Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

Hillhater said:
Sure, as i said before, over 1500 sites have been identified. In SA alone as being suitable for hydro storage facilities ...many usung the Murry as a water source ( recycling) .... But politics, finance, and various othrt interests ( green ?) come into play and slow everthing down.
You note that it took a private individual, with a high media profile, to kick start the Tesla battery project....which itself had been previously stuck in a thinktank for a year or more .!.... And that subsequently jump started Snowy 2.
..All these just highlight the lack of leadership and forethought from the relavent authorities in Oz currently.
Click to expand...

Totally agree

I work in the coal gas industry and we are exporting gas for less than 7 cents a litre and we cant buy here under 70 cents doesn't sound right.

Im for solar but not coal mines and coal power, unfortunately some industries need high heat in there processes that electricity can't get to, thats where CSG comes in. But they need to export to pay for the infrastructure.

Really its like Sydneys roads if we could go back 100 years we would certainly have planned and done things differently.

Cheers Kiwi
 
Using fresh water in Australia for a battery could be risky, but it wont surprise me that if we can reach a good healthy 1000ppm of co2 we will see more rain come and thus it might be more viable for fresh water.
The Federal government gave a money grant to develop a pumped hydro storage project using seawater, but
http://www.afr.com/news/politics/malcolm-turnbull-funds-pumped-hydro-storage-project-20170221-guhkjd
I remember watching the ABC 7:30 report talking about a seawater pumped hydro when Malcolm announced the grant and they had two "renewable energy experts" on to talk about the idea and I was shocked to see them say that a seawater pumped hydro had never been done before in the whole world and were basically taking the piss out of it.
But I remember watching a documentary on cable TV/youtube video? on a salt water pumped hydro, I think I even remember them having footage of the concrete sealed dam before it got any water, this was to prevent salt etc going in the soil and killing everything.
Edited, I got some of the pumped storage projects names/urls mixed up, fixed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai_Pumped_Storage_Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_Yanbaru_Seawater_Pumped_Storage_Power_Station
Its quite visible on googlemaps https://goo.gl/maps/X3eyt7R5CiT2

Originally I thought this one in the USA was salt water but its one of the worlds biggest freshwater lakes, at least the sides of this hydro battery dam are concreted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant
https://goo.gl/maps/HibbuzAEA4s

Its annoying to think that my very casual knowledge of this stuff seems to exceed renewable energy experts interviewed on ABC's 7:30 report, whats wrong with this world, the information is a google search away. I should have downloaded the episode off ABC iView and stored it on youtube, the cluelessness had to be seen to be believed.

Gives out a pretty impressive amount of power as well.
Pumped hydro has been used since the 1890's has impressive power output (at least the big fresh water ones) and useful paired with solar and wind generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
The thing is most places that are nice and hilly around the coasts are covered in trees and wildlife, it's amusing that we hate to have sustainable logging where its all guaranteed to be grown back but when it is permanently concreted over with sea water then we are all happy to see it happen.
 
The Frankland river was stopped for the very reasons you assert will be ignored this time around. Make up your mind ;)
The aim is to use existing reservoirs, and/or build new, smaller ones 'off river'. The use of desalinated water would make sense too.
I'd be very disappointed if the hills behind Port Augusta were filled with sea water for the sake of storage - it's stunning countryside, and just because we turned Iron Knob into an Ironless tabletop, doesn't mean we should do the same to Commissariat Hill. There are far better sites, and SA lends itself to battery storage anyway given it's flat, dry nature.
 
New Zealand

Is certainly kicking the ass in renewable power don't quote me but last count they only have one coal power generator and 4 small geothermal generators with the rest coming from wind and hydro.

My cousin lives on the west coast of the south island has been on stand alone hydro for 15 years made a generator out of a F and P washing machine motor I guess it helps when you have 380 meters of head and over 3 meters of rain fall a year he never turns it off.

Point being New Zealand has shit loads of rain and they use it we have shit loads of sun and we don't use it, I have been running my EVs off stand alone solar for 3 years now hasn't cost a thing, I only use the extra power from the house.

Cheers Kiwi
 
jonescg said:
The Frankland river was stopped for the very reasons you assert will be ignored this time around. Make up your mind ;)
The aim is to use existing reservoirs, and/or build new, smaller ones 'off river'. The use of desalinated water would make sense too.
I'd be very disappointed if the hills behind Port Augusta were filled with sea water for the sake of storage - it's stunning countryside, and just because we turned Iron Knob into an Ironless tabletop, doesn't mean we should do the same to Commissariat Hill. There are far better sites, and SA lends itself to battery storage anyway given it's flat, dry nature.
Click to expand...
At first when I looked directly behind Port Augusta I thought you must be joking https://goo.gl/maps/ifH2uAU3r3S2
But then I looked a tad further up and saw the hills with trees, and yeah there are some photos and it looks lovely. While it's a tad more inland than I was thinking of its again the same thing, where as soon as you get hills you get precious trees and wildlife in Australia.
https://goo.gl/maps/GHYjwV28Xt12 like Mount Brown or The Dutchmans Stern.
 
Hillhater said:
And Geo Thermal !... Australia also has easy access to huge amounts of GT heat,....but aparently its not economically viable to use for power generation ??
Click to expand...

Funny you should say that I was on that rig at Inaminnka and it was working Geo dynamics just could raise more capital to do more the wells were down over 5000 meters but the were getting simulation between the two wells.

Cheers Kiwi
 
Hillhater said:
And Geo Thermal !... Australia also has easy access to huge amounts of GT heat,....but aparently its not economically viable to use for power generation ??
Click to expand...
Yeah Tim Flannery who was famous for saying during the 2009 drought that it was never ever going to rain like it used to because of climate change got the Rudd government to hand over 90million dollars to do geothermal and own shares in the company as well as pay them selves $500k a year each for taking such a 'risk' for managing such a project.
It was a total flop.
Heraldsun fixed link, also try right clicking into incognito mode to load it


Tim Flannery also convinced the government to build the desalination plants claiming there was no way our dams would ever get rain again so the government then spent billions on the desalination plant in Victoria that has since just sat there never really used, its been claimed Dan Andrews deliberately ordered some water via the plant only to save face. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-12/no-need-for-27m-water-order-from-victorias-desalination-plant/7588704
They then had failed to actually provide the water ordered. The most interesting part was the government was willing to demand its money back, normally the Victorian government just hands over more money when contracts aren't met like the $1.5billion Myki debacle.
Heraldsun fixed link


Shapes biscuits to shrink as Arnott’s says high energy costs mean it needs to change snack packs
http://www.smartcompany.com.au/marketing/tiny-teddy-shapes-biscuits-shrink-arnotts-says-high-energy-costs-mean-needs-change-snack-packs/
I been wondering about the large industrial bakeries as sooner or later energy prices and going to fry them to a crisp, its funny to see folks believe its some kind of scheme and not about energy input costs, maybe they will be happier if there are large job lay offs. They could probably bake garbage biscuit food in China and people wouldn't notice, maybe they will be more happy about it all if it goes that way.
 
Yeah Tim Flannery who was famous for saying during the 2009 drought that it was never ever going to rain like it used to because of climate change got the Rudd government to hand over 90million dollars to do geothermal and own shares in the company as well as pay them selves $500k a year each for taking such a 'risk' for managing such a project. It was a total flop.http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinio ... 1a6a725f9e

Was this the Geo dynamic project I can't get this link to open ?

Cheers Kiwi
 
Flannery said some dumb shit at the time of the drought (anyone who pins a single incident on the climate is a fool) but to be fair on him, it wasn't Flannery's advice that got the pointless desal plants built.

It was the NSW state government who wanted a photo opportunity to cut a ribbon. They set an arbitrary limit of 30% in the dams before it was worth building it. The dams were at 33% and knowing that it might start to rain next week, their advisers said "Hold off, don't do anything, but lets get the paperwork ready just in case". When the dams hit 32% everyone was getting nervous, and when they hit 31% they flinched and said "Start work!".

It started to rain 2 weeks later. And it didn't stop raining till the following June.

So now you have the most expensive, mothballed desal plant costing everyone in NSW lots of money.
 
For me, the invisible odorless gas called co2 that everyone hates and also creates with every breath they take only helps plants and the environment.
There are many videos on youtube that show them pouring co2 out of a glass onto a flame and watching it go out, like this https://youtu.be/EccfJs92UCo?t=53s
https://youtu.be/eAcc69Svwi4?t=1m2s

I was thinking if people seem to accept gas power-stations as OK then surely if we could reach a co2 emissions level closer to gas via coal if the coal power-stations were built more inland, that way the evil co2 gas could travel along the ground and reach all the vegetation that would soak it up to grow more healthily.

But for the co2 that does reach the oceans, I thought I would post this article here as it talks about the incredible amounts of co2 sea-weed farms soak up out of the water and how the sea-weed also supports other marine life. This article believes with enough sea-weed farms most co2 can be captured because seaweed can grow at rates more than 30 times those of land-based plants.
https://theconversation.com/how-farming-giant-seaweed-can-feed-fish-and-fix-the-climate-81761
Article quotes The kelp draw in so much carbon dioxide that they help de-acidify the water, providing an ideal environment for shell growth. The CO₂ is taken out of the water in much the same way that a land plant takes CO₂ out of the air. But because CO₂ has an acidifying effect on seawater, as the kelp absorb the CO₂ the water becomes less acid. And the kelp itself has some value as a feedstock in agriculture and various industrial purposes.

Seaweeds can grow very fast – at rates more than 30 times those of land-based plants. Because they de-acidify seawater, making it easier for anything with a shell to grow, they are also the key to shellfish production. And by drawing CO₂ out of the ocean waters (thereby allowing the oceans to absorb more CO₂ from the atmosphere) they help fight climate change.

…could produce sufficient biomethane to replace all of today’s needs in fossil-fuel energy, while removing 53 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere… This amount of biomass could also increase sustainable fish production to potentially provide 200 kilograms per year, per person, for 10 billion people. Additional benefits are reduction in ocean acidification and increased ocean primary productivity and biodiversity.


I can't get past the fact where at 7.5billion people on this earth and 8billion on its way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population and nothing is seems to be getting into the way of this, its just going into over-drive.
No amount of shutting down other processes is going to cause use to lower our co2 emissions we had 300 years ago as long as we got that many people of the earth.

Here is the refresher on that reality, each human puts out 0.365tons of co2 annually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Human_physiology quote "The body produces approximately 2.3 pounds (1.0 kg) of carbon dioxide per day per person"

Then its 7,500,000,000 x 0.365 = 2,737,500,000. So 2.7billion tons of co2 per year just from human breathing.
As for Australia, our yearly emissions from coal power-stations is about 151million tons of co2 a year. The mere respiratory activity of everyone in the world is putting out 18 times more carbon dioxide than all of Australia's coal electricity generation power-plants, each year.
 
TheBeastie said:
For me, the invisible odorless gas called co2 that everyone hates and also creates with every breath they take only helps plants and the environment.
Click to expand...
It does good things and bad things. Like most things, in small quantities it isn't too bad. The only problem with it is that we are putting too much of it into the atmosphere, and that warms the climate (and kills a lot of plants due to that warming.)
But for the co2 that does reach the oceans, I thought I would post this article here as it talks about the incredible amounts of co2 sea-weed farms soak up out of the water and how the sea-weed also supports other marine life.
Click to expand...
It also acidifies the oceans and kills off coral reefs.
I can't get past the fact where at 7.5billion people on this earth and 8billion on its way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population and nothing is seems to be getting into the way of this, its just going into over-drive.
No amount of shutting down other processes is going to cause use to lower our co2 emissions we had 300 years ago as long as we got that many people of the earth.
Click to expand...
Yep. Population control has to be part of any solution. And the best way to support that is to support education for women; the more educated a woman is the less likely she is to have a lot of children. To that end, two of the charities I supportare Camfed (campaign for female education) and Tostan (advocates for human rights, but focuses on girls and women's right to be educated.)
As for Australia, our yearly emissions from coal power-stations is about 151million tons of co2 a year. The mere respiratory activity of everyone in the world is putting out 18 times more carbon dioxide than all of Australia's coal electricity generation power-plants, each year.
Click to expand...
Generally, though, people will support shutting down coal plants over genocide.
 
As I said in the bottom of this post https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=89376#p1304091
, Tesla/Elon would be nothing but secretly angry it's unwittingly attaching itself to South Australia with his biggest ever battery solution only to find South Australia's high reliance of renewable energy has caused it to slip onto the very top of the world's ladder of having the most expensive electricity prices in the world which of course makes Tesla look bad (if the main-stream media was insane enough to bother telling the truth instead of telling people what they want to hear which is far more profitable.)

This chart reminds me of the good old days now, before they closed Hazelwood, Victoria's 3rd coal power-station, we only got two others now and its feeding both states, Vic and SA. Pushing up electricity prices for me as well. Victoria's government is just itching to join South Australia's clean energy party.
View attachment 1

But of course Tesla/Elon has now obviously realized it could end up looking bad because of SA's insanely high electricity prices.. Quite smartly though Tesla/Elon has now distanced themselves from South Australia's government citing their energy policies are going to drive up energy costs and they are dumb blah blah blah.
Quote from article "In a blow to Jay Weatherill’s “bromance” with Elon Musk, the US tech billionaire’s Tesla has slammed the South Australian government’s planned energy security target and warned it is not representative of the state’s leadership on renewable energy."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/elon-musk-falling-out-of-love-with-weatherills-energy-security-plan/news-story/e3b2a6673d97db181f5d827de06ff5e8
no paywall link two

For those who don't know..If you wonder why South Australia is frequently talked about, it because SA claims they run the state 50% on renewables, the other half comes from the other state Victoria via coal power-stations via an interstate grid connection (but as far as I am concerned more like 80% of SA's power does).

Anyway even though South Australia is sucking the hell out of coal power-stations via the state of Victoria so they can pretend they are green its expected to over-load the interstate grid connector and they are now buying petroleum diesel generators.

Weatherills 80,000 litres of diesel an hour solution to SA energy crisis
Backup URL Weatherills 80,000 litres of diesel an hour solution to SA energy crisis
Quote Generators the Weatherill government is buying to prevent blackouts this summer ahead of the March state election will use 80,000 litres of diesel an hour.

The fleet of generators, currently being shipped from Europe to South Australia, have been used for temporary generation around the world. But those behind the South Australian energy security project, costing taxpayers more than $300 million, yesterday could not say if the generators had ever been used as part of a permanent solution.

In a major revision to his $550m go-it-alone energy plan, Premier Jay Weatherill last week announced nine “state-of-the-art” gen­erators providing up to 276 megawatts would be purchased to provide back-up power for the next two summers.
I was really hoping they would go with the power-station-on-ship solution, would of been hilarious. I guess he wants to be a bit more discreet about it all.. https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=89002&start=100#p1300678

I been trying to find global electricity price comparisons for the post Hazelwood coal power-station shut down lately on the websites but they are hard to find. I found this one on the AFR that I think does a decent job of injecting reality.
1501829123113a.png
Again if you wonder why Australia is now the biggest bunch of losers in electricity costs I will say it again, we have ultra bad media that injects garbage as my rant here is almost entirely about https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=89002&start=150#p1306995 .
Actually its almost an impossible thing to "graph bad destructive media" that injects baloney information but electricity price charts are in a way a decent measure in my opinion, some of these side effects offer fantastic little windows of our world in some respects, and might actually help the future, in the long run.
South Australia is the king of energy policy by Facebook memes, like this one here https://plus.google.com/u/0/114336428063081027194/posts/RbqHTYjYQux its so believable but just so far off the mark its evil.
Countries like Italy would love to have coal in the first place to burn and provide cheap electricity but they can't, but here we just have to shut it down.
 
At least SA have admitted there is a flaw in their energy stretegy and are panicing to plug it at any cost !..
This just further highlights the lack of planning and forethought that the authorities put into many of their major infrastructure projects...not just power..before they committ to a plan of action.
No body has yet explained how these inconsistent power sources such as solar, wind, hydro, ..etc will be supported during the enevitable "lulls" and variations in supply ?
The much mentioned critical "demand management". solution, is little more than a catch phrase so far with those who do know its true meaning reluctant to explain exactly what it means for fear of scareing businesses and industrie sectors that may be asked to significantly alter their power usage .
Unless someone can offer a suggestion how to cover those calm evening peak periods when the sun has set and the wind has dies down. ( we dont have enough Hydro ) then some form of conventional generation capacity will be needed for the foreseeable future.
Ironically, if SA had accepted this issue a little earlier, they could have chosen to use "piston" powered , gas fueled, generators which would have been cheaper to buy, cleaner environmentally, and produce cheaper electricity.
But, due to the "compressed" timescale, they cannot use them because they cannot find a permanent site with a suitable gas supply.
I sincerely (but likely in vein !) hope that the other states who are now rushing headlong into Solar Farm installations (as they shut down conventional power plants), with have better planned their systems.
Solar farms are currently being planned for Swan Hill, Moree, and several in Qld, but no mention of back up (base load ?)
Winf farms seem to be stuck in a different enviromental debate currently ?
 
https://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/the-project/extra/season-9/sick-of-getting-screwed

Far and away, the real reason power is so expensive is because it was privatised. Everything else is a contributor, but really, the greed of a few has meant pain for many.
 
Took a drive through the oil patch in NM aka the Permian Basin and noticed a lot of natural gas electric plants. I think this is a better use of co2 gas then just flaring the stuff out. We could easily close our plants in New Mexico and replace it with natural gas as we have huge reserves of it and no big pipeline to market it. 8)
 
Hillhater said:
No body has yet explained how these inconsistent power sources such as solar, wind, hydro, ..etc will be supported during the enevitable "lulls" and variations in supply ?
Click to expand...
Storage, rapid ramp combined cycle natural gas plants and load aggregation.
The much mentioned critical "demand management". solution, is little more than a catch phrase so far with those who do know its true meaning reluctant to explain exactly what it means for fear of scareing businesses and industrie sectors that may be asked to significantly alter their power usage
Click to expand...
My company does that. They're not scared. Perhaps the future belongs to companies with courage?
Ironically, if SA had accepted this issue a little earlier, they could have chosen to use "piston" powered , gas fueled, generators which would have been cheaper to buy, cleaner environmentally, and produce cheaper electricity.
Click to expand...
They are dirtier, more expensive to operate AND more expensive to buy. IC generators are about the worst source of utility power, as Hawaii has discovered.
 
billvon said:
Hillhater said:
No body has yet explained how these inconsistent power sources such as solar, wind, hydro, ..etc will be supported during the enevitable "lulls" and variations in supply ?
Click to expand...
Storage, rapid ramp combined cycle natural gas plants and load aggregation.
The much mentioned critical "demand management". solution, is little more than a catch phrase so far with those who do know its true meaning reluctant to explain exactly what it means for fear of scareing businesses and industrie sectors that may be asked to significantly alter their power usage
Click to expand...
My company does that. They're not scared. Perhaps the future belongs to companies with courage?
Ironically, if SA had accepted this issue a little earlier, they could have chosen to use "piston" powered , gas fueled, generators which would have been cheaper to buy, cleaner environmentally, and produce cheaper electricity.
Click to expand...
They are dirtier, more expensive to operate AND more expensive to buy. IC generators are about the worst source of utility power, as Hawaii has discovered.
Click to expand...

Bill, yes most of the solutions are understood, but the point is nobody is planning the installation of the capacity required to actually fill those gaps....
After all the noise down here in SA about the Worlds biggest Battery installation, it turns out it is not intended to store power for peak supply support, only buffer grid frequency and smooth wind farm output (30MW max)
Even the 9 portable generators they have planned can only provide a max of 270MW which wont go far for peaking either.
That State is still reliant on external support for peak cover.
Those generators by the way are going to be Diesel fueled and portable..hence the higher costs and emmissions compared to fixed, Gas fueled, ICE generators.....nothing like the aged recycled oil burning ICE units used in Hawaii.
 
India is doing the right scale of battery energy buffering for solar and wind.

The USA tends to be last to the party in anything that involves energy and is a good idea for species survival.
 
AFAICT, in much of the USA, if something costs money and doesn't have an immediate extremely-high profit margin return, it's unlikely to happen until pressure from some outside source is too intense to resist, or until money from some outside source creates profit.
 
liveforphysics said:
India is doing the right scale of battery energy buffering for solar and wind.
....
Click to expand...
Possibly so..but we have not heard of anything bigger than Teslas planned 129MW installation in Australia ?
And anyway , in addition to Indias renewable power program, they also have plans for 370 new coal fired power plants ! :shock:
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-india-coal-conflict-climate-commitments.html
So they wont go short on "base load" capacity any time soon .
 
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-14/solar-thermal-power-plant-announcement-for-port-augusta/8804628

24/7 solar power. At $650 million it's not cheap to build, but the free fuel for the rest of days is sure to offset it.

South Australia is to be commended for realising the national electricity market structure has failed them, and are doing something about it.
 
jonescg said:
24/7 solar power. At $650 million it's not cheap to build, but the free fuel for the rest of days is sure to offset it.
....
Click to expand...
Not quite 24/7....its only planned to have 8-10hrs of storage ?
And at $78 MWh , it makes the cost of gas generation seem really cheap ,($55 MWh)
So another masterplan with a 8+ hour black hole in it that will need to be filled by some other source ...Gas generators !
Why TF have they chosen this route ?...they are supposed to be trying to make power cheaper and more reliable.
At $650 m (including a $110m subsidy !), to supply 495 GWh per year, it is a joke, (thats average output of <60 MW )
Solar PV with full battery storage for real 24 hr supply of the same 60 MW , would have been cheaper.
..And Wind ...even cheaper !
But fortunately , private enterprise is going to install 1800+ GWh of solid 24/7 gas generators to keep the lights on .(still at half the cost of the Thermal Solar !)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-07/agl-announces-new-sa-power-station/8596016
 
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