Sure, but its not the same horse....its been replaced many times.
And we no longer use them for general or mass transport.
Sure, but its not the same horse....its been replaced many times.
Nope. Horses are the existing technology. They are big and dirty, and their waste (and carcasses) caused a lot of disease. But they used to be super cheap, before people started living in cities in a big way - you just put two of them together and 12 months later you'd get a new horse. For free. And they ran on grass.Hillhater wrote: ↑Feb 11 2018 3:06pmI think you got that backwards..
Horses are like Solar...
..they need to sleep every night,
..are very variable (unpredictable) in their performance,
...very low output (1 hp ?) ..so you need a lot of them to perform big tasks continuously.. ( think Wells Fargo, Pony Express))
...relatively cheap initial cost, but need regular renewal, limited life span !
It's not surprising at all. Nor will it be surprising when renewables make a similar replacement. They will have their problems (as cars do) but the upsides will far outweigh the downsides, and that will drive replacement.So its not really surprising that the car (fossil fueled) replaced the Horse ( Renewable ?) , for transport , is it ?
Yep. And Iowa has lower-than-average electrical prices; they get 36% of their energy from wind.jimw1960 wrote: ↑Feb 12 2018 1:46pmTexas Got 18 Percent of Its Energy from Wind and Solar Last Year.
"The Texas grid, operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), has seen sustained levels of wind energy penetration above 40 percent for hours at a time without significant issues."
All this while holding retail electricity prices cheaper at lowest levels in the past decade. Two coal plants in my area are being closed next year.
They should have used BESS. Much cheaper and faster responding.
even that limited capacity diesel plant can provide 5+ GWh per day if needed..
Yeah, its owned by AGL who seem to be pretty dubious in their operations as they seem to love deliberately creating scarce energy supply. But their actions as a private company make sense, if everyone's food and sodadrink consumption were somehow deemed to be increasing sea water levels then, of course, the government would be engineering some kind of weird marketplace to force people to drink more water but if the water comes in a kind of random fashion and the public NEED to buy it then, of course, its going to help increase profits if you can limit supply.Hillhater wrote: ↑Feb 13 2018 8:29pmOne of the (many) latest inititives in the strange world of S Australias commitment to Renewable Energy ...(lets be honest ..non-coal) ...is this "Barker Inlet". (Torrens Island) proposed power plant.
See the (artists impression of) shiny new generator plant in the bottom left of this photo..
Well, that is a new 211 MW Diesel/gas powered generator plant using 12 of these monster ICE engines..
Its intended to replace the 50 yr old thermal gas power plant in the background...which is still operating fine with many more years service life.
Now that is fine, SA desperately needs more generation capacity, but there are a few issues i find hard to accept.
1). The Thermal plant is still fully operational and has at least 10-20 years service life expectation remaining.
2). The reason this type of ICE driven generator plant is being used is due to the need for fast output response to deal with the severe fluctuations from the Wind farms in SA.
3). The entire 211MW capacity of this $295m plant is only equal to ONE of the 8 thermal 200MW generators in the old plant !
4). Since Wind generation is given priority in the wholesale market, its a fair assumption this new plant will be on standby much of the time, lowering its CF dramatically, effectively destroying any efficiency expectations, and increasing operating costs.....and consequently power costs.
To me that widget seems to be heavily manipulated to make green energy look better then it really it is, to me it seems to use some upper highest average of the renewable energy being generated because its Always sitting well above what the offical AEMO dashboard claims or what electricitymap.org claims. All screenshots taking within a few mins of each other, Electrictymap seems to run 1+ hour time for whatever reason.jonescg wrote: ↑Feb 11 2018 4:56amI think the NemWatch widget is pretty darn good with it's up-to-the-half-hour results and live demand data.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/
If you look at it very early in the morning (like 3 am AEST) you can see Tumut 3 and Shoalhaven pumping water uphill.
..But it is hosted by RenewEconomy, so best you take Beastie's advice and vomit up the Kool Aid before the ABC-backed social justice warriors eat your babies!![]()
Thorium reactors do have the major disadvantage (in terms of government support) that they don't produce any nuclear weapons materials as byproducts. They actually burn it up instead. Where's the fun in that, you know, if you're a demonic overlord?
You are aware that the average speed driven of almost every vehicle on the planet is a lot less than it's top speed? Or do you only drive your car flat out on an empty oval circuit? And that's forgetting the time spent refuelling or servicing or sleeping.TheBeastie wrote: ↑Feb 14 2018 12:45amLike I said before, if you bought a car and it could only drive on average %23 of the claimed speed you wouldn't buy it.
If one 211MW reciprocating peaker plant makes a 1600MW coal plant redundant then that is a massive gain in efficiencyHillhater wrote: ↑Feb 13 2018 8:29pm3). The entire 211MW capacity of this $295m plant is only equal to ONE of the 8 thermal 200MW generators in the old plant !
4). Since Wind generation is given priority in the wholesale market, its a fair assumption this new plant will be on standby much of the time, lowering its CF dramatically, effectively destroying any efficiency expectations, and increasing operating costs.....and consequently power costs.
Neither do light water reactors. In fact, they take enriched uranium and turn it into contaminated less-enriched uranium.
Of course. And that's true of every new energy product that's come out in the past 200 years. And if you expand it to "powerful , influential , parties with big interests in existing business's that would not want to see new technologies succeed" then that's true of basically every new product that uses new technology, ever - from digital cellphones to computers to cars to electric vehicles to airplanes. Fortunately they rarely succeed in quashing such new products.
I doubt it. The big barriers will be safety and cost, not "internal hangups" - and those barriers will prevent purchase and operation, not development.It going to take a private developer, or independent state (China, India etc). To break the barriers. and develop a commercial LFTR
....And it sounds like China are well on their way with thousands of Scientists working on it already.
Like the man said, we will probably end up buying these reactors from China, because of our internal hangups !
Go to a city sometime and see what speed people drive their cars.TheBeastie wrote: ↑Feb 14 2018 12:45amSo ( 11,824MW / 49,600MW ) x 100 = 23.8% capacity factor
Like I said before, if you bought a car and it could only drive on average %23 of the claimed speed you wouldn't buy it.
If they needed that sort of energy they should have installed a fast startup combined cycle gas plant.
Very expensive - because that's not what you use BESS for.How expensive would a similar capacity BESS be ?
Solar, wind, spare conventional generation, the usual...and what would you use to charge it ?
Or if they got themselves a BESS.But it would not be needed at all if the output from the wind farms was more consistent.
No, I won't - because I work. However, I don't really need to - I am fully aware of the promise of thorium fuel cycles.I hope you watched the Thorium videos.....
(But something tells me you wont !)
Just the one at Oak Ridge back in the 1960s. Supposedly it ran for several years with no problems. Problem nowadays is that licensing is a lot more difficult. I used to do consulting work for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission up until 2011. They are the biggest bunch of know-nothing bureaucrats who take forever to make a decision about anything. All they know how to license is solid uranium-fueled pressurized reactors.
Those contaminants you mention include plutonium. Reactor waste is a source of this element. Thorium reactors don't provide it in useful quantities, so they haven't been promoted or developed by those who demand a supply of plutonium.
Right. However, thorium reactors do produce U-232 which is also quite usable in nuclear bombs. Of course it's very hard to separate and work with - but that's also true of the Pu-239 that you can get from spent LWR fuel.
1)... Its NOT a peaker plant.Punx0r wrote: ↑Feb 14 2018 7:33amIf one 211MW reciprocating peaker plant makes a 1600MW coal plant redundant then that is a massive gain in efficiency
Why on earth would you criticise the capacity factor of a peaker plant? "This piece of equipment that is designed to run briefly every now and again doesn't run 100% of the time!"