Labor backs coal beyond 2050

Originally posted by acorn: ↑

That's a good article although I don't agree with the concept necessarily. As do many experts in this field such as Amory Lovins etc.

I don't have a problem with the information in the article. What they are saying is accurate in that the more supply you have, the less you make from it.

Where I reckon they're wrong is they are talking about how the grid operates now. A peaking grid where prices vary wildly depending on demand.

A future grid won't work that way ultimately. That said, it's going to take quite a long time to get to that point.

We are already seeing renewables curtailed. That is, they generate too much at certain times for the market to handle. At the moment it is mostly infrastructure driven and lack of storage. We have already seen periods where the electricity price goes negative because of too much supply.

That is a clearly unsustainable situation going forward.

So, because of the intermittency of renewables we have to use storage. But not just to store excess but to also flatten the price.

Ideally, if there were no peak power prices, life would be much easier for business. If the price was flat regardless of the time of day, businesses would operate quite differently.
Peaks are created by a lack of generation. In a widely distributed, very flexible, fast acting smart grid, peaks will largely be a thing of the past. A whole grid that can respond in milliseconds to demand will flatten prices.
Technologies like ev charging will automatically provide load at times of low demand once again flattening the load demand.

That is what renewables plus storage offers. Flat power prices. Once you have flat power prices you can adjust them according to manage profits which can be regulated.

However, the article is correct in that we may not get to 100% renewables. A recent report by the Grattan Institute argues that we ought to aim for 90% net zero emissions earlier ( 2040 ) and then mop up the last 10% as technology allows. They argue that the cost of trying to get to 100% might not be practical. They add the caveat that technology might change in that forecast period and change that prediction of course.

https://grattan.edu.au/report/go-for-net-zero/

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The capacity of solar and wind will limit their share of the market and batteries will add another cost and constraints.I think its a throw away line that some use that batteries will soak up the power when demand is low ,the amount of batteries that would be required is an industrial scale and the amount of mining required to produce these batteries will require massive step up in mining,this massive step up in mining of minerals needed for batteries and EVs will need to take place on wilderness areas and even then like all minerals they are finite.
I have solar and even a back of the envelope calculations I would need a massive amount of solar cells with batteries to get me through the winter months to be stand alone , then in the summer months I would be generating huge amounts of power going to waste.
I think we need to look at the grid and work out what type of grid we need given many towns in Australia could be standalone and not needed to be connected to the grid.