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22/06/18
18:51
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Originally posted by acorn
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You are dead right . The best evidence is reality and the great thing is that it is right there in front of us to study . We don't have to guess . We are already building the models for renewable generation based on real data . On top of that , we can introduce it progressively and tweak it as we go in order to build the right type of generation infrastructure .
Not sure why you keep banging on about additional capital cost ? The current generation fleet is old . It all needs to be replaced in the next 10 - 20 years . Some actually sooner than that . So , large amounts of new investment is required regardless .
As to investment in things like Snowy 2.0 or the big battery in Tasmania . Those assets are likely to be used for more than a century and will compliment any type of electricity generation . A pretty good investment I would say .
Gas peakers . Solar plus battery storage is already displacing gas peakers on cost on today's prices . Gas peakers only run for a few hours at a time over a year . A couple of days at best . In the US they operate less than 6% of the time . They represent 30% of the total generating fleet .
Talk about a large investment for a small return , albeit necessary when they are needed .
Solar peakers can and are used every day and their batteries can be used for grid stabilisation . That means that they can do more of the work and reduce the need for larger power stations that are under utilised .
A way more efficient use of the money .
Back to the UK wind drought . Australia is vastly different to the UK . Australia has one of the greatest solar resources in the world compared to the UK . Even Australia's domestic solar output is massive compared to the UK let alone it's commercial solar output . That said . solar has hardly got started in Australia . As solar continues to get cheaper and cheaper it makes even more sense to put more of it in . Solar and wind plus storage is now competing on price with fossil globally and it's price trajectory is still going down . It is likely that in a decade it will be less than half the price of fossil with much lower running costs , no emissions and no legacy issues .
So the argument that it is going to add cost is false .
In the case of a wind drought which will happen regularly , Australia will differ from the UK in two ways . We will have a massive solar resource that the UK doesn't and won't ever have . So while the wind isn't blowing , the sun is still shining . And there will be storage facilities of all different shapes and sizes , custom designed for specific roles , everywhere .
Then there's the physical size of Australia .
The UK is about the size of Victoria and relies on the wind that is adjacent to it . That leaves plenty of other areas in Australia that won't necessarily be becalmed at the same time , unlike the UK . Large windfarms are being built up the Eastern Seaboard that feed into the national grid . Wind generation that will mostly have storage on site as a package .
Thanks to data that has been collected over decades we can model these wind events and design the infrastructure specifically to match it .
And we have the luxury of doing this while the fossil fleet is still available to us .
Coal , gas and nuclear cheaper ? I call bs on that one . Old coal power stations become very expensive to run , aren't flexible and breakdown more often . When they need maintenance they take big lumps of supply off , sometimes for months . So they need more fossil fuel stations to cover them for those periods . A large , distributed renewable system is likely to be more reliable , more efficient and way more flexible . Thanks to the modelling from the data we already have , it is not complicated at all . Certainly no more complicated than the system we have now which is subject to manipulation by the power companies .
Storage . Australians are pretty good at accepting new technology . They have been putting solar panels on their houses for years and the domestic battery market is ramping up the same . As this continues we are developing a very large distributed storage facility that is funded by the consumer . Because people want to, not because they have to .
EV's . As the sales of evs increase over time we also develop yet another distributed storage facility that is once again funded by the consumer . Evs are predicted to match ICE cars in price between 2021 and 2025 and considering that we buy 1 million cars a year , that is a giant stationary storage component that will build quickly . That part of our infrastructure will essentialy be free as it comes with the cost of the car .
Once again debunking the increased cost theory that gets bandied around .
There are no countries that run off new renewables and storage yet . That is another dumb question .
However , there are many example of countries and states that are increasing the use of renewables over time . The benefit of this is that these renewables are being integrated progressively , without disruption , and are providing valuable data in how they can be made to fit in with weather patterns , load changes etc .
If you'd bother to watch any of the videos I've posted you would have seen this in action .
I encourage you to do some reading on this subject in order to educate yourself better . There is plenty of info available and the changes are literally happening already .
And before you mention cost , have a look at the cost of power in Texas . In Texas the wind generating capacity is passing that of coal and yet the still have very cheap power . So much for renewables being expensive .
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"That leaves plenty of other areas in Australia that won't necessarily be becalmed at the same time , "
just like my old Greenie mate says, "the wind is always blowing somewhere."
So if for example we need 10,000MWH of electricity you would need that much capacity in Victoria and if the wind wasn't blowing there another 10K capacity in WA and another in Qld. and so on plus solar plus storage etc. etc.
I have heard the head of the Snowy 11 quoted on radio saying the cost of the energy from the pumped storage would have to be $250.00/MWH. and that if a new HELE coal fired power station was built it would make Snowey pumped storage un-viable.