Letter from Dick Smith to the Guardian - Renewables - good read sounds logical ?
DearGraham
CONCERN FOR OUR GRANDCHILDREN
Irefer to your article "Dick Smith's ABC radio rant against renewablesoverflows with ill-informed claims" which you wrote about my appearance onMacca's Australia All Over on Sunday 3 November 2024.
Myclaims are not ill-informed, they are based on objective evidence, research andcommon sense.
TheCSIRO GenCost report does include an allowance "for extra costs associatedwith storing that power", however it is clear to many experts that theCSIRO has greatly underestimated the amount of storage required. This allowsthe CSIRO to falsely claim that renewables with storage is the cheapest form ofenergy, and that a modern industrial economy can operate primarily on renewablepower.
It'sdifficult to calculate how much storage the CSIRO has allowed in the GenCostreport, and the cost for this. Simon Holmes à Court tells me that it is fivehours of storage.
Fivehours? That's ridiculous, it's most likely far too low. The CSIRO has based itsfindings on historic wind and sun conditions from past data. There is no way toknow if this will differ in the future as the climate changes.
Forexample, the $11.8 million renewable energy project at Lord Howe Island couldonly afford battery storage for three days, and even that is not enough.
Nodoubt you have noticed all the wind and solar farms that exist around ourcountry. If the CSIRO claim that wind, solar and storage is the cheapest formof energy is correct, these facilities would include batteries to supply power24/7 – or at least for five hours. None of them do.
Thereis one clear explanation for this. That is, the cost of even limited storageresults in solar and wind power being so expensive it is unaffordable.
Thepeople of Lord Howe Island accepted the CSIRO claim that renewables withstorage is the cheapest form of energy, and supported the renewable energyproject. With $11.8 million of Government subsidies and loans, the powerstation went ahead.
Nowthe commercial premises on Lord Howe Island are paying 90 cents per kilowatthour for their electricity – three times what it would cost on the mainlandfrom coal.
Inan article in the Lord Howe Island Signal newspaper dated 30 September 2024,Suzie Christensen, the CEO of the Lord Howe Island Board, said the following:
"Operationally,based on those averages, electricity generation and supply for the Island is43% more expensive than prior to the solar installation, even with the grantfrom Arena."
Yes,you are correct – there is less diesel being used, but there is still acolossal amount being shipped to the island. After three and half days of cloudcover, the enormously expensive battery is fully discharged, and the wholeisland runs 100% on fossil fuels.
Youdidn't mention this in your article, did you?
Ifa small population of 400 residents can't rely on renewables – even with an$11.8 million subsidy, how can the CSIRO claim be correct?
Inrelation to power outage at Broken Hill, you didn't mention that the solar farmand wind farm have the capacity to provide ten times the amount of energyrequired by Broken Hill in any 24 hour period. However, the $45 million batterywould only store power for about one hour, and it was unaffordable to alsoinstall a stability system that would allow the solar and wind to provide powerwithout the connection to the brown coal grid in Victoria.
You,and many other journalists appear to have genuinely deluded yourselves intobelieving that Australia can run its entire nation 90% on renewables –including transport and industry. No other country in the world has been ableto run 90% on solar and wind, despite the erroneous claims from the ABC FactCheck.
The90% renewable plan is not only unaffordably expensive but it is alsoexperimental and therefore risky. I support following a proven system. That is,replacing the base load power from coal (which has served us very successfullyfor over 100 years) with nuclear power.
Ihave become a supporter of 18 year old Will Shackel and his Nuclear forAustralia group. After all, it's his generation that will be affected if wemake the wrong decisions now.
Over30 countries have embraced nuclear at the present time, including poorcountries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, and 60 reactors are under construction– so it is clearly affordable.
Ihave challenged the CSIRO to redo its GenCost report so it accurately reflectsthe true cost of the amount of storage that would likely be required to give a90% renewable grid.
Inmentioning South Australia and the high levels of renewable energy it canobtain when the wind is blowing and the sun is out, you failed to mention someof the other problems.
Forexample, look at the attachment. It shows that on 10 September 2024 at 21:50,only 2% of South Australia's power came from renewables.
Youdon't mention that when the sun isn't out and the wind isn't blowing, the wholesystem becomes problematic, do you?
SouthAustralia has the Hornsdale $90 million battery, however it only has thecapacity to run Adelaide for seven minutes. This shows the unaffordabilityproblem with storage. There is nothing on the horizon which shows the necessarymajor reduction in the cost of storage so it is affordable to go to high levelsof back up for intermittent renewables.
I'vechecked with a friend of mine who lives in Adelaide, and they are currentlypaying 53 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity – which is 50% higher thanthe Sydney rate.
Allaround the world, where there are high levels of renewables, there are higherelectricity charges. For example, California has high levels of renewables, butalso the highest price for electricity in the continental United States.
Thisgoes against the CSIRO claim that renewables with storage are the cheapest formof power.
Nodoubt you have seen the claim by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy,Chris Bowen, that 1.8 million homes will be provided with "reliable renewablepower" from the Illawarra deep ocean floating wind farm project.
Youand your fellow journalists have failed to mention that Mr Bowen is completelywrong - wind power is not reliable. In fact, it's the opposite – it's totallyunreliable because it doesn't provide any power at all when the wind is notblowing.
Nomention has been made by you or your fellow journalists of the unaffordablyhigh cost of storage that needs to go with the Illawarra wind project so thatthe power would be available when it is required.
Graham,I know you must be concerned about our grandchildren, and the problems that arelikely to come from climate change if we reach tipping points. Surely we shouldhave every possible way of reducing carbon on the table.
Ichallenge you to write an article covering the high cost of renewables whenadequate storage has been costed in, and the concept that nuclear should atleast be considered as part of the mix as we move forward.
I'mnot against renewables, just a realist about the high resultant costs. I drovein the first solar vehicle race from Darwin to Adelaide, and at one stage wasone of the drivers that held the record of a solar vehicle from Perth toSydney.
Myelectric car is different to the ones owned by most of my greenie friends whosecars are primarily charged from the coal grid. My car, a Nissan Leaf, ispowered from the sun through a large battery bank in my garage. But as I said,I'm a realist. My Nissan Leaf costs twice as much per kilometre to drivecompared to a petrol Leaf when you add in the replacement battery costs for thevehicle itself ($10,000) and for the batteries in the garage ($48,000).
Yes,you can be a renewables enthusiast if you are wealthy.
Irequest that you publish this letter so your readers can judge whether myclaims about renewables and nuclear are ill-informed.
Regards
DickSmith
