using significant gas.
Of course the Euro's can never really get into trouble, there are enough neighbouring countries that they can always buy their way out if they get in trouble.

Night time in California right now , so their 15Gw of Solar is doing nothing. Wind is at 12% capacity. They are burning gas in Green California.
Wanting to be green and pretending its all simple doesn't really help.
 
All that's kind of true.
1: A wind turbine has power proportional to the cube of the wind speed. That means if your wind turbine will work well in a 40km/h wind, when its a 10km/h wind you only get 1/10 of the output. So 20% is too conservative. The scientific term for how much overcapacity you need is "s**t loads". Similarly you need to have a lot of surplus capacity for your solar, because some days there is bugger all.

2: 99% will also be economically inefficient. People are already complaining about costs at the snowy II, a scheme that already has convenient dams in place.

3: Yes they will need to have enough capacity to supply a LOT of the grid. Economically you need to pay for 100% capacity of gas power stations , to sit in mothballs, as well as a huge overcapacity of renewables.


The geographic spread has issues as well.
Under the old SEC the government did a deal to provide cheap electricity to Portland for the Aluminium smelter. It was a shocker of the deal, because it didn't allow for the transmission costs. One of the reasons the S.A. transmission link was made, was so that it didn't appear obvious that millions were spent on a transmission line to Portland. Then when the SEC was privatised, a shell company was retained so it could buy electricity and sell it to the Aluminium company at a loss.

DC transmission may be of interest though. An AC transmission has around 7% per 1000km losses. DC can be around half of that.
Solar Arrays actually generate DC electricity, so in principle you could have a DC link in outback NSW supplying electricity to Melbourne.


The overcapacity of renewables principle is fine in a Government owned system.
But what happens when you have a huge surplus of renewable electricity on a sunny windy day, and the solar and wind installations are all owned by competing companies. Who is going to build the surplus , when the investment returns decrease with every added installation?

Your statement that it is generally sunny or windy somewhere has been proven incorrect by the Europeans who are well advanced in their wind power.

Right now , the wind power in Germany is around your 21% capacity. Check it out from time to time, it gets a lot less.
Looks like the UK are close to 40%. Ireland doing great at around 70%. Spain 40% Of those countries , only Ireland isn't using significant gas.
Of course the Euro's can never really get into trouble, there are enough neighbouring countries that they can always buy their way out if they get in trouble.

Night time in California right now , so their 15Gw of Solar is doing nothing. Wind is at 12% capacity. They are burning gas in Green California.
Wanting to be green and pretending its all simple doesn't really help.
dude you need a hobby, something to take all this negative energy you funnel into renewables, have you considered maybe building a nuclear plant in your back yard to prove they work in Australia?
 
dude you need a hobby, something to take all this negative energy you funnel into renewables, have you considered maybe building a nuclear plant in your back yard to prove they work in Australia?

During WWII the New Zealanders built a tank. I'm sure some negative nellies told them it wasn't that simple to build tanks, but they built it anyway.
And then people laughed.

It'd be great if it was simple to build a sustainable electricity supply.
I'm pretty positive about things that will work.

Trying to get a solar project over the line where i work.
Because we only work day shift we should be able to reduce our emissions by at least 50%, but after that it gets really tricky and expensive.
We could pay extra on our bill and claim to have zero emissions, but that's bullshit.
 
During WWII the New Zealanders built a tank. I'm sure some negative nellies told them it wasn't that simple to build tanks, but they built it anyway.
And then people laughed.

It'd be great if it was simple to build a sustainable electricity supply.
I'm pretty positive about things that will work.

Trying to get a solar project over the line where i work.
Because we only work day shift we should be able to reduce our emissions by at least 50%, but after that it gets really tricky and expensive.
We could pay extra on our bill and claim to have zero emissions, but that's bullshit.
Man i love it

Hey bro lets build a tank
Yeah bro sick, you got plans
Nah bro lets wing it
Ok bro
 
Jan 12, 2011
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If it keeps raining like this Hydro is becoming more viable in Victoria. Tragic though the consequences are in the low lying areas.

Victoria have recently been using more Hydro generation than gas. If the water is there its great, able to quickly adjust to demand as the wind power fluctuates. ( Victoria getting up close to 50% wind power on the right day ).
But they have also been using more coal, because the brown coal is unaffected by the global prices, but the gas is heavily affected.
 
If it keeps raining like this Hydro is becoming more viable in Victoria. Tragic though the consequences are in the low lying areas.

Victoria have recently been using more Hydro generation than gas. If the water is there its great, able to quickly adjust to demand as the wind power fluctuates. ( Victoria getting up close to 50% wind power on the right day ).
But they have also been using more coal, because the brown coal is unaffected by the global prices, but the gas is heavily affected.
and that is a problem of capitalism because we don't have an issue with gas supply we have an issue with price gouging because we allow it to happen

the government could fix that quite easily but they'd have to piss off donors to do it and that's not what they are there to do

on the hydro I really hope it doesn't keep raining as bad as it has we need a break to recover and fix stuff but the forecast says we've got another 4-6 weeks of this

hydro shouldn't need flooding to work
 
and that is a problem of capitalism because we don't have an issue with gas supply we have an issue with price gouging because we allow it to happen

the government could fix that quite easily but they'd have to piss off donors to do it and that's not what they are there to do

on the hydro I really hope it doesn't keep raining as bad as it has we need a break to recover and fix stuff but the forecast says we've got another 4-6 weeks of this

hydro shouldn't need flooding to work

A lot of places that have really extensive Hydro have Glaciers or Snowcaps, which act as a sort of buffer to stop all the water coming at once.
Our Hydro doesn't need flooding, but when its raining like this and the dams are full, its use it or lose it.
 

mighty tiges

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Aug 21, 2002
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The ABC again have little miss sports rorts on to lecture us and blame everyone else for the mess the LNP left the country in :rolleyesv1: .

And where's the media to use this publicly available document to hound Taylor, McKenzie and co. for deliberately hiding the energy price rises before last election when they were still in government until after the election? :thumbsdown:

Ff5EDKjagAAZJbD
 
May 13, 2008
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During WWII the New Zealanders built a tank. I'm sure some negative nellies told them it wasn't that simple to build tanks, but they built it anyway.
And then people laughed.

It'd be great if it was simple to build a sustainable electricity supply.
I'm pretty positive about things that will work.

Trying to get a solar project over the line where i work.
Because we only work day shift we should be able to reduce our emissions by at least 50%, but after that it gets really tricky and expensive.
We could pay extra on our bill and claim to have zero emissions, but that's bullshit.
homer-presentation.png
 
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