By Jo Nova
The State of Climate Action for 2025 is out, looking like a kindergarten report with red and orange stickers for all the areas the world is failing in, which is everything. Show this report to any MPs who tell you Australia is in danger of being left behind.
Ten years after the Paris Agreement even The Guardian notices that despite the bonanza in new wind and solar power, coal use hit a record high last year.
It’s a bizarre report, surely a product of an industry oozing too much spare cash. It has finger-wagging lectures, chumpy predictions, and cutsie stamps. But who is supposed to be impressed by this (apart from The Guardian) — political staffers in the third world? No one is going to look at forty graphs of failure and think “we have to double our efforts”.
Progress is marked with school teacher lingo like “Well off Track” or “U Turn needed”. As if the world is waiting to hear, and can just, ‘bing’, make planes fly on pumpkin seeds.
The graph of zero-carbon sources in electricity generation rather sums it all up — the outstanding hell-for-leather uptake of renewables is almost a flat line, but in their dreams renewable power is about to launch into space. (“S-Curve likely” they say, which is code for a slow start but with great news just around the corner.)
These kindy-totalitarians have big plans. Wow.
For some inexplicable reason the share of wind and solar power is a key outcome in and of itself, as if the world needs windmills and photovoltaic panels to be whole, or fix holes in its Chakra.
This graph is the wet-dream of the renewables industry…
Heat pump sales in the EU are not headed in the right direction:
It’s almost like hundreds of thousands of people tried a heat pump and didn’t like it.
Meanwhile direct carbon capture is… a wasteland:
The acceleration required in direct carbon capture is “greater than tenfold”, they say, on a graph that shows a that what they really want is a 400-fold increase.
It was brave of the team to include global aviation. Especially given that the lifespan of an electric battery in a plane is about three weeks. But look at the fantasy…
Who knew, Climate Action means we’re not supposed to drive our passenger cars as far (even if it’s an EV charged by a nuclear plant?) They are still dreaming of 15 minute cities, saying — “planners and developers must redesign cities to being foods and services closer to where people live and avoid the need for motorized passenger travel…”
…
And this is the current progress on Green hydrogen production, as written by renewables fans:
They don’t say it, but production needs to ramp up by a factor of 662 by 2030.
If anything, the report proves that the world has no chance of meeting its Net Zero target and that the government boondoggles, NGOs and tech giants (like Bezos Earth Fund) have far too much money to waste.
h/t El Gordo
International Energy Forum – Monthly Oil & Gas Data Review – October 2025
Summary findings from the latest JODI oil & gas databases update – 24 page PDF
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“Victoria owns the largest source of light oil on our planet. This light oil, (C6-C20 n-anes, n-enes, phenols) can be extracted from Gippsland lignite using a benign, low-cost solvent process at a cost lower than US$28/BoE. Most of the infrastructure to transfer this oil to Viva’s Geelong refinery already exists.
The proven extraction rate exceeds 1.1 BoE/raw ton of lignite. Gippsland lignite consists of 20% oil, 20% carbon, 60% water. The phenols are already extracted from Loy Yang coal and have been sold as soil enhancer for about 30 years.
Graphite in the carbon derived from the lignite can be used to make low-cost graphene. This graphene can be used to coat copper wire to make low-cost superconductors or doped to make powerful magnets. Two copper wire manufacturers are established in Victoria.
There are 33 Billion tons of easily extracted lignite. The inferred resource is 395 Bt. There is another 1,200Bt under Bass Strait. The extraction process can be done in a factory or from spent oil well & gas wells.
Victoria now has A$200 Billion of committed debt.
It is difficult to see how ANY government can maintain committed public spending without a new, long term, massive source of taxable growth income.
Most of the world’s remaining oil is heavy (C28+). To move this bitumen in a pipeline requires mixing with 30-35% light oil. Without light oil a trillion dollars of existing pipelines will become unusable.
If we wish to remain independent of dictatorships, US policy, Canadian politics, OPEC and Singapore prices, Australia must have its own oil supply.
Victoria can become the richest state.”
Net Zero in action in Victoria means bankruptcy for Australia.
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Here’s a short uplifting old video, ~3 mins, about Latrobe Valley coal and Yallourn power station from 1948, the time when Australia appeared to have a bright future.
Sir John Monash would be appalled at the deliberate destruction of the energy supply he built.
https://youtu.be/eWXFnVT5Wj0
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Geoff, you’re way too practical. If governments don’t want to use over 500 years supply of brown coal to make cheap electricity, there’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell they would even consider making light oil. Just saying.
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Ross, the frustrating thing is as Victoria goes bankrupt we sit on an asset worth US$105 Trillion, not counting the RTU we could sell the United States (North Dakota) and the EU (Germany) for processing their own lignite or making superconductive wire. You could not write this as fiction.
Australia could buy ALL of the United States debt…..
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I wrote a slightly, softer, simpler version. Hope you like it and it get’s past OT. (like probably many, I had never heard of this proposal)
“Victoria has a massive amount of lignite, a type of coal which we already use for electricity genreration, in the Gippsland region. Lignite alsoh contains valuable light oil. This oil can be extracted cheaply (under $28 per barrel) using a safe, simple process. The infrastructure to transport this oil to a refinery in Geelong already exists.
Each ton of lignite can produce over 1.1 barrels of oil. The lignite is made up of 20% oil, 20% carbon, and 60% water. Some parts of the lignite, like phenols, are already being used as a soil enhancer. The carbon in the lignite can also be turned into graphene, a material that can be used to make affordable superconductors or strong magnets. Victoria already has companies that could use this graphene to improve copper wires.
There are 33 billion tons of lignite that can be easily accessed, with potentially 395 billion tons more, and even more under Bass Strait. The oil can be extracted in factories or from old oil and gas wells.
Victoria has a lot of debt ($200 billion), and without a major new source of income, it will struggle to keep up with public spending. Most of the world’s remaining oil is heavy and needs light oil to flow through pipelines. Without light oil, many pipelines could become useless. By developing its own light oil, Victoria could avoid relying on foreign oil from places like OPEC or Singapore, making Australia more independent.
In short, Victoria’s lignite could make it extremely wealthy by providing a huge, low-cost source of oil and other valuable materials. However, pursuing strict environmental policies like Net Zero could harm Australia’s economy if it ignores this resource.”
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The game played is to rank brown coal as the ‘dirtiest’ form of fossil fuels. Basically in Victoria it is 66% water. So you can say it has a third of the energy content per tonne.
But remove the water and you get similar energy values to black coal.
The energy content of black coal varies but 24 to 30 MJ/kg for high-quality Australian black coal
Victorian brown coal can have a gross dry energy value of 25–29 MJ/kg
There is no end to the coal haters. And no science.
In 2009 the Victorian government stopped a $400Million sale of brown coal to India after a campaign by The Age which said that if you removed the water, you make the coal ‘blacker’. And we all know black is dirty.
And the Victorian government is hopelessly bankrupt and rapacious. No surprise there. And now charging thousands per household for a Fire Levy which has nothing to do with fires.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOWTDDy6wlg
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It’s a sop to the idea of dirty carbon. The planet doesn’t need false solutions. But the whole thing is nonsense. There is zero threat from man released CO2 from old leaves. And humans do not, cannot control the amount of CO2 in the air. If we could, we would increase it. More food, and higher temperatures mean fewer deaths from cold, more habitable planet, more abundant plant life, more animals, insects, fish and birds and less powerful storms.
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Thanks Geoff & Ross
Your words have made it into the Comments Section of 2 of The Australian Articles
As you say Geoff – Australia/Victoria under Labor & Labor Lite Liberals/Greens/TEAls are the Stupid Country
the frustrating thing is as Victoria goes bankrupt we sit on an asset worth US$105 Trillion, not counting the RTU we could sell the United States (North Dakota) and the EU (Germany) for processing their own lignite or making superconductive wire. You could not write this as fiction.
Australia could buy ALL of the United States debt…..
PS what is RTU?
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A Right-to-Use the technology.
No-one need buy Russian oil.
Australia copper wire can be a superconductor. This works today.
Graphene would suddenly replace silicon at a Taiwan fab. A multi-state CPU. No GPU required. 0 & 1 replaced by 0-255. IT geeks would begin loading the entire internet onto a single computer.
A gas pipeline far stronger than steel would extend from Australia to Japan.
An unbreakable water pipeline 11m in diameter would transfer stream flow from southern Canada to California under the Pacific.
A space station would unfold from an Earth-to-space elevator and spin up to provide gravity.
An unmanned mission would be launched to our nearest habitable solar system. A 400 year exploratory round trip.
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The Sictorian LayBore Guv’ment is either negligent, wilfully trying to destroy the Joint or insane.
Either way, get them out at the next Election.
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“The Sictorian LayBore Guv’ment is either negligent, wilfully trying to destroy the Joint or insane.” I’m fairly convinced they manage to be all 3 of these things at once!
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Victoria has in excess of 300 billion cubic metres of lignite, which, with a specific gravity of around 1.2, and a cubic metre equalling one tonne of pure water at sea level at 10C, means there is over 340 billion tonnes.
The 33 billion figure is just the really easily accessible stuff.
And that’s before we get into the actual gas deposits in Gippsland and the oil and gas in the Otway Basin.
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What a clueless disaster and we should never forget that proper BASELOAD energy security equals NATIONAL SECURITY.
Relying on super expensive, toxic, unreliable W & S + batteries is a very dangerous move and only attracts the attention of very dangerous players like China, Russia, Iran and Nth Korea etc.
We must always aim for 24/ 7/ 365 energy security and ASAP.
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Spooner Cartoon in The Australian Commentary Today – Sums it All up Perfectly!
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Elbow has already said we will be made to buy 5,000,000 (Chinese) EVs by 2035, ten years time. This is essential to the Chinese business plan.
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‘The feasibility of the Labor government’s 2035 net-zero target has been called into question after a Liberal senator revealed that it is impossible for Australian car dealers to sell the required number of EVs within the next decade.’ (Epoch Times)
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Albo must have had one of his minions read art of the deal.
‘Albanese channels Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’ and ticks off list of agreements.
‘Anthony Albanese has embraced Donald Trump’s signature approach, arriving at the White House with transactions spanning critical minerals, defence, technology, and economic investment.’ (Oz)
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Link gives a brilliant Johannes Leak cartoon.
Well, it does now anyway!
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This complete failure is excellent news for the plants and the poor of the World.
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Yes, if it was not failing the West would already be in economic collapse.
Don’t forget if the West was in economic collapse it would be a complete environmental diaster.
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It is obvious – we must triple, nay quadruple our efforts to return Australia back before 1788.
That way Australia will be free of CO2 emissions (except from bushfires for hunting etc as that is cultural acceptable).
The only question is how to send suitable money back to those original inhabitants, as they would expect.
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They can’t use money as such, so maybe possum skins or sharp sticks.
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Or a BIC lighter…that’d be handy
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LOL
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Figure 23 is not clear. What do the columns represent? Ditto the middle row.
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Does any sane person think that
destroying thousands of klms of our pristine environments for an average capacity factor of 15% for S and 24% for W is an intelligent way to waste TRILLIONs of $?
And in 15 to 20 years we must clean up the toxic mess and start again and again. In fact many times by 2100, while cheaper, reliable baseload energy could last for the entire period.
No doubt about it Labor, Greens and the Teals are insane.
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No sane person does, but we seem to be few and fair between these days, however the world is full of numpties and muppets, especially our bureaucracies and parliaments.
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I’m not an electrical engineer but I’d like an answer to a very simple question.
We have a grid relying on W & S + batteries and a strong la nina comes along and a lot of extra cloud cover over many months.
Then what happens if we have a nasty wind drought off and on for many months and the batteries only supply the grid for a few hours?
How do you then start up a W & S grid that is supposed to supply eastern Australia?
This version of Murphy’s law will kick in sooner or later and we’ll really be in the sh-t. Any ideas?
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Don’t need to look at very long periods such as months for an answer. GenCost is only modelling on two hour’s battery backup, and I doubt that sufficient grid battery backup will be built by 2030 to provide even that backup amount. Also we regularly experience cloudy days followed by windless nights in winter, so the chances of batteries run down overnight trying to support a grid being charged the next day is doubtful. I believe that only a few days of this would be sufficient to prove that battery backup won’t work.
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Thanks Graeme4 and I’m sure you’re correct. See Lance’s reply and I wonder why we want to risk everything for such a risky future and definitely not worth the cost or the time.
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I’ll try, Neville:
“How do you then start up a W & S grid that is supposed to supply eastern Australia?”
Grid loads are resistive, inductive, and capacitive. Capacitive loads are uncommon. Grid is mostly inductive (motors, transformers, etc) and resistive (electric water heaters, cook stoves, etc).
When one tries to start a grid, in the first 0.001 seconds, generators see a giant capacitor (transmission lines) that need to get charged up. Once the power hits a substation, there is a reflected wave equal in intensity to the load seen by the substation. Then the generators see an inductive load. Essentially a short circuit, for about a second. The inductive loads need 4 to 6 times their actual running power in order to begin rotation, for a second. So, whatever generators are feeding the load must have 4 to 6 times the capacity of the connected inductive load or the grid will collapse again from low voltage or excessive current or a lack of reactive power to stabilize voltage, or a collapse of frequency stability if this event overloads the torque capacity of the steam turbines or the inverter based solar/wind inability to maintain frequency whilst feeding a dead short. This is called a black grid restart. Nobody knows if it can work or not. No sane person wants to find out.
The only way to energize a black grid restart is to break the grid into segments and attempt to connect the segments to available generation, then synchronize generators of whatever type, into the connected load. The only place one can get resistive loads is residential sub grids: water heaters, stovetops, etc. Everything on the commercial/industrial grid is 99.9 pct inductive. It is a bootstrap event that may or may not work.
If any substation transformers, switchgear, etc are damaged in the process, it can take 1 to 3 years to get replacement components. In the meantime, nobody has any power at all. Anywhere served by the affected system.
ALL of the wind and solar inverter based systems cannot connect to the overall grid unless there is a 50HZ synchronization signal that must exist before they can connect. Otherwise, all of them would be out of phase and simply destroy each other.
So, yes. Exactly HOW does one restart a black grid. This question needs to be answered with a stepwise plan by AEMO before it happens, not after.
[I’ve tried to simplify the situation for illustrative purpose. It is actually much more complicated]
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Thanks Lance and as I thought there is just too much risk involved and years of expensive, unreliable power generation would be the end times for any country.
Australia must build only reliable, baseload energy like coal, gas or nuclear. Anything else is a waste of both time and money.
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Just a little clarification.
An electric motor, (ideal), that does no work can be considered inductive. As soon as it starts to do work, then the load is going to have a component of real power, (W) AND of course the inductive part, (VAR). If the motor is fully loaded and ideally designed, at full load it would be the same as a resistive load. In reality, there will always be a reactive component and motors aren’t run to their design capacity.
Starting a grid by parts is difficult but thanks to spinning inertia, it can be achieved in bites. It’s the spinning inertia that enables an AC grid to handle the instantaneous shorts at switch on. For this reason, it is unlikely that an inverter would ever handle a cold/black start without having a large resistor in its supply conductor that can then be switched out. I could go through the maths but most people here would be glazed over before I got to the end.
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Not just motors. The museum where I help out has a lot of plug pack and similar switchmode power supplies that power LED lighting and displays. The sudden power turn on every morning puts a lot of stress on the circuit breakers that are only rated for light industrial use.
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Yes. There is Active, Reactive, and Total/Apparent power. The cosine of the angle formed by the Active and Reactive vectors is the Power Factor, PF. A normally operating grid has a PF of 0.95 to 0.85 (18 to 31.8 degrees). As the PF goes to zero, the inductive load Reactive power goes to 100% and zero real work is accomplished. At a PF of 1.0 the real work is 100% and the reactive component is zero, mimicking a resistive load.
My intention was to simplify the general explanation without getting too deep in the weeds.
Suffice to say, only a spinning turbine/alternator set can produce/absorb Reactive power dispatchably to enable voltage stability on the transmission lines and produce the 50Hz synchronization signal necessary for the inverter based generators to connect.
Nobody in their proper mind wants to test this out at grid scale. It would be an absolute nightmare.
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A very good explanation of the complex factors associated with transmission lines. I would slightly disagree in saying that a long line is more of a multistage combination of L and C, but it still exhibits the characteristics that you have outlined. I’m in a constant battle with electricians at a local museum who don’t understand the fact that the many Museum loads are essentially inductive, and who won’t install circuit breakers with a higher magnetic trip rating. So the Museum continues to suffer circuit breaker trips in the morning power startups, and I continue to add delays to GPOs in an effort to avoid these trips.
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There are still enough essential generators to power the grid in the worst of weather conditions in Australia even mid summer with all air-cons doing their job. No large grid can be completely reliant on low inertia sources as SA found out. And it would be folly to run a weather dependent grid on just passive rotating inertia. SA always has some gas plant ticking over on line.
With heaps of batteries – say 50GW all synchronously clocked, it is possible to start and run the grid without rotating inertia but that is a while off. I believe the UK has demonstrated this at pilot level. They ramped the frequency and voltage together so the whole grid was in soft-start mode. No massive inrush to transformers and motors just gradual start up for anything still connected. Most stuff meant to run on 50 or 60Hz will have protection unless the voltage and frequency are within a safe range. Transformer inrush can be an issue for transmission assets still on line so a soft start is better for them.
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” I believe the UK has demonstrated this at pilot level. They ramped the frequency and voltage together so the whole grid was in soft-start mode.”
Exactly HOW does one “soft start” a grid loaded up with myriad inductive loads that do not have inverter drives or wye-delta closed/open transition or autotransformer starters? The generators of whatever stripe see instantaneous loads at full voltage and current and frequency and reactive power.
“soft starting” any inductive load is totally dependent on the load “having” its own soft start capability. Even then, the “soft starters” soften the inrush current for maybe a few seconds. How does this work for thousands of connected inductive loads all trying to simultaneously start?
The generators do not have “soft starting” capability. Generators supply connected load at voltage, at frequency. Period.
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A VERY good question!! Most PC have a soft-start switchmode power supply, but lots of other gear doesn’t.
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No its not. A proper soft start of any AC motor or transformer requires both frequency and voltage control. Almost all variable speed motors these days use variable voltage variable frequency speed control.
The whole grid starts at low voltage and low frequency and gradually ramps up. The same way a VFVF drive works.
I have at least 10 such motors that I have in sorts of things that I play with like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB3SZuwS40I
And this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg9-APfZ5Tw
And this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6zVozzDkRA
All use VVVF drives. Some with hall sensor and some without.
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I disagree.
Nearly all Australian Governments, state and federal WOULD want to double their efforts (or more).
Especially the anti-energy minister, Blackout Bowen.
It’s pitched at the single digit mental age of simpletons like Bowen, Albanese and the useful idiots of the anti-energy lobby.
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Again here’s the co2 emissions data for the World, the OECD and the NON OECD and I’ve added Australia and Canada as well.
Note the World’s co2 emissions have been in a fairly straight trajectory since 1945 and ditto the NON OECD since 1950. And ZIP increase per year for the OECD since 1990.
But what happens when India really kicks in and the 1500 + million Africans decide they want to build a lot more proper reliable, baseload coal generators?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=OWID_WRL~Non-OECD+%28GCP%29~OECD+%28GCP%29~AUS~CAN
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Emissions Impossible.
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– someone at the Systems Change Lab must have thought who is the dumbest politician that this report needs to be pitched at? Their research indicated Chris Bowen and Lily d’ Ambrosio (Federal and Victorian state Ministers for Climate and Energy, respectively). Hence, all the coloured graphs. It’s a wonder the report wasn’t issued with some free crayons.
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OWI Data thinks the World’s population will be about 10.2 billion by 2100 and 8.4 billion of that total will be from Asia and Africa by 2100.
China and Japan’s population will be lower than today.
OWI Data uses UN, World bank etc data
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-long-run-with-projections?country=CHN~BRA~NGA~IDN~USA~JPN~IND~OWID_WRL~OWID_ASI~OWID_EUR~OWID_AFR
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Australia’s birth rate, at 1.5 per adult female, is not that much greater than Japan’s 1.2. You need a birthdate greater than 2.1 to sustain population growth without immigration.
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Australia’s electrical energy strategy is wrong and it has cost the country most of its heavy industry. Did you know Australia is using taxpayer’s money to keep businesses owned by other countries operating in Australia.
If you want to build a 1GW power station in Queensland to run the 830MW needed for BSL now you have three choices to build it on a 10 year time horizon – gas, coal or solar. You could never count on getting nuclear done in 10 years in Australia.
The solar plant would require 8GW of favourably aligned fixed panels for winter sunlight – say AUD8bn installed. And 48GWh of batteries – say AUD10bn installed. So total power plant cost of AUD18bn. Assuming 5% loan, the total cost over a 20 year life is AUS28bn for a production of 10Mt over 20 year. Giving annual unit cost of $AUD800/t. That is not much less than the current price of aluminium AUD4200/t.
IIf you take the coal route, GPS could be replaced with 1GW efficient coal burner at cost say $5bn. It will burn 2.4Mt of coal a year at a cost of $250M. Annual loan repayment is $300M including plant maintenance so the unit cost on 0.5Mtpa is AUD1000/t. Leaves a good margin to current Aluminium price of AUD4200.
So sola/battery has to do a lot better before it can powere BSL.
With a house, stick on 10kW of panels aligned for winter for $10k and go for a 30kWh battery costing $6k to power a home using 5,000kWh a year. Loan repayment over 20 years is $1260 resulting in unit cost of 25c/kWh.
The latter is competitive with the grid. People would probably be prepared to pay a dollar a day for a reliable grid that already exists to earn a little extra from their installation.
No doubt there are a huge number of situations in Australia where battery firmed solar is an economic proposition using the existing grid. But hoping to power smelters from solar/battery is a fools errand at the present time.
This review makes some interesting observations on solar battery development.
https://climateenergyfinance.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/CEF-Solar-Panel-Manufacturing-Trend-Report-2025.pdf
Figure 1.1 is quite illuminating. It is more than a bit deceptive because it is not normalised by population or other factor representative of industrial development. Coal has been with us a lot longer than 40 years – last year 8,000TWh came from coal. But irrespective it does show the rapid uptake of solar and that wind is starting to level out. I doubt there will be any wind in another 40 years. But solar will stay on its present trajectory until there is viable fusion or cut and paste fission.
Right now australia needs to get back to sensible bidding of only dispatchable generation. No solar or wind unless it can meet its bidding capacity for 24 hours at a minimum. If you are a wind farm and you want to bid 100MW for the day then you will need to have gas and/or battery aligned to take over if the wind stops. Likewise with solar. That immediately gets back to sensible grid pricing.
The cost of rooftop solar with batteries already makes economic sense for households in Australia but it has a way to go before solar/battery can power heavy industry. Any benefit from investing in distributed rooftop solar and battery should flow into lower grid costs for heavy industry rather than spending big on the grid to bring in yo-yo generation.
The next technical step is to take what has been learnt in SA and apply it to places like Alice Springs and Broken Hill to make them firmed generators for their locations. Let’s get a working pilot program going rather than betting the whole economy and destroying it in the process.
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I haven’t as yet seen figures from you proving that the system size you are recommending will deliver power reliably for the next 20 years for an average-sized house. When I say “reliably”, I would expect over 95%, closer to 98% or better.
On the other hand, data from farm properties forced to use their own power source show a totally different story, requiring a far bigger setup that’s a lot more expensive. And most of these admit that even with their much larger setup, they still have to run the backup diesel generator occasionally.
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Graeme,
I’ll give you real life data. I’m off grid. Have been for 15 years. My system has 8kW of solar inputs and 50kWHr of battery. I haven’t started a generator in over 5 years, (not since I upped the solar from 3.5kW).
So yes, it can be done. As a bonus to the above, in winter, after a long night, I’ve drained down 10% of the battery, I could probably have used a smaller battery. I use gas for cooking, everything else, including an air fryer, microwave, kettle, toaster and A/C are all electric.
I’m in NE Vicdanistan. It can be done. Do most yourself and it’s not only cheaper it’s wayyyyy cheaper than grid.
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Ok Ian, but you haven’t said what your average daily power draw is. And you didn’t mention your water heating – if that’s electric, surely that would consume considerable power in winter, unless it’s timed. The Australian daily average is 15kWh, but I’m guessing that most “normal” Australian homes would consume a lot more than that. I know I do in the middle of summer, as I run the air con continuously during a string of hot days and nights. Your battery is larger than Rick’s, which I can understand as Rick doesn’t normally consume much power. But I still doubt that even your battery would adequately support a standard house during difficult times, such as a string of very cloudy days together with windless nights.
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Graeme,
Let’s use your numbers. Average household demand being 15kWHr. I have 8kW of solar inputs. So on a sunny day, I’ve got that demand covered in 2 hours.
In winter, with a dark day, real dark, I could expect 800W for 8 hours. So 6.4kWHr. If I get three days like that in a row, then my 50kwHr battery is down by 27kWHr, ie around half charge left.
In reality, even the darkest days have an hour or so where the gloom lifts, even the odd break of sun. My worst day ever for solar input, with 8kW of panels, has always been greater than 10kWHr. So if those worst days were to align 10 days in a row, then I’d need a generator to start. As I noted, it’s not needed.
Water heating is via a roof mounted, evacuated tube unit, very efficient and heats the water any time of year to at least 50 degrees in the tank. A gas booster kicks in as required to bring the delivered water above 60C. After two days of sun, even in winter, the tank is well into the 70s and is throttling back the input energy. If I wanted to use a reverse cycle unit, then it would be handled without too much of an issue. I could always place 2kW of dedicated panels to the that purpose if required.
Most people who visit my house would never know it was off grid. And that’s the point, why should they. We have efficient appliances, aiming for better star ratings than the trashy goods often on sale, this extra cost is worth it. 7 stars IS better than 2.
So to answer your question. Yes you can have a standard house off grid, even on cloudy days. It happens, it will happen more often and as Rick says, if you aren’t using solar then you are getting ripped off. The same goes for batteries. If you want to buy their power at peak rates, then Joe Public is a loon, why spend your money to pay their profits?
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Not everyone sticking 10kW. of panels on the roof and 30kWh of battery on the garage wall will be able to drag 15kWh for 350 days a year but they will get that or better with panels tilted favourably for winter sunlight and clear view of the Sun. My house and 5 closest neighbours all have roof space for that capacity but one is heavily shaded by council trees and I lose about 30 minus FSE each day from neighbour’s tree shading.
One good feature of steeply angled panels is that they are almost immune to hail damage. Cricket ball hailstones do not have much horizontal component and will be deflected by panels tilted more than 45 degrees rather than the much harder impact at shallow angle. So would be good practice for locations where hailstones get big.
I have seen very few systems with panels optimally aligned for lowest sunlight days but that is what is required for an on-demamd system if you want to get top value from the panels. On the flip side, a few more panels to follow the roof line might be an options.
In time, housing estates will be arranged to get vest value from the sun.
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A 30 kWh battery would only backup an “average” dwelling for 48 hours, which matches the GenCost grid backup figure. I thought most folks, apart from the CSIRO, agree that the 2-hour backup figure is insufficient to provide the required grid reliability.
There are many situations where having 24/7 reliable household power is a must. It was a medical situation in my household for a while. Surely we are entitled to expect very reliable power in our houses, and most certainly our hospitals and other emergency services require this. We should not have to run our households on a power source than doesn’t deliver reliable power.
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I agree 2-hour is way to little.
I have run an off-grid system for 13 years now. It has been on transfer for low battery voltage for less than a day a year on average. The first three years it worked without going out on low voltage.
The demand is reasonably constant but varies a little from day-to-day and seasonally. Last week is seasonal average of 2.8kWh per day. I use 3kW of panels with most at 27 degree angle – way below winter optimal. The demand ranges from 2.5 to 3kWh. I have 1kW of panels at 50 degrees that provide half the generation during winter. The battery is 5kWh. So with optimally winter aligned panels I would get 99.7% availability from the 5kWh (48 hours) and 2kW of panels if they were optimally aligned.
There is a HUGE difference getting from 95% to 99.9% in availability with solar. In Melbourne, the design criteria for 99.9% availability is 2hours of full sunshine in 48hours for sub-optimal alignment. So over the worst consecutive days, you would expect to get 20kWh. So a 10kWh shortfall over the two days is the worst case. You may not get 15kWh every day without pulling from the grid but you will not need much even on the worst consecutive days.
East coastal regions can be testing during summer with rain depressions but they are unlikely any year to impact more than 15 days.
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The AEMO reliability figure is no more than 0.002% of unserved power. This translates to 99.998%. Reliability can only be achieved by designing a system for worst case and being able to cope with that worst case. Aircraft and bridges are not designed for average operations. So if somebody expects to achieve the same reliability of 99.998% when operating off-grid, the amount of solar and battery would need to be so large as to be uneconomic.
Should we be ok with a lot less reliability? An interesting question, and I would say that the many blackouts that would occur with less reliability would generate a lot of anger.
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‘In time, housing estates will be arranged to get v(b)est value from the sun.’
We might also go back to 1960’s style skillion roofs which provide more opportunity if angled to the North.
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Never going to happen. Also skillion roofs tend to detach in severe storms. Perth has had many cases of this occurring in coastal suburbs. And I’m not sure that all panels facing north is a good idea in all locations. For example, I need max solar in the afternoons to assist with cooling on hot summer afternoons. So my western panels are really helping in that case. My eastern panels don’t help that much.
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You don’t need gas, you can do it with coal.
Maybe power it with some coal from those coal fields that are exporting millions of tonnes a year to China and Japan.
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The gap between unleaded fuel and diesel prices seems to be growing. While they cost the same to refine, the government’s decision to remove sulphur—blamed for contributing to global warming—has led to rising costs for goods and services dependent on diesel, bitumen, and similar products. At the same time, pothole-filled roads have become standard even on major freeways. Could it be that bitumen is losing its natural waterproofing? Possibly.
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Bitumen is bitumen it’s what they modify it with that changes it’s performance.
You have hot weather mixes that are good for flexible pavements in the hot areas of Oz but would be too brittle in the cold, leading to cracks. Similar for cold weather mixes, apart from they go all sticky in the heat instead.
And then there are the real modifications, plasticised, additional cementing agents, water draining/porous mixes, etc, etc, etc. The problem is often NOT the top surface it’s the pathetic base materials. You can’t seal over a puddle and expect miracles but it’s one way to save money, (on the short term).
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When a road surface starts to go over a wide area it is a sign that the under strata is also breaking down, which means you have to rip the entire thing up, down to at least 1m, and redo it.
Just patching it, or drizzling bitumen over the cracks doesn’t even start to address the problems.
Of course, leaving the pot holes open means you get even more water into the under strata and the surface will break down even faster.
40
Most road pavements are 300mm thick at most. No need to go any deeper. A tyre load spreads out at a minimum of 45 degrees within the road material. So if it’s 10cm by 10cm at the top, by 300mm down that weight is spread over 700×700. Even a 5T wheel load is trivial at that, 50kN/0.5m2 = 100kPa. Your foot delivers higher pressure under your heel as you walk. And apart from walking on soft mud or wet sand, we don’t sink too deep. And of course we don’t build roads out of wet mud and soft sand….. apart from VicRoads….
Crocodile cracks are the symptom that you are talking about, caused by shear failure of the lower strata. Most road products weaken when wet. Keep the road dry and the road will last till it is eroded away. Crack it once, in a dip/rut and the road will be RS in months.
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Vic Roads was once a global leader in flexible pavements during the glory days of the Country Roads Board, but unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. The key purpose of using bitumen is to keep the subgrade and pavement dry, but it loses effectiveness if its structure is altered to the point where its elasticity is compromised, preventing it from expanding and contracting as it should under load. Bitumen needs to expand and contract in harmony with the flexible pavement it rests on. In this country, we don’t use rigid pavements; our pavements are designed to flex with changes in climate and wheel loads.
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You’re talking about asphalt (hotmix), but I’m referring to the actual bitumen component used in cheaper sprayed hot chip seals for roads. Not all bitumens are equal. Bitumen is refined into graded forms to suit different conditions, such as colder temperatures or higher traffic volumes. Altering any core component of a natural product can change its behavior. For example, when the sulfur content in diesel was reduced, many operators faced costly repairs because the sulfur acted as a lubricant for certain injector pumps. In Australia, the bitumen commonly used for asphalt is a 320 grade or heavier, while C170, a lighter grade, is primarily used for spray seals. C170 is now often heavily modified with scrap rubber or polymers to strengthen it, mainly because the core product has been weakened.
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The dream (read: nightmare) is to avoid motorised transport within a canton – reminds me of Chinese village life in 1986 (on my way to Tibet) where everything had a 1950s feel to it.
Today they are living in the future while the Great Southern Quarry, ie. Australia, is being ‘nudged’ to leap BACKWARDS 70 years to the 1950s … blissful rural idyll or Mad Max Returns? Interesting times…
130
“No one is going to look at forty graphs of failure and think “we have to double our efforts”.”…except for our numpty Energy minister Chris “bonehead” Bowen.
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“Climate Action”
Who comes up with these terms?
How will we know when Black Lives Matter?
How will we know when we’ve stopped Climate Change?
Here in America colored people have apparently only advanced to becoming People of Color.
“One nation under God” is now Christian Nationalism.
Once the pledge to a Republic now constantly labeled ‘a Democracy’.
I miss that that short period of history when intellectuals at least tried to come up with language the illuminated rather than obscured and deceived.
‘Hey buddy, know anywhere in this town where a guy might find some Climate Action?
No wait, I meant the Cis Heteronormative kind.
Oh well, thanks anyway.’
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How many make a written “S” that looks like the curve of which they speak?
A sigmoid function is any mathematical function whose graph has a characteristic S-shaped or sigmoid curve. The term “sigmoid” comes from the Ancient Greek word σιγμοειδής (sīgmoeidḗs), meaning “shaped like sigma,” which refers to the Greek letter sigma (σ).
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“For some inexplicable reason the share of wind and solar power is a key outcome in and of itself”
Indeed, as is “climate finance”. Very telling, that… because it’s never been about science or reason, has it?
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