I am sick of hearing these lines that Australia is low on coal.
If you look at the location for the Adani Carmichael thermal black coal mine, its in the middle of nowhere, arid location.
This location wasn't some special rare special find at all, they just chose a spot that was out of the way of everything else where they know they can dig for countless decades without annoying anyone, the just need to build a rail-line to it.
https://goo.gl/maps/bHySbJjJ1162
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmichael_coal_mine
The best way to think of Australia is that its full of coal.
SA would just has lignite coal instead of dry black coal which tends to be in NSW/QLD.
That mine in SA opened up in 1943, its amazing it even had coal until recently.. your website states http://flinderspower.com.au/leigh-creek-coalfield/
Leigh Creek Mine Background
Open cut mining officially commenced in Lobe B, an area formerly known as the ‘Telford Open Cut’, in August 1943. The early years of Leigh Creek saw a dramatic increase in production from 9,000 tons per annum in 1943 to approximately 440,000 tons per annum in 1949/50.
If you want to see renewables of wind and solar in action just look at electrictymap and in South Australia/Vic there was even an article out today talking about the fact on most hot days when these states need a lot of power, the wind is typically never there.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/smart-meter-price-pain-as-power-spikes/news-story/b85bf16d6f125e7184eca065363e486f
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There is a bit over 1000MW needed when the wind isn't blowing for Victoria which is typically on hot days.. So wind is "perfectly" missing on the days its actually needed. I been watching this a lot over this whole summer and the wind has never blown during the hot days it blows the next day when its cool, its almost like some kind of tease the wind does for SA/Vic.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=country&remote=true&countryCode=AUS-SA
If you compare Germany (which still does have 24/7 cranking 10GW nuclear) compared to full nuclear France, Germany is ALWAYS pumping out 5-10 times more co2 then France.
I know the bias takes over so think of it this way if you had a job that paid 10 times more would that seem like a lot? Of course.
A country that has no nuclear (even though it imports from France) is Italy, it has 30GW of Wind/Solar and a fair amount of Hydro but still they are pretty dark yellow most of the time https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=country&remote=true&countryCode=IT
Tomorrow will be warm for SA/Vic and it will be the first solid warm day out of the holiday season when everyones at work so will be interesting to watch electrictymap tomorrow and see how it goes. Who knows maybe there will be some strong wind this time and will sail through ok, but the forecast for SA/Vic is $13,999 a MWh at 5pm when the sunsets and typically there is no wind.
http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-dashboard#price-demand