Solar Panel Feed in Tariff

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Originally Posted by woodPixel

The Coal industry is a stiffening corpse, it just needs to be buried.

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That thought worries me greatly. It's a fine goal, and has much support from those in cities, but for those of us living in mining areas the realities are somewhat different. We are told that renewables will employ those ousted from the mining industry, but that's a pipe dream. In our area we have large PV and wind generation systems being, or having recently been, installed. What we have seen is short term employment of "muscle" to do the earthmoving, construction etc., but all the technical stuff is either FIFO workers or done off site. Once the system is up and running, employment drops to near zero - I am told the large wind farm near us employs a handful of permanent local staff (I've read just two people are required full time). Compare this to the thousands of people employed at the local mines. The vast majority of those mineworkers are "muscle", largely unsuited to anything other than driving big machines, and are used to being paid big$ for doing so......

When a mine closes, all its employees will be looking for work. There is nothing local for them to do, even if they took jobs as farm hands (jobs for which they are neither suited nor required) they would be looking at perhaps 70% pay cuts, and would be unable to pay their mortgages. So their only choice is to move or claim the dole (and sell their house!). All the direct mining support industries, engineering supply companies, and most of the irrigation/pumping companies would go bust, so their employees are also on the dole. Car dealerships and mechanics have no mines to buy fleets of vehicles, nor mine workers wanting new cars every couple of years. In short, the knock-on effect is that every other local business is then in trouble - no customers and nobody has any money to spend. People move away to try to find jobs, local businesses fold. Eventually even the supermarkets have too few customers to generate enough income for their corporate heads, so they close down.

For those of us living in a mining economy, those mines shutting is a terrifying concept!

Our local mine is closing for 8 weeks from early January and there is some discussion in town as to whether it will be re-opened. On a personal note I would welcome permanent closure due to local coal dust pollution issues that have been happening since they introduced long wall operations but I would not be out of work like the current employees would be and I can relate to being unemployed and given the boot.

Warb, I absolutely agree and empathise with that dilemma.

I've no answer, other than to do one of a few things.... get out now, reskill/train/whatever before the rush, or work out a way to migrate/mitigate it on a personal level.


There are many parallels such as Holden.... steel mills, the Tasmanian timber industry and coal. Mining towns boom and bust all the time.

I had shares in a gold mining company in NT that was going gangbusters, until it... didn't (poof!). The entire area went from casino town to carpark in a fortnight....


I think, however, that new opportunities will present themselves. I spend a bit of time each day just thinking about things and this is one which crosses my mind often. I honestly believe we are in for a truly golden age soon. The economies of the world are violently changing, communications/internet are part of daily lives, locality will soon not matter too much (autocars and autotrucks) and the use/need for "cities" seems to be vaporising by the day.

I find it of no use to agonise over the end of things. I stole part of the above statement from an intellectual property lawyer I once worked with... he described Telstra thusly "The rancid and putrefying remains of a terrible business, with desperate people trying to prise money out of an ever-stiffening corpse".... I loved it! Man he hated Telstra.

We can see the end. Don't need to be Nostradamus. Like those desperate saps who still worked at Holden at the end. What a "rancid and putrefying" affair that was.... corporate social security at its very worst. It would have been kinder to kill it quickly. It was unseemly seeing those workers holding out the rattling cup for alms at the end...

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Originally Posted by woodPixel

Warb, I absolutely agree and empathise with that dilemma.

I've no answer, other than to do one of a few things.... get out now, reskill/train/whatever before the rush, or work out a way to migrate/mitigate it on a personal level.

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I'm lucky, I'm largely retired except for a few small "freebie" jobs I do for some local businesses. I have my farm and another business that is to some degree immune from mine closures, certainly in the short term. The majority of the mine workers themselves will be totally stuffed, however. The mines don't develop their employees in a positive way, but rather with a "hit it with a bigger hammer" approach to most things. One of my friends has postulated that this is quite deliberate, as it makes those guys almost unemployable anywhere else - the mines have money to spend fixing broken machines, but farmers etc. don't, so nobody wants to employ people who smash machines on a regular basis! The other big problem is that, as I said, those guys are paid a ridiculous amount of money for what they do, and there is no way they'll get the same money anywhere else. This is why many of them are still there - they don't enjoy it, their bodies are breaking and the hours are awful (12hour shifts, compulsory night work etc. etc.) but they just can't get other jobs, never-mind a level of pay to cover the lifestyle (and loans) they are used to.

I do agree that the mines are doomed, but sadly I struggle to see a "golden age" in the making any time soon. We have all the ability to make it happen, but I'm not sure we will. At present I see vast numbers of people who make all the right noises but don't actually do anything. Many if not most of our friends in Sydney expound green principles, desires to stop global warming, address inequalities and all the other popular views, but do they actually do anything? Rooftop PV, water tanks, electric cars? No, no and no. Composting, growing their own vegetables, limiting showers to 3 minutes to save water? Well no, but this year they haven't flown abroad so that must count? Oh, wait, nobody has been allowed to fly abroad because of Covid......... But they did join a TwitFace group to show their support for something or other, so that PROVES they're serious, and they signed a petition to have a wind farm built somewhere well away from their suburb.......

We have the ability, but few people are willing to put in the effort, and even fewer seem willing to change their habits. Maybe that will change, but we're a selfish species in the main. Until the disaster hits us in the face, we'll make the right noises whilst carrying right on doing the wrong thing. It's the same concept as leaving before the Covid lockdown, everyone knows the lockdown is to reduce the spread so they should stay put, but "if we leave now we won't get stuck and we can still have our holiday".

I thought you folks might like to see some of the disparities that occur in our Eastern Seaboard grid. This was the first snapshot from 2006hrs last night. It has been a long time since the load was more in QLD than NSW and more usual is the price in NSW to be five times that of QLD! You will also see that the QLD price is actually more than the retail price (29c/KWhr), although it did not stay quite that high for very long.

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This snapshot from 0607hrs this morning is quite different.


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It was an interesting, but hectic night ironically brought on by some welcome rain. Very, very pleased I don't have to return until after Xmas.

Regards
Paul

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Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I thought you folks might like to see some of the disparities that occur in our Eastern Seaboard grid.

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Out of interest why does the Tasmanian price go the opposite way to everyone else?


I notice the government has now approved a new coal mine in Jerry's Plains supposedly to produce coal for the next 26 years.

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Originally Posted by Warb

Out of interest why does the Tasmanian price go the opposite way to everyone else?


I notice the government has now approved a new coal mine in Jerry's Plains supposedly to produce coal for the next 26 years.

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Warbs

Where there is an inter-connector the power will always flow to the state with the lowest price. Particularly with Victoria, which has inter-connectors with Tassie, SA and NSW this can result in some interesting flows. Each inter-connector has a maximum flow it can support, but there are sometimes physical issues that "constrain" the flow. Consequently there may be a flow that is less than the maximum. This is a situation that can cause an increased price in one state and often a low price in the state at the other end of the inter-connector. Balance of power is a reality in the electricity market :rolleyes: .

New coal mines may receive approval to go ahead, but whether any company is brave enough to push ahead with that development is another matter. The ability to raise finance is another matter again with the mainstream bank starting to treat coal as a pariah. However, the fact the government is open to such approvals is a statement of where their priorities lie and here I am not being political as the QLD government have in recent times approved the Adani mine, which is even more questionable.

I would also echo at this point your comments on potential employment. The mines have offered well paid jobs. Compare, for example, the rate a dozer driver gets in general construction compared to an employee in a mine. However it is indeed only the construction phase that provides significant employment. Increasingly there are fewer and fewer people employed on site. Driverless trucks can be operated from anywhere.

Regards
Paul

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Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Where there is an inter-connector the power will always flow to the state with the lowest price.

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I need some time to think about that, and I'm too busy right now! Normally things are purchased FROM the lowest priced supplier, so it seem counter-intuitive that power from higher priced states would flow to a state with a lower price, because that would imply it has been bought at a high price and then sold low..? I think I'm missing something!

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Originally Posted by Warb

I need some time to think about that, and I'm too busy right now! Normally things are purchased FROM the lowest priced supplier, so it seem counter-intuitive that power from higher priced states would flow to a state with a lower price, because that would imply it has been bought at a high price and then sold low..? I think I'm missing something!

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Warbs

No time needed. Power flows from the lower price state to the higher.

I got it a.r.s.e. about. :- That's what night shifts can do to an already addled brain. :rolleyes:

On the positive side you have demonstrated you are reading the posts most carefully and keeping me honest.

:cool:

Regards
Paul

At some point, the declining feed in tariff(and utilities limiting feed in due to grid instability) will intersect the falling price of home battery storage, probably within the next 2-3 years.

I'm partway through re-building after our home was lost in the bushfires in Jan (first anniversary coming up :(), and have put a 6.6kW system on the roof which the original house didn't have. Plenty of space in my services area for modular LG Chem (or similar) batteries when the time is right, and everything has been selected/wired to make this easy.

In the short term, AGL were offering 17c/kWh vs the 11c we would get from our existing provider (Red Energy). Of course, that may all change by the time we move back in !

In suitable areas I can see a future for local micro grids to lessen the impact on the wider e=grid. This has been done in WA mainly to try and ensure better reliability over long distances in remote areas due to grid disruption problems such as high winds etc.

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Originally Posted by Mr Brush

At some point, the declining feed in tariff(and utilities limiting feed in due to grid instability) will intersect the falling price of home battery storage, probably within the next 2-3 years.

I'm partway through re-building after our home was lost in the bushfires in Jan (first anniversary coming up :(), and have put a 6.6kW system on the roof which the original house didn't have. Plenty of space in my services area for modular LG Chem (or similar) batteries when the time is right, and everything has been selected/wired to make this easy.

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Originally Posted by Chris Parks

In suitable areas I can see a future for local micro grids to lessen the impact on the wider e=grid. This has been done in WA mainly to try and ensure better reliability over long distances in remote areas due to grid disruption problems such as high winds etc.

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When I bought the farm I live in, a fair number of years ago, I had owned my previous farm for several years and the power hadn't been great - awful by city standards but probably passable in a rural area. The house on the "new" farm needed work (my wife point blank refused to live in it until I'd sorted it out) but I intended building a new house so I just did basic reno's to make it habitable. Then we lived in it for a couple of years whilst we planned and built the new house. That was an eye opener; the power went out at the slightest excuse, high voltage (and spikes), brownouts etc. etc. With that knowledge, I built the new house with a separate group of circuits for "mission critical" loads like lights, fridges/freezers/coolroom, computers and TV. At that time there was very little commercially available battery backup, so my electrician and I improvised a system. I found a battery inverter (second hand) of suitable capacity, and a large box of AGM batteries. I then used about 2kW of solar panels on a shed roof, connected to the batteries by a Midnite Solar charge regulator to keep the batteries topped up - at the time the DC side was all "DIY" legal, though I believe they have since dropped the DIY allowable voltage to something stupidly low. I incorporated a S.O.C. meter (Victron?) that also shuts down the inverter if the batteries discharge below a preset level. My electrician then checked the DC side and wired up the inverter with a bypass switch, such that I can (if I choose) power the "critical circuits" from the batteries 24/7, or power everything the grid or (the normal setting) power from the grid but with an instant automatic transition to batteries should the grid fail. He was (still is) happy that it was legal and provides no risks, the fuseboxes are all correctly labelled to make it clear which circuits are supported etc. in the approved manner. It works perfectly, and is still on the original batteries. It has, I suspect, also saved it's cost in wasted food etc. when the grid has gone down for 12 to 24 hours a couple of times over the years. Unlike modern commercially available versions, it generates no feed-in to the grid, no REC's etc., it is purely used to keep the power going when the grid fails. It is, however, a nice feeling when a neighbour complains about spending the previous evening with screaming kids by candlelight, and we didn't even know there was a problem!

One day (or in the next place, if we ever move again) I'll replace it with a more modern storage system with the capability to store excess power through the day and reuse it at night - we can do this now, but it requires a bit of thought so we don't bother!

I'm hoping, though somehow doubting it will be in my lifetime, that eventually a "micro-grid" system will leverage cheap battery storage, both domestic and grid based, to smooth out the loads and supplies. Unfortunately I suspect things will have to get a fair bit worse before the various organisations involved are driven beyond thinking of their own profit or simplistic well-being and start to consider the bigger picture. The present thinking seems to be largely "domestic PV is a challenge for the grid, so quietly discourage it", which is driving people around here to contemplate off-grid solutions using the newer cheaper batteries. I think a better option would be to develop a management system that would allow people to interact with the grid in a "managed" way that would be beneficial to both the power companies and the homeowner.......

These are now being rolled out by the hundreds.... 13 GW.... ONE is enough for 13000 houses.

A Monster Wind Turbine Is Upending an Industry - The New York Times


In one deal alone 276 turbines are being installed at Dogger Bank off Britain... 276!
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Originally Posted by woodPixel

These are now being rolled out by the hundreds.... 13 GW.... ONE is enough for 13000 houses.

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WP

That is an interesting article and water based wind turbines certainly avoid the land acquisition issues (presumably some permission is still required). I imagine that it brings other challenges instead such as, but not limited to, sinking a footing and rough weather as well as corrosion in the unforgiving salty environment. Not meaning to be a dampener :rolleyes: .

From reading the article I don't think they are quite at the point of rolling out hundreds, although General Electric would clearly like to be at that point. They have one turbine erected (they did not say if it was hooked up to the grid) and it is on land at Rotterdam. They are still investigating where they will be manufacturing the machines with several of their plants in different countries and seeking an economic method of mass production. However, I can only go from what is in the article you have linked.

This is a video of the latter stages of construction. Not easy with something that is 850' high. Even more difficult while "treading water." No doubt it can be done, but can it be built for the right price and will it last long enough to return it's owners a financial benefit? These are the questions we should ask of any new technology and before anybody jumps in and says wind is not new (I agree ) it is when it is this big.

Construction of world's biggest wind turbine Haliade X | Drone video - Bing video

Thank you for posting.

Regards
Paul

I believe they are like oil derricks, they float. We see only one third of the install, the rest is a ballast underwater?


edit! They do indeed float. They are monsters.

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Originally Posted by woodPixel

I believe they are like oil derricks, they float. We see only one third of the install, the rest is a ballast underwater?


edit! They do indeed float. They are monsters.

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Thanks WP.

I had no idea how they did it and had a mental image of people pushing wheelbarrows laden with concrete (waterproof) on the sea bed filling post holes...Well not exactly but you probably get the drift. You would not want to run into one in your private submarine I am thinking.

Regards
Paul

Coming soon to an empty patch of sea near you.....

Star of the South

I have an indirect connection with this project. Predictably, it's the onshore portion that is causing all the issues !!

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Originally Posted by Bushmiller

...... and water based wind turbines certainly avoid the land acquisition issues (presumably some permission is still required).

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The land issues cause all kinds of problems. The owner of the land in question has to sign a non-disclosure agreement and gets paid a lease fee for each turbine. Their neighbours, who may be 5m on "the wrong side of the fence" get nothing, even though the person owning the land on which the turbine is built may be km's away and out of view of the turbine (or even living in a city somewhere) whilst the "neighbour" may have the turbine right in the middle of their view and only a few meters (relatively) from their house. It can create some bad feeling..........