Plastic bags, climate change, renewable energy,

hifiandmtb said:
Ignore him PP.

https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-renationalising-australias-electricity-grid-73951
Click to expand...

Good article, agree with it. The neocon obsessions at selling everything to their corporate mates has been hugely damaging and insanely costly to society in many ways.

The only positive I’ve seen is the continued investment in clean energy despite government policy being actively hostile to them. They at least recognise the economic sense they make..
 
I had just finished typing this when the site went down.

Scotty T said:
Looking like a lemon...

http://theconversation.com/snowy-2-...s-claimed-we-must-hit-the-pause-button-125017
Click to expand...
A few things to consider there that the author seems to miss and one that he gets wrong. Modern pumped hydro can work with >80 % efficiency and he is claiming energy losses of 40%.
He ignores stream inflows.
His costing is based on construction/purchase price only. The cost of maintenance and replacement is not considered.
Because he is working with 40% energy losses all of his calculations are wrong.
 
Freediver said:
I had just finished typing this when the site went down.


A few things to consider there that the author seems to miss and one that he gets wrong. Modern pumped hydro can work with >80 % efficiency and he is claiming energy losses of 40%.
He ignores stream inflows.
His costing is based on construction/purchase price only. The cost of maintenance and replacement is not considered.
Because he is working with 40% energy losses all of his calculations are wrong.
Click to expand...

I’m not across the details, but the author is well known and well regarded in his field and has been doing this a very long time.

I don’t know the answers but I’d suggest it’s worth digging into it and finding the sources of the assumptions you’ve identified.
 
Haakon said:
I doubt anyone is really very surprised given the politics that created it.
Click to expand...
it's deffo a political beast, but what isn't in this sphere?

Scotty T said:
Thanks for the info @climberman, you've obviously done some homework on the topic.

From that article I got that it's going to cost a lot and it's a bit of all eggs in one basket with sketchy numbers on what can actually be generated. I'm not against spending 20 billion of tax money on suitable storage projects all over the country, so the cost stuff is what it is, but taxpayers need to know what this will do to power prices and CO2 emissions in real terms over time. That's not been made really clear.
Click to expand...

I just find it interesting and try to read a bit.

I don't really worry so much about power prices - in terms of AGW high prices are good. In social terms less so. I think that in the current political climate they are a distraction from AGW action and Labnatiral's love of coal and gas donations. Great politics though, it was well framed by whoever thought of it.

The aim of these types of projects is to capture the highest cost areas of the power market - which serves to moderate the higher (and, at a guess, the very lowest as well, by being a demand point for when the NEM is trying to dump power because consumer demand is low and production is high) end of the price market - smoothes things out. Because all the generator companies game this as much as possible ('oh, I own a gas generator - I might take the coal generator offline for service when prices might be high') they will argue againt government market smoothing. Maybe they are right?!

Re CO2 emissions that's also hard but it reduces reliance on CO2-producing generation so will be a part of the puzzle. There's no silver bullet, it's all incremental change in tech, interconnection, market rules, customer responses, etc

Haakon said:
Bread and circuses.
Click to expand...
Probably that too!

Haakon said:
The thing with snowy is I’m not clear on why we need to spend public money on it. The private sector has been rolling out more generation than we need, they will take on (are taking on) the storage/grid services as well - just in a decentralised manner which is arguably better for grid reliability anyway.

Free markets FTW.
Click to expand...
We could sell it later!
 
Haakon said:
I’m not across the details, but the author is well known and well regarded in his field and has been doing this a very long time.
Click to expand...

That's what gives some credence to a lot of his argument, but also adds a layer of concern - he deliberately looks past or misrepresents some things that are patently obvious to any infrastructure person and he's too smart to have done it accidently.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top