Katoomba Monthly Temp average set to be SMASHED!!! AGAIN!!! [Archive] - Page 6

FenceFurniture

14th February 2020, 08:31 AM

Have a look at this Paul, Innovation - Sundrop (https://www.sundropfarms.com/innovation/) I am no expert but I have just read Tim Flannerys' latest book ( and yes I do find it a bit disgusting that such an honorable man (Australian of the year 2007), brilliant academic, great writer, thinker and leader is senselessly slandered by the ignorant) It seems that this system of concentrated solar mass is low cost, reliable and makes baseload power far more cheaply than any other system. This is probably what we should be building. Also here NoCookies | The Australian (https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/this-is-the-future-of-farming/news-story/99fd0a207d8b6aa0768c32fd61b3d00e) and here World-first solar tower powered tomato farm opens in Port Augusta | RenewEconomy (https://reneweconomy.com.au/world-first-solar-tower-powered-tomato-farm-opens-port-augusta-41643/)Len those links seem to be more about the tomatoes than the power source, and The Australian is paywalled (I'll not give Murdoch a cent). Also, yesterday, Beardy seemed to suggest that RenewEconomy was a biased source and the Nine News was more reliable and would give a more complete account, so is RenewEconomy trustworthy in your opinion?

As soon as I saw who the publisher was I thought it best to get the whole story
Downer EDI profit falls 35pc on '''risky''' construction (https://www.afr.com/companies/infrastructure/downer-edi-profit-falls-35pc-on-risky-construction-20200211-p53zuk)

FenceFurniture

14th February 2020, 09:15 AM

They appeared with him on this list. List of Australian of the Year Award recipients - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_of_the_Year_Award_recipients) (those who were selected for the award by the government of the day to help further their own political agendas)I can't follow that at all. You've linked to a list of every AotY since 1960, which also includes David Morrison, Peter Cosgrove, a host of sportspeople, musicians, religious figures etc. I don't understand why you would single out Goodes and Batty to compare them with Bond. The implication (to me anyway) is that Goodes and Batty have done something to disgrace themselves, as Bond did. Obviously you must think that Morrison and Cosgrove et al are right up their with Bond as well. :?

doug3030

14th February 2020, 09:30 AM

They're all people that Doug doesn't like. Says more about him than them.

Well that's a rather rash assumption, the making of which says more about you than it does about me.

Putting aside Bond's business achievements (which most would assume were dodgy right from the start in light of subsequent evidence) I really enjoyed watching his America's up challenges which did a hell of a lot for national pride and Australia's standing on the world stage. Do I dislike him? NO. Was he worthy of an Australian Of the year award once all the facts were known? doubtful.

Adam Goodes is/was a great footballer. I am not an AFL fan but living in Victoria where AFL is a religion, you can't help but notice. He was awarded AOY for his work against racial discrimination. But nobody who boo-ed him on the field did it because of his race; it was because of his behavior. He brought it all on himself. If you doubt this, lets look at another aboriginal footballer,albeit in a different code - Jonathan Thurston. If Goodes was boo-ed because of his race, why did nobody boo JT? Probably because he didn't act like a dick. He made no issue of race so neither did anyone else. He was also very active and influential in the community and did a lot of good for a lot of other people. Goodes' primary interest was in himself. Do I dislike him? NO. There is a lot about him to admire. Was he worthy of an Australian of the year award? Compared to other potential candidates, I think not.

Rosie Batty went thorough a terrible experience and I admire her for the way she channeled the energy of that experience into her advocacy against family violence is inspirational. However, at the time of the awarding of AOY, had she done enough? Most recipients of the award have worked hard over several years before being noticed and awarded, whereas Rosie was given the award by Tony Abbot to enable her to go out and do her work with a more substantial platform to support her. It was a win-win,with Rosie getting a raised profile and helped Abbot to shake off the still lingering affects of the mysogony slur which Gillard so successfully used to discredit him. I do not dislike Rosie Batty, I admire her. She had not done enough to have earned the award whenit was presented and probably still has not made up the difference, but she has done a lot more than most would have done in the same circumstances.

The point I was making was that AOY awards are not necessarily a guarantee that they have sufficient achievements to justify it. Like other decisions made by politicians, they are made to get the most political mileage possible. If you have a bit of time to kill go through the list of any high-profile awards administered by the state or federal government and then think about who the leaders were at the time and what the agendas of the day were then look at the award recipients.

NeilS

14th February 2020, 09:31 AM

A link to AEMO for those of you who are interested in the prices and demands for each state. It is right up to date all the time.

Thanks, Paul

Not much sun here yet and no wind this morning... SA is paying over $300 MW spot price.... Yikes!

And, Tas has turned on the tap to keep the Vics going.

Very interesting.

FenceFurniture

14th February 2020, 09:41 AM

AOY awards are not necessarily a guarantee that they have sufficient achievements to justify it. Like other decisions made by politicians, they are made to get the most political mileage possible.Well that's all you had to say in the very first place, and your meaning would have been quite clear, instead of obfuscated, and frankly, misleading.

FenceFurniture

14th February 2020, 09:44 AM

And, Tas has turned on the tap to keep the Vics going.Maybe they shouldn't have :D

doug3030

14th February 2020, 09:48 AM

Well that's all you had to say in the very first place, and your meaning would have been quite clear, instead of obfuscated, and frankly, misleading.

It's a bit like sport-fishing really. When the bait's in the water there's a good chance of a strike. :D

FenceFurniture

14th February 2020, 10:00 AM

It's a bit like sport-fishing really. When the bait's in the water there's a good chance of a strike. :DOk, so finally Doug3030's intentions in the thread have become clear. He has made no real meaningful contribution at all, just pedantically bickering with various points of view, and just wants to bait people.

With that in mind I have no intention of reading any more of his posts, and he is now the second-only person to go onto my ignore list.

Bushmiller

14th February 2020, 10:32 AM

Thanks, Paul

Not much sun here yet and no wind this morning... SA is paying over $300 MW spot price.... Yikes!

And, Tas has turned on the tap to keep the Vics going.

Very interesting.

Neil

You are clearly taking full advantage of the active trend.

I took these screen shots yesterday just to highlight the difference the sun makes to SA in particular and to emphasise that SA has little base load power of it's own. The left pic was at 1500hrs and the pic on the right at 1828hrs. In SA there is a large increase in load for the evening peak.

468601468600

The fact that it has insufficient base load of it's own is not really a problem to my mind so long as the adjacent state of Victoria can supply the deficiency. Compare the price (as that is the primary indicator of demand) to the same time period on 12 Feb (sorry I cannot supply the same screen shot). The price during the same period ranged from -$40.00 to $50.00. Quite a difference.

468602

Something I neglected to mention before is that in the shot above and the earlier post showing those shots is that half the shot is what happened and the half to the right is the prediction for that period of time. It may or may not eventuate that way. You can see to the left the line is "crinkly," which reflects the reality, while on the right it is unrealistically smooth.

Regards
Paul

FenceFurniture

14th February 2020, 12:32 PM

That all sounds fine but the two points that I still struggle with are ;
1- What is this golden opportunity that Australia is presented with? I hear this touted a bit but don’t understand what it is.
2- This coal replacement item/ product has yet to come to fruition as we have recently discussed, I don’t understand how we are meant to be going full steam ahead and leading the world when we don’t even know what direction we are meant to face.
Watch Q&A from last night.
I will tonight, I hope my questions are answered but I am not confident

And so did you watch it as planned? If so, do you have any reaction to it?

doug3030

14th February 2020, 01:14 PM

We all know that Bond went to gaol, albeit 17-18 years later after he committed his crimes well after he was AotY, but what have Flannery, Goodes, and Batty done to be considered in his class?

They appeared with him on this list. List of Australian of the Year Award recipients - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_of_the_Year_Award_recipients) (those who were selected for the award by the government of the day to help further their own political agendas)

They're all people that Doug doesn't like. Says more about him than them.

I can't follow that at all. You've linked to a list of every AotY since 1960, which also includes David Morrison, Peter Cosgrove, a host of sportspeople, musicians, religious figures etc. I don't understand why you would single out Goodes and Batty to compare them with Bond. The implication (to me anyway) is that Goodes and Batty have done something to disgrace themselves, as Bond did. Obviously you must think that Morrison and Cosgrove et al are right up their with Bond as well.

The point I was making was that AOY awards are not necessarily a guarantee that they have sufficient achievements to justify it. Like other decisions made by politicians, they are made to get the most political mileage possible.

Well that's all you had to say in the very first place, and your meaning would have been quite clear, instead of obfuscated, and frankly, misleading.

So Brett, you asked me to explain the link between Flannery, Bond, Goodes and Batty in the firstquote above.
I answer your question in the second quote- big print that the awards are for political positioning.
Next two quotes - - after explaining my initial post - I get attacked firstly by AlexS, then by FenceFurniture. Next post I paraphrase my original explanation (in big print again)
In the last quote I get "that's all you had to say in the very first place". Well I didn't say it in the first place for a reason, however, I did fully explain it when asked, no problems. And I explained it BEFORE the two attacked! I'm not the one being obtuse here.

As to the "fishing trip", well I only went on one. I haven't been fishing the whole time. I have been trying to contribute to the thread. several times when I posted a contribution I copped what I considered to be unreasonable responses from a very few participants. So this time I made the contribution and I purposely did not explain the links between the AOY winners I named because I wanted people to think about it. I carefully chose the bait for the fish I wanted to catch and they both came in like a couple of flathead onto a soft plastic lure dipped in tuna oil. I am sure that many other members would have seen the trap and were quietly watching to see the outcome.

Anyway, now I am on Brett's personal "naughty boys list". I had not thought it would come to this but I learned along time ago that I cannot take responsibility for the decisions of others, good or bad. So be it. I guess that I can take some solace in the fact that it is a very short and exclusive list.

woodPixel

14th February 2020, 03:12 PM

We need MONSTER solar farms. Windmills everywhere. Pumped Hydro storage where we can... Focused light salt-bed thermal.... deep hot rock thermal....

On the hydrogen front, I was only just talking to some scientists in the USA and China who have a new membrane that is nothing short of unbelievable. It readily, cheaply and easily (AND with longevity) allows only Hydrogen to flow through, leaving water (or whatever) on the other side.

It is said they can scale this up the wazoo.

Let me see if I can find the article.

ON TOP of this, another group has perfected a solar panel that works in the shade and AT NIGHT. It uses UV. It looks exactly like a solar panel and I believe it can be readily incorporated/overlain onto existing panels.

IF WE AS A SOCIETY can get past all this trivia about coal base load and focus on the future we can solve these problems.

$1 billion for a new coal fired plant? Insanity. $1 billion of fields of solar - genius.

edit 1 - Water-conducting membrane allows carbon dioxide to transform into fuel more efficiently (https://phys.org/news/2020-02-water-conducting-membrane-carbon-dioxide-fuel.html)

Use solar to burp out Methanol!

edit 2 - Researchers turbocharge hydrogen fuel cells with novel ion-conducting copolymer | NYU Tandon School of Engineering (https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/researchers-turbocharge-hydrogen-fuel-cells-novel-ion-conducting-copolymer)

Use solar to burp out hydrogen!

Imagine this. Instant-on gas fired generators distrubuted into suburbs... power where needed. Big base stations of solar, hydro and wind for bulk base.

Very exciting!

rustynail

14th February 2020, 05:19 PM

Brett, You had asked earlier about the inner city furnace. The answer is no. The project my son is working on is methane from food waste use enzyme break down. No burning involved. He was in the States when you asked, so I thought I had better find out what he was actually up to before I opened my mouth.

rwbuild

14th February 2020, 06:04 PM

One thing for sure, the BOM will be scratching their heads about the abnormal temperature spike in Katoomba, in the last 2 weeks :D

FenceFurniture

14th February 2020, 06:15 PM

Well, given that Beardy has been in and out of the thread (looking) about 2-4 times today, and hasn't posted any evidence whatsover to support the following claims:

Well there are the dams will never be full again statement about two years before they were breaking their banks,
so we spent how much on Desal plants and their horrendous standby costs for the last 10 years and the energy required to run them V building dams
I recall the other statement of the sea level rising 25 metres and Parramatta would be the new Sydney waterfront for a start.
Flannery is just one example, there are plenty of misleading reporting by certain media outlets that are not being honest
Those that don’t trust the mistruths and scaremongering that constantly comes from the pro CC camp ( just like they do from the denialists)
The likes of Tim Flannery have done the cause no favours.
If they were honest and upfront of the real state of play they could gain more trust and traction

I recall Tim Flannery getting a 90 million dollar grant from Gillard for his thermal rock energy that he said was very straight forward and an easy form of energy, well after the money was gone guess what, it was too hard.

It would seem that this statement (wrt finding the evidence)

You don’t have to look far to find them.is not quite as straightforward as he says.
It may turn out to actually be impossible to find supporting evidence.

Beardy

14th February 2020, 11:32 PM

Well, given that Beardy has been in and out of the thread (looking) about 2-4 times today, and hasn't posted any evidence whatsover to support the following claims:

It would seem that this statement (wrt finding the evidence)
is not quite as straightforward as he says.
It may turn out to actually be impossible to find supporting evidence.

Really? You are checking to see if I have logged on as you are busting to win an argument :C

I am not here to argue with you, I am stating my point of views and opinions but you seem to take offence when others do not necessarily share your point of view.
I am not particularly a fan of the whole CC mantra / religion and how it has been sold to us from the likes of TF and numerous others and related media outlets. And to be absolutely fair the CC deniers do exactly the same thing for their camp but the difference is the CC guys won’t acknowledge it happens in their camp. Me I sit in the middle and try and look at things from a practical common sense point of view and try and decipher the truth which is usually somewhere in the middle of the two.

That article about Downer withdrawing from Australia written in Renew Economy and The Financial Review whilst both may be technically correct, the perception of one article is misleading is it not?
That is the type of thing I am referring to, you can see it happening in this thread with people believing that X or Y is the answer to our problems based on the spiel they have read from whatever source or from the pro CC camp and it gives the false impression that we have the solution and it is certain political parties or individuals who are stopping it from happening which isn’t the case. All of these options being bandied about are being trialled and not a proven solution yet but they don’t say that.

I could find some articles to post up and then you or someone will post up a counter one about the intent or the timeline of the statement and it was a longer timeframe and not immediately blah blah blah and then the thread will get derailed like it has before playing for points which I have no interest in.
Surely you can’t deny that at the time when Flannery and Gore were working the crowd the language was very alarmist and the intent was a scaremongering approach, the words were carefully chosen but the intent was clear

Why cant we just tell the truth and say this is where we are at?

I didnt get get to watch all of that Q&A show yet but saw about 3/4 of it. Maybe the critical information is in the last part of the show which I will get to but didn’t see the silver bullet to my earlier questions in the bit I watched yet. I was a bit surprised with some of the guests on the panel and thought there would of been some more suitable candidates but it was a good show just the same.
Maybe the balance of the show will tell me but I am still struggling with this notion that Australia can be the next superpower of energy supplier to the world. I get it if it is a product we are extracting from the land like we are currently doing with coal etc as it has to come from here but if it is manufacturing based I am so sure. We have already lost all our manufacturing to overseas markets as we can’t compete so why would this be different? It would be great if we could do it but I can’t see it.
I will watch the balance to see

DavidG

14th February 2020, 11:49 PM

Please keep it none personal. Blast away at the subject not the messenger.
I do not want to be forced to close this thread..

DavidG Moderator.

Remember - Subject, not person.....

Beardy

14th February 2020, 11:49 PM

May I briefly hark back to the base load situation and I am going to throw out a statement for discussion.

It is that we may have completed the first stage of renewable energy and for the moment we have gone as far as we can go in economic terms. By that I mean that any additional power sources of any type will from now on make the market uneconomic. Let me suggest that during the day renewables on a good day can replace or supply around forty percent of the market. By a good day I mean that the sun is shining well, the wind is blowing well and the dams have plenty of water. If any further players enter the market they are only competing for that 40% and as a consequence will drive down the wholesale price in total.

On the face of it that makes it sound good for the consumer. Short term it is, but long term companies go out of business. Bear in mind that none of these renewable are in a position to replace that 50% base load.

What do you think is the way around this? Firstly that an economic plateau has been reached and secondly what will replace the fossil fired base load?

Regards
Paul

Would it be fair to say that fitting of panels to private homes has been good for the home owner and providing supply to the grid but the flip side is that it has been detrimental to the commercial ventures entering the market?

woodPixel

15th February 2020, 01:26 AM

We are effed. Game over.

News | NASA Flights Detect Millions of Arctic Methane Hotspots (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7598)

Bushmiller

15th February 2020, 01:33 AM

Would it be fair to say that fitting of panels to private homes has been good for the home owner and providing supply to the grid but the flip side is that it has been detrimental to the commercial ventures entering the market?

Beardy

That is partialy true. However, consider:

While ever solar panels were low volume they were always going to be expensive and would never become affordable. So the subsidy was required but as well as kick starting solar, unfortunately, also held the price up (the problem with subsidies). Today solar is relatively cheap. Subsidy is not unique to solar. Coal gets subsidies on their diesel fuel for example.

The solar farms had the opportunity to get in early but they didn't initially. Then they thought they saw money and jumped in. When they got there it dawned on them that there was no free ride and they had to actually compete. Did they forsee that in SA, for example, the whole sale prices would at times be negative for a extended period? Probably not. The gas people made a similar error. While the wells were being esablished ad the pipeline built there was no place for the gas to go. They built small power plants and gave the gas away. Once the pipeline was operational they could export the gas for elevated prices and the gas stations found themselves on a level playing field. They immediately screamed they couldn't make any money.

There is no milege in entering a market unless you can do it either better or cheaper or expand it. If you cannot do one of those things you are now sharing the bucket of money with the existing players and probably everybody ends up with less. Usually in the electricity market the newcomer has the hardest time as the investment costs are as high as they will ever be. The old hands have reduced their debt and have a distinct advantage. This is why in my post to which you have referred I suggested, for the time being, any further solar players are going to be disappointed if they believe there is pot of gold out there. We actually have an oversupply of power for the sector in which they can compete.

While I am a strong believer in solar power, it still has a long way to go before it becomes the universal panacea some people would like it to be. While probably I am in that wishful group, I like to think I am also pragmatic.

Regards
Paul

FenceFurniture

15th February 2020, 08:46 AM

Really? You are checking to see if I have logged on as you are busting to win an argument :CNot at all - down the bottom of the thread is a list of who is currently looking at it. If a name comes and goes then they are obviously in and out of the thread. If a name stays there it doesn't necessarily mean that the person is constantly looking at the thread - they may be away from the computer or using other windows. Yesterday morning I challenged you to put up evidence to support some fatuous statements, so before I follow that with a second call of "Where's the evidence you speak of" I have to be sure that you have seen the original request, so I looked at the list of readers from time to time. In the ecommunity it is etiquette to allow enough time to respond because people have other things to do.

I note you still haven't supported any of those statements with links/quotes, despite being aware of the call for 24 hours or more..

I am not here to argue with youHmmm :think: I think that's debatable. :; Five minutes or ten?

I am stating my point of views and opinions but you seem to take offence when others do not necessarily share your point of view. See, again you are misconstruing. It's not about different point of view, it's about supporting CC denial with proper evidence - it never happens (and for a very good reason). Outrageous statements/claims and other bomb throwing will always be challenged. Sometimes when a statement is absolutely ridiculous it might just get torn apart.

I could find some articles to post upWhen it comes to the outrageous claims about Flannery then I think they really must be supported. Post away with your evidence that "you don't have to look to far to find". If it's that easy...

Surely you can’t deny that at the time when Flannery and Gore were working the crowd the language was very alarmistI never did see Gore's film, but I saw him in the media. I have to say though, if it took some alarmist language to kickstart the debate then that is not necessarily a bad thing, because we were sleepwalking towards this catastrophe. We needed to be slapped awake. As Neil and others have commented in here, if we were in the U.K. we would not even be having this debate because it has bilateral political support - there is no argument to speak of. Here in Oz though - probably the continent with the most to lose - we still have around 25% (IIRC) of the population who either don't care and think it's all bullsh. We have no political will, and certainly not bipartisan support for remedies. It's staggeringly disappointing. Bearing in mind that the U.K. was stupid enough to leave the EU (the next couple of years will be "very interesting" in the full Chinese sense), but smart enough to catch on to CC - doesn't really say much for Australia's collective nouse does it!

I am still struggling with this notion that Australia can be the next superpower of energy supplier to the world.Maybe you need more exposure to Ross Garnaut. In this interview (https://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/the-business/2020-02-10/interview-with-ross-garnaut/11952082) you can skip to about 4 minutes to hear him touching on jobs in the future. There are other interviews where he goes into more detail, but there are so many hits in a search of "ross garnaut interview (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=ross+garnaut+interview)" that it is tricky to find the one that I saw in the last couple of months. Some of them are quite long too. Note that I have supplied two pieces of evidence to support my claim.

rustynail

15th February 2020, 08:48 AM

Solar by day, methane by night. Simples.

Beardy

15th February 2020, 09:51 AM

Beardy

That is partialy true. However, consider:

While ever solar panels were low volume they were always going to be expensive and would never become affordable. So the subsidy was required but as well as kick starting solar, unfortunately, also held the price up (the problem with subsidies). Today solar is relatively cheap. Subsidy is not unique to solar. Coal gets subsidies on their diesel fuel for example.

The solar farms had the opportunity to get in early but they didn't initially. Then they thought they saw money and jumped in. When they got there it dawned on them that there was no free ride and they had to actually compete. Did they forsee that in SA, for example, the whole sale prices would at times be negative for a extended period? Probably not. The gas people made a similar error. While the wells were being esablished ad the pipeline built there was no place for the gas to go. They built small power plants and gave the gas away. Once the pipeline was operational they could export the gas for elevated prices and the gas stations found themselves on a level playing field. They immediately screamed they couldn't make any money.

There is no milege in entering a market unless you can do it either better or cheaper or expand it. If you cannot do one of those things you are now sharing the bucket of money with the existing players and probably everybody ends up with less. Usually in the electricity market the newcomer has the hardest time as the investment costs are as high as they will ever be. The old hands have reduced their debt and have a distinct advantage. This is why in my post to which you have referred I suggested, for the time being, any further solar players are going to be disappointed if they believe there is pot of gold out there. We actually have an oversupply of power for the sector in which they can compete.

While I am a strong believer in solar power, it still has a long way to go before it becomes the universal panacea some people would like it to be. While probably I am in that wishful group, I like to think I am also pragmatic.

Regards
Paul

Again Paul , thanks for the informative response.
So the pot of gold still sits on the mantle waiting for whoever comes up with a solution.

NeilS

15th February 2020, 11:37 AM

468601468600

Something I neglected to mention before is that in the shot above and the earlier post showing those shots is that half the shot is what happened and the half to the right is the prediction for that period of time.

Yes, picked that up.

This morning I'm pleased to see that SA has the cheapest power again ($0.00) and that it is exporting to Vic, who in turn is exporting it, plus a bit, to Tassy. As usual, NSW is being carried by the other states. It being a Saturday will of course make it atypical.

Something that I couldn't work out from the above states distribution graphic was the numbers in the small boxes next to the inter-connectors. Perhaps not necessary to getting the overall picture.

One thing that has struck me from looking at the AEMO data is that the Tassies are using almost the same amount of electricity as SA, which has a population of 3-1/2 times it. Does that say anything about unlimited supply, demand and price? There doesn't seem to be a price signal down there on the apple isle.

NeilS

15th February 2020, 12:42 PM

Please keep it none personal. Blast away at the subject not the messenger.
I do not want to be forced to close this thread..

DavidG Moderator.

Remember - Subject, not person.....

Yes, please!

Eleanor Roosevelt has been attributed with the saying, paraphrased as I couldn't find the original source:
Good minds discuss ideas;
Mediocre minds discuss past events;
Limited minds discuss people.

or, paraphrased for Australia:

Let's play the ball, not the man/woman.

This is also why I haven't weighed in on the Tim Flannery assassination/defence (who btw I personally admire) or jumped at the opportunity to attack Andrew Bolt (who btw I do not admire). Or individual politicians; like everyone else I have opinions about them as people, but these are irrelevant to the ideas we are discussing here.

We all have good minds here. Let's focus them on a contest of ideas.

rwbuild

15th February 2020, 02:56 PM

I agree, this thread was turning into a Spanish inquisition and actually works against the cc activists, as I have said twice before, there is a middle ground where we can all have a win win but it will take time, patience (sorry Brett) and technical progress and no histrionics.

woodPixel

15th February 2020, 03:10 PM

More magic from the wizards in white coats: The catalyst that removes CO2 and produces hydrocarbons / News / SINC - Servicio de Informacion y Noticias Cientificas (https://www.agenciasinc.es/en/News/The-catalyst-that-removes-CO2-and-produces-hydrocarbons)

Make ethylene, hydrogen and oxygen at MEGA VOLUMES from renewable sources.

Bingo! Base load SOLVED!

NeilS

15th February 2020, 03:30 PM

Bear in mind that none of these renewable are in a position to replace that 50% base load.

What do you think is the way around this? Firstly that an economic plateau has been reached and secondly what will replace the fossil fired base load?

Looking at the AEMO/NEM maps I keep seeing how critical the interconnector network is to the eastern states. The glaring gap is a connector between WA and SA.

https://www.energynetworks.com.au/assets/uploads/pic_2.jpg

A link between say Woodina in SA and Kalgoolie in WA is about 1,500km. The Bass Strait interconnector is only abt 200km, as the fish swims, so a SA-WA interconnector would be a much more significant undertaking.

Back in an earlier life I was involved with video and audio conference meetings of reps from all the states and WA was always the hardest to accommodate. They were still in bed when most of us wanted to get on with it.

My thinking here is that the time offset of 2-3 hours between the east and west of Australia is also a peak use offset. We in the east could be cooking their breakfast with solar in the mornings and they could be cooking our dinners in the east of an evening. Yes, only when the sun is shining. But a more widely located network would also allow for more distributed wind power to iron out wind variability across the continent.

It seems to me that network development is lagging behind and is becoming problematic (you Paul will know better than most about that). Do we need a Snowy-3? Snowy-1 included the network to get its hydro power to consumers.

The little I ever knew about about electrical engineering left me long ago, so I'm uncertain about the loss factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses) with such a long distance high tension interconnector, but expect that it may not be such a significant factor. The economics would be more of a determining factor.

A recent report looking at the proposed additional interconnectors between SA-Vic, SA-NSW and SA-Qld put the cost (as of 2018) at between $0.75m and 1.00m/km. So an above ground interconnector between SA-WA could cost about $1.5bn, not all that more than some of additional interconnector options currently being considered by SA.

https://www.electranet.com.au/wp-content/uploads/projects/2016/11/ElectraNet-Transmission-Line-Cost-Review-Jacobs.pdf

So, not exactly an addition to base load, Paul, but more of a partial mitigation against the need for it.

AlexS

15th February 2020, 04:18 PM

It's good to see the contributions from people with expertise in lots of different fields, particularly power generation, transmission and pricing which is a black hole to me (apart from a theoretical understanding of hydro). Does anyone know if there is much research being done into tide & wave generation. It seems to me that this could be suitable for peak & base load generation, and wave generation would be close to where most people live, on the coast.

Bushmiller

15th February 2020, 04:42 PM

Something that I couldn't work out from the above states distribution graphic was the numbers in the small boxes next to the inter-connectors. Perhaps not necessary to getting the overall picture.

One thing that has struck me from looking at the AEMO data is that the Tassies are using almost the same amount of electricity as SA, which has a population of 3-1/2 times it. Does that say anything about unlimited supply, demand and price? There doesn't seem to be a price signal down there on the apple isle.

Neil

Those small boxes relate to the capacity of the individual connectors (in MWs) and which way the power is flowing. I have to say that I find it a little difficult to follow at times, but usually the direction of transmission will be towards the state with the higher MW price. Having said that, with the two SA/VIC connectors, you will see that the arrows are going in different directions. I am am unsure of the reason for that, but it does highlight the complexities involved. It is not quite the same as our extension cord analogy in the shed. Also we have to be aware that the capacities for an individual line are not usually the same for both directions. One issue that frequently catches us out in the QLD/NSW interconnector is when the line is "constrained." The reasons for this (to us at any rate) are not always clear but the limitations rarely seem to come at a good time.

The Tassie load might (I stress "might") be explained by two factors. One is that SA could have had or be having mild temperatures. The other issue is that they are exporting power to Victoria. probably both combined accounts for that apparent discrepancy.

Thirty years ago the seasonal peaks occurred in winter, but with air conditioning becoming more commonplace summer peaks have easily taken over that position. A heat wave get the populace cranking up the air cons and the system becomes severely stretched.

Regards
Paul

Bushmiller

15th February 2020, 04:56 PM

Looking at the AEMO/NEM maps I keep seeing how critical the interconnector network is to the eastern states. The glaring gap is a connector between WA and SA.

My thinking here is that the time offset of 2-3 hours between the east and west of Australia is also a peak use offset. We in the east could be cooking their breakfast with solar in the mornings and they could be cooking our dinners in the east of an evening. Yes, only when the sun is shining. But a more widely located network would also allow for more distributed wind power to iron out wind variability across the continent.

Neil

While the time differences could be used to advantage in staggering the peak demand periods (I think daylight saving already assists with that to a lesser extent) I suspect WA will continues to be on their own for a long time to come. The reason we bump up the voltage on transmission lines is to minimise the transmission losses. Most of the power is used at about four voltages 11KV, 6.6KV, 3.3KV and 415V. However the most modern and longest lines are now up to 500KV. 330KV used to be top of the line :rolleyes: .

I am not an electrical engineer, but I would hazard a guess that the cost of a line of 1000km is more than double the cost of a line of 500km just to take some hypothetical figures. We often use the garden hose analogy for losses. If you connect enough garden hoses together nothing comes out the end in a useable flow. If you have ever had to connect power to a shed over an extended distance you would be aware that the cable dimension have to increase proportionately. These lines have to be maintained. The cost there would balloon I suspect.

The other problem is who wants to build it? The private companies do not have the desire or the money. We know where the government stands. All mouth and no money.

Regards
Paul

Bushmiller

15th February 2020, 05:08 PM

Does anyone know if there is much research being done into tide & wave generation. It seems to me that this could be suitable for peak & base load generation, and wave generation would be close to where most people live, on the coast.

Alex

I don't know, but there is clearly such a reluctance to research any of these new technologies (actually, not so much a reluctance but more a lack of funding) that I doubt there is significant development. My quick take is that there are some places where there are huge tidal variations (up in the far North?) but possibly the communities are too small to justify the investment. The economic laws of supply and demand are as relevant here as anywhere. It is in particular an Australian problem of vast distances and a small population (The Chinese city of Shanghai has the same population as Oz).

Wave just does not seem to have been pursued. Geothermal, which I think Tim Flannery was keen on, has fundamental issues to my mind. I am not an expert in this field, but anything that is three or four kilometers down in the ground and relies on some pipework has some potential for unreliability. Having said that, how deep are oil wells? I don't know.

Regards
Paul

doug3030

15th February 2020, 05:32 PM

My quick take is that there are some places where there are huge tidal variations (up in the far North?) but possibly the communities are too small to justify the investment.

My understanding is that the generators must be in areas where there is significant flow from the tide to make it work. This means shallow water where the depth variation is a significant percentage of the average water depth. they do not work offshore in deep water because even with a 10 metre tide that is only a depth change of 10 metres over say 100 metres depth is only a change of 10% over 6 hours which is pretty insignificant and probably almost no movement near the bottom. Also deep water tends to be further offshore which increases the cost of transmission lines,making it less economically viable.

This means that all the good spots for tidal generation are close to the coast in shallow water. These are also often the places that need to be preserved as marine habitats or are used for recreational purposes. I can see a lot of kickback from a lot of concerned citizens if a tidal generation facility was proposed for a marine park or a popular Gold Coast beach. Other places with high tidal flow such as the mouth of Sydney Harbor (large body of water passing through a small gap creates a strong current as the tide rises and falls) could be ruled out due to obstruction to shipping and habitat destruction.

Maintenance costs could also become an issue in a marine environment due to rust etc and the general wear and tear of the ocean and weather.

FenceFurniture

15th February 2020, 06:13 PM

How deep are oil wells (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/17/the-worlds-deepest-oil-well-how-bad-science-spreads-on-the-internet/)? I have no idea how credible that site is.

RE wave power, I wonder what impact soaking up all that mechanical energy would have on the various micro environments. It may be none but I would doubt that - I'm thinking water flushing in and out of rock pools and the like. I imagine it would be different to taking mech energy out of wind because wind is so widespread over much greater travelled distances (not breadth), and I'm trying to think of how it might benefit an environment - nothing comes to mind. Anyone?

On the cost of connecting WA to the Eastern States I would have thought that money would be better spent on some solar farms or similar for the two sides of the country.

Beardy

15th February 2020, 06:28 PM

You would think tide movements and wave action would be a good source of energy and consistent as well
They set up a trial unit at Port Kembla that eventually was damaged from a storm.
My understanding was it was cost prohibitive and was shelved but don’t know the details.

NeilS

15th February 2020, 06:37 PM

On the cost of connecting WA to the Eastern States I would have thought that money would be better spent on some solar farms or similar for the two sides of the country.

Yes, but that doesn't address the issue of base load that Paul has raised.

Dispatchable electrons is the issue.

With enough batteries and other storage, maybe, but the magnitude of those that would be required to provide dispatchable power for any length of time and the economics of doing so has been questioned by Paul.

Beardy

15th February 2020, 08:12 PM

Bushmiller

15th February 2020, 08:50 PM

Is there much hope that batteries will come of age to provide base load power? I get the feeling that it won’t pan out that way except for vehicles etc.
When we do get to the EV being mainstream, our power requirements to charge them will ramp up the baseload too I would expect

Beardy

Batteries are not the economic answer for the moment. Baseload power would only be affected if battery charging took place primarily when solar was not operative. At this stage we can only guess at how charging profiles will develop. The benefits of electric cars are diminished if fossil fired power is used to recharge them.

Regards
Paul

Bushmiller

15th February 2020, 11:11 PM

In an earlier post I referenced a newspaper article from WA regarding a feasibility study for a new coal fired power station in QLD. It appears that the location concerned was the site of Collinsville, inland from Bowen. This is my take on the porposal.

The old Collinsville power station was small. 4 x 31MW units and 1 x 66MW unit. It was built on top of a coal mine and had (still has) a good supply of coal. It was closed down in 2018. At least once during it’s operation they had to shut the station down when they ran out of cooling water. They used old style cooling towers rather than the huge hyperbolic towers, not that that would have made much difference.
Today there is a 42MW solar farm on site. Much has been touted about re-opening Collinsville. That is mis-leading and more exactly the description would be the creation of a completely new station. The indigenous company, Shine Energy, which has local connections is the interested party.

Back during the last Federal election there was a promise of $10 million to fund a feasibility study. Nothing happened to honour that commitment until recently when the Morrison government announced a $4 million grant for a feasibility study.

My impression is that Shine Energy is seeking significant funding if the project went ahead (and in that statement we are well ahead both of ourselves and the feasibility study). I don’t know who would be interested in putting up the $2 billion. The government has no interest in financing anything and has divested itself of much it used to own. I would be surprised if any bank was interested in today’s climate (pun intended).
The government is clearly keen to get onside with the marginal seat of Collinsville (or whatever the electorate is called) and they will no doubt point to the feasibility study as testimony to their commitment to coal. If challenged by southern electorates where there is less sympathy with fossil fired power, they will claim it is only a feasibility study and one they possibly already know is doomed to failure. The government will probably claim they sought an independent study, but the cynical among us might even claim it is a sly ploy to curry favour with zero responsibility and less intent.

One problem is that QLD is probably the worst state of all to contemplate such a venture even disregarding carbon emissions and a move that may well be seen as completely contrary to targets anyway. The last coalfired units built in Eastern Australia, six of them, are all in QLD. They will all last until 2050 if required. I was going to say the best location would have been Victoria, but they have brown coal and that is worse even than black coal for carbon emissions. QLD has, if anything, a surplus ofpower.

There is talk of an ultra critical boiler. Ultracritical is similar in concept to supercritical with the only real difference being that the pressures are higher again with 280bar to 300bar in an ultracritical compared to 240bar for supercritical. Traditional modern drum boilers are 168bar. The advantage of ultracritical is better efficiency, but this has to be balanced against greater strain on all components. This type of unit in the past has had to be around 400MW plus to be economic.

In a way that is the right way to go from a technology aspect, but not at all from the carbon reduction point of view. Time will tell where this will go.

Regards
Paul

Toymaker Len

15th February 2020, 11:31 PM

woodPixel

16th February 2020, 01:30 AM

Collinsville.... Imagine if they used that $2 billion for solar and battery .

I just happened to receive an investor pack for this.

Battery isn't trivial. It is the future .

https://thehub.agl.com.au/articles/2020/02/spotlight-on-batteries

Also ESCRI-SA - Dalrymple Battery Project (https://www.escri-sa.com.au/)

Beardy

16th February 2020, 06:46 AM

[QUOTE=Beardy;2173838]Really? You are checking to see if I have logged on as you are busting to win an argument :C

I am not particularly a fan of the whole CC mantra / religion

The thing here is that religion is a belief system and science is not.
Science is a tool. Just like a shovel or rather the idea of of shovel. So if you know what a shovel is then you can adapt the design to suit what you want to shovel, like a super wide shovel for snow or an narrow shovel for digging trenches or a spade for garden work etc. (I should have said 'chisel') If you don't believe in shovels and you have to move a pile of horse manure then you will just have to use your hands.
And science is a unique tool in that it is self correcting. It is only when an idea has been tested thousands or millions of times that it is accepted. Everybody tries to find fault with every theory, every experiment, every set of data. That is how it works. When the scientists say that co2 is causing climate chaos they are not just making an ambit claim, they are stating the best picture of reality which we currently possess. That is why all these astonishingly precise and complicated things that make up global 20thCentury civilization work. All the medicine, communications, global travel, modern agriculture, computers...everything is because the science is right. Religion on the other hand is just what a bunch of people reckon...

Len you have misunderstood me
Maybe that is my fault for not elaborating on the comment.
I am not referring to the science I am talking about the cult like following that has emerged as a result where people cannot even have a rational discussion on the topic without vilification, children have been denied their innocence and are being used as political pawns. In a broad sense the public has been led to believe that we have the answers and the right wing and Murdoch are preventing it from happening. You hear the touts of solar, wind, thermal, nuclear, hydrogen, batteries mung beans or whatever else is out there like we have a solution in waiting, it feels like everyone is hysterically running around in circles waving their hands ( and placards) in the air saying do something, children are crying and suffering mental health issues because they have been told they have no future.

That is not the scientists doing that is it? I saw a program were a leading scientist said a particularly finding had been taken out of context and the information being circulated is not correct/ misleading he was asked why then don’t the scientists step up and set the record straight to which the reply was to the effect of “We are scientists, our job is to report our findings not how the information is disseminated ”

If I look at how this thread has developed ( assuming the information is correct given this is a woodworking forum lol) in summary, we have basically already gone as far as technology can allow us to with our green energy uptake and the next phase will develop when the technology allows.

I believe that regardless of who the political leader is of the day and what Murdock thinks, when a viable solution comes to light there will be no stopping it as it will be a huge money trail that even Gina would put her shovel down and follow it.
Everyone needs to put down their placards, take a deep breath, calm down and stand back and have a rational look at where we are at.
We spent too much time focusing on things like the percentage of the reduction of our emissions over the next X years. Realistically we are arguing over 10 or 20% of 1% :?

As Ray said earlier, there is a sensible common ground in the middle

FenceFurniture

16th February 2020, 07:32 AM

Realistically we are arguing over 10 or 20% of 1% :?¿Que?

Beardy

16th February 2020, 07:42 AM

Some great footage here from Vic Parks of the fire damage

YouTube (https://youtu.be/kaGNi0WeD-U)

FenceFurniture

16th February 2020, 08:01 AM

Beardy

16th February 2020, 08:29 AM

I've never seen burnt landscape where it is just sticks that are left - usually brown crowns, but at the two minute mark the landscape is just bare earth.

"because of Climate Change and it's impact, so this is not normal bushfire - it's beyond that"

Yes it is crazy looking with the scour marks on the ground from the fire tornadoes that developed. It was good to see the pockets that were unaffected and still intact, they appeared to even be surprised at that.

Glider

16th February 2020, 09:50 AM

[QUOTE=Toymaker Len;2173978]

I am not referring to the science I am talking about the cult like following that has emerged as a result where people cannot even have a rational discussion on the topic without vilification, children have been denied their innocence and are being used as political pawns.

The science is clear. Now, the only worthy discussion is what do we do about it. It should be about transitioning to a near carbon free future with the least effect on people and the economy.

In a broad sense the public has been led to believe that we have the answers and the right wing and Murdoch are preventing it from happening.
And they would be right; along with Rupert's son, James.

You hear the touts of solar, wind, thermal, nuclear, hydrogen, batteries mung beans or whatever else is out there like we have a solution in waiting, it feels like everyone is hysterically running around in circles waving their hands ( and placards) in the air saying do something, children are crying and suffering mental health issues because they have been told they have no future.

Beardy, you're using very perjorative language. The frustration stems from powerful people who are busily protecting their own interests and often disguising their actions as protecting the interests of others. They are preying on the scientifically uninformed. About children, I was 13 in 1961 when the world was on the brink of thermonuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. My American friends were practising classroom drills in the event of missile attack. The kids are tougher than you think.

That is not the scientists doing that is it? I saw a program were a leading scientist said a particularly finding had been taken out of context and the information being circulated is not correct/ misleading he was asked why then don’t the scientists step up and set the record straight to which the reply was to the effect of “We are scientists, our job is to report our findings not how the information is disseminated ”

The scientists don't control the media. They have stepped up, but they don't control the mass media.

If I look at how this thread has developed ( assuming the information is correct given this is a woodworking forum lol) in summary, we have basically already gone as far as technology can allow us to with our green energy uptake and the next phase will develop when the technology allows.

I cannot agree with this. Solar, wind, pumped hydro, electric cars, eating less red meat, air and discretionary sea travel etc. are all existing remedies which are available for both investment and for the market to embrace for the sake of our descendants. I don't want to change, but I know I have to.

I believe that regardless of who the political leader is of the day and what Murdock thinks, when a viable solution comes to light there will be no stopping it as it will be a huge money trail that even Gina would put her shovel down and follow it.

Spot on. And do you think they'll give a stuff about working people?

Everyone needs to put down their placards, take a deep breath, calm down and stand back and have a rational look at where we are at.
We spent too much time focusing on things like the percentage of the reduction of our emissions over the next X years.

No way, mate. This is too important. People are dying. My wife lost her 1865 farm house near Bodalla and $100k worth of fences in the worst spread of bushfires in living memory. Climate records are being broken every month. The speed at which it's happening is frightening and it's even surprised the experts.

As Ray said earlier, there is a sensible common ground in the middle

In 1974 the ozone problem was identified by Rowland & Molina, two researchers at the University of California. Their results were based on no more than a computer model. The world banned fluorocarbons in aerosols and refrigeration. Problem solved, not without some pain I might add. Here we have incredible amounts of supporting data from a myriad of scientists worldwide supporting man's deleterious contribution to the greenhouse effect. But only a few industries were badly affected. Now it's everybody.

The problem is that people are not sufficiently informed and they're being manipulated. And those self same people are trying to tell scientists how to do their job! OK, let's all express our opinions on doctors, airline pilots, engineers etc. and tell them that they don't know what their doing. Does anyone here like people telling them how to do their job?

It's way past time we all stopped with the "opinions" and started to pull together. The science was established 124 years ago Arrhenius' formulas were developed in 1896 and they still work today. Nothing new to see here.

mick

doug3030

16th February 2020, 09:59 AM

Yes it is crazy looking with the scour marks on the ground from the fire tornadoes that developed. It was good to see the pockets that were unaffected and still intact, they appeared to even be surprised at that.

Yes, when I looked at the video I certainly got the impression the makers were expecting it to be a lot worse than what they found. In fact they seemed optimistic of a good recovery excepting a few of the worst areas.

NeilS

16th February 2020, 01:00 PM

... science is a unique tool in that it is self correcting. It is only when an idea has been tested thousands or millions of times that it is accepted. Everybody tries to find fault with every theory, every experiment, every set of data. That is how it works.

Excellent description of the scientific process, Len.

Living knee deep in scientists as I do in both my wife and my family, I know close up that the prize goes to the scientist who challenges the current thinking with a new explanation that can't be disproved. The process is one of attrition. Put forward a new theory and it will attract vigorous attempts to discredit it. A theory only lasts until it is disproven. That is why Einstein's theories are accepted, at least for now!

As far as I can see, none of the participants in this thread are calling the science into question (am I wrong about that), just what should be done about it.

NeilS

16th February 2020, 01:22 PM

Geothermal, which I think Tim Flannery was keen on, has fundamental issues to my mind. I am not an expert in this field, but anything that is three or four kilometers down in the ground and relies on some pipework has some potential for unreliability. Having said that, how deep are oil wells? I don't know.

The most useful document on that is the International Geothermal Expert Group's Report to ARENA (https://arena.gov.au/assets/2014/07/ARENA-IGEG-main-report.pdf)

The one page of Key Findings summarises it quite well.

Drilling multiple 4km deep wells at an average cost of approx $15m (back in 12014) is the limiting factor along with the remoteness of the best geothermal areas from users. Just one successful well can establish the economic viability of an oilfield. The stakes are much higher for deep geothermal energy.

NeilS

16th February 2020, 01:26 PM

Does anyone know if there is much research being done into tide & wave generation. It seems to me that this could be suitable for peak & base load generation, and wave generation would be close to where most people live, on the coast.

Or on a remote island.

Full steam ahead for King Island wave power trial - Australian Renewable Energy Agency (https://arena.gov.au/blog/king-island-wave-power/)

Toymaker Len

16th February 2020, 02:45 PM

[QUOTE=Toymaker Len;2173978][QUOTE=Beardy;2173838]Really? You are checking to see if I have logged on as you are busting to win an argument :C

"I am not particularly a fan of the whole CC mantra / religion"
Well if you accept the science and understand what science is, then you should understand why people (children included) are getting pretty upset. The planet is plunging into runaway climate chaos and the biosphere is taking a hit so big that it qualifies as an extinction event on par with an asteroid strike or having a super vulcano blow up. It is not a theory, it is actually happening. Meanwhile our political system has been pretty much bought up by the vested interests of the fossil fuel lobby supported by a massive media disinformation campaign.(see what the Koch brothers have done...“Kochland” Examines the Koch Brothers’ Early, Crucial Role in Climate-Change Denial | The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought)) Not one single politician from either Labor or Liberal will stand up and lead a transition to a zero carbon economy despite the rest of the world heading in that direction as fast as it can.
Who wouldn't be upset?

Toymaker Len

16th February 2020, 02:57 PM

And if you can't understand that there has been a huge propaganda effort to protect fossil fuels have a look at this...New IMF study says the 'true cost' of fossil fuels is actually about $5 trillion (https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-07/imf-true-cost-fossil-fuels-53-trillion-year).
The basket of money they are protecting looks to be over $5trillion. And think of the poor old Saudis, what would they do for folding money if the world transitioned to what is essentially free energy.

NeilS

16th February 2020, 04:02 PM

Raising here a different perspective: Micro generation.

Most of our discussion so far has been on the big picture; where will the base load come from to power Australia through the evenings when the sun goes down and the wind has dropped.

From what I can see, big industry has accepted the science on CC and its impact on the economic environment in which they will operate and is ready to take on that challenge. They are the big users of power so will no doubt find solutions.

Enough renewables to meet SA’s needs five times over: Sanjeev Gupta’s plan | Repower Australia (https://www.repoweraustralia.org.au/meeting-sa-energy-needs-sanjeev-gupta)

Access Denied (https://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/story/6569153/gfg-breaking-ground-in-2020/)

Leaving that challenge aside for big industry, I would like to give a little focus to micro generation.

In 1918 my grand uncle returned from the war in Europe with a small hydro generator in his luggage. He installed it in the creek on his dairy farm and he was one of the first in the district to have domestic electricity. It ran the milking machines in the dairy and the lights in the dairy and house (32v DC) and it worked for decades before a flood washed it all away. It paid for itself many times over in that time.

At about the same time, on a different family property, an hydraulic ram pump (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram) was installed at the bottom of a waterfall and that pumped water many hundreds of feet up the hill to the house for countless decades. It never cost a cent to run. It didn't generate electricity but could have done so if a return pipe with generator was installed back at the bottom of the hill.

I have some friends who live in a remote area on Kangaroo Island (not the bushfire end) and they chose to go with their off-grid setup because the cost of running the connection to the grid was going to be prohibitive. Many decades on they are still self sufficient (and comfortable so) with solar and old style battery storage. They have a backup generator but it has rarely been used. They are well ahead on cost and their carbon footprint is very low.

Rooftop solar across Australia is in essence micro generation. As I write (1:45pm) it represents 20% of the total generation (https://reneweconomy.com/nem-watch/). Adding small domestic battery storage to that (micro storage) when it becomes economical to do so will offset some of the demand for base load for domestic use.

What we seem to be missing with micro generation is other sources than rooftop solar. With many people owning their own bit of rooftop real estate it is understandable that is where it has happened so far. The missing sources seem to be micro wind and micro hydro generation.

Discussion some time ago with a company that specialised in small scale wind generation (mainly for off grid use) made me aware that one of the issues is the reluctance by grid operators to connect such a variable source of generation to the grid. Unlike solar that has a relatively smooth output, small scale wind in domestic settings is highly variable. Paul has raised the challenges from instability in the grid. The grid managers just don't want to know about any generation source that is going to add any further instability.

Anyone who has added a large domestic rooftop solar lately will know that retailers are also adding smart meters at the time as well as real time communication back to their control centres to monitor solar exports. I presume that is to do with the retailers optimising the sale of their excess into the spot market.

If pumped hydro is an economic proposition at a macro level, it seems to me that pumped hydro at a domestic micro level may also work. Around our way everyone is required to have a water tank for fire fighting purposes that is never grts used for anything else and is never required for most of the year. We are also quite hilly here (Adelaide Hills) so most properties have a drop from one end to the other. Adjoining properties can when combined have a significant elevation drop. I'm sure that various systems could be put together that pumped water up to a holding tank with whatever power source made sense, eg traditional wind mill, wind turbine or ram pump, or even solar if that works out on the sums. With a smart meter and comms connected, the retailer could then switch on your hydro generator to deliver a steady kW feed into the grid for a period of time, presumable at peak use periods. Then your system would prime itself for the next time.

Once proven as an off the shelf and workable system, local councils, schools and community groups could adopt it where suitable in the same way that they have adopted rooftop solar.

As rooftop solar has proven, micro generation can make a difference.

Any further brain waves on micro generation out there?

woodPixel

16th February 2020, 04:54 PM

NeilS, you are exactly right: Evergen Energy System (https://www.evergen.com.au/) and a pricing model: Evergen Battery Only Price Guide ACT (https://content.evergen.com.au/evergen-battery-only-price-guide-ACT)

One generates local power via Solar, wind and hydro. The batteries store it. One uses their own storage first, then the grid, or alternatively (or in parallel) feed it back in when price is high.

It charges the battery when price it low. It uses a smart pricing/charging/release system that talks back to Evergen constantly.

An example of hyper-local hydro: The gravitational vortex water turbine puts small hydro on the map - EE Publishers (https://www.ee.co.za/article/the-gravitational-vortex-water-turbine-puts-a-spin-on-small-hydro.html)

It works. Its a thing. Its real and it pays handsome dividends.

IF EVERY NEW HOUSE HAD ONE..... and 10 or 15 solar panels.... well, it changes things.

AlexS

16th February 2020, 05:37 PM

Or on a remote island.

Full steam ahead for King Island wave power trial - Australian Renewable Energy Agency (https://arena.gov.au/blog/king-island-wave-power/)
Thanks Neil. I was aware of an earlier tidal energy trial that was damaged and abandoned in a storm quite a few years ago, and for Australia, as others have said, the highest tidal ranges are well away from population centres. Then again, many coal mines are well away from population centres too. Collinsville isn't that close to Brisbane. Wasn't aware of the Port Kembla one.
Tidal generation also has to find a balance between land value and closeness to demand centres, but then again, so does any other form of generation.

ian

16th February 2020, 05:46 PM

Looking at the AEMO/NEM maps I keep seeing how critical the interconnector network is to the eastern states. The glaring gap is a connector between WA and SA.

https://www.energynetworks.com.au/assets/uploads/pic_2.jpg

A link between say Woodina in SA and Kalgoolie in WA is about 1,500km. The Bass Strait interconnector is only abt 200km, as the fish swims, so a SA-WA interconnector would be a much more significant undertaking.

A recent report looking at the proposed additional interconnectors between SA-Vic, SA-NSW and SA-Qld put the cost (as of 2018) at between $0.75m and 1.00m/km. So an above ground interconnector between SA-WA could cost about $1.5bn, not all that more than some of additional interconnector options currently being considered by SA.
I'll buy into this

If you want to integrate the WA and Eastern state grids, you would need a minimum of TWO interconnectors both operating at 330 or 500 kV.
(you would want at least two links to provide a level of redundancy sufficient to allow the WA coal plants to shut down)
The distance from Portland to Perth is about 3300 km, and transmission the line losses (AC) would be about 10%, perhaps as high as 20% on a hot day.
At $1M/km, a pair of interconnectors would cost about $7 Billion. And at the distances involved, over 3000km, high voltage DC is looking like the way to go.

To totally replace coal and gas fired generation in the Perth to Kalgoorlie region, would likely require a minimum of FOUR high voltage interconnectors, each capable of supplying 1000 Amps -- say $14B as a starting figure. (you have to allow for cloudy days with little to no wind.)

So, IMO it's doable -- but the economics would require a substantial Government investment.

ian

16th February 2020, 05:55 PM

This whole base load thing is such coal-agenda crap. Its a lack of imagination, vision, technology and drive.
nope

the whole base load thing is about synchronization. Your 50Hz solar or wind generator must be in sync with everyone else's otherwise you end up with a blackout on the scale experienced in South Australia.

Lappa

16th February 2020, 10:47 PM

The benefits of electric cars are diminished if fossil fired power is used to recharge them.

Regards
Paul

Thats spot on Paul, and something that many people don’t realise.
I was putting some papers together on noise pollution and came across these interesting figures for Fuel Life Cycle CO2 in g/km

Petrol car - Toyota Corolla

468717

Electric car - Tesla

468716

FenceFurniture

17th February 2020, 08:31 AM

Thats spot on Paul, and something that many people don’t realise.
I was putting some papers together on noise pollution and came across these interesting figures for Fuel Life Cycle CO2 in g/km

Petrol car - Toyota Corolla

468717

Electric car - Tesla

468716

Agreed that recharging EVs from locally produced Solar power is the optimum way to go, but isn't it a bit misleading to compare figures for a sedate car such as the Corolla which does 0-100 in around 8-9 seconds (petrol), with figures for a performance vehicle (EV only) which does 0-100 in "as little as 3.4 seconds"?

If it were two petrol vehicles with those same 0-100 figures, wouldn't you expect an even bigger difference in the gm/km CO2?

Bushmiller

17th February 2020, 09:36 AM

nope

the whole base load thing is about synchronization. Your 50Hz solar or wind generator must be in sync with everyone else's otherwise you end up with a blackout on the scale experienced in South Australia.

Ian

Yes, the "base load" phrase incorporates a number of concepts and can loosely be termed to be the section of the market that is always generating. It is those machines that are both reliable and cost effective. The grid, or the market if you prefer, acts as one ginormous unit and is physically locked in to generating, in this country, at 50Hz which means that our generators rotate at 3000rpm. When a machine is synchronised to the grid it cannot travel at any other speed. (In the US their machines are at 60Hz which means their generators rotate at 3600rpm and this is the problem if we wish to buy any of their power tools as the frequencies are incompatible).

If you have your own portable generator or are otherwise off the grid you will be generating close to that speed (3000rpm) but there will be a greater range, which generally your motors and appliances will tolerate. In the large system, the grid, it cannot tolerate wide swings and needs to regulate that aspect.

I have made quite an issue of the way the competitive market dictates the price, primarily on demand, but it is not the only aspect of pricing and at this point I should draw your attention to the grey box on the top left of the pic below:

468731

Those sections relate to how the grid is regulated and stability maintained. The "L" prefix is for lower and the "R" preficix for raise. Now this bit is important: Solar for the moment cannot do this. Hydro can and the storage batteries, as I have already stated, are superb at it.

If you go to the link below (I did note this back in post #496 :) ) and scroll down the page you can see the descriptors. They are for raise and lower over 6 seconds, 60 seconds and 5 minutes.

AEMO | NEM data dashboard (https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem)

Nothing is easy. :wink:

Ian in your other post linking the billionaire, the figures seem a little vague. One statistic that to my mind is deliberately mis-represented is the power figure. There is a big difference to how much is produced per hour (this is the figure we refer to in the industry) and how much is used over the course of a year. I am not quite sure how a 280MW solar farm converts to 10GWs even over the course of a year, particularly when you factor in that it can only produce a quarter (optimistic assessment) of that 280MW/hr over the entire day. As to it producing five times as much as the requirement for SA???

Regards
Paul

jack620

17th February 2020, 12:06 PM

The grid, or the market if you prefer, acts as one ginormous unit and is physically locked in to generating, in this country, at 50Hz which means that our generators rotate at 3000rpm.

Are you sure? Google tells me the generators at Tumut 3 rotate at 187.5RPM. 3000/187.5=16, so I assume they are 16 pole generators?

Bushmiller

17th February 2020, 12:53 PM

Are you sure? Google tells me the generators at Tumut 3 rotate at 187.5RPM. 3000/187.5=16, so I assume they are 16 pole generators?

Jack

That is quite correct. There is always an exception that proves the rule. :rolleyes:

The hydro machines are a very different set up. They are much larger diameter, mounted vertically and much bigger diameter than the steam generators. Centrifugal forces play a big part. Check out the speeds of circular saws of different diameters to gain an appreciation of this.

The 60Hz generators tend to be longer and slimmer than our 50Hz machines of a similar capacity. You see a similar comparrison with three phase motors. The two pole motors rotate at a nominal 3000rpm (more like 2950rpm) and a four pole motor is a nominal 1500rpm (1425rpm in reality).

Thanks for pointing this out.

Regards
Paul

Bushmiller

17th February 2020, 01:12 PM

As the subjects of hydro and DC links have been mentioned it is interesting to look at the Itaipu Dam hydro station which produces more power than any other power station in the world, despite not having the greatest capacity (the difference between rated capacity and actual ability). Half the twenty 700MW units supply power to Brazil at 60Hz but the other ten units, which supply power to Paraguay generate at 50Hz. However, those 50Hz generators easily supply Paraguay's needs and the surplus is sent to Brazil.

"Of the twenty generator units currently installed, ten generate at 50 Hz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz) for Paraguay and ten generate at 60 Hz for Brazil. Since the output capacity of the Paraguayan generators far exceeds the load in Paraguay, most of their production is exported directly to the Brazilian side, from where two 600 kV HVDC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Itaipu) lines, each approximately 800 kilometres (500 mi) long, carry the majority of the energy to the São Paulo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Paulo)/Rio de Janeiro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_de_Janeiro) region where the terminal equipment converts the power to 60 Hz." (from Wikipedia)

I was talking to a colleague at work and he pointed out the DC transmission lines are more efficient, but of course they have to have inverters to transform the power to and from AC.

Just out of interest and I think those of you who are advocating some of the newer technologies may be particularly interested, this is a list of the largest power stations in the world. Some big stations for tidal/wave/geothermal that I was not aware of at all: Just goes to show! Just remember my chorus of "it has to be economically competitive." What is economic in one country is not necessarily so in another.

List of largest power stations - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations)

I did see a reference to a proposed tidal facility, which if it went ahead would be the largest station in the world of any type, but now I have lost where it was. :-

Regards
Paul

doug3030

17th February 2020, 02:27 PM

Jack

That is quite correct. There is always an exception that proves the rule. :rolleyes:

Paul, don't you hate it when you simplify the explanation to suit the non-expert audience and they call you out on it. Can't win sometimes. :rolleyes:

FenceFurniture

17th February 2020, 02:40 PM

I had to go to Lithgow this morning, and decided to return via Bell's Line of Road and Darling Causeway to Mt Victoria. It was raining very heavily all the way from Lithgow to Mt Vic which restricted my vision somewhat, but it was a very sobering drive. Virtually no unburnt vegetation the whole way.

As you drive out of Lithgow on the north eastern corner you can see that the fires were actually within the town. Then you go up a very steep hill with a few hairpin turns, and that hill was very badly burnt. Because of the heavy rain there was a torrent of BLACK water coming down. In photographic/printing terms the water was about 70% black. It gave me some insight as to what is running into Warragamba dam etc.

For the entire drive there was no clear water runoff - it all contain sediment of one colour or another because there is just nothing but scorched earth. No grasses etc of any kind.

Bushmiller

17th February 2020, 03:24 PM

Paul, don't you hate it when you simplify the explanation to suit the non-expert audience and they call you out on it. Can't win sometimes. :rolleyes:

Ha ha. Even as I was typing I had thought, well this is not absolutely true, but I think sometimes we underestimate our audience. I have no problem at all on being picked up on an inaccuracy as overall it contributes to our collective awareness and that has become the thrust of this thread. Brett started the discussion probably, quite innocently, commenting on the unheard of Katoomba temperatures. I suspect, whether (that's not weather :rolleyes: ) we like it or not and whether we accept it or not we all now have more information under our belts.

So while I have a good understanding of what you mean, I think we are on an overall winner. In fact as a result we have a better understanding of hydro power's place in the equation.

Regards
Paul

Beardy

17th February 2020, 04:28 PM

Just like to say that I have enjoyed this thread and have learnt a lot and trust others have too.
It is good to hear other people’s viewpoints and the knowledge they bring to the table.

Cheers

ian

17th February 2020, 05:06 PM

Ian in your other post linking the billionaire, the figures seem a little vague. One statistic that to my mind is deliberately mis-represented is the power figure. There is a big difference to how much is produced per hour (this is the figure we refer to in the industry) and how much is used over the course of a year. I am not quite sure how a 280MW solar farm converts to 10GWs even over the course of a year, particularly when you factor in that it can only produce a quarter (optimistic assessment) of that 280MW/hr over the entire day. As to it producing five times as much as the requirement for SA???

Regards
PaulPaul
yes my figures for a East-West inter-connector are a little vague. But not, I hope, deliberately so.

It's more than 3300 km by road from Portland to Perth. Both these cities were selected on the basis that there are already a 330 kV lines to them and connecting to the local switch yards would be feasible. (You can't start a very high capacity inter-connector in Port Augusta or Adelaide (or for that matter Kalgoorlie) as neither city has sufficient inflow current to allow the energising of a suitable inter-connector.)

Allowing for a windless night (no solar, no wind) I'm figuring that each of the four inter-connectors would need to deliver 1000 amps at 500 kv (= 500MW). Now 2000 MW might be on a bit on the high side for WA's demand, but for redundancy you have to plan for at least one line failing. So in practice, you'd be working on reliably receiving 1500 MW into WA. Hopefully load shedding and smart meters would make up any difference. If not you would need more high capacity inter-connectors which would operate at partial load 99.99% of the time. (BTW, there are approximately 525,600 minutes in a year, so 99.99% means that the inter-connectors would be running at full capacity for about one hour each year.)

My $14B figure involves just a little bit of rounding. It would take a lot more work than I currently have time for, but I would expect that the mooted inter-connectors would need a lateral separation of 40 to 50 km so that at worst you would only lose two lines to the same storm event.
The west-to-east time difference should allow some continental wide power shifting, but by how much ...
And of course, a project of the scale envisioned would require High Voltage DC connectors.

on your other point -- how does a 280MW solar farm equate to an annual 10 GWe ?
Just some thoughts
280 MW will be the peak output, sustainable for maybe 30 mins per day during summer.
The average day-time output might be less than 200 MW for say 6 hours per day.
make a few more assumptions about cloud cover, etc and it's not too difficult to get a number close to the 365 days in a year.

woodPixel

17th February 2020, 05:32 PM

For $14B one could build a stupendous set of solar and wind farms, with storage!

Bushmiller

17th February 2020, 06:20 PM

on your other point -- how does a 280MW solar farm equate to an annual 10 GWe ?
Just some thoughts
280 MW will be the peak output, sustainable for maybe 30 mins per day during summer.
The average day-time output might be less than 200 MW for say 6 hours per day.
make a few more assumptions about cloud cover, etc and it's not too difficult to get a number close to the 365 days in a year.

Ian

I made a few assumptions in suggesting a 25% output over a 24 hour period.The way I reasoned it was that at least 2/3rds of the day is without direct sunlight. Commercial farm panels may have a degree of solar tracking associated with them, which would increase output, but they also lose efficiency above 26degs). I reduced the overall output to 25% to allow for cloudy or partially cloudy days. Now I concede that this is not a hugely scientific approach, but I thought it would do to question the figure apparently stated by Sanjeev Gupta.

My calculation is therefore 280 x 6 x 365 = 613,200MW per year, which is 613GW, which is not 10GW.

More of an issue is how is that five times the requirements for SA? Their website maintains SA demand is 1.65GW per year!! My calculations are 1200MW (Purely an average observation as I have seen >2000MW and < 1000MW) x 24 x 365 = 10,512,000MW which is 10,512GW. Unless I have messed up the figures (which has been known to happen so please correct me if I am wrong) there is a big discrepancy there. This is not a journalistic mistake. It is from their website:

Enough renewables to meet SA’s needs five times over: Sanjeev Gupta’s plan | Repower Australia (https://www.repoweraustralia.org.au/meeting-sa-energy-needs-sanjeev-gupta)

Regards
Paul

Bushmiller

17th February 2020, 06:22 PM

For $14B one could build a stupendous set of solar and wind farms, with storage!

WP

Agreed you could, but could you get a commercial return on your $14billion investment?

Regards
Paul

Bushmiller

17th February 2020, 06:27 PM

FenceFurniture

17th February 2020, 06:30 PM

I think I may have missed the reason why it is better to link WA to the eastern states, when they never have been before, especially at such a cost. Could someone just touch on that again please?

FenceFurniture

17th February 2020, 06:34 PM

Did you get any pix?No Paul, unfortunately it was persisting it down far too hard for that - it did cross my mind though. It was double speed windscreen wipers all the way....

Think of some bloody foul charcoal mix that you may have been encouraged to drink for health reasons, and you'll get the picture.

Lappa

17th February 2020, 07:06 PM

FenceFurniture

17th February 2020, 08:00 PM

The point was that even if it is fully electric it is still considered a CO2 producer. Yes of course - even in their production, just like solar panels are. Anything produced in a factory that runs off power from the grid is a CO2 producer. That an EV car is still a CO2 producer is no revelation at all.

If you looked carefully you would have seen that the Corolla entry also included their hybrid.

It just so happened that those vehicles were being used in the paper on vehicle noise I was preparing. I just looked at the CO2 and thought it was interesting and worth posting.Of course I looked carefully. :roll: In fact I suspect that I pay much more attention to the detail than some other participants who post wild claims that are somewhere between inaccurate and flat out fatuous, and without supporting evidence. I deliberately ignored the hybrid Corolla because we don't know what % is attributed to the EV part, and what is attributed to the petrol part. Those figures for the hybrid can only ever be guesstimates because they don't know how the car is driven (or charged).

doug3030

17th February 2020, 08:08 PM

For $14B one could build a stupendous set of solar and wind farms, with storage!

I don't know what you can build for 14B but I assume it would be more than 14 million times better than the $1K approx system of solar panels, batteries, and inverter in the back of my ute.

While this system was primarily intended for "glamping", which it does very well (plenty of power for fridges, lighting and entertainment devices) it has also proved useful during blackouts at home, when I have been able to run two fridges and a freezer, lights, TV and sound systems, fish tank and of course a cable modem for a day and a half (with some load sharing/rationing between fridges and freezer which I really did not have to do if I had known for sure when the power was coming back on but I was preparing for the worst). I have also used it to run power tools when working at remote locations.

It allows a level of camping off the grid that many motorhomes would struggle to compete with but you would struggle to sustainably run a modern house with it. People have been talking about micro systems, so there's a successful example. You would think that with the buying power of a $14 billion project you would be getting the components at a fraction of the cost I got mine for It makes me wonder if it was a mistake to have all the rooftop solar connected into the national grid. Running them all as micro systems makes them independent of the base load issues and can take a substantial load of the grid. Yes, it removes the "buy it when its cheap and sell it back when it's expensive" attractions of he scheme and probably there would be other issues that I would have no idea about but it seems that the base load requirements are what is currently preventing the further advancement of renewables.

Lappa

17th February 2020, 09:50 PM

Hmm,

I don’t remember posting that:?

468809

FenceFurniture

17th February 2020, 10:09 PM

Hmm,

I don’t remember posting that:?

468809Crikey, anything to score a point eh? Quoting a post with bold responses is quite a common technique on here - have a look around. Are you seriously trying to suggest that I would try to get away with embellishing your post (and hiding it by making it bold)? :roflmao: That really is laughable.

Or not.

If you have a look at post 552 it is very hard to tell the quotes apart from the responses because bold wasn't used.

ian

18th February 2020, 04:16 AM

For $14B one could build a stupendous set of solar and wind farms, with storage!yes one could, but on the scale that is necessary to allow the existing coal and gas plants to be phased out, you need to allow for the times when the sun's not shining (night (duh) and cloudy cover) and the wind's not blowing

A 2019 report by Navigant (Navigant: 'Risk of slower than expected price declines' for lithium batteries but prices will fall | Energy Storage News (https://www.energy-storage.news/news/navigant-risk-of-slower-than-expected-price-declines-for-lithium-batteries) ) suggests that a 300 GWh battery might cost USD $23 BILLION in 2030 (that's around AUD $30 Billion using 2020 exchange rates ) -- assuming that I've got the powers of 10 right. Somewhere in the past 5 years I've read a report that suggested that to keep the lights on, you need at least 3 days worth of energy storage.

The point being that a system to replace the existing coal powered grid with an equivalent always on source of power is very very expensive.
(NB: AUD $30B is about half the cost of the NBN and the NBN covers all of Australia, while the $30B battery would only power the SW of WA)

ian

18th February 2020, 04:42 AM

Ian

I made a few assumptions in suggesting a 25% output over a 24 hour period.The way I reasoned it was that at least 2/3rds of the day is without direct sunlight. Commercial farm panels may have a degree of solar tracking associated with them, which would increase output, but they also lose efficiency above 26degs). I reduced the overall output to 25% to allow for cloudy or partially cloudy days. Now I concede that this is not a hugely scientific approach, but I thought it would do to question the figure apparently stated by Sanjeev Gupta.

My calculation is therefore 280 x 6 x 365 = 613,200MW per year, which is 613GW, which is not 10GW.

More of an issue is how is that five times the requirements for SA? Their website maintains SA demand is 1.65GW per year!! My calculations are 1200MW (Purely an average observation as I have seen >2000MW and < 1000MW) x 24 x 365 = 10,512,000MW which is 10,512GW. Unless I have messed up the figures (which has been known to happen so please correct me if I am wrong) there is a big discrepancy there. This is not a journalistic mistake. It is from their website:

Enough renewables to meet SA’s needs five times over: Sanjeev Gupta’s plan | Repower Australia (https://www.repoweraustralia.org.au/meeting-sa-energy-needs-sanjeev-gupta)

Regards
Paulmy calculations were different

10,000 MWh / 200 MW = 50 (days) x 5 = 200 (days). Factor in something for cloud, etc and 365 is not too big a stretch so sort of reasonable as an order of magnitude calculation.

on SA's power requirements, annual demand is about 12 to 13,000 GWh (12 to 13 TWh) - https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Planning_and_Forecasting/SA_Advisory/2018/2018-South-Australian-Electricity-Report.pdf - not 1.7 GWh so for starters that's a "journalistic mistake" in the order of a factor of four. Did I mention something about not believing everything you read?

ian

18th February 2020, 04:55 AM

ian

18th February 2020, 05:32 AM

WP

Agreed you could, but could you get a commercial return on your $14billion investment?
Paul

This discussion is confirming to me that, as a country, Australia has to totally rethink what constitutes a "commercial return on investment".
For those times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind's not blowing -- you will need storage of some sort. And that storage is not cheep.
And for those times when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing the "commercial return on investment" will be negative. (It's a function of the necessary over investment.)

If the economy is to continue functioning at those times -- I'm assuming that no one is volunteering to freeze in the dark while not being paid -- then it's the role of Government to step in and and provide a "take or pay" price guarantee spread across the Nation's entire tax base.
A role current governments appear to be very reluctant to take.

Beardy

18th February 2020, 06:08 AM

Further to that point Ian, the income stream the government currently receives from mining and fuel excise will be diminishing so there will need to be some changes to revenue collection system

poundy

18th February 2020, 07:54 AM

FenceFurniture

18th February 2020, 08:43 AM

actually FF, I would agree that you should never edit an in-line response with your own text, even if you choose to bold it, as it's no longer clear that the quote was modified. The forum allows you to have multiple quote sections, so there's no reason not to do that imho... And when someone forgets to mark it as bold, at least it's clear. (yes this is not on the topic of discussion but I still think the reason it came up was to have clarity of message and therefore worthwhile in this context)Well I've been doing it for years and years, along with other people (which is why I started it in the first place - it appears to be accepted forum practice), and nobody has ever complained about being misquoted before (if you look through my posts just in this thread you will see it used often, but not always). I used to also make it blue but these days (4-5 years) I can't because I have a DarkBackground app in Firefox which changes the colours that I see compared to what is posted.

What I could do is put FF: put a response in here

Bohdan

18th February 2020, 09:14 AM

I only read the quote if the response is unclear or I have missed the original quote.

If there is only a quote I assume that it is an error, that there was no response and move on as it is too hard to work out which bit is quote and which is response.

poundy

18th February 2020, 09:21 AM

Well I've been doing it for years and years, along with other people (which is why I started it in the first place - it appears to be accepted forum practice), and nobody has ever complained about being misquoted before (if you look through my posts just in this thread you will see it used often, but not always). I used to also make it blue but these days (4-5 years) I can't because I have a DarkBackground app in Firefox which changes the colours that I see compared to what is posted.

What I could do is put FF: put a response in here

I only read the quote if the response is unclear or I have missed the original quote.

If there is only a quote I assume that it is an error, that there was no response and move on as it is too hard to work out which bit is quote and which is response.
@Bohdan's reply shows why your text in the inline quote is going to get lost in the formatting, even with bold/coloured etc.

Just because someone did something and then others followed doesn't mean it's still a good idea... And sure, in this thread we're talking important things not trivialities like this, but I think keeping things clearly delineated makes sense.

Bushmiller

18th February 2020, 09:21 AM

Paul

This discussion is confirming to me that, as a country, Australia has to totally rethink what constitutes a "commercial return on investment".
For those times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind's not blowing -- you will need storage of some sort. And that storage is not cheep.
And for those times when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing the "commercial return on investment" will be negative. (It's a function of the necessary over investment.)

If the economy is to continue functioning at those times -- I'm assuming that no one is volunteering to freeze in the dark while not being paid -- then it's the role of Government to step in and and provide a "take or pay" price guarantee spread across the Nation's entire tax base.
A role current governments appear to be very reluctant to take.

Ian

We have commented at work that the dynamic is already changing in the way prices are going and realistically we are only a very small way into the transition to renewables.

One point I have made in the past, but not recently, is that for solar (also applies to wind but for simplicity and to explain the concept I will restrict to solar) to replace fossil fired generation you need four times the amount of generation. You need three times to cover for the dark or sunless hours and another amount for when it was cloudy. A quick look at the demand a few moments ago showed it to be 23,673MW across the five states. We will call it 25,000MW as you need at least the maximum demand if there is to be no load shedding. 25,000MW allows you to have power through the day but there is nothing remaining to charge the storage batteries which is why you need the extra 75,000MW (50,000 to charge up 16 hours of storage and another 25,000 for the cloud cover factor) plus 75,000MW of storage batteries too! There are some assumptions there that are not quite correct (the demand at night is less than during the day for example), but I am trying to illustrate a point)

Clearly this is going to be expensive: Make that horrendously expensive! If the cost of producing 1MW of solar power is now on a par with 1MW of thermal power it translates to being only four times as expensive without factoring in storage batteries. Perhaps one day there will be a way of doing this but it is not there now and without a major break through in technology I don't see it happening in the near future.

So that brings us back to needing to find a solution for that base load component, which is the only one for the moment to guarantee continuity of supply. I certainly don't have an answer, although I did suggest that more research was required into Thorium nuclear. As so far only pilot plants have been built it is unclear as to whether it will ultimately be a viable option.

Some information in the Wikipedia link below, but as you can see it is not without problems.

Thorium-based nuclear power - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power)

Regards
Paul

Bushmiller

18th February 2020, 09:32 AM

"I think I may have missed the reason why it is better to link WA to the eastern states, when they never have been before, especially at such a cost. Could someone just touch on that again please?" (Quote by FenceFurniture)

Brett

I think this was an idea that was tossed out because of the time differential and the possibility that peak demand times would be staggered. the proposal was that excess capacity could be shuffled back n forward in a similar way that the current interconnectors do between the eastern states. However, it would be ridiculously expensive and then the theme developed from there as to what you could build for the same money.

So it remains a product of the brainstorming.

:D

Regards
Paul

Edit: Brett, I must have clicked "reply" instead of of "reply with quote." It was in response to your question over an interconnector between WA and the Eastern states in post #579. I have added in your quote so it makes sense.

Bushmiller

18th February 2020, 09:52 AM

Agreed that recharging EVs from locally produced Solar power is the optimum way to go, but isn't it a bit misleading to compare figures for a sedate car such as the Corolla which does 0-100 in around 8-9 seconds (petrol), with figures for a performance vehicle (EV only) which does 0-100 in "as little as 3.4 seconds"?

Brett

It is a little mind blowing to see how fast electric cars can accelerate. This is because (I'm sure you know) they produce instant and full torque. The internal combustion engine is poor at developing power. It has to build power and to compensate for this deficiency we give these vehicles a gearbox. In fact we now quite commonly see 7-speed automatics and 6-speed manuals. I don't know what an electric Corolla accelerates at. The Tesla "S" easily blows away any muscle car you care to name over a standing quarter mile including the likes of V8 supercars. It loses out to all of them over a mile drag. It puts power down in the first 100/200m that no conventional combustion powered vehicle can emulate. I say conventional because somebody will point to the top fuel dragsters (they are amazing, but not terribly practical).

There is a car around called the White Zombie. It is an electric car based on an old, old Datsun. Back in 2011 it was the fastest electric car in the world. There are many videos of this car in action, but this one below is indicative of just how an electric car puts down it's power. (Sorry, the vid is, well, amateurish)

YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rVTIpS5zb4)

The guy that built it also drove it around as his street car. At some point he swapped out the original lead acid batteries for lithium ion batteries. I can't remember how much weight was saved, but the car then accelerated even faster.

Regards
Paul

NeilS

18th February 2020, 10:07 AM

I think I may have missed the reason why it is better to link WA to the eastern states, when they never have been before, especially at such a cost. Could someone just touch on that again please?

My embolding above in quote from FF.

That was my contribution and the primary reason for raising it is the offset that it could provide in sunlight hours between the east and west of our wide brown land and the variation in cloud and wind patterns from one region to the other.

At its simplest, WA could be supplying solar generated power to the eastern states (not just SA) during peak use of an evening. Tea cooking time on the eastern board (say 6pm) is only 3pm (depending on day light saving) in the west. The reverse would apply in the mornings when they are cooking their breakfast toast in the west before their solar kicks in, but that morning peak is less on an issue than the evening peak.

Secondly, extending the grid would increase the chances to have the wind blowing somewhere at any one time.

The problem we are trying to solve is to reduce the use of CO2 emitting generation when the sun is not shining or the wind blowing locally. Dispatchable power from hydro and batteries goes some way to helping with that but is not sufficient as yet to make inroads into CO2 emitting generation.

An east-west interconnector might partly reduce the need for that dispatchable power until storage increases and generation from sources such as hydro-gen kicks in.

The economics of an east-west interconnector is beyond me, but the $5bn for Snowy 2.0 doesn't seem to have been insurmountable.

woodPixel

18th February 2020, 12:35 PM

Hehe. Base load. Coal. Jeez, if baseload were provided from burning babies alive, people would still be proponents for it.

I suspect people are attempting to save their jobs.

Technology will solve all.

I've provided a dozen examples of life and society changing technologies and all I hear are nay-sayers. Well, I've put my money where my mouth is and invested in dozens of new operations. All tech based, all making a difference and all (surprisingly) making money.

Here is another one to thoroughly bake your cake: New green technology generates electricity 'out of thin air' (https://phys.org/news/2020-02-green-technology-electricity-thin-air.html)

IT IS MIND BOGGLING.

Coal is dead. It is game over. It is utterly finished. These technologies will kill it... industrial or home generation, it doesn't matter: Wind, solar, hydro, estuary, geothermal, micro-generation, UV solar, perhaps thorium pebble beds, annnnddd GEOBACTER !!!!!!

I'm also looking at HEMP! How cool is hemp! Its the magic plant! :)

BIOFUELS!!!