Electric cars not the best option, page-1314

Thanks PP. I'll have to watch Andrew's presentation later when I get a chance.

I'm all for pumped hydro as I am for gravity storage, compressed air storage, green hydrogen as storage etc. And don't forget industrial sized flow batteries. I reckon all of them will get a run in certain circumstances.
Pumped hydro will be great. However, building pumped hydro projects will take time. Quite a long time actually if you have a look at some of these projects. Don't forget we need the infrastructure to support renewables in order to support pumped hydro. We don't want to be using coal for pumped hydro, do we ?
There is quite a queue of large renewable projects banked up. One of the reasons they are being held up is because they will be severely curtailed as the grid infrastructure ( and storgage ) is not there to support them. E.g. the new SA-NSW interconnector. We already have large projects curtailed at the moment.

All dressed up with no where to go.

Make no mistake. I'm not a fan of this seemingly dodgy gas deal that Taylor and his denier mates are trying to cook up.

I see gas as a temporary bridge to get us across the line. If we can get good access to reasonably priced gas in the shorter term, e.g. 5-10-15 years, that will enable us to get rid of marginal coal quicker than not.

Power stations like Liddell and Yallourn won't have to be extended. They are already struggling and with plenty of gas backup, we can shut them down sooner rather than later. That has got to be a positive.
The good thing with gas turbine peakers is that they can then be converted to hydrogen operation so we can recycle them down the track. If we place them strategically, they won't need to be moved. Just converted.

Switching solar: Ultimately, it would be ideal that we have enough storage to absorb every electron we generate from renewables. However, that's probably not practical. Maybe in 50 years we'll achieve it but in the interim we certainly won't.

Grid stability is the number one priority.

We are already curtailing wind and solar right now in Australia. We simply don't have the storage or suitable grid connections today to avoid it.
Thanks to poor policy etc, we are already generating surpluses that we can't use regularly. So, we are effectively switching off renewable resources now to ensure grid stability which is the absolute priority.
Hopefully large solar farms will have local bulk storage down the track that will absorb these excesses but that's still quite a way off yet.

It's not a head in the sand attitude at all. It simply isn't possible or practical to do it any other way. Of course, not having a national plan that coordinates all the players isn't helpful. We have to do the best we can with what we've got.

I'd be interested to see how you think we can manage large solar ( or wind ) excesses any other way with the current grid configuration today.

Suggestions welcomed .