By Jo Nova
Games with levelized guesses don’t take all the hidden costs into account
Prize of the day for national policy research goes to Nick Cater, who managed to ridicule our billion dollar national science agency, the CSIRO, with a newspaper column.
The CSIRO put out a report proclaiming that nuclear power would be impossible before 2040 and cost “twice as much” as renewables. But Nick Cater just compared electricity in New South Wales to Finland to prove their 129 pages of modeled costs were wrong:
Finland’s clean, Green nuclear power a lesson for Labor
On Saturday…. Electricity generation in NSW was releasing 750g of carbon into the atmosphere per megawatt hour of electricity. In Finland, it was 35g.
If the CSIRO’s GenCost report is to be believed, Finnish electricity prices should have gone through the roof a year ago when its newest reactor was turned on. They did not. The retail price of electricity in Finland, which is indexed to the spot market, came down almost immediately.
Were Energy Minister Chris Bowen to spend a few days in Finland, he might realise almost everything he says about nuclear is complete and utter nonsense. This might be why he spent his time in Europe last year trying to sell green hydrogen to the Germans.
All over Europe the countries with the most solar and wind power have the highest prices
Modeling electricity costs is ripe for the plucking, so the only costs that count are the real ones that customers pay. According to Eurostat data on electricity prices in the EU last year, some countries were paying twice as much as others. And the cheapest electricity was in countries using coal power or lands with lots of hydroelectricity and plenty of water.
And if nuclear power was “eight times” more expensive than solar and wind, why is that Germany pays so much more for electricity than France does?
Germany, Italy, Poland, and Greece are all pricey but none of them have nuclear plants (yet).
Serbia has cheap electricity and it is nearly 70% coal powered. Norway has cheap electricity and 100,000 natural Fjords for hydroelectricity.
Look who has solar power and expensive electricity:
Things aren’t working out well for Greece, Germany and Italy.
Look who has wind power too
Denmark has a lot of wind, but it also has seven interconnectors to countries with cheap reliable hydro and nuclear power. We don’t.
CSIRO artificially pumped up the cost of building a nuclear plant in Australia because it would be a new industry here. Did they do that for technologies that are barely invented like hydrogen and batteries too? They claim it would take 15 years to build one plant, yet the French built 56 plants in 15 years, and that was 40 years ago. The average build time then, without faxes, flip phones and “the internet” was just 7 years, yet somehow they got it done. Do the CSIRO think they can get away with publishing this kind of incompetent partisan hackery and Australians won’t find out?
This young man (boy) is founder of Nuclear for Australia.
He also knows a bucketload more (about nuclear) than the CSIRO and “Blackout Bowen” combined I’d dare to think.
I’d love to see ANY of the above debate this young man. He’s interviewed Dick Smith who believes in “renewables” as well as nuclear – very enlightening interview.
Site is well worth a look at and maybe sign the petition while you’re there.
Cheers,
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Thanks Popeye. He is an impressive speaker (apart from the waving hands!), very articulate.
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CSIRO do barely acceptable mainstream science thees days. How did anyone think they could do intensive economic analysis of a complicated system where they have little experience themselves? I followed their Twitter/X feed years ago thinking I might get some useful information updates. Their posts are full of rainbows, DEI and for some reason a pre-occupation with wombats.
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Just reading the CSIRO website, they appear to be full on lefties, all the buzzwords, all the skewed graphs to make CO2 look bad, air compositions have total exclusion of water vapour, they don’t seem to want to know or acknowledge it.
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I believe that many of the folks involved in GenCost also “represent” Australia on the IPCC. The BOM also has quite a few involved with the IPCC.
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They don’t have a great track record with their predictions. I love this one from 2008
https://www.smh.com.au/national/petrol-could-cost-8-a-litre-by-2018-20080711-3dc1.html
Average petrol price in 2008 was $1.42. So they predicted a 463% rise by 2018.
In reality average Australian petrol price in 2018 was $1.44, so a 1.41% rise
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How many remember that in December 1986 the Hawke government put their own brand of “social scientists” in charge of the real scientists at the CSIRO, appointing a new board of management with Neville Wran as chairman?
There were no problems with the management of the CSIRO. In our industry, and I expect, every other legitimate industry in Australia, the CSIRO held the rank of Fairy Godmother. Many were the problems the CSIRO solved for us, while at the same time keeping Australia at the forefront of pure science. Note “The Dish” at Parkes, which, built in 1961 using world leading technology, has been maintained over the 62 years since to keep it still a world leader in pure science.
The only possible explanation for the change of management was that Hawke intended to direct our science to suit his (Marxist) politics.
It wasn’t very long then before a full page tabloid headline brought us the monstrous lie that “Cows are Australia’s Biggest Source of Greenhouse Gases”. A CSIRO scientist had discovered this.
I don’t believe any self respecting scientist ever said any such thing.This was the CSIRO’s now Marxist publicity machine at work. I knew it was a lie, but so little research had been done that it was impossible to refute the lie. It stood for years and was taught in our academies and schools until somebody did a bit of proper research and Agriculture, which includes “cows”, has moved down the list of “emitters”.
Now Oxbridge are giving the lie a rerun. It should this time be possible to put them down. They chose methane to lambast. So how much methane is generated by an acre of land that never saw a cow?
They might then wake up to the fact that it is all a zero sum cycle.
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Tedi
CSIRO also owned a patent essential to wifi if I recall correctly.
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They’re not all bad, they developed this rather effective software for keeping longwall faces aligned, which boosts productivity and safety in underground coal mines
https://www.csiro.au/en/about/corporate-governance/ensuring-our-impact/impact-case-studies/environment-energy-resources/lasc-longwall-automation
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The CSIRO has done some good things BUT we give them vast sums of money to do research not to write a report that the government wants. Like the BoM for which we pay over a million dollars per day to keep weather records that are accurate not doctored to suit a government agenda. Like the ABC for which we pay over a billion dollars per year to give accurate and opinion free news of the world not highly biased misinformation. When the nation depend on accuracy in order to make the best decisions we are poorly served by partisan public institutions with an agenda. There is no redemption for such organisations for they have betrayed the public which pays them. The only correction is to shut them down entirely.
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They once did a lot of very good projects to help many industries. There’s a number in agriculture which were hugely successful and ground breaking. But that was THEN. At the moment they appear to be a bunch of activists pretending to do science.
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‘No plan B’: Chris Kenny blasts govt for betting future on ‘unreliable’ renewables
Sky News host Chris Kenny has blasted the Albanese government for betting the future of Australia on “unreliable” renewable energy.
“Labor is betting the future of this country on unreliable renewable energy,” Mr Kenny said.
“The Albanese Labor government is conducting the highest risk technological experiment in the world, trying to transition a modern, energy-dependent economy from fossil fuels to an untried, unprecedented renewables plus storage model.
“They have no plan B.”
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‘Risky, slow, and expensive’: Bolt slams Chris Bowen’s green hydrogen schemes
Sky News host Andrew Bolt says “look at reality” as he questions the cost blowouts from renewables amid a new CSIRO report claiming the Opposition’s push for nuclear is “rubbish”.
“If I didn’t look outside, I would almost believe the crowing from the ABC and the Albanese government,” Mr Bolt said.
“They are so happy today because a new CSIRO report claims the Opposition’s plans for nuclear power are rubbish.”
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Florence, the Snowy 2.0 machine, is stuck again
Snowy Hydro does not know how long it will take to restart the troubled Florence boring machine tunnelling underground on its $12 billion Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme after it became stuck yet again.
Florence, one of three boring machines on the NSW mega storage project, has been tasked with excavating a crucial 14.9 kilometres of a 17-kilometre “headrace” tunnel, which will carry water from a reservoir to a powerhouse.
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Two comments:
1: using high-pressure water jets to remove the rock
Elsewhere the problem is said to be “hard rock”. If water can move it, why do they need Florence? I think they should use CO2, the miracle molecule.
2: It will get a lot easier and pick up when we get out of this curve.
It sounds to me like the boring machines are not designed to go around curves. This makes me wonder about the tunnels of old that went via curves. When did engineers lose this knowledge?
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“2: It will get a lot easier and pick up when we get out of this curve.”
Maybe they mean the curve where the rock is too soft, too hard, too this, too that, that curve.
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The cost-effectiveness learning curve, perhaps?
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That’s how it looks to me.
Was the designer an engineer?
It’s time to ask a few questions. Who is responsible for this debacle?
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Should have named her Goldilocks
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Yes and poor Florence –
Another nearly 7 Billion South Pacific Pesos allocated for Snowy 2.0000000000 in the 2024 Feral Gu’vment Budgie(t). What a complete waste of money. That would build one Nuclear Power Station according to the Silly SIRO (CSIRO). And hpw far has Florence managed to tunnel?. Not very far at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGaoZuBlItk
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The CSIRO are compromised and pursue political avenues that suit their ideology.They are guilty of lying.
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The CSIRO is now a fully paid up (with our dollars) member of the Labor/Green/left climate alarmist machine. It has nailed its colours to a lie and now want to make the lie even bigger. It should no longer be funded by the taxpayer because it is giving the taxpayer erroneous advice based on its acceptance of the climate change scam.
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$532 million committed to National Battery Strategy, but no plan yet on how to reclaim supply chain
More than half a billion dollars of federal government funds have been set aside to encourage production of batteries in Australia, but exactly how the scheme will work has not yet been figured out.
A new National Battery Strategy has been released, aiming to make the country a globally competitive battery maker for domestic use and as an export opportunity.
It is part of the government’s Future Made in Australia policy, which aims to grasp the economic opportunities of the global transition to net zero emissions, as well as ensuring China does not control the supply chain.
The centrepiece of the strategy is $532 million in financial incentives for the production of batteries. Announced in the budget earlier this month, the funding would be spread over seven years and administered by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
But the scheme, dubbed “Battery Breakthrough”, has not yet been formulated, despite funding due to commence in the coming financial year.
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$532 million worth of future Guy Fawkes nights. LOL
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Go easy on the crackers! Their $532 million might run out before they get there.
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I see where AEMO has forecast that Australia will require 19GWh of battery storage by 2030. That amount wouldn’t even hold up the eastern grid for one hour. As usual, the amount was quoted in GW, not GWh.
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He was advised by Bonehead Blackout Bowen that if Australia became a Battery Manufacturer Superpower then Australia could then become a Superpower in raising Battery Chickens. I kid you not. LOL,
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And it is the same here in the UK ahead of our election to decide which branch of the Uniparty will destroy our electricity grid and how fast. The saviour today of our grid are interconnectors – outsourcing responsibility to foreign countries. And that will get worse every year.
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Relative power generation costs.
From sensible engineering estimates the ranking from cheapest to most expensive electricity is:
1. Coal fired power.
2. Nuclear.
3. Renewables.
This is for useable power delivered to the office, home or industrial plant and it includes ALL costs.
Gas isn’t mentioned because there are better uses for it than as a fill in to save face for politicians.
Hydro, not pumped, is OK but generally suffers from being a long way from users and vulnerable to droughts, especially in Australia.
Nuclear at the moment is more expensive than coal but with greater turnover that would change. Renewables are just outrageously expensive from every perspective.
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WA obtains around 30% to 40% of its SWIS grid energy from gas. But they can do this, because their gas price is around half that of the rest of Australia. And CCGT gas is only marginally more expensive than coal.
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..AND because the SWIS grid capacity/demand is small (<10%) compared to the East Coast grid !
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A little bigger Chad. The SWIS grid peaks at over 4GW. The NWIS grid, mainly large industrial, is also quite large.
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A mix of gas and renewables in the short term is the most likely political option, Kurri Kurri has teething problems.
‘The cost of building a new gas-fired power plant at Kurri Kurri has blown out by almost 60 percent.
‘Critics of the controversial project say it’s costing taxpayers too much… while others hope it will help slash power prices.’ (NBN)
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I think that what the customer pays is only a small part of the picture. There must be costs that are absorbed into the revenue and costs of the .system. The $300 given to customers by the government to come off the bill for instance is a direct cost that is paid by the community in taxes but artificially shows up as lower electricity prices. The costs of Snowy 2 , subsidies to solar rooftop customers , and the roll out of transmission get lost as general revenue and cost items that reflect in the governments balance sheet. In theory some of these hidden costs should be adding to the value of the governments balance sheet as newly created assets that in theory could be privatised sometime in the future but if as is the case in Australia these assets are not fit for purpose and should be written down to their true value then the write down should be added to the cost.
I don’t know if my logic is correct and would be fascinated if anyone is aware of what is the total cost of renewables compared to nuclear and what would be the real cost of transition of the two forms incorporating an assessment of those costs incurred by the government that don’t find their way through to the customer and can’t be recouped in the future by privatisation or acknowledgement of increased value of government assets.
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The subsidies to rooftop solar installers was hidden in electricity bills, and so is the cost of interconnectors, FCAS, forward hedging, etc. The $300 hand out is a rare “outside the box” thing. There are some subsidies that are also outside the bill, like research grants, but in the end, name me one country that has cheap retail electricity and lots of wind and solar, and no one can. Name me one town, one island… there is nothing. If wind and solar were truly cheap on the system cost, surely there would be a situation where that would show up?
One of the big invisible costs of unreliable generators is that they force reliable generators to run erractically, and at low efficiency, and they increase the MWh rates for bidding of coal and gas. The end point retail price captures all that, and so much more than all these junk GENCost modelled estimates never see. Instead the Gencost probably looks at the new higher bids for coal and assumes that is a coal cost, not a wind and solar cost.
The backup support added to the grid, the synchonronous condensors, the FCAS market (which didn’t exist before), the payments to keep things on standby or to curtail exesses — that’s probably not visible in the modeling, but it comes through in the retail cost.
The Snowy Hydro scheme was supposed to be paid by Snowy Hydro and those costs to date should turn up in their bidding behaviour, but the latest 7b offer by the governmnt probably doesn’t.
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Put these two posts on the signboard!
Publish them far and wide!
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BOB agreed with CSIRO that off-shore wind turbines were more expensive than land based ones. However he said that there’s always wind off-shore. Really BOB?
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If that was the case, then the Bass Strait islands would never need to run their diesels.
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Why bring reality to this. 🙂
We’re discussing the new religion of Renewabubbles and Nett Zero.
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The other cost of electricity that is not mentioned and should be taken into account is the cost of unreliability bearing in mind that at over 90% nuclear is the most reliable. The direct costs of this can be seen when we have blackouts as occurred in South Australia a few years ago and companies had to be compensated for by government. This also is seen in the situation that occurs often where large energy uses have to be told to reduce production on high risk / demand days to try to prevent blackouts.
The fact that electricity prices are still going up rapidly as we transition to renewables reflects the best case scenario and excludes many costs that have been kept out of the calculations including unreliability costs.
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Yep. just like farming, it’s the breakdowns that cost you efficiency. Reliability is everything.
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I agree. Nuclear is absurd when we have coal and are the world leaders in coal technology and infrastructure. Once the coal runs out, sure, no problem.
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There should be a start on a small scale to begin with so that systems and costs can be assessed. Progressively, as things develop there would be greater efficiency but even now, from cost and environmental viewpoints nuclear is a long way in front of all renewables.
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Which is in about 500 years time ( at least )
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Agree Philip
Nuclear is a compromise that only makes sense because people can’t be bothered to argue against the presumption that CO2 emissions is causing dangerous climate change.
If one could re-educate the population that there is in fact no evidence that CO2 causes climate change / global warming and if it did that there is no evidence that this would be a problem then that is the best policy. But to overturn the indoctrination is a task that no political party is prepared to do but after the success in completely reversing the sentiment on the Voice it gives me hope that in the future there will be a politician prepared to argue against the climate narrative..
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Zigmaster, there are two Qld Senators who have called out renewables and we should bring back fossil fuel generation for baseload. They are Malcolm Roberts (One Nation) and Matt Canavan (Nationals), so far the Liberals havn’t been game but Ted O’Brien has come out for nuclear, so there is progress. However, in woke Victoria and NSW the opposition parties are too scared or stupid to raise the subject, even though it might win them an election!
I will vote for any party who will effectively stop the rape and pillage of our once great electricity generation system, build long-term reliable plants, and dams and look after our high-quality mining and agricultural heritage. We need politicians with real vision, not the rose coloured glasses that Bowen myopically stares through. Yes, and not forgetting the tarnished CSIRO climate alarmists and the incompetent BoM ship of fools, how the mighty have fallen!
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The interesting aspect of continuing to support leftist Labor governments ( especially one that is propped up by Greens and Teals) is the belief that things will turn out and if the worse comes to the worst a conservative government will eventually turn things around.
One just has to look at places like Venezuela or Argentina to show how consecutive socialist orientated governments can destroy country,S economic standing. Germany is a modern day example of government policy destroying its economic advantage through crazy leftist ideology with several other European countries following suit.
The US is vulnerable whilst the Democrats are in power and another term of Labor / Greens in Australia will inflict incredible carnage here.
Unfortunately the vast majority of the population are too disengaged with politics to realise how crucial it is for them to use their democratic right to vote wisely.
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yes, it is often said by political commentators that the Aus public never get it wrong at the booth, that they aren’t stupid and can’t be fooled. I am always bewildered when I hear this.
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I still think we could avoid some of that problem if we had optional preferential voting in the reps, meaning there’d be no chance of being forced to give a vote for Teels, or Greens, or Labor.
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QLD was pumping 1300 MW across the border a couple of hours ago.
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And SA desperate to get that interconnector to NSW. Why? They have a small population and enormous amounts of desert at the doorstep. Ideal for wind and solar. On green ideology, they should be able to cut the interconnector with those conditions.
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They claim it’s to export the excess but we all know that is BS.
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Correct. Export solar-powered energy in the middle of the day, when the other states are struggling to cope with their excess of solar energy.
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Well there is a slight time difference for peak solar in SA compared with NSW.
Remote mining installations are installing RE to minimize the cost of fossil fueled (AKA reliable) power generation. NEM and AEMO should have the same philosophy.
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When I looked at test solar installations at mining sites in WA, it was notable that the solar panels would be covered in dust after 24 hours and required constant cleaning, initially by staff with large brooms/mops in the hot sun. One system has been converted to use auto cleaning on a trial basis, but given the serious dust problems, I doubt that solar is a viable concept for mine sites.
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Agreed Graeme, But the main issue is the 24/7 operating environment, they go all night so solar with batteries won’t cut it. SMN’s may be the answer for long term mills and refineries and for desalination plants.
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Solar is only used to REDUCE generation costs at mine/remote sites….much like domestic Roof Top solar.(maybe also subsidised ?)
So providing the savings for daytime supply offset+ the installation costs, they are happy , and keep the diesel for night work.
Panel cleaning sounds like a good early morning job for an apprentice or a “penalty” job for slackers.!
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Check the generation mix for the entire E Coast grid for the last 24 hrs !
http://nemlog.com.au/gen/region/nsw/
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Building nuclear is a ‘new industry’ and will cost x times more, was this the standard applied to the new industry (to OZ) of installing solar panels and generator-on-a-stick industrial farms, plus learning how to keep the lights on while juggling wildly gyrating power inputs, I suppose not.
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So the CSIRO has written that a 24/7 nuclear power plant would cost less and be built faster than Snowy II? Really?
Snowy II does not generate any power. It’s a battery. It has to be charged and with 30% losses.
Stop Snowy II tomorrow and build the nuclear power plant. Simples.
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Perhaps the Wagner group (re: Toowoomba airport construction) might be talked into the preliminary works for QLD reactor locations?
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I tweeted this:
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Hey, BOBowen, have you seen what’s happening with Snowy 2.0 lately? No, didn’t think so! 8 Billion $$$$ and several years behind schedule. Several Small Nuclear Reactors could have been constructed in the time it has taken to get this far with a development that will likely never get finished and even if it does a cost-benefit analysis will likely prove the fallacy of it! CSIRO can’t even predict the weather 6 months from now so their report on building a nuclear power facility in Australia is just political claptrap. Get Real Get Nuclear! And this Battery BS just consolidated Labor’s mindlessness Anthony Albanese will unveil a new $550m strategy aimed at turning Australia into a ‘world-leading battery manufacturer’ as the next plank of his Made in Australia agenda.
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Hydrogen isn’t a source fuel. It’s a “battery” fuel.
The CSIRO, like so many “scientific departments” is all about arse covering, and keeping the gravy trains going.
The Covid debacle demonstrated that immeasurably!
It’s sad, but they cannot be relied on to produce any honest work.
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As Willis E pointed out quite a while ago –
“The problem with hydrogen is that it is pre-burnt. You can’t just go and open up a hydrogen mine”.
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The Goverment recently announced that there are over $ 300 billion in Green Hydrogen investments planned !!
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Follow the money! Howard government opened the floodgates when they allowed non-dispatchable generators access to the grid…to the detriment of all carbon based power sources. Nuclear negates that clusterfluk. Nuclear doesnt have to buy certificates nor does it have to shutdown if the wind blows or the sun shines. Nuclear is public enemy number one to the renewable industry and associated carpet bagger userists.
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Has anybody looked at the new GenCost in detail? Was wondering what had significantly changed since last year’s GenCost.
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Brief discussion in this video.
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/chris-kenny/csiro-has-big-adjustments-to-make-on-their-nuclear-power-cost-report/video/c03350656d35891d3baadf61a36aad5d
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Thanks. Currently meandering around WA’s southern forests, so can’t access the report.
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Here’s more detail from an ABC radio interview with “Nuclear for Australia expert Tony Irwin”. 10min audio.
https://youtu.be/y_J1gSeWomA?si=f2Empd5IB3Js7vre
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There’s no doubt the CSIRO has been pushing a side and fudging figures, such as only giving Nuclear a 30 year life when the reality is at least double.
But, with our heavily unionised large project construction sector and weak government willing to pay overs on public projects, it’s hard to translate overseas cost experiences to our likely predicted equivalent. But the overseas experience certainly does show up the many lies.
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The Left reference Finland for everything from education to prisons, except electricity. For that, 18th C Holland is the preferred model.
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There is one thing that doesnt seem to be taken into account in CSIRO’s analysis and that is that a nuclear plant once built would last for around 50 to 80 years (not the 30 they allowed) and may then have to be updated. Wind turbines last for only about 10 to 15 years and then have to be replaced – therefore the cost of a nuclear plant should be measure against at least 3 times the cost of wind and solar and their attendant batteries. Never mind all the waste that has no value for re-use or recycling. Yes nuclear waste is a potential issue – but it is modest compared to the massive waste of defunct wind vanes.
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At 10-15 years you have to write the whole investment in wind and solar off.
I think that would be covered in depreciation and add it to the yearly cost, but the CSIRO are not accountants.
And they have an agenda.
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And we are being forced to pay for 10,000km of transmission lines which would not be needed with nuclear. The cost of harvesting wind and solar is so much more than the cost of site generation.
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Would it be that they hindcast to get the numbers that give “the right forecast”?
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This pretty much sums up climate science, start from a predetermined outcome and work back from there.
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It seems that Lazard, CSIRO and others chose the 30-year lifetime because they believed that wind and solar wouldn’t need replacing over that timeframe. But they will.
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Here’s another song sung blue to grind your teeth too!
“In 2015 NSW’s largest coal power station life extended by at least two years
The state government could pay up to $225m a year to keep the plant going but will make a profit if Eraring does.”
The NSW government sold the last coal-fired generator in its portfolio to two private investors for just $1 million. But at least that’s $1 million more than it got for selling the Liddell coal generator in the Hunter Valley, which it essentially gave away for free. This little carbon package was later on sold to AGL for several million in clear profit.
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Ooooookay!
I understand that this is boring old mathematics, and based loosely on averages, but it is indicative.
Let’s then do some Maths and use that as a form of comparison between the costs for Nuclear power generation and for the sake of that comparison, wind generation. Oh, and at the same time, let’s ‘ballpark’ the construction time frame as well.
And here, I’ll use a two Reactor Plant, so two individual Units. And let’s go around the average shall we, say, like using a single 1150MW Generator being driven by each Unit, so here we will have a Nameplate of 2300MW. (For some insight and perspective on this example, I’ll use the Diablo Canyon Plant in San Luis Obispo in Mid Coastal California, a plant which has been in operation since 1985, so all but forty years now, and with a lifetime operational Capacity Factor (CF) of a tick under 90%, and that’s about the average for Nuclear Power in the U.S.)
So, and here that CF figure is the AVERAGE I will be using, and the CF for ALL wind generation here in Australia is 30%. (Well, it fell below 30% this week, the first time below 30% in more than three years now)
Now here, CF is the relationship between the actual delivered generated power (in GWH) and the Nameplate. (in MW)
So, by extrapolation, that means for wind to deliver the same generated energy across a whole year as just this ONE large nuclear power plant, they would need to have in place three times the Nameplate of the Nuke. (CF of 90% versus CF of 30%)
(For comparison, the total Nameplate in Australia for wind is 11,409MW, and it delivered 27,600GWH of energy to the AEMO Australian grid last calendar year 2023)
So, for wind to deliver the same energy to the grid, and using that average CF of that Australian 30%, then we would need a Nameplate of 6900MW. (2300 X 3)
Okay, I know, I know, averages again.
As an example for wind, let’s use Macarthur, which at the time of coming on line in 2012 was $1.2 Billion. Okay, now wind (they keep telling us, but actually not exactly truth) has gotten sooooo much cheaper, but even so, 2012 dollars versus 2024 dollars would sort of cancel out that relative cheapness would be my guess.
Now, Macarthur has a Nameplate of 420MW, so to construct this comparative Nameplate of 6900MW, we would therefore need 16.45 of these monster sized plants, considering that since that time in 2012, they have only put in place two plants larger than this Macarthur plant. (and in fact, the Coppers Gap plant in Queensland with a Nameplate of an almost equivalent 452MW was also $1.2 Billion, so those costs haven’t fallen as dramatically as they keep telling us, eh!)
So, using Macarthur as a cost example, then 16.45 times $1.2 Billion comes in at $19.8 Billion. Umm, that sounds to me a considerable amount higher than the cost of the nuclear power plant.
Okay, time frame. We have 11409MW of wind Nameplate constructed across the last 25 or so years.
Again, I know, averages and all that, so 6900MW of 11409MW X 25 years, then it would take 15 years to construct the equivalent required Nameplate for wind plants.
So almost $20 Billion and 15 years.
Hmm, sounds, umm, almost competitive with nuclear power, eh!
Yeah, I know, averages, averages, averages.
Umm, didn’t they use averages in their construct for the nuclear power plant???
Tony.
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All that having been said in my above Comment, (waiting in moderation) It would be far cheaper again, and take less time to construct a state of the art latest technology UltraSuperCritical coal fired power plant.
Tony.
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Robert Bryce
Discover more from Robert Bryce – Energy, power, innovation, and politics.
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ENIAC was a beast.
The world’s first general-purpose electronic computer contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, and 6,000 manual switches. All those parts were connected by some 5 million soldered joints, most of which had to be joined by hand. In 1946, when it was completed, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer weighed 27 tons, covered 240 square feet (22 square meters), and required 174 kilowatts of power.ENIAC used so much electricity that when it was switched on, it caused lights in the rest of Philadelphia to dim momentarily.
Six years later, John von Neumann, the mathematician and computer pioneer, unveiled MANIAC, the first computer to use RAM (random access memory). As I explained in my fifth book, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving The Catastrophists Wrong, that machine required 19.5 kilowatts of power. Author George Dyson said, “the entire digital universe can be traced directly” back to MANIAC, short for Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer.
Many things have changed in the decades since ENIAC and MANIAC were first connected to the grid. But the power hungry nature of computing has not. The Computer Age has been defined by the quest for ever-more computing power and ever-increasing amounts of electricity to fuel our insatiable desire for more digital horsepower. As data centers have grown over the past two decades, concerns about power availability have surged.
That history is relevant to me because I first wrote about data centers and electricity in 2000.
In a piece for Interactive Week called “Power Struggle,” I wrote:
In the debate over power demand and the Internet, data centers are often exhibit No. 1. These facilities, also known as “server farms” or “telco hotels,” consume vast amounts of electricity. With power concentrations of 100 watts per square foot, a 10,000-square-foot data center can demand as much power as 1,000 homes. But unlike homeowners who turn their lights off when they leave for vacation, data centers require full power 24/7. In Seattle, a raft of new data centers is forcing the city to scramble to meet their needs. Over the next 24 months, the city’s utility expects a handful of data centers to raise its average daily demand by about 250 megawatts, an increase of nearly 25 percent over current loads. Other regions, including the San Francisco Bay and Chicago areas, are also facing power supply problems caused, in part, by data centers.
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What’s old is new again.
The rise of artificial intelligence has re-ignited concerns about electricity availability and strains on the power grid.
Over the past two decades, worries that data centers would overwhelm local electricity providers have been muted because our computers keep getting more efficient. But this time, the concerns that there won’t be enough juice for AI and data centers are justified.
Yes, this time is different. And the key difference is Joe Biden’s EPA. On May 9, that agency published a rule in the Federal Register that, if it survives legal challenges, will force the closure of every coal-fired power plant in America and prevent the construction of new baseload gas-fired plants.
If the rule survives those challenges, it will strangle AI in the crib.
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Chart 5
The chart below uses my estimates of the company’s electricity use and information from its sustainability report.
At roughly 57 terawatt-hours per year, Amazon uses more electricity than Greece.
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It seems inevitable, if governments continue on their corrupt path, that AI centres will install their own power stations, and sales of candles to the general public will go up.
60
Sadly, the once vaunted and respected CSIRO has become the science propaganda arm of the Australian Government.
40
It appears that the CSIRO report calculating the “levelized” costs of electricity generation assumes that sunk costs are “free”. So Snowy2 is a sunk cost that will provide “free” backup for intermittent wind and solar. And the added network costs are also “free”. Wacky wreckenomics to get the answer they want?
130
Oz needs an energy plan. It does not, at present, have one.
Here’s a thought:
1. Stop any decommissioning of existing thermal plants.
2. Require any wind/solar assets, existing or new, to incorporate the costs of FCAS, intermittency, storage, and CF
3. Initiate a standardized nuclear reactor design. France has done it. And create a nuclear reprocessing pathway.
4. Explore, identify, develop, and integrate, all sources of coal and gas reserves.
5. Create a 5, 10, 20, and 50 year plan for the economy of Oz and publish annual results WRT energy, jobs, debt, and national security.
6. Stop electing ignorant, compromised, lying, ideologically driven, idiots, to decide your collective future.
It isn’t difficult to observe that unpredictable, intermittent, non-dispatchable, short lived, generation, isn’t in Oz interests.
Absolutely nothing that the fear mongering media and eco zealots have predicted has ever happened.
Look at your costs, jobs, futures and living. Compare them to the promises. Make decisions.
Kick the lying basturds to the curb and vote like your lives depend on it. Because they do.
Whatever happens is because of what the populace did or did not do. The price of inaction and wrong decisions is frightening.
Your government is not interested in that price because they will not pay it. You will
140
Lance, the advocates of wind & solar backed by batteries claim that all the ancillary services such as reactive power and frequency/voltage control (etc. etc.) can be supplied by the renewables just as reliably as legacy generation technologies such as coal-fired, gas-fired, and nuclear.
Here is a question for you. Could you give us a quick overview of how, technically, wind & solar backed by batteries could supply these ancillary services in a way which duplicates what the legacy technologies such as coal-fired, gas-fired, and nuclear power can deliver?
For purposes of providing a technical explanation, it doesn’t matter what these methods and means might be, or what these might cost. It only matters that it is technically possible for the renewable energy technology to deliver the needed ancillary services without the use of pumped hydro.
Thanks in advance.
33
Beta Blocker TOXIC W & S only generate power for 30% and 15% every 24 hours and a lot of that is surplus when it’s not required and SFA when you desperately need power.
Don’t forget a number of ONGOING COLD FROSTY STILL nights with little WIND and we’re really in big trouble. And of course useless FLAT BATTERIES.
40
Thanks in advance.
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/05/saturday-59/#comment-2765511
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“Could you give us a quick overview of how, technically, wind & solar backed by batteries could supply these ancillary services in a way which duplicates what the legacy technologies such as coal-fired, gas-fired, and nuclear power can deliver?”
That’s easy. They can’t, won’t, and never will.
The “legacy technologies” you speak of are electrically synchronous mass units, effectively a single kinetic system, capable of generating and absorbing reactive power. None of the wind/solar generators can duplicate that ability.
Wind/solar cannot connect to the grid without a synchronous frequency pulse. That pulse is generated by the thermal plants.
Wind/solar cannot generate actual reactive power in real time in consonance with actual load. They are always, in terms of real time, behind the thermal generators and behind the actual load. Two steps removed from reality.
A grid is an interactive system of Load and Generation that must be exactly matched within seconds or the entire system fails. Wind/solar will never be able to accomplish that feat except in isolated micro grids with little or no large reactive power loads.
Reactive loads are inductive in the large. Motors, transformers, etc. It takes 4 to 6 times the running load of an inductive load to start the device. Inverters cannot deal with large swings in such loads. The only reason wind/solar has any meaning whatsoever is to displace fuel consumption at a thermal plant by sustaining ongoing loads. To start those loads, the thermal plants are indispensable, for without them, nothing on the grid would function. The inrush power required to start an aircon, motor, etc, is dependent upon the kinetic energy of the thermal plants.
A grid is not about watts. It is about Megawatts and Gigawatts. Wind and solar are all about LED lights and TV’s. Not about motor loads, industry, jobs, agriculture, and life as anyone knows it. Without the thermal plants providing the FCAS and instantaneous reactive power, there would be no grid, no water, no refrigeration, no lifts, no industry, no agriculture, no mining, no industry. Give it a think.
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Functional grids supply real and reactive power. MVA and MVARs. the vector sum of them is the “apparent” or total power required to sustain the connected load and is the required generation supplying the load. Wind and solar cannot now, or ever, respond to that requirement without thermal generation support. It is a matter of physics and electrical engineering, not politics or beliefs, or hopes and wants, or ideology.
Tell me. At 1500 hrs tomorrow, how much reactive power is needed and where will it come from? Guessing won’t satisfy reality. Hoping won’t either. Either it exists when needed or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, the grid collapses due to voltage or frequency collapse. The ramifications of that failure to balance the grid and load results in millions of dollars in lost goods, productivity, and lives. It isn’t something to bandy about. Unless one enjoys chaos and discounts lives.
40
Lance, strictly for purposes of discussion, suppose we turned a large mass DC motor with battery power supplied from wind & solar generation resources, and the large mass DC motor was shaft-coupled to a large mass AC generator unit.
The DC to AC conversion process using this motor-generator coupling might not be very efficient and therefore might be extremely costly to operate.
But having said that, could this kind of DC to AC conversion approach be employed to supply reactive power from a huge bank of conventional lithium-ion batteries? (At least until the battery bank was exhausted, anyway.)
13
No offence intended, but that concept is nonsense.
If the DC to AC motor generator example you propose actually happened, it would be an attempted replication of existing thermal plants, but at a 50% loss of efficiency. That alone would double the cost of electricity. And there is nothing addressing night time generation or windless days generation. So that concept has zero reliability at grid scale.
If you are depending upon Li-ion batteries for storage to stabilize such a generation scheme, there isn’t enough lithium in existence to do so for more than 10 to 20 years for any single continent, much less all of them. The entire system is unsustainable from a resource standpoint.
So, no, that isn’t a viable option.
Better to look at a cascaded nuclear cycle of U235, MOX U235/Pu239, Thorium 232, with reprocessing, which would be good for 50,000 years at 4% increasing load per year from current generation. The cascade burns most of the waste and the Th232 cycle avoids the transuranic series. Optimal waste reduction. Perhaps that elusive fusion cycle might happen sometime in between. But wind/solar cannot, do not, and will not, supply any relevant generation for any meaningful period of time. W/S are a waste of effort, financial and natural resources.
130
Could you please explain the purpose of this ongoing “discussion”.?
Thanks in advance.
https://www.joannenova.com.au/2024/05/saturday-59/#comment-2765511
20
A reason to give Lance’s comments 400 plus green upticks!
The information he supplies with every and any comment makes me feel like a ‘Kindy’ student.
Tony.
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Totally agree Tony.
Lance went around the instructions given by Mr Beta and thrashed it.
Mr. Beta is trying to manipulate and control.
Why?
10
so why do our politicians the CSIRO, AEMO etc not understand this?
00
they do understand, but the unions have all their super invested in renewables, if (when) renewables fail 3 million workers will lose ALL of their super, not to mention the failure of the future fund (which pays public servant superannuation). So what do you think they are going to do?
10
One of the main functions of the grid storage batteries is the provision of FCAS (frequency control and ancilliary services) to the grid.
I dont know how much battery capacity might be required, or how effective it might be for the Reactive component, but to some extent ,FCAS support is possible.
And as others have suggested, there are large rotating systems available also for some services together with the ongoing hydro generation facilities.
10
There is a decommissioned coal power station, I think in Florida, the the power authorities were thinking of just running the turbines as spinning reserve for FCAS.
20
Grid bus structures are divided into Generator Bus, Load Bus and Slack/Swing Bus for load flow analysis. These analyses are how the grid operators decide, day ahead, on how to dispatch and stabilize the expected load profile within probabilistic limits. The solutions are continuously run but it gets way more complex and near unsolvable with intermittent generators of unreliable capacity and characteristics.
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/65445
Essentially, the Slack/Swing Bus balances the Generator and Load Bus by injecting or absorbing reactive power. It does not power the Load Bus, it provides the necessary Reactive power to the Generator Bus. Depending upon where the Reactive power is needed, at what node in the grid system, some generating unit is defined as the “designated swing unit” or “slack unit”. This designation can change hour to hour or minute to minute. But, all things said, it is the slack/swing unit that provides the necessary reactive power. It does so by changing the excitation in the exciter winding of the alternator. Every alternator has a performance envelope in which it can provide or absorb reactive power depending upon the status of the exciter winding.
This becomes critically necessary when the included angle between the total power and active power ( apparent and real ) is greater than 36 degrees or a Power Factor of Phi < 0.8.
Solid state inverters usually have a maximum power factor capability of 0.8. Any angle greater than that ( a PF < 0.8) causes excessive amounts of total power to be consumed as reactive power instead of Real/Active power. Ie, less work is being done and more work is lost to the magnetic fields being supplied. So, the inverters cannot help anyone below PF = 0.8. This is where the swing unit comes in. When the inductive load on the Load Bus is greater than the Generator Bus can handle, the Swing Bus provides the Reactive power stabilization.
A slack/swing unit might need to provide 50 MVAR in a matter of seconds to stabilize the grid. To a limited extent, and only for a few seconds to minutes, a Synchronous Condenser can assist by stabilizing a sudden load impact, and that does help but at a significant operating cost.
The point of this is that only the thermal plant alternators have the massive capacity to inject or absorb reactive power and stabilize the grid bus when and where needed on command. The inverters at RT solar (5 kW) and 2-5 MW intermittent Wind plants cannot hope to provide the required reactive power at the time it is needed and at the grid bus node it is needed. If that reactive power isn't available where, when and in the quantity needed, the grid overall goes into a voltage or frequency collapse death spiral. The grid goes black in 4 to 15 minutes.
Batteries and inverters are of no significance in this scenario. Useless. They lack the scale and capacity needed.
Simulating a 300 ton to 600 ton rotating mass at 3000 RPM and 200 to 500 MW alternator is no simple task. Replacing what works with what "sounds good" is a very dangerous offering.
00
Eraring has been given a life extension. Closure now out to August 2027 rather than next year.
Snowy 2 will need to be working before Eraraing can shut down. And That will be later the 2027 so expect more life extensions.
I get the impression that a few people are beginning to realise you cannot push on a piece of string. Generating capacity is worse than useless if it is only available through the middle of the day.
60
And no severe drought, when VicGov closed Hazelwood Power Station the Snowy Hydro dams were low and caused headaches for VIC grid managers.
20
AGAIN here’s the real data from the CSIRO and proves that Australia and the entire SH SINKS are already contributing NET ZERO co2 emissions to the atmosphere.
See below for the CSIRO quote. Definitely no NET co2 emissions from Aussies and the entire SH countries.
IOW the SH countries could BANKRUPT themselves and spend endless TRILLIONS of $ for DECADES and it wouldn’t make the SLIGHTEST DIFFERENCE to the CLIMATE or TEMPERATURE or SLs or anything else.
So when will the CSIRO actually read and understand their own DATA and start to THINK?
https://capegrim.csiro.au/
“Seasonal variation”
“Carbon dioxide concentrations show seasonal variations (annual cycles) that vary according to global location and altitude. Several processes contribute to carbon dioxide annual cycles: for example, uptake and release of carbon dioxide by terrestrial plants and the oceans, and the transport of carbon dioxide around the globe from source regions (the Northern Hemisphere is a net source of carbon dioxide, the Southern Hemisphere a net sink)”.
50
Neville,.. no matter how often you repeat that belief, you cannot change the definition of “Net Zero” as being used by the IPCC for this agenda.
..It is ANTHROPOGENIC emmissions and ANTHROPOGENIC sink actions only….
10
And yet some credited “sinks” are basically natural landscape and not really an “anthropogenic” sink. It’s just that someone has promised to keep the landscape as a sink and measure the change in “carbon” in the soil.
30
I remember reading a book by Jared Diamond and the quote “I wonder what Easter Islanders were thinking when they cut down the last tree?” How could their desire to worship their gods lead them to destroy their own home.
I always thought that such a scenario could never occur in a scientifically literate society …. Yet, here we are?
80
Is that actually what happened on Easter Island? I have my suspicions. It was always used as an example of man made environmental disaster destroying everything, economy, ecology, just plain human stupidity, and that’s where we are all headed.
20
I recall the premise in the book was that moving massive granite carvings from one side of the island to the other required the felling of large numbers of trees to use as rollers/sleds.
20
Here’s the bloody awful King island hybrid so called generator AGAIN and Solar up to 50% sometimes and Wind is not roaring 40s much today.
But the Diesel is there AGAIN to cover for the W & S rubbish as usual.
I’ll ask again, how can we power Australia with this TOXIC W & S rubbish if we can’t supply RELIABLE power to a small island lying in the so called ROARING 40s?
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
120
The silence on this is astonishing.
40
Reliable Nuclear vs Unreliable “Renewables” – comparing Apples with Oranges
Our clueless Energy Minister stated: “If we can store water we can store electricity”.
Australia currently has “Big Batteries” with a national ENERGY storage capacity of 2 GWh – this would provide around 4 minutes of back-up for national electrity demand
Average national electricity demand is 670 GWh per day or 28 GW every hour.
If all this battery storage had been installed last year using Tesla MegaPacks this this would have accounted for 14% of Tesla’s annual “Big Battery” output.
https://www.energy-storage.news/tesla-deployed-14-7gwh-of-energy-storage-in-2023/
Now assuming that Australia would need only one day’s backup without evil fossil fuels and without nuclear how long would it take Tesla to make all the “Big Batteries” reqired?
How about 45 years at current production rates?
Australia is more likely to need at least 20 days backup to allow time for recharging following periods of cloudy weather with low wind (with no gas, coal or nuclear).
Now Tesla will ramp up production of its Megapacks as these are now its most profitable business since the massive price cuts on its EVs and their are other “Big Battery” suppiers, however there are still other countries committed to the wind and solar dream who are seeking more “Big Batteries”.
Therefore supply of “Big Batteries” will limit the speed of the transition to dream of “renewables” only.
This reality shoots down the claim that nuclear energy would take too long to implement when nuclear provides reliable power 24/7 and no battery back-up is required.
News Flash: The Eraring power station will now close in August 2027 allowing a “orderly exit from coal-fired power” to “ensure lights stay on for homes”, according to the state government. Analysis from the Australian Energy Market Operator found without Eraring, the state would face energy reliability issues from 2025.5 hours ago
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-23/eraring-power-station-to-stay-open/103882576
2027 is only 3 years away and the idiots believe that you can replace a 2.88 GW coal-fired power station with an ENERGY capacity of 2.88 GW times 24 hours times 365 days (not allowing for some maintence downtimd) with a 2.88 GW “Big Battery” with an ENERGY capacity of 2.88 GW times 2 hours).
May we live in interesting times.
40
Environmental Standards for “Big Battery” Installations
Currently there is an average of one “Big Battery” fire a month world wide.
There needs to be an ungrading of environmental protection for “Big Battery” installations such as capture and treatment of all water used to contain such fires (which are generally left to burn) and siting well clear of populated areas given the toxic smoke from battery fires.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/27/tesla-lithium-battery-fire-bouldercombe-energy-storage-site-project-rockhampton
30
Err ?… you may want to correct that…
670GWh, is NOT 14% of Teslas battery manufacturing capacity.
Tesla has a battery capacity of <100GWh
00
Just defund the CSIRO and the useless people producing these stupid reports can collect the dole. That would be better for the economy then having them produce propoganda.
120
Speaking of propaganda, what on earth is all this government advertising of late? Im sure advertising was not done on this scale, though I must be mistaken, I don’t hear too much noise about it. Looks like blatant propaganda to me.
50
The CSIRO are the lapdogs of the government. They know why they are asked for an opinion and they oblige.
I am always accused along with every other person who disagrees that I take money from the fossil fuel industry. Which is odd as the fossil fuel industry is doing very well out of Climate Change. Sales have never been better. And if silly little countries like Australia want to play dog in the manger, it’s not their problem.
But the CSIRO are special. Thousands of government scientists who do what they are told. And justify their existence. These are not independent scientists. It is clear that the people who have coal or nuclear have much cheaper power and a far smaller impact on the environment. But you will not hear that from the CSIRO. Their job is to please the government, especially a communist Green government.
It’s not an accusation but a self evident fact. What was the last great invention of the CSIRO? And no, they didn’t invent WiFi. They played the patent ripoff game where others donated technology to a world standard.
50
2022. CSIRO grew to 6,316 people. $1.54Billion cost at $243,825 per person.
We are told we get $10Bn worth of value each year. They use special CSIRO arithmetic. But these are the same people who deny nuclear is more cost effective than short term windmills and solar panels. But 5 years of the raw cost of the CSIRO would produce a massive nuclear power source to last 50 years. And which would be more useful?
70
CSIRO would claim that they have delivered billions in value by discouraging the government to spend billions on reliable energy sources. Not long before they’ll be claiming that their advice has prevented the climate catastrophes that they modelled!!
Great work if you can get it.
50
It’s a retirement home for pretend scientists. Fire the lot and buy a power station which works. And at the same time fire the ABC,SBS and all the Clean Energy departments. All based on a lie. It’s all about the money, nothing more. Why is it only business which is corrupt? What’s the difference in motivation?
40
This would be the same CSIRO that collaborated with staff from the Wuhan institute of virology to work with bat viruses .
They denied it but Matt Canavan produced the paper they published as part of the work .
https://www.aph.gov.au/-/media/Estimates/economics/bud2122/Treasury/ssCSIRO_clarification_letter_COO_Judi_Zielke.pdf?la=en&hash=10098E286F43B846E1E8FEA33A7341B8118C8CF1
The paper :
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49795689_Type_III_IFNs_in_Pteropid_Bats_Differential_Expression_Patterns_Provide_Evidence_for_Distinct_Roles_in_Antiviral_Immunity
Matt Canavan discusses :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hdUXj4wTDQ
Detailed report by Sharri Markson :
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/health/coronavirus-nsw-dossier-lays-out-case-against-china-bat-virus-program/news-story/e1833c0893bfdac16d21dca6ce364bfb
Once a great organization , now destroyed by infestations of leftist activists . I wouldn’t believe a word they said on any matter .
20
Latest CSIRO tactic (Blackout Bowen) is to use 30 years as the claimed operating life of a nuclear power plant, no doubt to try and increase the costs compared to wind and solar with average around 20 years plus or minus.
It follows the dishonest claims often made on blogs that coal fired power stations here are falling apart, no mention of government imposed restrictions limiting profitability and related affordability of anything but essential repairs and maintenance, and that the scheduled closure period for accounting asset write off purposes is usually 50 years and most here are passed or close to reaching that time.
50
At sunset today there were 14 maybe 15 ships off NovoCastria waiting to pick up coal.
70
At the risk of boring everyone: I’ve been compiling ‘stuff’ about the weather (‘Climate Change’ and all that!) all leading on to – lets call it “modern” nuclear, about which so many people know nothing. There’s a superb video that Nick recorded in his recent trip to Finland and, if you’re feeling brave, you may check it out here: start at page 12 for some interesting news about the Finnish ‘Greens’ before moving on to page 13 for Nick’s video. And you are allowed to watch this whole PDF if that doesn’t alarm you!
(Of course. if you’re feeling very brave, you might start whole procedure about the weather here. And everything follows on ….. (Oh! Surprise! Surprise! Joanne features here and there too ….)
WARNING! I doubt that our most-learned Minister for Energy & Climate Change (or is it the other way around?) would approve though …..
20
I though Jo would like this! https://www.wheatbelt.wa.gov.au/files/9314/0487/0817/Wheatbelt_Snapshot_Series_-_Power_and_Energy_FINAL_08072014.pdf” rel=”nofollow ugc”>
20
The CSIRO is the Australian branch of the U.N.’s IPCC.
40
“Do the CSIRO think they can get away with publishing this kind of incompetent partisan hackery and Australians won’t find out?”
FADE IN: INT: CSIRO Cafeteria: the staff are eating a lunch of soy-steak, faux-fish broth, and salad, washed down with green tea.
#1: (Swallows a lettuce leaf) “I say, it does seem like the Hoi Polloi are up in arms about our latest GenCost report.”
#2: (Looks up from his faux-fish broth) “What?”
#1: (Looks taken aback) “The Hoi Polloi-”
#2: (Snorts) “Don’t interrupt me with their nonsense. I’m busy thinking my genius thoughts!”
#1: (purses lips) “Ahh yes. But, of course, we all have those. Why, I had some last night watching the ABC-”
#2: (Wrinkles nose) “Utter tripe. ABC is legacy media. I get all my news directly from the Internet!”
#1: (Arches eyebrow) “The Internet?”
#2: (Humphs) “Yes. That thing invented by Al Gore!”
#1: (Lifts head) “Saint, Al. Praise his name.”
#2: (Sighs) “Well, of course. Goes without saying. The man’s a legend in his own lifetime. A saint. (Waves hand at the other staff) None of us would have a job without his climate leadership.”
#1: (Nods head knowingly) “Indeed … no job at all.”
#1 & #2: (stare at each other, and stiffle a smirk.)
#1: “Hoi polloi.”
#1 & #2: (Burst out laughing)
FADE OUT
10
I asked Lance a question in a comment upthread concerning reactive power and if it was technically possible to supply reactive power from wind & solar backed by batteries.
Mr. Kalm Keith, questioning my motives for asking this question, said on May 23, 2024 at 3:37 pm: “Could you please explain the purpose of this ongoing “discussion”?
My response follows:
Back on May 18th, on the JoNova ‘Saturday’ thread, I told you personally (i.e. Mr. Kalm Keith) what it was I was doing and why I was doing it.
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/05/saturday-59/#comment-2765359
As I said in my comment to that JoNova thread, I am now engaged in a personal project to analyze the costs of adding 3500 megawatts of wind & solar capacity plus 720 megawatts of demand response capacity to the US Northwest’s power grid. I am not analyzing such costs for the entire US power grid.
Energy policy now being pushed by the Biden Administration will force all of the generation added to the US Northwest power grid to be wind & solar backed by batteries, including the demand-response/load-following capacity.
It is for that reason that I asked Lance if it is possible to use wind & solar backed by batteries to accomplish the task of supplying reactive power to the grid using an approach which couples a battery-fed high-mass DC motor to a high-mass AC generator.
Boiled down to its essentials, Lance’s answer is that yes, it will work technically, but only at very low efficiency and thus at horrific expense. That is the information I am looking for, and Lance was only too kind to provide it.
Concerning the comment I posted to ‘Saturday’ on May 18th, it included a link to another comment I made on WUWT which goes in to some good bit of detail as to what I am doing and why.
Mr. Kalm Keith, it would be in our mutual interest for you to take the time needed to read my WUWT comment and to pay particular attention to the slides which are presented there.
Have a nice day.
Disclosure: I am a mechanical engineer who has spent thirty-five (+) years in nuclear construction and operations. My internet handle derives from the fact that my career occupational dose has come mostly from beta-gamma sources of radiation. Hence I am ‘Beta Blocker’.
Oh, one more thing ….
When I’m done with the cost analysis for adding 3500 Mw of wind & solar plus 720 Mw of demand response wind & solar, I will be doing a second project to analyze the costs of constructing and operating a nuclear power complex on the same central Washington State site employing three 1200 Mw AP1000 reactors for baseload plus twelve NuScale 77 Mw SMRs for demand-response,load-following.
My expectation is that the lifecycle cost over sixty years of the wind-solar-battery solution will be three to five times the lifecycle cost of the nuclear solution. The only way to know what the true figure might be is to do the math and see what pops out.
70
BB, regarding your question on Reactive power in a Wind+Solar dominated grid,..
You may find some answers in this paper..
“ Reactive power control in renewable rich power grids: A literature review”
https://ietresearch.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1049/rpg2.12674
30
Chad, thanks to you and to Lance for the links. I’m reading through them now, along with Lance’s further explanations.
10
BB, see response to Chad at 27.1.4.2 above.
The grid is built upon a structure. Generation drives Transmission. Transmission drives substations. Substations drive primary distribution. Primary distribution drives secondary distribution.
The control systems for Generation presume the downstream voltage is lower than the upstream voltage. That can change if the secondary distribution is being driven by solar/wind inverters at higher than expected voltages. Ie, in order to push RT solar onto the local grid, the RT inverters have to be above local grid voltage. If they exceed the secondary distribution envelope (10%. for AU 230 x 1.1 = 253 VAC) which does happen, the solar inverters can fry local electronics (wash machines, TVs, computers, etc).
The real issue is that the Generator Bus “sees” the transmission lines towards the Load Bus and requires Reactive power to support transmission voltage into the transmission system. If the connected load bus has greater reactive power requirements than the generator bus can provide, then a swing/slack unit must provide the difference, or the transmission voltage will collapse, followed by the distribution bus and ultimately overcurrent demands or voltage drops will trip the main generator bus offline. Since solar/wind are on either the secondary or primary distribution bus downstream of the transmission lines and generator bus, those sources cannot correct for reactive power requirements upstream of the primary distribution substation. It gets complicated. Short answer is you can’t push a rope uphill.
Good luck with your efforts. Maybe somebody will listen, but I wouldn’t count on it. The stupid will continue until there’s a grid collapse, IMHO, and the chaos that ensues will be historic, legendary, unimaginably destructive and deadly, and the decision makers will walk away unscathed.
I’m an M.E. as well, but almost an E.E. and a Chem E. 2 more semesters I couldn’t afford at the time.
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FYI.
Energy and the Hydrogen Economy: https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/hyd_economy_bossel_eliasson.pdf
System requirements for 100% US Solar generated Utility Baseload Electricity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/04/going-solar-system-requirements-for-100-u-s-solar-generated-utility-baseload-electricity/
Nuclear Power Subsidies Threaten Wind and Solar Power… Proof That Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/25/nuclear-power-subsidies-threaten-wind-and-solar-power-proof-that-truth-is-stranger-than-fiction/
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Lance, the education and the information you are providing here is most useful. Thanks for the assistance. I will have more questions for you in early June after I get through digging deeper into all this material.
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OK. I’m now seeing how you are framing your question.
Existing grid (“old tech”) provides power from a “top down” approach. Generators supply transmission lines that supply substations that supply primary distribution that supply secondary distribution.
Wind and solar, at the local/user/residential level are inputting power at the “back end” of the grid. Commercial wind/solar systems are inputting power at “some level” which can be a local or regional grid. It matters where, in the system, they inject power.
The synchronous thermal generators are supplying Real and Reactive power to a downstream load. The inverter crowd is supplying power to a local load that is 2 to 4 transformers downstream of the thermal generation. Reactive power is local at the local secondary distribution level, but the inverters have a limited ability to provide reactive power.
The thermal generators are pushing Real and Reactive power “upstream” of the “local load”. These are two different scenarios.
Reactive power is needed from primary generation to the Transmission Line level to sustain voltage at the transmission level. Injecting reactive power causes resistive heating in the transmission lines and thus, losses. Pretty much, the reactive power is blocked at the first transformer it “sees”, resulting in transformer core losses and heating.
The rooftop solar and wind use inverters to inject their power into the system. If that power is consumed locally, win-win. But those generators cannot push any reactive power onto the primary or secondary transmission systems. So, they do not help transmission level voltages. But. It is the transmission level voltages that “back up” the local secondary distribution voltages the in turn, allow the inductive motor loads to initially start rotation.
For the overall system to function, the thermal generators provide reference frequency, transmission voltage, and reactive voltage stabilization under all conditions upstream of the load. The solar/wind are trying to supply the “end of the line” loads but cannot support the transmission level requirements. There are two (or more) generators trying to supply the end of line load, but the end of line load depends on the thermal generation to function if the solar/wind inverters can’t deliver power. This is a control system nightmare. Not all watts are equal. Useful watts need to exist when, where, at voltage, at frequency, at current, and in-phase, to the connected load. Intermittent generators aren’t helpful in stabilizing this situation. Yes, they provide electrons, but at a substantial risk and cost that they pass off to “others”.
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Based on web searches
i believe the likely efficiency of Snowy 2 will be closer to 50%.
It will use green power to smooth W & S power variations.
The closest and best source of green power is Snowy 1. I would rather have 2 MWhr stored in S1 dams than 1 MWhr stored in S2. Minister Bowen, would you please legislate to prohibit running S1 and S2 simultaneously. We do not need any more desal plants, even if they do generate perpetual revenue for rich folk.
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What sources might that be ?
The SN2 design plan was based on a round trip efficciency of 67%-76%, depending on actual rate of charge/ discharge.
I have not seen any current PH system with an actual reported operating efficiency of less than 60%.
But it does not really matter as any RE power used or returned would have otherwise be “curtailed” or wasted.
Actually i suspect it will use cheap coal/gas generation at midday to shift power to the pm /am peak periods
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Yes, you’re right Chad. I did hear an energy “expert” once comment that the only place where a pumped hydro scheme like Snowy 2 works, is with cheap coal electricity. So, the best place to have built Snowy 2 was probably close to the Latrobe Valley power stations in Victoria and to utilise the mountains to the north for the holding dams. Or possibly, don’t built it at all, because it’s largely a waste of time white elephant.
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Well, he was obviously no “expert” .. because for decades they have worked very effectively with Nuclear intensive grids in the UK and Europe !
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Chad
“Actually i suspect it will use cheap coal/gas generation at midday to shift power to the pm /am peak periods”
I think you are probably right But remember, the carbon footprint of a MWhr out is twice that of an input MWhr. Think of that when you are using unwanted out of hours dirty coal power, overall, using S2 is equivalent to tens of thousands of extra FF cars on the road.
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Chad
I was unable to find what looked like professional reporting of total efficiencies, most pumped storage websites read like green propaganda.
Best practice large motors 90% to 92%, so I took the same for generators. large industrial centrifugal pumps peak at around 75%. I found a paper on turbine efficiencies that stated around 90%. Seems high but go with it. Multiply those figures and get 57%.
Pipe losses, transmission losses, as a load balancer it will be speed adjusted away from the point of maximum efficiency. 50% is the best guess of a retired PE, and adequate for this level of conversation. I may be wrong, so convince me. It is an obscene amount of money to spend to waste so much energy. The same effect can be obtained by throttling Snowy 1, with fewer losses.
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Yes, you are wrong..!
One classic example..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
With references to verify !
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Chad
Wikipedia has form for bias on politically charged topics. I checked 10 of the references, 2 were dead links, 7 referenced other wikipedia postings, 1 was an interesting article in “Engineer” mainly about batteries. A word search found assertions but no data.J am out of time, farewell.
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..🙄…Ahh!,.. a typical cop out when losing a discussion!
How many facts and references does it take to make someone realise they have no idea what they are talking about ?
Wiki is not infallible, but much of its contents area good starting reference.
If you took even a few seconds to do a crude search you can find pages of reports and papers, engineering reviews, performance assesments, etc etc reveal the real facts and benefits of PHES.
You ignoring the facts doesnt change the reality !..
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032115000106
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