Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

In the words of systems theorist Kenneth Boulding: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
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https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-09/excerpt-from-the-patterning-instinct-can-we-transform-our-society-for-a-flourishing-future/
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South Australia, Denmark, and Germany have the most expensive electricity in the world.
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sendler2112 said:
South Australia, Denmark, and Germany have the most expensive electricity in the world.
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Yep, and it has nothing to do with renewable energy. In fact renewable energy is booming in those states BECAUSE of the high electricity prices. SA has ALWAYS had expensive electricity, long before the photovoltaic effect was ever exploited.
 
S Australia has some unique features that contribute to its higher electricity costs than other Australian states...
Its a large state ..1.0 mill sqr kms... with a small population , (1.7m) and low electricity demand ..1.5GW typical , 3.0Gw max.
It has also limited access to the cheap coal supplies of other Au states, relying on more expensive gas supplies and low thermal quality Lignite.
However, it should be noted, the differences were not great prior to the “privatisation” of power generation in 1995. When all power prices were down at 5-6 C/kWh !
Since then , prices have increased more than 500% with S Australia heading the states by an ever increasing margin. (See above)
As has been said many times, its not the cost of generation from RE sources that force the prices up, ....but it is a consequence of their introduction and the policies encouraging their use.
The RE wind and solar farms are attracted by the rebates and guaranteed priority supply contracts, (cost which are Ultimately paid by the consumer !)
But the main cause of higher prices in SA is the market pricing system and the generation shortages resulting from the forced closure of all the coal generators leaving only expensive gas generators to maintain supply when the wind dies.
A simple explanation of the Au electricity market pricing is near impossible, but this is one of the best i have seen..
..assume there is a demand for an extra 100 MW..
A coal plant might bid into the market at, say, $40 to $50 per megawatt hour. If electricity is in high demand on a really hot day, a peaking gas generator may bid into the market at a price running to hundreds of dollars, or maybe even the maximum allowable: $14,200 per megawatt hour.

But remember — we're buying and selling electrons, not apples here. And the way pricing in this market works is a little strange. Power is dispatched by the market operator in order of price from lowest to highest.

Essentially, the final megawatt of energy dispatched by the market operator to meet the required demand sets the price paid to every other operating generator.

In the fruit market analogy: let's pretend you need to buy 100 apples. One wholesaler might be willing to sell you 99 apples at 10 cents each. But you still need one more apple. If the next most expensive wholesaler is offering his apples at $10 each, you will have to pay $10 for each and every one of those apples!

The same goes for electricity. If the last generator to be dispatched is offering its energy at $14,000 then everyone gets paid $14,000 — even those who had offered their electricity to the market for nothing.

Because S Australia has a high % of intermittent Wind and Solar, it experiences frequent huge variations in generation capacity requiring the continual use of this “bidding” system providing oportunities for the Gas generators to “play the market” and rip fortunes from the consumers.
If S Australia simply had a continuous, reliable base generation system , ( even “expensive” Gas), it would avoid these rediculous price hikes and have a lower cost of electricity.
So, in summary, S Australias high electricity prices ARE a result of their conversion to wind and solar generation.
 
sendler2112 said:
In the words of systems theorist Kenneth Boulding: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-05-09/excerpt-from-the-patterning-instinct-can-we-transform-our-society-for-a-flourishing-future/

South Australia, Denmark, and Germany have the most expensive electricity in the world.
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markintell-global-comparison.gif

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Yep, its a great chart & web link, and it brute forces the reality of "Supply & Demand Law" in the electricity market.
It's no coincidence that the 4 top has the largest amounts of wind-turbine/solar installations in the world on a per-capita basis combined with the lack of availability from traditional dispatchable electricity generation.

It's just like bananas, except swap "Bananas" with "Electricity"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeRnxSuLFI

Here is an article from the Australian, showing the closure of coal-power stations and the massive rise in electricity prices, South Australia was also once very cheap at an averaging all states for about $50 per MWh.
It's no surprise that SA had a very eary "jump" in electricity prices, as SA was the first state to start shutting down coal power-stations and move to wind-turbines.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/power-rows-drive-surge-in-prices-equal-to-50-a-tonne-carbon-tax/news-story/76250cea38872e5789741256e00643a2
https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/cac32b32b8d226bfe1d9e2a8d6f486f2?width=650
cac32b32b8d226bfe1d9e2a8d6f486f2

You can word it and garbage it all you want, but the brutal reality is its the effects of "supply & demand law".
We are now heading towards even dumber ideas, that being to somehow force electricity to be cheaper by taking control of the market/operators, sounds so much like Venezuela, but I can hear the renewables folks say "It's going to be different this time" :lol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntpc4zS2x-Q
Look at Victoria blue, it had the biggest shutdown in coal MW 1700 and it went up the most over the last few years.
All up losing 5318MW of coal generation over the last 5 years is a lot of power to lose, its amazing electricity hasn't gone up more.

Some of the other country/states can be explained in a similar manner, merely from over demand for existing conventional electricity suppliers as populations of states/countries get huge. Like NSW for example, merely the CITY of Sydney has a population BIGGER than a lot of ENTIRE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES like Norway, not their city but the whole country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway#Population
The city of Sydney is well over 5million now. Melbourne also over 5 million now.

I constantly see these "LOW IQ level 75" equivalent memes on Facebook telling everyone we should all be like the country of Norway, and copy their cheap electricity/free university/health care/free everything, while these incredibly dumb people IGNORE the most obvious part of Norway's as a country/people success, that is the incredibly low population for the country resources.
Norway hasn't yet filled up its country with 3rd world migrants just to push up Coca-Cola sales or general stockmarket indexes just for the sake of it for the people at the top of the tree, while feeding garbage information via broadcast media to push it all pointlessly further.
Also, note on that electricity index price chart that Norway is near the bottom.

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell"
This insane ideology is constantly pushed by broadcast TV media when it makes no sense, because supply & demand law means that the ONLY thing it can do in the modern society is push-up the costs of living, while destroying the quality of living for the public, no normal everyday person wants that, but the people at the top do.
Constant increases in automation kill the traditional idea of growth based economies based on mass-immigration, instead, it just accelerates the inequality of wealth to the people at the very top.

Bad ideology is incredibly powerful, just look at the difference between North and South Korea, same people, same everything except their ideology. The modern western world is now under control of equally destructive insidious ideologies based around wind/solar energy, extreme SJWism, and more mass-immigration for pointless growth GDP numbers at the cost of everyone else's quality of living.
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But people are so dumb they fight for a lower quality of living and increased costs of living and also lower wages, all because they gain their insight/information about the world from broadcast media.
People are ultimately being brainwashed-programmed via old broadcast media and go out protesting for extreme SJW virtue signalling causes, ultimately at the cost of their own lives/living quality. And at the same time just get more angry and confused.
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/download/file.php?id=251987&mode=view
Being presented with an easily absorbable "supply & demand law" to brainwashed broadcast-media people who are deeply annoyed at the costs of living causes them to get even more deeply confused that their masters on TV could be lying to them.
https://youtu.be/67g4_9LenCw?t=177
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Everyone wants to believe Elon Musk and his vision of EVs and Robotaxi's but don't believe it affects jobs? Again more mass immigration only lowers your wages and new job prospects in an ever-increasing world of automation.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/22/tesla-elon-musk-self-driving-robo-taxi/

[youtube]67g4_9LenCw[/youtube]

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=82223&start=6050#p1464228
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=99183#p1464254
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These two articles are great, in describing the real world effects of supply and demand law on electricity prices in the market.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/05/more-renewables-more-record-prices/
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/03/surprise-australia-closed-a-cheap-coal-generator-and-electricity-got-85-more-expensive/

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Should ever have to say it, but I do of course.. That is, if Wind/Solar is so cheap/great/reliable, why does it only ever get deployed based on government subsidies? Why can't it just be deployed by its self in an open free market? It's another "IQ level 75 puzzle elimination test fail", because it's all crap.

It's only getting to be a few more years more or less until Australia has the same population as Canada.
But Canada has resources like multiple freshwater lakes bigger than the entire size of Tasmania, and lots of other freshwater lakes the same size of Australian cities, quantities of water that Australian people could only dream about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_of_Canada#Canada's_largest_lakes
Australia, conversely, is running so low on fresh water that all the fish are dying, and old TV broadcast media is so crap/cancerous that it fails to point out we are using all the remaining water up for food farming and still just wants to continue with mass-immigration. The fighting between states of SA/NSW/Vic for this water has gone on for decades, the fact is it can never be fixed or be enough water with overpopulation. Every few years they have a review or "new policies", the fact is it's just not enough water.

Always here these stupid government ideas of "Australia being the food bowl of the world", when the fact is you can look up the food production numbers on any major vegetable and see China produces about a 1000 times more of the same vegetable in weight, no one really needs our food, we should be saving our water for the sake of the environment, but everyone's under the control of old backwards broadcast media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato#Production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot#Production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broccoli#Production

An expert has warned against making rash decisions about Australia's biggest river system as NSW authorities drag tonnes of dead fish out of the Darling River.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/tonnes-of-dead-fish-pulled-from-darling-in-river-clean-up
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-15/mass-fish-kill-in-darling-river-to-impact-other-states/10715640
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Again it's just like bananas, except swap "Bananas" with "Electricity/Food/housing". They are all commodities being traded on a market, and ultimately we should imagine our selves living on a small tropical island, eventually, demand outcompetes the available supply.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeRnxSuLFI
If u could have/buy electricity for only 1/3rd of the day from Renewables or pay more for reliable 24/7coal-gas (even if it's cheaper to produce) u are forced choose coal every time.
If the entire system is just traditional conventional electricity that's capable of dispatchable 24/7 power, then you have more choice via and more competition PUSHING DOWN prices.

Wind/Solar in the electricity market is pure cancer. The Wind/Solar electricity on the grid market is a bit like only being able to order an "Uber driver" at 3am in the morning when you DON'T want it.
You naturally end up deciding to pay more so that you can have an "Uber driver" available when you need it during the daytime, just like with electricity demand, no one controls the wind, but the costs to build/deploy/maintain are fixed.

Uber drivers also find themselves being victims of the market because of the invisible costs of having to maintain their vehicles. Imagine if Uber drivers had to work on a law like the randomness of the wind, where they could only randomly be allowed to go Uber-driving when the winds are only strong enough to a certain degree outside, most would get annoyed and decide to only do it if it was triple the money.
Such annoying chaotic effects would affect supply and demand law and therefore the total costs would go up.

South Australia now has 2,142MW of wind-farm capacity online its grid, but still the most expensive electricity in the world.
2142MW for a state that uses on average about 1300MW of power, so it has over 150% of renewables installed, but it doesn't matter because if you're a gas/goal generator willing to buy/hold/maintain an expensive thermal generation asset that randomly gets called upon to supply power, you invariably end up being the ONLY person who can supply power, then you have to charge a fair price for that electricity to cover your costs in a market full of insane people/policies.
https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy

The Australian Greens party policies will NOT lower co2, this is simply obvious because they are the BIGGEST proponents to mass-immigration into Australia under SJW/Virtue-Signalling ideologies.
Even IEA/The-Guardian has articles claiming every time a 3rd world migrant moves to the 1st world their co2 footprint multiplies at least by 100 times in co2 emissions. http://energyatlas.iea.org/#!/tellmap/1378539487/4
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So 1million new migrants "technically" means 100million times more co2 emissions for the country they migrated to, how on earth is that being Green? The major political parties are pure lying cancer.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5pYxlCU8AALGbn.jpg
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https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5pYxlCU8AALGbn.jpg
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New article out from Forbes environmentalist Michael Shellenberger
The Reason Renewables Can't Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the-reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-meant-to/#2606d430ea2b
Germany was forced to acknowledge that it had to delay its phase-out of coal, and would not meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction commitments. It announced plans to bulldoze an ancient church and forest in order to get at the coal underneath it.

Despite Germany's massive 60,000MW wind-farm deployment, Germany gets about half the MWh's of its wind-farms annually from "Biomass Renewables", which mostly just encompasses the practice of cutting down trees and burning them to generate electricity under the name of "Biomass".
The chart shows 45TWh from "Biomass" vs 92TWh from "Wind", which is just a complete insidious joke played on the general public, for the size and the amount of capacity of wind-installed, biomass shouldn't be anywhere near half the generation.
https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=country&countryCode=DE&remote=true
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig3-share-energy-sources-gross-german-power-production-2018.png?itok=lABkj99H
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Over the years everyone came to view biofuels like corn ethanol as a "false economy" and ultimately not green, the new argument now is people will now slowly accept the fact that covering huge amounts of land with wind/solar renewables is equally as dumb.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/07/with-ethanol-and-biomass-no-longer-viewed-as-green-will-other-renewables-soon-follow/#41d85abe7fb9

Over the last decade, both groups have turned against two of the largest sources of renewable energies: biofuels, including corn ethanol, and biomass. Both had been long touted, like solar and wind, as climate solutions.

It all raises the question: with biofuels and biomass no longer accepted as “green,” is it only a matter of time before environmentalists similarly reject other forms of renewable energy, including solar and wind?
 
2005-2007 was also when networks started to invest heavily in their infrastructure - poles, wires and substations (known as the great Gold Plating of the network). Part of the reason we have bucketloads of spare capacity on the network. Someone had to pay for that, and it ended up being households.
 
Remember less than 30% of SA’s electricity cost is “poles and wires”, 50% is wholesale costs (generation)
That was also the same time that the Labour govnmt jacked up he RET and increased the ost of the LRECs ... (Carbon Trading Certificates)..... all costs that end up dumped on the consumers
Those “Green Costs”. Add 16% to every electricity bill in SA.
 
jonescg said:
Yep, and it has nothing to do with renewable energy. In fact renewable energy is booming in those states BECAUSE of the high electricity prices. SA has ALWAYS had expensive electricity, long before the photovoltaic effect was ever exploited.
Most people miss that.

I've seen a lot of deniers claim that Hawaiian power prices are so high because of all the solar power there. Hawaiian power prices are high because they generate their power with diesel generators, which is the most expensive way possible to generate power with fossil fuels. That's why so much solar gets installed there - because the payback time is so short on a diesel powered island.
 
sendler2112 said:
electricity production by source Hawaii.
Yep. Fortunately that is now changing.
The electricity price in South Australia doubled from 2006 to 2013.
And it's even higher this year. Why? Let's ask the Australian Energy Market Operator:
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Electricity prices across much of Australia’s main grid rose to record highs in the first quarter of 2019, the Australian Energy Market Operator notes in its latest quarterly report, and it puts the blame on the record heatwave, rising coal and gas costs, and the rising cost of hydro power because of the drought.

AEMO, in its latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report, notes that the March quarter was the hottest ever – for temperatures across much of the country (see Figure 1 below), as well as for demand, and for wholesale electricity prices.

In South Australia and Victoria, the average wholesale prices over the quarter were the highest ever, driven by high prices at demand peaks, but also the rising cost of “underlying energy”. In both Victoria and New South Wales, these “underlying costs” were the highest ever, and the second highest ever in Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia.

The cause of this? Not renewables, says AEMO. In fact, it notes, demand – and presumably prices – would have been significantly higher were it not for the growing penetration of rooftop solar which reduced peaks and operational demand.

The drivers of high underling energy prices, as cited by AEMO, were:

- Dry conditions which resulted in a reduced output from hydro generators.

- A continuation of comparatively high wholesale gas prices.An increase in the price of offers from black coal-fired generation, with some generators citing coal conservation and/or quality issues.

- Increased demand resulting from hot summer conditions.

Those record breaking heat – both in peaks and in the average over the quarter – drove a significant increase in demand as consumers turned to their air-con systems for relief – across all parts of the day.

The underlying demand driven by this use of air-con units was an average of 515MW, but the grid had to only deal with an average increase of 243MW because of the impact of rooftop PV generation.

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https://reneweconomy.com.au/rising-coal-and-gas-costs-push-australia-electricity-prices-to-record-highs-53542/

Let's all hope that these higher prices drive faster solar + storage installation, so the price starts to drop.
 
The AEMO are deflecting the blame from themselves and their price “bidding” market system which allows the wholesale suppliers ( generators , who often control both RE and Gas generation). To manipulate the market when there are shortages of supply.
S A has had higher demand summers in the past, ( 2010, 2013, most recently) without major issues of supply or crazy price excursions.
...but that was before they shut down their “base load” coal plants at Playford and Northern, with no practical plan for substitute generation. :roll:
If SA had installed just one modern coal plant instead of all the mess of wind and solar spread around the state, they would not be having either these demand issues or giving the opportunity to their owners to manipulate prices and rip off consumers.
The blame is squarely on the dumb state government and there misguided green policies.
 
And around we go in ever more painful circles...

Do you have any capacity to imagine any place outside the particular Australian state in which you live? Something other than the bid-based grid management you have?
 
Punx0r said:
And around we go in ever more painful circles...

Do you have any capacity to imagine any place outside the particular Australian state in which you live? Something other than the bid-based grid management you have?

He doesn't even live in SA. He lives in NSW - the state with the highest demand and the greatest electricity imports of the entire Eastern grid - its running a supply-demand deficit of about 300-600 MW every hour of every day. An interconnecter between SA and NSW would provide the state with at least a gigawatt of clean energy. SA is leading the way, and some folks refuse to acknowledge this.
 
jonescg said:
An interconnecter between SA and NSW would provide the state with at least a gigawatt of clean energy. SA is leading the way, and some folks refuse to acknowledge this.
How is SA going to export anything (let alone a GigaWatt of clean energy) when it shows a near constant demand for an import and is running largely on gas peakers?
 
By doing so when the wind is blowing and/or the sun is shining and its own needs are met :?
 
Punx0r said:
Do you have any capacity to imagine any place outside the particular Australian state in which you live? Something other than the bid-based grid management you have?
Wrong on many levels... :roll:
I dont live in S A...
I dont have to “imagine” other places or electricity markets,..when real data is available as previously discussed.
Many other pricing systems are employed in markets such as Germany,Denmark, California,...but the outcome is the same ..more Wind and solar results in higher prices.
If you had been following the thread you would have noticed S Australia was being discussed because it happens to have the highest electricity prices in the world and one of the highest % proportions of wind/solar generation capacity.
Obviously this is an upsetting reality for you , so perhaps you might prefer tto spend some time figuring an explanation as to why the UK’s largest thermal generator has been persuaded to switch from coal to a fuel that produces over twice the CO2 per Mwh ?..whils claiming its for CO2 reduction ??
 
jonescg said:
By doing so when the wind is blowing and/or the sun is shining and its own needs are met :?

I've never seen a chart showing SA is not importing electricity and/ or burning a large percentage from gas that would allow them to export any wind or solar.
 
jonescg said:
..... He lives in NSW - the state with the highest demand and the greatest electricity imports of the entire Eastern grid - its running a supply-demand deficit of about 300-600 MW every hour of every day. An interconnecter between SA and NSW would provide the state with at least a gigawatt of clean energy. SA is leading the way, and some folks refuse to acknowledge this.
And the reason NSW (and Victoria) have to depend on imported electricity ??....is the same as why S Australia has to import ....
..because their state governments have forced the closure of base load coal power generators without an effective program for replacement capacity.....and the large nameplate capacity wind and solar farms that have been introduced have failed to perform up to their predicted expectations.
S australia already has an interconnector to Victoria,..but has NEVER been able to export a GW of any kind of electricity,..even briefly !
You would also be aware that SA is restricted in how much wind power it is able to generate, due to the destabilisation and damaging variations it would introduce to its grid.
S A is certainly leading the way, ( together with Germany etc).. and the world should be paying attention to it as a pilot for how not to operate a power generation grid if you want affordable, reliable , continuous, power.
 
Turns out if ou google "does south australia have the most expensive electricity in the world" the answer is in the first result:

http://theconversation.com/factcheck-does-south-australia-have-the-highest-energy-prices-in-the-nation-and-the-least-reliable-grid-92928

The answer is "no". Nor is the high price due to renewables, nor is the grid particularly unreliable, and what unreliability there is, is not down to renewables. Hillhater's assertions turn out not to be his own opinions: they're well-worn political rhetoric.
 
from the article:
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"According the Australian Energy Market 2017 Residential Electricity Price Trends report, South Australia does indeed have the highest retail prices in the nation. Current prices for the typical SA customer are 37.79c/kWh."
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"There are ramifications involved in Germany’s contemporary renewable energy program, including an instable electric grid, the burden being placed upon German households by increased costs for electricity, and the need for secure back-up power that is affordable and reliable. Currently, utility companies within the country are receiving payments from the grid as a measure of stabilizing a network that has been disrupted due to surges and falls in contributions from solar and wind power sources. Coal is being utilized in a heftier manner in order to back-up the renewable technologies (and their intermittent nature) while delivering a reliable base load of power, although at the risk of increasing emissions of carbon dioxide. The result has been German residents having to pay feed-in-tariffs in addition to high utility costs as a measure of subsidizing the renewable energy technologies."
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Punx0r said:
Turns out if ou google "does south australia have the most expensive electricity in the world" the answer is in the first result:

http://theconversation.com/factcheck-does-south-australia-have-the-highest-energy-prices-in-the-nation-and-the-least-reliable-grid-92928

The answer is "no". Nor is the high price due to renewables, nor is the grid particularly unreliable, and what unreliability there is, is not down to renewables. Hillhater's assertions turn out not to be his own opinions: they're well-worn political rhetoric.
Your reference article is “political retoric”..
S Australias high electricity prices and the causes of that,..are well known facts .
 
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