National Archives at College Park – Archives II (College Park, MD) 1979
By Jo Nova
The ferocious demand for gas power to feed US Datacenters has triggered a global shortage
Such is the cashed up desire for gas turbines in the US, that all around the world other people are struggling to get gas turbines. Manufacturers have ramped up production, but waiting times have blown out to more than five years. In sheer desperation, companies are converting jet engines into small gas turbines.
Wow – this graph from the latest IEA report
The demand for gas power in “US captive data centers” is so large it is bigger than the investment in gas power in any other country except for the investment in grid connected datacentres, also in the USA.
Anyone who thinks they can just add a gas turbine here and there to patch up a gap in their renewable transition could be in for a nasty surprise.
“It only takes 30 -45 days to convert a Boeing 737 Jet Engine….”
Soaring Electricity Demand Meets Gas Turbine Shortage
By Irene Slav, OilPrice
Turbine makers like Siemens, GE Vernova, and Mitsubishi are ramping up production, but expansion projects could take up to 5 years.
Yet all these plans take time to materialize, and industrial electricity consumers need it now, so they are converting jet engines to gas turbines. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the conversion of jet engine turbines to power generation turbines was a growing business enjoying a lot of investor interest. One such converting company, FTAI Aviation, had seen its shares gain 42% since it announced this new business, which takes just 30-45 days to convert a Boeing 737 jet engine into a power generation gas turbine.
However aircraft jet engines are much smaller than the full capacity of a proper gas power turbine. A 737 engine is only about 25MW, compared to a proper gas power plant which might be 400MW or 600MW. They are really just large emergency generators. Still if Australians get poor enough from the renewable transition and crazy tax laws, soon we’ll have plenty of spare jets to convert to tiny power stations, right? The riff raff won’t be flying…
If only Australia had fully functional old coal plants they could restart like France, Germany and the US did, we could have sold the cheap power to desperate data center operators instead of being a technology backwater. Instead we blow them up, and throw a party to celebrate.
REFERENCE
IEA World Energy Investment 2026 PDF https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/4fda38df-523c-46f5-ae75-49481abdc8fc/WorldEnergyInvestment2026.pdf
So again the Greens have led us blindly into the fun of the Law of Unintended Consequences. They constantly assume everything will remain as it is today (while they endlessly harp about yesterdays). All the damned fools need to do is lift their heads and see that things change, really, really fast. “Not when they’re completely locked up with admin, tax and censorship they don’t,” those bastards seem to think.
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Unintended?
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The plan is coming along nicely.
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AI power demand won’t hit us here. With the highest ratio of public servants to population in the world, 9 out of 10 new jobs in Victoria being government jobs, we have enough people doing nothing to cope with the lack of electrical power.
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But the demand for wages without any output is going to make inflation rocket. Meanwhile it’s another 6 years to find out if Snowy II will ever be finished, having exceed the time and cost for the English chunnel project and uncertain if it will ever work. It will however be the world’s biggest failed project and a testament to the power of Australian Prime Ministers to launch billion dollar projects without any price benefit argument or even justification. Still Malcolm Turnbull’s gift of $444 million to his wife does appear to have fixed the Great Barrier Reef. How’s Albanese’s Quantum Computing investment going?
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It is not fair for Australia to claim all the big boondoggles.
Snowy Hydro II = AUD 42 billion
California’s high-speed rail project is around $106 billion
An oldie but goodie:
Boston’s Big Dig, officially known as the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, [originally projected to cost $2.8 billion] is estimated to be $24.3 billion, (not adjusted for inflation) construction from 1991 to 2007.
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Per capita, Australia’s boondoggles are far worse.
Plus you now have a patriotic leader who cares.
We have a lifelong communist as “leader” who does nothing but destroy.
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Especially California and their High Speed Rail. California is huge. It is the largest state in population with a GDP larger than Japan and just less than Germany. Greater LA alone at 13million population, half Australia, is bigger than 45 US states. So they can waste fortunes. And the Democrat governments do, ably supported by Hollywood and Big Tech. Up to now.
But their big industries of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Aircraft are fleeing utter Democratic madness. AI, taxes, Woke, Uncontrolled migration, reverse racism and profligate waste are killing the place. Billionaires are fleeing, chased away. Like all Blue Democrat states. Karn Bass is a total disgrace and the Palisades fires a National disgrace. The winds never passed 42mph. It was all laziness and incompetence from the top down. No one checked for water in the hydrants. No fire trucks. It is still a wasteland. And Bass was in Ghana on her 13th trip overseas having vowed not to leave the State. They just don’t care.
The shining light is the LA Mayoral election this week. Fearless Spencer Pratt is doing so well and using AI to make a laughing stock of Newscum, Pelosi, Bass, Harris. even with the press solidly against him. His endless AI on the internet is better than Hollywood can do for the Demonrats. The tide is turning strongly. We will know by Thursday/Friday.
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But our useless project was supposed to be $2.5Bn and 2 years. That’s 20:1 on costs plus which means we pay forever. And it now faces a potentially impossible final stage. A gigantic hole in a National Park. Another Green project.
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AI power demand won’t hit us here.
It will if we want to buy a gas turbine.
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In fact all those don’t work from home people will be the biggest users! AI will read and summarise incoming emails. And write all their reports. The afternoons for gardening.
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Looks like that was a bit close to home.
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A large Hamster Wheel comes to mind.
And how is that Gas Fired Power Station in the Hunter here going? Got going yet?
Emissions Impossible……………
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But think how much harder the government could make for the private sector if they use AI to help them do nothing.
The best governments can achieve is efficient re-allocation. Most of what they do is hindrance. It is easier to stop something than build something of value.
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The role of the Australian Public Service is to hide the true number of unemployed. In the 80s I recall how it took 20 NSW government railway workers on a Sunday to maintain a level crossing on our road. ARTC took over and the same job was done by two men, a ute and a Hiab.
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And I’ll bet the wait time for steam turbines is similar.
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When is the Australian Government going to work out that you can’t run data centres, aluminium smelters, steel production, mining, agriculture or just about any other essential of industrial Civilisation on wind, solar and Unicorn flatulence?
And yet the Government/Left is fanatically committed to this insanity and have already destroyed the economy to prove it.
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WE have been asking this question for decades and the answer is still the same, they never will. Until the current crop of incompetents, both politicians and bureaucrats, are removed we are stuck with idiotic and illogical decisions and policies. Should the three right wing parties work as a team to defeat Labor they need to remove the top tiers of the public service as well. Pauline says even if she had to pay out contracts she would stop transmission lines and renewable projects. She could also pay out the heads of departments and senior bureaucrats.
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The companies in the USA could make things easier for the rest of the world if they started building coal plants again (ditto for Australia). American coal production has declined 50% since 2008 at the same time that LNG production has absolutely skyrocketed. Imagine the ‘energy dominance’ America could achieve if it tapped the world’s largest reserves of coal with the same kind of exuberance that it taps natural gas? Sell the most lucrative stuff on the global market and keep the stuff that doesn’t demand a premium price to maintain low energy prices at home (which attracts more industry and jobs as well as keeping consumer prices low).
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If the Americans get a whiff of a profitable market they will be in it in a flash. So the American coal producers are already sniffing for that whiff. Actually, I think it must be a pretty strong whiff by now, more like a pong – coal price is up about 40% this year.
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It’s staggering to think that Australia’s major energy decisions are being made by two remarkably stupid and unqualified anti-scientific people, the simpletons PM Albo and Chrissie “Blackout” Bowen.
https://www.pm.gov.au/media/stronger-action-climate-change
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They have an overwhelming parliamentary majority and can do what they please without any accountability. And will retire on huge indexed pensions with permanent staff and offices. Their view is that we’re stupid.
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And they are importing millions of loyal Labor voters, even if they are also people who have no intention of becoming part of Australia. Integration is a dirty word.
Plus employing millions more. 2 million in the State governments alone. 400,000 in Canberra. 200,000 in local councils. All of whom will vote to keep the money and government jobs flowing.
And it’s working beautifully, with the odd problem at say Bondi. Bombing of tobacco shops.
With real estate prices plummeting, soon we will all be equally poor with no electricity. But most will expect to be paid cash for sunshine where the big players expect to be paid when the wind blows.
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Australia has a little way to go before total grid collapse.
Don’t forget, deindustrialisation is not yet complete.
We still have a 2700MW average power draw from the following aluminium smelters. This is about 10% to 12% of the entire National Electricity Market (NEM) load.
Tomago (NSW): ~950 MW
Boyne Island (QLD): ~700 MW
Portland (VIC): ~700 MW
Bell Bay (TAS): ~350 MW
Tomago gets payments to allow it to be load shed at any time.
These smelters are mostly no longer economically viable even with massive taxpayer subsidies so I expect they will close within the next few years.
This will liberate 2700MW. Assuming no more power stations are blown up, we will keep the lights on a little longer. Unfortunately. The sooner grid collapse happens the sooner people will wake up
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And our pop. clock ticked over to 28 million this morning – the stream of voters continues unabated. We don’t have a supply problem, it’s a DEMAND problem.
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Australia is a front runner competing with some European countries to become the next Zimbabwe, South Africa, Venezuela…
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Overwhelming majority House of Representatives and achieved mainly with preference votes distribution, Labor 2025 primary vote under 35% and their second lowest result according to the ALP Election Report since 1934 which was the 2022 election result for Labor. To remove Albanese Labor from government in 2028, if they do not decide to call an earlier election, will require the full cooperation of the conservative side parties who based on present numbers of elected House of Representatives MPs need to support the Coalition of Liberal, National and in Queensland LNP.
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… sigh …
First the Libs need to purge the wets in that party.
Since that won’t happen, the ON electoral cattle prod will be constantly applied. The Libs as they are now simply cannot be trusted.
The 2028 Federal election (or earlier if Elbow sees advantage there) will reduce the ALP majority but not overcome it. The appalling Bondi massacre moved the needle, sure, but not sufficiently, and as we see and expected the RC has become just a hard squabble between our various police and security forces. So ON is the only other robust force around to change things.
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NSW State Executive was charged a while ago and more recently VIC State Executive … Liberal president Brian Loughnane and Victorian leader Jess Wilson.
Brian is the husband of Peta Credlin who was PM Abbott’s Chief of Staff.
And now Abbott is National President and Vice President former Howard Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer.
PM Turnbull leader of the left faction was replaced in 2018 and soon resigned and left the House of Representatives.
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And still they can’t exit Paris.
More cattle prod needed.
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That comment is way behind the conversation and comments posted with links revealing Paris and Glasgow signed or unsigned are unenforceable.
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“. . unenforceable ” . So is “Net Zero”.
Yet governments and media seem to take it serious. Libs, LNP, can quietly slip back to 80% now they’ve abandoned net zero. The Paris accord is a piece of paper with things written on it. It comes up in the fine print of much departmental aspirations. They “aim to emit less carbon in accordance with the Paris accord”.
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How Are Countries Held Accountable – link previously posted here
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-are-countries-held-accountable-under-paris-agreement
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“How Are Countries Held Accountable”
Activists in media ? Not relevant anyway.
But I agree it has no physical teath. If it is so useless why so difficult to escape? It provides a prop to encourage just a bit more “carbon reduction”.
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Try explaining to renewables believers that the AEMO has stated that we need permanent 40% gas backup. Watch their faces as they try and comprehend the contradiction. Morons.
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A 40% gas backup doesn’t match Labor’s requirement for only 18% fossil fuels by 2030.
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Politicians are the ones who dropped out of science because they couldn’t handle maths and logic and went into law and economics. You cannot expect them to be numerate and logical, let alone at the same time.
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they couldn’t handle maths and logic and went into law and economics.
Am I being overly optimistic when I speculate that inconsistencies in logic would produce laws (and other government regulations) which are contradictory?
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And illegal.
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A 40% gas backup doesn’t match Labor’s requirement for only 18% fossil fuels by 2030.
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Many have forgotten that the Morrison Coalition Government 2019-2022 proposed four gas turbine generators be installed, one each Queensland and Victoria and two for New South Wales. As far as I am aware only one has been built or is under construction and that is owned by Snowy Hydro Limited company located at Kurri Kurri New South Wales and it is the plant Minister Bowen disagreed with the SMH CEO about when he tried to explain the plant could not be fuelled with “green” hydrogen, and later “resigned”.
Morrison also proposed a new coal fired power station to be built in Queensland and with Federal Government underwriting the finance, and the Labor Government of Queensland were not interested. Since the LNP Government replaced Labor the state owned coal fired power stations closure schedules have been cancelled.
The later Dutton Plan was not only about five nuclear power stations and two plant, the plan followed Morrison Government’s plan for using more fossil fuels including for power stations, Angus Taylor Minister for Energy and earlier Matt Canavan Minister for Energy.
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How many working nuclear power plants would we have instead of Snowy II? These would generate actual on demand wind and sun independent power. Snowy II will destroy 40% of the power it is given.
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And of course nuclear power has zero emissions! (Ha!)
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Not supporting the Snowy 2.0 Project decision however recently I posted a link to Snowy Mountains Hydro Limited company, now wholly owned by the Federal Government but in 2016 it there were State Government shareholders and involved in the 2.0 Project decision, partly funded by government and SMH Ltd finance arranged directly, SMH being a publicly owned asset but required to pay dividends to the shareholder. Project 2.0 is added to the original hydro electric scheme and existing power stations and will use the same water supply dams.
There is a future Project 3.0 and 4.0 according to the very detailed information at the link I posted here recently.
I am often surprised to read comments (not necessarily here) making statements like Turnbull decision ignoring the states involvement at the time and that SMH had submitted a detailed planning and costing application for capital expenditure approval including funding plan.
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So wasting $42Billion is fine is you are Liberal? And other politicians agree? How do you think this is going to pay for itself? It loses 50% of what is stored, 40% in just pumping uphill. More in transmission.
It’s an absurd fantasy to make random wind power realistic. And night time solar. This huge waste does nothing for the real sources of power in this country. But as long as it has detailed planning and costing. Love to see it. $2.5Billion now $42Billion? At what point does anyone think of stopping? If it made sense at $2.5Billion, how does another $40Billion make sense, based on the alleged costing?
This is the same Liberal PM who gave $444 million in cash without application to his wife just as he lost his job. Officially to ‘save’ the great barrier reef. There was no costing. Not even an application. A week later the six person office said they still had no idea what to do with the money, but the cost of administering it would be $135Million. No one has heard what happened to this cash. But you can be sure the public servants have manufactured an explanation and paperwork by now for what was the biggest blatant cash robbery in Australian history. And no one notices the other $42Billion for what exactly?
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Add on the $370 million plus that ministers Taylor and Canavan squandered on green hydrogen from 2019 onwards. Albo and co were more than happy to continue flogging that dead horse once they got into power.
https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/taylor/media-releases/australia-be-world-leader-hydrogen
Uniparty uselessness. See if the ministers who implemented the now deceased green hydrogen initiative have learned their lesson and endorse energy projects that will actually work.
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Slight correction Jo, just a typo I’m sure. As aircraft engines they burn aviation kerosene, Jet A or Jet A-1.
However jet engines are omnivorous so can burn just about any liquid or gaseous hydrocarbon but kerosene is preferred for aviation because of its low temperature tolerance and other attributes.
In industrial turbine conversions jet engines burn diesel or natural gas and fuel nozzles are optimised for these fuels with multi-fuel combustion systems. This allows them to atomise thicker liquids like diesel or switch to natural gas on the fly.
[Fair point. Thanks! I took out the “diesel” — Jo]
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Australia will just build its own.
Let’s see. We take all those engineers trained in windmills and retrain them to build gas turbines. We retrain a few lawyers in metallurgy to build high tech factories to make the turbine components.
If Australia started now, the county could be building state-of-art gas turbines within 20 years.
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I think they can get there a lot sooner than that: buy or borrow a 2nd hand nuclear sub for Aukus: hook it up to the grid. Done. I reckon that with a bit of luck they could get it down to 19 years. What year did China say they would take over?
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Australia is getting three second hand submarines. The electrical output of each is likely under 100MWe. So all three would get close to a mid size CCGT.
India is presently building the most powerful submarines with rating of 200MWe.
The datacentres in the USA are sized up to 2GW.
The proposed Hazelwood data centre has nominated demand of 720MW so its location near a power station site makes sense. They claim it will be powered by “renewables” but it will not get built unless it uses low cost coal fired power.
Low cost electricity is the essential ingredient in AI productivity potential. Expensive power means it does not improve overall productivity.
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We retrain a few lawyers in metallurgy to build high tech factories to make the turbine components.
I think you are being overly optimistic…..
Remember some things are easier than others, and some very much not.
though I am sure that some tax lawyers could design some very creative finance options for those plants.
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If only Australia had a fully functional government, it could be like France, Germany, and the US and have cheap power for desperately needed data centre operators instead of being a technology backwater. Ordinary citizens would benefit too, but they are the least of the politicians’ concerns.
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Or like India. They don’t show a big demand for gas on the graph above because they moved to invest in coal power almost 2 years ago, mandating power companies to purchase $33 billion worth of equipment to build coal powered plants. Cheaper than Snowy 2.0 and it will actually deliver energy.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/power/india-asks-utilities-to-order-33-billion-in-equipment-this-year-to-boost-coal-power-output/articleshow/111456136.cms
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I don’t mind Australia demolishing its old coal plants, it’s the”not” replacing them with new plants that annoys me.
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Ross you’re correct, but we shouldn’t close any more coal plants until they’re replaced with new coal plants and PHON and the Coalition parties should now be selling this to the Aussie voters.
Anyway how can the Labor loonies continue to build toxic, unreliable W & S without gas turbines as back up support?
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And you need to supply enough Gas. In OZ it’s kept in the ground. Yes, that will work………./sarc
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Victoriastan, Australia has the embarrassing globally unique distinction of being the only place on the planet where fracking is banned in the Constitution.
The Liberals colluded with Labor to pass the Constitution Amendment (Fracking Ban) Act 2021.
Tell me again about how Liberals are pro-energy Dennis.
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Meanwhile, here in Western Australia, our dopey state Labor government has our grid operators burning precious gas for baseload power generation while the two state owned (tax payer owned) coal plants sit idle or turned off for intermittent periods. I surmise this is purely due to climate ideology.
We could be selling the gas to use over east.
The percentage mix has changed in the last 6 or so months from roughly even 30% each Gas & Coal, to 40+% Gas and 20% Coal. They are accelerating wear on the gas units (which as Jo states, replacement units, spares parts and expertise are in short supply and long wait times) while also simultaneously accelerating wear on the Coal units buy ramping them up /down and cycling off/on. Idiocy personified.
https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/wholesale-electricity-market-wem/data-wem/data-dashboard
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I don’t have any problem with the WA SWIS grid being mainly gas powered, as WA has a plentiful supply of relatively cheap gas and mostly uses efficient CCGT turbines. Also most of the WA northern power generation is gas-powered, around 2.5GW, not that small, with a number of privately-owned power stations, some as large as 500MW. WA has to import most of its coal for power station use, and its coal power stations are not that efficient.
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Graeme4, your comment that we import coal into WA is completely incorrect, it was a once off situation for a short time in 2023. Also, not sure how you quantify that WA coal power stations are not that efficient? What’s you source or qualifications on this? None I assume, just a throw away disparaging comment?
How many coal fired plants are there in WA and what capacities and ages are they Graeme? Do you even know?
The use of Gas units in the north where the gas is located makes sense, it’s also irrelevant to the SWIS system where it doesn’t make sense to have state owned assets sitting idle or being used extremely inefficiently due to a stupid, false ideology having captured those in charge of power generation infrastructure.
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Ross I don’t understand your concerns, the Liddell site is going to used as an “Energy hub”, problem solved. Of course Bowen and Albo never mention that these energy hubs are nett consumers of electricity, they generate nothing but it certainly sounds good on a 30 second sound bite on the 6 o’clock news.
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The problem is, Big Wind Bowen thinks you can walk behind a unicorn, lift its tail and plug in your EV to charge it…
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Matt Canavan has been telling us for years that we must not close any more coal powered stations, but so far no comment from our clueless labor govt and the B O Bowen loony.
Liddell should’ve been updated ASAP but alas the clueless Labor morons wanted to blow it up. What were they thinking? But then again most Labor, Greens and Teals don’t think anymore but would rather BELIEVE in their toxic, unreliable W & S lunacy.
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Mike Canon Brookes, a climate warrior, owns 11% of AGL. AGL acquired Liddell PS as part of its purchase of Macquarie Generation from the government of NSW. MCB also loves renewables and figures that he can make more from renewable subsidies than generating cheap electricity. Solution: shut Liddell which AGL bought for $1 and force AEMO to purchase dearer electricity from his renewable investments. This is what happens when markets are manipulated to favour one source over another.
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“If only Australia had fully functional old coal plants they could restart like France, Germany and the US did.”
Ha, they are just now celebrating the downing of the smokestacks and cooling towers of the latest coalfired station to be decommissioned, Liddell, claimed to be old and ‘unreliable’, a retube and refit and it would be good for another 25 years.
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The South Australian State Government quietly had installed gas turbine generators at the former General Motors Holden factories in the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth after the first major blackouts occurred not long after coal fired power stations there had been shut down and demolished as so called renewables focus took hold.
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The 1480MW Yallourn Power Station is the next one to be destroyed under Australia’s very own Nerobefehl, the Nero Decree, the National Socialist plan to destroy all their own infrastructure to punish the German People for losing the war.
Scheduled for 2028.
I wonder if they’ll bring that forward?
The next Federal Election is May 2028. International Socialist Albo will certainly want it gone by then in case a conservative Government (One Nation) is elected who will want to keep it.
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David, correction, Yallourn may be the next one for the Eastern grid but the next to be closed and later demolished in Australia is Collie A 340MW station in the WA SWIS grid, set for closure in October 2027.
Built in the mid 90’s and commissioned in mid 1999 it’s only 27 years young and reportedly the best condition / best quality built plant of WA’s three coal fired stations. It’s also the largest single turbine unit in the state which is to it’s detriment of being less flexible to follow the wind /solar output dominated grid demand.
https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/facility/au/WEM/COLLIE/?range=7d&interval=30m Note: website says 300MW but it is 340 gross/ 318 net to transmission.
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The use of converted jet engines for electricity generation is obviously not a new thing. I can remember lots of discussion about them in other blogs, social media at least 10 years ago. There were comments during those discussions that mentioned they have a nasty habit of blowing up with quite catastrophic results. So, not the sort of plant you would establish in a residential suburb.
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A good enough reason to build them next to those ignorant “Pollies” from Albo all the way down.
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Also OCGT systems are not very efficient- around 30%. Ok for backup and occasional use, but not for long-term supply of cheap power.
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More like 35-36% actually, which is not very different to a coal plant, …..and when you consider that gereration costs are only a minor part of our electricity bill, it should not be a big cost factor.
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Noted, but CCGT systems are much more efficient at around 60%.
I note that China has obtained 46% efficiency from one of its newest coal power stations.
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Using aircraft engines is well and good but they need to be matched to a generator or alternator. Are there surplus generators or are they also in short supply?
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Here’s the latest global count of coal power plants up to July 2025.
About 2500 in total and China is about 1195, India 290, USA 195 and Australia 18.
But I’m sure that Aussie count is lower today. And many more will be built around the world in the next few years.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/
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Of course Nuclear power is the densest energy source and below is the comparison between, wood, oil, coal and nuclear, to generate 11 MWh of electricity.
Wood 2.5 tons.
Oil 7.5 barrels.
Coal 1.5 tons
Nuclear 100 grams.
“As you can see, nuclear energy is by far more efficient. This is because just a small amount of uranium can generate as much power as large quantities of fossil fuels or wood. Here’s the breakdown:
Wood: You need about 2.5 tons of wood to generate 11 MWh of electricity. This hefty amount shows how low wood’s energy density is compared to other fuel sources.
Oil: It takes 7.4 barrels of oil to produce the same 11 MWh. While oil is more energy-dense than wood, it still requires a significant amount to reach this energy target.
Coal: Producing 11 MWh takes about 1.5 tons of coal. This makes coal more efficient than wood and oil in terms of energy density.
Uranium: Amazingly, just 100 grams of uranium can generate 11 MWh. This emphasizes the incredible energy density of nuclear fuel compared to traditional fossil fuels or biomass”.
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But wood literally grows on trees and costs money to get it carted away. Far smarter to burn it and get its heat value.
The 2019-2020 bush fires burnt enough wood fuel to fuel the entire economy for two years.
If you don’t use it you eventually lose it and it makes an expensive mess when it occurs uncontrolled.
Finland is one of the few countries that puts its wood resources to good use.
https://saf.org.ua/en/library/923/
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@RickWill: A problem with wood as fuel in an electrical facility is that it is costly to transport from an ever increasing distance.
Note: “333 transportable heating plants” Actually Combined Heat and Power (CHP) {I want to see one of those.}
I wish there was that possibility near me. The woody-fuel accumulation in my neighborhood is outstanding. Nature is responding, that is — plants are, to the extra CO2 and “suppress all fires” combination.
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Amazingly, just 100 grams of uranium can generate 11 MWh.
That number is presumably calculated from extracted fuel rods where most of the mass is unreacted U238.
More amazingly yet, in purely thermal energy terms, it would require the complete fission of only ~0.5 g of U235 to release 11MWh of energy. So, something like 1.5g in a nuclear-steam power plant sending out 11MWh.
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@ Neville: 7.5 barrels of oil will weigh about 2,000 pounds.
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…??
GE , Fuji and others have been produceing aero turbine derived gererators for many years.
GE alone has over 2000 , 37 MW , dual fuel , (Gas/diesel) mobile units in service.
This is not a new tecnology.
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On Fire! US hunger for gas power so large, wait time for turbines blows out to 5+ years
Good job too.
Some (rough as guts) facts:
Running flat chat, a grid-scale 400MW oc gas turbine generator sucks in gas at around 4000GJ/h (about 100k m3/hr). In technical terms, fkn heaps.
If you build a grid which depends on gas generation at night, when the wind isn’t blowing, and the batteries are flat – you are at the mercy of supply pipeline capacity and the physical issues of transporting gas molecules thousands of kilometres from where it’s produced.
Pipelines are volumetrically huge. But for stability they need to be kept filled all the time to a local minimum operating pressure. In NSW, for example, the regulated pressure at the Jemena distribution network (from which NSW gas turbine generators draw their supply) is between 3.8 and 5MPa – so the gas volume available to withdraw at any time is a fraction of the total line pack.
Gas travels relatively slowly through the pipeline system from field to customer – as an example Queensland CSG molecules take a couple of days to arrive in NSW. So, refilling a local section, such as Jemina, to maintain a safe operating pressure happens much slower than the rate at which a fleet of gas turbines can pull gas out.
There comes a point where you can’t build out any more gas generation within the physical constraints of a stable gas supply system. In NSW, again for example, possibly another 3 big units will top off supply capacity when they all run together.
And unfortunately gas reservation policies don’t really help with pesky physics, infrastructure, and engineering supply limitations at high-demand margins.
Yet, here we are with both Labor and the Liberals relying on gas generation unicorns to prop up the renewable grid.
So, hooray for US data centres dropping grit in the Arts/Law planning wheels. Maybe someone will notice.
(Caution: aero-derivative gas turbine generators have been in widespread use for decades. They have their own advantages and are not an emerging response to jammed supply chains of the big units.)
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You mean, like the Perth SWIS grid that has to deliver up to 5GW on very hot windless nights, along with another 2.5GW from the northern grids that, since they mostly power industrial 24/7 sites, have to continually supply that 2.5GW? All these grids seem to run quite well on mostly gas power, with a bit of help from coal power.
And some of this gas is transported over two thousand kilometres, right down to Esperance on the south-eastern coast.
Sorry, the gas reservation policy really does work in WA.
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Graeme 4 , you’re pretty good at throwing out misleading statements and ignoring facts in other peoples comments. Dr Faustus is making the point that there is such a thing as pipeline capacity restriction.
If i recall correctly from recent commentary & reports, the WA grid is at that point now with the South west pipeline, where our politicians have proposed new gas turbines in the SWIS but the pipeline is basically at its capacity with the existing gas generators.
Also, this comment is misleading.
For the past 4 or so years the WA SWIS has been fairly even contributions of a third each of coal, gas and combined wind /solar. To say our grid runs mostly on gas “with a bit of help from coal” is BS. Around the 2014-2016 age it was 55% coal, 35% gas and the rest renewables, changing to a third split and as I said in comment #11.1.1.2 only recently more gas than coal. When the gas units suffer accelerated wear and require repairs with long lead times for replacements , spares, and expertise your high paise for gas power may be short lived.
https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/wem/?range=all&interval=1M&view=discrete-time&group=Coal%2FGas%2FRenewables
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Hallelulijah sister! But how long before Chris Bowen sees the light and becomes a convert?
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How long to convert Bowen to a logical and knowledgeable energy minister? Light years.
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It’s funny how the climate hoax is diminishing as companies realise they need data centres. I’m sure most on this blog and even the general public must be also noticing this, but I think that process will be much slower in Australia.
In fact, the most recent US protest movement appears to be those opposed to the construction of these behemoths. Notice how the Greens who oppose anything to do with fossil fuel exploration, are now suddenly stumpf. Labor couldn’t care less, there’s CFMEU jobs in constructing these sites.
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Diminishing but still not vanished, at the moment many in the climate hoax hold contradictory views of climate zealotry and pro data centre technocracy, not that it is unusual for leftists to hold contradictory views, their most common trait is hypocrisy.
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A report on the economy says it would be stalled if it wasn’t for all the fast tracked data centre building going on.
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