Plastic bags, climate change, renewable energy,

rowdyflat

chez le médecin
Cant really think of too many MPs that are admirable at present esp LNP.
Labour Joel Fitzgibbon has been wedged + given up .
Its generally true that Australians esp the working class are very conservative but we shouldnt give up.
 

climberman

Likes Dirt
pfffttt.

  • it's doable now and with current very reliable and basic tech
  • it can be done on a very large scale - there are few spots with the pumped hydro scale capability in the nation that happen to be halfway between the two largest markets in the nation
  • the cost stuff is not quite the government's feasibility study - government put forward a ballpark, subject to a feasibility study - and the revised estimates are in line with those feasibility study figures (which were also in $2017, not escalated $$ which the article refers to - Mountain is smart enough to know these differences but chooses not to - makes me suss
  • large scale contracts are as prone as small scale contracts to cost estimate changes (actually smaller projects are typically more prone) - the headline numbers may seem lower but a 20% increase on a $5bn project is the same as a 20% increase on 500 $10M projects
  • grid connections and improved interconnectivity are an issue for all distributed generation, and will only become increasingly so. AIUI this was also noted in the Snowy2.0 strategy paper, so it's not really 'ignored'. I think SH is right to argue that the full costs wouldn't be bourne by them - this is typical for all infra in a shared market (eg if telstra builds a mobile phone base station tower, and Optus later comes along, Optus pays Telstra some money. If Voda then come along, they then pay to both as well. The same happens in other spheres). Second tasmanian Interconnect is also going ahead which is 'not economic' but I suspect is also good for tassie which reduces the financial burden Tassie places on the rest of the nation.
  • I'm pretty sure that SH realise that they won't be running at the headline capacity duration all the time, or even ever... FFS, this is like listening to people who argue that the Tesla Battery in SA is dumb because it's only half an hour's storage. Its value is in delivering 0.2 second's worth of capacity (or absorbing a spike) and knocking hte top off the market's cost spikes - this is why the market argued against it ('this one wierd trick - banks hate this!'. SH2.0's benefit will be delivering long duration versions of the same
  • I'm not sold on the enviro risks - any new infra will have construction impacts. I also have issues with some of the NPA's claims on the 'problems' with the EIS / impacts as i know some of them are directly stupid and it makes me suss on the others

- do we really think government would get an investment house on board to tell it it's not worth doing? FFS, they would probably say it's worth doing and can they have a slice, have we got a proposition for you!
 

Scotty T

Walks the walk
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.
 

Haakon

Keeps on digging
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.
 

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
To underpin the system and ensure security of power supply. If the infrastructure all ends up owned by China/America/Martians and we have a falling out, they could just switch off the grid and upset people. Television is very important.
 

Haakon

Keeps on digging
To underpin the system and ensure security of power supply. If the infrastructure all ends up owned by China/America/Martians and we have a falling out, they could just switch off the grid and upset people. Television is very important.
Bread and circuses.
 
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