By Jo Nova
This is the feasibility study for the whole country that the government could have done…
Instead of doing reckless experiments with our national grid, we could have done a practice run and transitioned one small town to see if it worked. If renewables were going to be successful anywhere, it would be in a place like Coober Pedy. After all, these small desert communities have wide open spaces, lots of sun, and new renewables only have to compete with expensive diesel generators, not cheap coal.
Fans of renewables were partying last week because one small town had managed to run for “nearly five days” on renewables. Nearly five!?
You might think this was a new set up, but this is a system that was built in 2017. Basically, the people of Coober Pedy have been waiting for nine long years to get this lucky with the weather.
And the previous record they set with this equipment was in 2019!
New record, as iconic mining town runs on 100 pct wind and solar for nearly five days straight
By Sophie Vorrath, Reneweconomy
In a LinkedIn update on Tuesday, EDL said its Coober Pedy Hybrid Renewable Power Station recently clocked 116 hours of continuous diesel-free operations. “That’s almost five straight days of energy for the iconic Australian mining town, all generated exclusively by wind, solar and battery power,” the post says.
The previous record for the longest continuous period operating on 100 per cent renewables was 97 hours in December 2019.
It’s been a long time between drinks, so to speak.
And the big question is “How much did that cost”?
This is a town in the South Australian desert with a population of about 1,600 people. They tried to build a big solar system in 2009 for $7 million but it didn’t get off the ground. Then in 2014 they tried again, but this ended up costing about $40 million in capital costs, and the total project ballooned out into $192 million dollar power purchase bonanza over the next twenty years.
It was so bad, The State opposition called for an inquiry, and an independent report estimated that if they had just got another quote, they could have saved $85m (off the $192m bill) over the course of the 20 years operation.
Or they could have given every man, woman and child $120,000 to buy their own generators…
And how much did it save over 20 years?
Wait til you hear:
A DSD spokesperson said the project was forecast to save the Government $5.4 million against diesel generation costs over a 20-year-period.
So the State Government spent about $100m in subsidies that it didn’t need to spend in order to save $5m in fuel costs spread over the next two decades. But the good news is: we know our national renewables grid isn’t worth doing. The bad news: we’ve already wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and we didn’t need to.
How long, exactly, would Australia last without diesel??
Coober Pedy. | Photo by qwesy qwesy
See other microgrid “feasibility studies” here — like Flinders Island, Alice Springs, and Onslow.
h/t to Helen D and Jim S.
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MORE INFORMATION
The Coober Pedy hybrid system has a capacity of 9.25MW of which 1 MW is solar, 4MW is wind, and 4.15MW is diesel power.
Other information is available at the Coober Pedy EDL including a live generation report. (Where solar power appeared to be contributing 0.3KW at from 3am to 4.30am in SA).
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