Who’s afraid of a cascading blackout?
Last year investment in unreliable and asynchronous generators doubled in Australia thanks to government decree. For some reason, adding another few gigawatts of iffy capricious infrastructure to a 50GW finely-tuned-system appears to put the whole national grid in a near constant state of emergency. The AEMO (our market operator) had to intervene in the South Australian market eight times in 2016/17, but last year they had to do it 101 times.
This warning comes from the Australian Energy Market Commission (AMEC) which makes the rules for the national grid. Why are they baring the dirty renewables laundry? Because the answer to the crisis is always bigger government and this is a reason to call for it.
Renewables stress the grid
Perry Williams, The Australian
Australia’s electricity grid is relying on emergency safety nets to keep the lights on, …
The deterioration of the strength of the electricity network — most pronounced in South Australia — is also spreading to southwest NSW, northwest Victoria and north Queensland, adding to wholesale costs incurred by users.
SA’s electricity system is increasingly operating under the direct intervention of the grid operator, with last-ditch interventions reserved for emergencies becoming a default way of managing the network,…
“Systems with lots of non-synchronous generation like wind and solar are weaker and harder to control — raising the risk of cascading blackouts. Unprecedented in their breadth and scope, these trends put extraordinary pressure on the security and reliability of our power grid.” Investment in large-scale renewable energy doubled in 2018 to $20 billion, with one in five Australians now owning rooftop solar and electricity generated by clean energy accounting for 21 per cent of the overall power mix, Clean Energy Council data will show today.
That trend is also pressuring wholesale market prices, with the cost of keeping the system stable soaring to $270 million as of September 2018, while the cost of maintaining frequency control surged nearly tenfold to $220m in 2018 from $25m in 2012.
Spot the trend in Frequency Control payments. The weekly bills used to be $400,000. Now it’s $5 million.
Frequency control has gone up ten-fold in cost since 2012. Data AER.
Lo and verily, the solution to a problem the government created is to add more government…
Stop-gap measures propping up power grid
Angela Macdonald-Smith, AFR
Australia’s power grid is only coping with the rapid influx of intermittent wind and solar power with the help of costly daily intervention by the energy market operator to keep the lights on, an assessment of the electricity system has found, ramping up pressure for a long-term federal framework that integrates climate and energy policy.
AMEC could have pointed out the costs of trying to turn our national grid into a weather-changing-machine. Instead they are changing the rules and adding synchronous condensers, giant spinning discs to create some artificial stability.
“After AEMO declared a problem in South Australia that state’s network provider organized to install synchronous condensers which are due to be commissioned in 2020,” Mrs Pearson said. When that happens the need for very frequent directions to maintain system strength in South Australia will hopefully come to an end. It is a timing and technology issue. First AEMO declares a shortfall, then networks decide the best local solutions for them and start putting them in place.” — AMEC press release
Just let the free market back and renewables wouldn’t be a problem…
Press release AMEC
“After AEMO declared a problem in South Australia that state’s network provider organized to install synchronous condensers which are due to be commissioned in 2020”
My first thought on reading this was how much energy will be lost keeping these synchronous condensers running?
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They are pretty efficient, but the capital cost is non trivial. More unnecessary network costs to fortify Solar and wind power that doesn’t save any CO2.
Why? This stuff doesn’t work, it doesn’t reduce CO2 over the lifestyle.
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“They are pretty efficient”
True, but still they are wasting energy that would not be wasted if there were no “renewables” on the grid. And as you point out, they are adding cost to running the grid that would not be spent if there were no “renewables” on the grid.
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Not only that they add significant embodied CO2 emission. (What I call CO2 debt). The need for this junk just negates any CO2 savings. Not that there are any savings from grid scale wind and solar.
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Ric
Seemms to me that, having pushed us out on the renewables limb and found that it is bending, instead of retreating back down the limb the solution is supposed to come from pushing us further out on it.
Good luck with that!
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Rather like sitting on the branch you are cutting from the tree and deciding to chop faster.
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It’s more like that famous Sylvester and Tweety skit, where the cat saws through the branch and the tree falls down, leaving the severed branch, and the smug canary, in place… They have an answer for everything.
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Ric: Synchronous condensers normally draw about 30% of their rated capacity in order to keep them spinning and push through the load spikes.
One additional issue is that, to be effective, they must be located physically near the inductive load they are compensating for. You can’t push reactive power very far on a transmission line.
More info on those critters if interested:
https://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-115/issue-10/features/converting-existing-synchronous-generators-into-synchronous-condensers.html
https://www.powermag.com/aes-uses-synchronous-condensers-for-grid-balancing/
http://www.secs.oakland.edu/~frick/EE4220-EM_Dynamics/lecture21.pdf
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Jargon Lance meakes understanding problematic. Do the synchronous condensers, to be effective, they must be located physically near. the wind farms or near the consumers ?
If the former then it is going to be more expensive as the wind farms are in remote locations.
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Everyone using electricity is a consumer, but not all consumers are the same. Residential loads are both resistive (water heaters, cooking ovens, etc) and inductive ( AC compressors mostly ). Industrial and Commercial users appear almost totally Inductive to the grid ( Large Motors, Water Chillers, big HVAC Fans, elevators, escalators, etc ).
Synchronous condensers are effectively a large mass motor or a turbine/alternator set running as a motor. When spinning, they can either absorb or provide reactive power. But. Let’s say you have a 100 MW alternator running as a motor / rotary condenser. It is consuming 10 MW all the time to spin it. It has a capability of some 30 MW instantaneous capacity. A 1000 HP motor draws about 1 MW when running, but takes 6 MW to start it. That’s roughly the water chiller load on ONE of 3 or 4 commercial high rise buildings. Reactive power doesn’t travel great distances. So the synchronous condenser would have to be within a few miles of that business district to have any influence. They are not a total solution. They are a Local solution. They have to be near the Load. Not the Generator.
Wind farms and solar farms merely offset the fuel that would have been burned at a thermal power plant. They do not add dispatchable capacity to a grid, nor do they contribute to frequency or voltage stability. They synchronize with the mains frequency and voltage. In other words, the
Grid follows the Load and the unreliables follow the grid. Rooftop solar power rarely leaves the local neighborhood, it is consumed locally. but if the local loads ( lots of AC motors, AirCons, etc )drop online, then the grid has to provide the reactive power that the intermittents cannot provide.
Hope this made some modicum of sense. The renewables stuff just complicates and destabilizes everything that heretofore was working quite well.
Think of it as driving to Sydney by yourself vs. having 10 screaming kids in the car. Sort of like that. 🙂
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I’ve heard from an engineer managing grids that synchronous condensors are mainly there to give network managers a few extra seconds in a crisis so they can conduct organised load shedding rather than random mass blackouts. Is that fair?
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Yes, correct. Another point completely lost in this “debate” is that beyond a synchronous condenser keeping the grid up for a few seconds after a major incident, there needs to be sufficient generation available to continue to supply the load. And that generation has to be dispatchable, i.e., capable of following the load, something that renewables cannot do. The statement by Anne Pearson, CEO of AEMC, in today’s Australian that “the transition to renewables is accelerating with all the promise of lower-cost and lower-emissions options for consumers – but there are problems to fix along the way” is simply wrong and shows a breathtaking ignorance of the physics of what she is writing about. Before this whole saga plays out on the national stage, there will be many other issues to be addressed, such as when we run out of sufficient dispatchable generation to plug the renewables gap or follow load, reactive power across the networks, proper safe operation of protection systems, power quality issues including, harmonics, voltage rise at a local level and even other challenges such as how to black start a predominately renewable grid. And there will be yet more “challenges” as AEMO and AEMC proceed down the insane trajectory set out by (warmist) Finkel in his report such as how to control a fully distributed power system that would require guaranteed real time signalling across its entire breadth which in turn would require a fully functioning electricity grid! A little ironic. And having seen something of the work currently that is going on in AEMO and AEMC, I’m far from impressed and have concluded that the new guard now in charge does not know what it is doing.
Time will tell but I suspect that the only way that we will be “rescued” from a very real national disaster will be via a couple of decent system blacks. So get your standby generator ready.
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Yes, as Delta says.
A synchronous condenser adds “inertia” to the system, like adding a flywheel to an existing engine. It doesn’t make the engine more powerful, it simply allows the engine to tolerate spike loads up to the capacity of the added inertia. If the spike loads endure longer than the added inertia can withstand, the engine is overloaded, slows down, and stops.
Synchronous condensers do not make any long term capacity available. They simply “patch up” the system for a few seconds.
Those few seconds might be critical in allowing a synchronous plant to respond so it isn’t a totally wasted effort. But. Make no mistake about it, they are NOT an answer to an overloaded grid.
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Yes, what they really talking about is an inertial (flywheel) UPS which stores energy in a heavy spinning disk on a magnetic bearing. They can supply a megawatt or so for enough time to start a diesel generator. They are very efficient.
Actually they are a rather good UPS solution where you have a backup generator.
https://www.pscpower.com/what-we-do/products/uninterruptible-power-supply/batteryless-ups/
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Surely you wouldn’t run a very large old generator e.g. one of the Hazelwood units, as a synchronous condenser?
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They do that in the center of Tokyo I believe!
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Lance, thanks for the information about synchronous condensers.
“…to be effective, they must be located physically near the inductive load they are compensating for.”
In this case, they would not be compensating for an inductive load, they would be compensating for an intermittent load, so I wonder how that will impact their efficiency and/or effectiveness.
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Interesting stuff Lance. Thanks.
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How did we get to this point?
See https://www.monash.edu/sustainable-development/about-us/our-people
They manage our EPA Climate Change Act L-A-W. Reads like the Who’s Who of the Wonthaggi Desalination Plant spruikers. Now its GW and we are all going to die unless they get paid money to say “All is well”.
Bill Shorten will enable the same legislation nationally. Tony Abbott crushed the National Sustainability Dept. They went to Monash Uni.
If Shorten is elected its all over for the Grid.
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Electricity bill will short the grid.
When we empower non-technical people to make decisions on technical issues, we can be absolutely certain they will make the wrong decisions when their drivers are political ideology
There should be consequences for these rather than just being voted out.
Time in jail would be a good start and a deterrent for not working in the best interest of the country.
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Everyone will get audited for CO2 emissions by the nice people at ClimateWorks (Monash Uni). John Thwaites and Rob Skinner will make a motsa. You could not write a novel that matched this. Then there is MacBank involvement.
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They have to collect the money first – that will be the probelm for them.
Bit hard if everyone says “no”.
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What would happen if when we got our power bills, we deducted the RET “levy’
And declined to acknowledge that it is a legitimate or vaild impost on coal & gas powered generation.
Retail power companies & governments would not be able to deal with this
if we all ganged up on them and the dopey governments which created this scam !
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POWER & LEGITIMACY
COME FROM THE PEOPLE
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That could work.
Bit hard to collect on a potentailly illegal tax….
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Dont know about shorting the grid but shorting the renewable companies will probably be rewarding if Infigens share price is anything to go by.
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Yowzah all those taxeaters engaged in sustainability
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I keep telling people that 10% wind/solar ( especially wind ) on a grid should be a hard limit, that needs to be enforced.
Unless of course who ever are the powers that be are actually happy to let the grid become very unstable and put it at heightened risk of collapse?
Its funny world when we have people trying to do what seems like actually collapse our electrically powered civilization?
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There is one important fact that Shortstop needs to consider.
The system Black in September 2016 lead to so much anger that his mate Weathereral was kicked up the arse very hard at the March 2018 state elections.
if dopey Shortstop is so stupid that he brings about a collapse of the national electrical grid, with his windy and sunny power policies, Labor will be history for quite a while.
And frankly it would give mea good deal of pleasure to deliver that kick up the labor arse if it happens.
it would be like 1975 again when blocking the budget was THE only effective way if removing an incompetent and irresponsible government
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IN moderation because I used the word “Ar*e” twice
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Both cheeks?
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Steve, you need to read the UN Church of climatology Scam manifesto Agenda21 and 2030 to see this is going as planned – the destruction of western civilisation and the creation of a UN lead world government based on slave labour.
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Pssst. They’re not going to go to the trouble of hollowing out a nation’s industrial base and throttling its middle class and then support an efficient grid. Are you kidding? After all that wrecking work?
They know that hanging clunky antique technologies like wind and solar off the back of the grid is a total dud. It’s the reason they do it. Uncertainty, futility, waste and cost are goals of Agendas 21/30, not unfortunate by-products. You have to go now. The New Man is waiting to be born at Year Zero.
What about sewerage? After transport and power, why not attack sanitation? Rainfall can overwhelm sewers: why not say more extreme falls are causing “unprecedented” strain on the system and so the system can only be fixed by installing more whirlygigs etc to dial back the climate? Think they wouldn’t try that on? Someone might check and find the claims to be false. Ah…but would such checking be published? It’s not what you check, it’s what you publish.
The mainstreaming of old niche technologies while degrading proven mainstream technologies cannot help and is not meant to help. It’s meant to gobble invented money, park debt, provide plunder and squash down those pesky aspirationals. Six and a half billion of us are expected to go. It’s logical to lower expectations first.
Of course, I’m not really a potty conspiracy theorist. Hundreds of millions of humans don’t perish in collectivist experiments. Just funnin’ here. It’s all just fun…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjpGZN742Lc
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Add the water supply Mosomoso, the politicians regulated to push the pricing up after signing the Kyoto Agreement.
Even farm dam owners pay.
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Hilarious that there is one dam which is sacred to Big Green: the string of barrages which keep the sea from the Murray Mouth. The diametrical opposite of conservation and very perfection of futility. It’s a green treasure.
Every other dam is naughty. (Though they’re probably going to like Snowy 2. What could be better than burning coal to push a river uphill to stop the burning of…well…er…coal?)
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Yes those barrages which keep the sea out of the lower lakes here in SA, are indeed a sacred green icon.
They were built in an attempt to keep them fresh instead of estuarine. Now that is definitely NOT natural. And they have had an impact on the natural environment. Increased salinity levels in the Coorong & lake Albert due to restricted tidal flushing. And hugely restricted breeding by fish species that need the lakes as breeding areas; For example the famed South Australia “Butter Fish” which is still delicious but much rarer and far expensive.
But the barrages do ensure water for Adelaide and the irrigation regions of the lower lakes. But only if a huge a mount of water comes down the Murray Darling to keep them topped up.. Unfortunately they are very shallow with a huge surface area.So there is a high evaporation rate.
And that is a very ‘wasteful way of using water flowing down the Murray darling.
But who cares about those issues in SA, or is informed enough to even consider them ? Very few of us in SA. Mostly the message is just “Give us the water” told to the upstream states !
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As far as I can ascertain, no new dams for Snowy 2.0 as they plan to use existing dams.
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As usual the leftists (including many in the Liberal Party) ignore reality and reason by making so many false assumptions in order to promote their belief in reducing our emissions by way of renewables, and it’s scary. In fact in any other area such as economics it would be considered extremely dangerous and down right scandalous to make truth claims that are actually false and as a result people would end up behind bars for carrying out the actions to promote their so called truth claims. Not to worry though. When the crash and burn happens things will change for the better as people finally wake up to reality. As usual people have to learn things the hard way (and then eventually forget them to repeat the same mistakes later on).
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Peter
Reading things like this and the ALP’s EV “mandate” and that vegan treatise in the last thread suggests that a well known Irish travel direction has much wider application –
“Well the first thing is that you can’t get there from here”
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“vegan treatise”…. 🙂
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Vegan or vegetarian, depending on which indigenous tribal language, means incompetent hunter I understand.
lol
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OS – link
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/midweek-unthreaded-64/#comment-2124886
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“The Brain Needs Animal Fat
Why humans can’t thrive on plants alone.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/201903/the-brain-needs-animal-fat
Via
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/04/03/the-sound-of-settled-science-41/#comments
Comments look interesting
On the side – fungii have just been reclassified as “animal” – so I guess mushrooms are now off-limits?
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Interestingly ( and this is from my perspective as a Christian ) , in the Bible it never says humans are to be plant eaters only, in fact it doesnt present animals as food ( after all, why do we get hungry at the smell of a nicely cooked steak or snags? )
Much to the chargrin of the greenies, the Bible clearly puts humans above all animals and are responsible for them.
In the Old Testament, the fat of the animals on the altar was spoken of by God as a lovely aroma.
From my personal perspective, there is nothing, if you put it all together through a lens of faith, that says we should go the vegie route.
It seems to be purely greenist fairy story nonsense.
Its worth noting that in “closing the loop” on all this, that the NWO mob pushing this rubbish are also anti-christian occultists.
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..sorry…typo….
Should say “….in fact it does present animals as food… “
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Yes; it was only after the flood that man was permitted (instructed) to eat the animals. Before that they were only kept for the wool and the milk.
9:1And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. 9:2And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. 9:3Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 9:4But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
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OS and Greg
Thanks a lot – particularly handy quotes in this case
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Pity the election isnt happening in summer like the SA election. I might bring some of the energy/EV BS into sharper focus. People have short and selective memories.
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What a Mess.
Most of the modern wonders of society were developed over long periods of time, think thousands of years, and are taken for granted, until they fail.
We have modern sewage removal and treatment, clean water from the tap, garbage removal and “safing” alongside a fairly robust electricity system.
Then the Troughers arrived and supervised the ruination of our future. And so we watch as businesses close or close and relocate overseas while political mindedness avoids reality.
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/new-poll-54-of-australians-are-still-skeptics-of-man-made-climate-catastrophe/#comment-2125134
KK
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“If they beat me with the Green New Deal, I deserve to lose.”
– President Trump: https://twitter.com/PolishPatriotTM/status/1113241306732609536
If Electricity Bill Shorten beats Slowmo with his whacky green planet saving ponzi scheme … oh … that’s the thing … Slowmo has his own whacky green planet saving ponzi scheme, it just takes a little longer to save the planet because they are more fiscally conservative.
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Why do people keep saying that?
The series of LNP governments since the last ALP government, has more than doubled the net Federal debt.
In other words, it took the silvertails 5 years to accumulate more debt than all previous governments combined..
Two world wars, Viet Nam, plus every quango, grift, feather-bed and boondoggle in the Hisstree of Straya prior to September 2013, resulted in an accumulated net debt of $174.6 billion Straya-bucks.
By the end of 2018, the parade of 3rd rate lawyers who pretend to be ‘conservative’, added a further $179.9 billion Straya-bucks to the national credit card.
inb4 “But debt as a percentage of GDP hasn’t doubled”
Let’s just call that an argument worthy of Peta Credlin and be done with it.
The important criterion is debt as a proportion of private sector value added. Debt-to-GDP is meaningless, because GDP includes government spending, and you can’t pay down debt using government spending.
And if a “budget surplus” doesn’t result in a lower level of debt, it just means that there’s some spending going on that is not being counted. Yes, yes, there are some projects of a capital nature (infrastructure and so forth), but that’s not what people think when they hear “budget surplus” – the punter will think that it means lower debt, and therefore a reduction in the punter’s expected future taxes.
A good rule of thumb: all sustainable reductions in government debt must come from additional taxation of private-sector value-added (PSVA) – private sector labour, or private sector GOS. And even then, I would argue that we should exclude the proportion of PSVA that derives from revenue from government contracting: that’s just tax recycling.
Scummo is a typical ad-huckster, and he had his man Frydenberg gin up some rubbery figures for an election campaign that has the honesty of an ab-machine infomercial.
When we cast our eyes back on the Federal accounts in a couple of years, you can refer back to this comment[1] and see that I was right when I said that
Don’t get me wrong: I hold no brief for the ALP – back when Wayne Swan serially promised a surplus within the Budget outlook period, I declared him to be a big fat liar with pants ablaze. Like a religious whackball awaiting the Rapture, he moved the date back a year every time his promise fell apart.
I reserve a special adamantine hatred for everyone whose entire take-home pay is paid out of others’ taxes.
To borrow a nice turn of phrase some bloke from yonks ago,
I think that’s in the US Declaration of I’ve Had a Gutful of These Lying Scumbags.
And now the notes…
[1] Obviously this comment won’t get past the scrutineers, because the Mods appear to think that a modest LNP bias is the right setting for the political dial because the LNP isn’t hostage to a bunch of charlatans. That’s a naïve view – the right setting is treating every politician, everywhere, as if they are always lying.
I’ll keep a copy and find ways to remind everyone down the track that they had no excuse for being fooled by Scummo and J-Fry.
Federal Net Debt will continue to rise in 2019-2020 (and probably 2021): it’s baked in.
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you are not an economist are you?
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He’s not a mathematician either.
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It’s an interesting question, so I’m going to give a semi-serious answer.
For the record, I would say “Yes”, particularly when it comes to economic forecasting and quantitative analysis of economic policy, with systematic analysis of the sensitivity of the forecast or analysis with respect to changes in key inputs.
That’s been my main ‘thing’ for almost 3 decades now (of which, more below) with ADHD-like tangents into machine vision, geospatial analysis, and other neat things that catch my attention.
I s’pose it depends on the beholder, though: like all academic fields, there’s a lot of interdisciplinary “No True Scotsman“-ing… some schools of economic thought reject quant a priori (for bad reasons), and some quants think that essay-writers are just having a tug.
The arguments become impassioned, because empires are so tiny and the stakes are so low.
Thankfully, unlike highly-unionised “professions” like Law, Accounting, Medicine etc., pretty much anyone with an interest in economics can call themselves ‘a economist’ (even PBrain, Tim Colebatch and Kenneth Davidson).
The field abounds with autodidacts, which can be a good thing – good autodidacts can keep a practitioner on their toes and can see a weakness in what seems an obvious argument (which makes the practitioner have to defend, which is good).
Its not an unalloyed blessing though, since autodidacts near the cognitive adult average almost certainly have a fool for a tutor.
It’s helpful, then, to give the benefit of the doubt if a claimant has passed something approaching a rigorous meritocratic evaluation of their understanding of the discipline, and has done so to a level that puts them in a genuinely élite group.
I’d reckon it’s possible to “declare” a level of training above which competence is accepted, unchallenged.
Anyone who passes assessment in the top 1-2% of all people who study the discipline, ought to get a guernsey. Being in the top 1% of all comers is close to the equivalent of elite professional sport.
So… the top 1%, ay? That basically means that competence can be taken as read if the claimant has a First in Economics at a Go8 university or an international equivalent: i.e., normalised GPA of 4.0 at a global top100 (let’s call them the GT100, and “4.0[GT100]” can designate the equivalent to a First at a GT100).
I’ve done the ‘diff’ testing, having met hundreds of people with HIIA and lower from a GT100, and hundreds more folks with supposed Firsts from non-GT100: once you’re outside that 4.0[GT100] sweet spot, the quality is very very variable and the mean is much lower than us ‘Firsties’.
If it’s a joint 4.0[GT100] with a quant major (i.e., Economics and Econometrics) then that’s a lay down misère.
Anyone who hasn’t met that hurdle, is simply Dunning-Krugering themselves if they think they have a better grasp of economics than someone who did. The same is true for any genuine discipline (so not psych, journalism, teaching, or any of the various forms of Grievance Studies).
However I am nothing if not chivalrous: I’ll defer to anyone who, in addition to a 4.0[GT100], beats me in some other, minor relevant attribute – e.g., if they
• got better than straight H1s for Masters coursework; or
• have been offered more than one Reserve Bank cadetship (there are usually 4-6 awarded nationwide); or
• have been awarded more than one Vice Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship for their performance in Economics; or
• have been awarded more than 1 AGA “priority” scholarship for PhD (in Economics or Econometrics); or
• spent more than half of the late 90s consulting to corporates and government (Defence, Justice, the ACCC) about the effect of the “New Tax System” (based on our modelling of the changes to costs); or.
• have been invited more than twice to tell JEFG (the Treasury/Finance forecasting roundtable) how to do things they ought to know how to do (e.g., get rational expectations into their TRYM macroeconometric model; learn how to use a systems estimator; learn how to properly stress test a model); or
• did a set of scenario-based stochastic forecasts (a really interesting thing that became my PhD) for more than one major bank’s credit policy wallahs, to determine industries whose performance is correlated during different parts of the cycle.
(Let’s stipulate that if they beat me on one thing listed above, but lose on more than one of the others, I still win… lol)
That’s a fairly decent domain of variation:
I reckon Mardie Dungey (who was a student at ANU when I was at Monash) probably had me beat, because she scooped the pool for available prizes and the pool at the ANUS (lol) is deeper than Monash. She was super-impressive then we presented in the same session at the Econometric Society meetings in 96 (I was hung over).
But she’s been dead for two months now, so I still win.
[1] Why do I only stipulate a 4.0 normalised GPA at a GT100? Why not a PhD or at least a Masters?
Simple: Masters coursework is fairly ‘personal’ (i.e., close interactions with more senior staff) and so the quality-control slackens off appreciably. Any Masters student who is any good will be tutoring, and so will be in more of a collegiate relationship with staff. As a result, staff they are a bit too gentle, marks-wise. (Back in the day, Tim Fry and Ken McLaren marked my Masters research papers too leniently: what I produced wasn’t rubbish, but it would have been salutary to force me to rise to meet expectations)
Worse still, PhDs are more about your supervisor’s ability to navigate the shoals of academe – to find the right people to examine the thesis, and to shepherd you through the defence… but also to help you get through that last six months when you are totally fed up with your topic and you never want to see it again ever infinity no returns.
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I don’t think your problem lies with economics, it’s about focus and distortion.
Good luck
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Krattoclastes, Abbott is 2013 inherited a structural deficit courtesy of Gillard & Rudd’s new and expanded expenditure programs.
Attempts to rein in even part of that structural deficit was prevented and hampered by a hostile senate.
The Coalition has had to deal with that political reality.
your opinion does not.
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The LNP “structural deficit” talking point is just nonsense: it’s typical ad-huckster marketing drivel… a ScoMo/Credlin infomercial with the same value as the old CopperArt ads.
The structural deficit gets the coalition off the hook for $8 billion Straya-bucks, for eighteen months, tops.
Let’s be generous and say that ‘legacy’ considerations meant that there was $20bn of ‘baked in’ debt accumulation that the new government simply could not undo.
Let’s be agnostic as to whether that $20bn was unavoidable because they couldn’t get the votes in one of the chambers, or because of ‘poison pills’ in some procurement contracts which mean that the cost of stopping the spending would exceed the savings.
Where’d the other $158b in new debt come from? Are the coalition such poor negotiators that they resigned themselves to passing legislation that added all that debt? Bear in mind that only governments can propose spending bills…
Getting the right number of seats in the lower house, permits a party or coalition to form a government: it doesn’t confer a right to implement a policy platform unless the relevant bills pass both houses. So unless the government has a double-majority, there might be a requirement to negotiate: to do some horse-trading.
There’s where the supposed business chops of these Flash Jacks are exposed: they’re not used to having to negotiate – almost all of them made their name as lawyers in unequal contests of arms, where their wealthy client was prepared to spend the opposition into the poorhouse. That’s why third-rate dullards like Brandis think it’s perfectly OK to get made Silk when he was a dud journeyman at the Bar.
Anyhow… as I was saying, these people have overweening sense of entitlement (so do the other side: I’m a bipartisan hater). They think that negotiating is ‘caving in’.
So they don’t negotiate (or they negotiate in bad faith). They portray it as “playing hard-ball”, but it’s just nonsense.
At some point in time they have to nut up: if they refuse, and just spend ‘over the top’ of existing programs as if she’ll be Jake – they own the debt that results.
Otherwise, you’re implicitly accepting the argument that a party or coalition can form a government, legislate a vast river of future expenditures the moment they get the chance… and successor governments will be bound by those decisions for half a decade.
If I could reliably post images in here, I would post a set of charts that show the time path of accumulation of all that debt – it’s not as if the ALP gave Nigerian scammers the nation’s PIN number on the way out the door and the ‘conservatives’ have valiantly been trying to get things under control.
Anyhow… given that it’s so close to an election where the coalition is going to get subjected to ‘rougher than usual handling’, I guess all of the foregoing sounds like ALP talking points.
I assure you it’s not: I hate both sides equally, and I don’t vote at all.
That’s because voting is a pointless exercise that the political class permits us to do because the bottom 95% of the IQ distribution is too stupid to recognise to think beyond its symbolism.
01
Now that’s a bit of meandering grumpy rant.
We don’t see them often here.
Where did you learn the art of it ?
20
At some point people will have to recognize that the most “green” and sustainable of the energy generation technologies is nuclear. People are often afraid of it, but well managed nuclear plant, in a stable ground (no earthquakes, please) is the only proven technology to achieve lower CO2 emissions. Not that those emissions were of any concern in the first place…
130
Thanks to my careful planning, I have my own septic system with secondary treatment, my water supply falls from the sky (never run out in 5 years despite drought), and I have a back-up generator for when the power fails, which it has done about 14 times in the last 12 months. Power cuts are here and now. It can only get worse!
150
According to a couple of comments I have read elsewhere it’s all the fault of the LibNats, apparently Labor did not introduce the 28 per cent RET that was reduced to 23 per cent when the Abbott Coalition Government attempted to abolish the RET and the hostile Senate refused to pass the bill.
It would be written in the history book that only leftists are allowed to read.
80
Yes but they will argue till the cows come home ( or long in an urban environment…)
But lest not mince words – we are on our own.
We need to make sure our homes can survive the greenist “cleansings” that are coming.
As Mosomoso rightly points out, they don’t care.
70
Howard introduced the RET at 2% in 2001. Rudd increased it to 20% in 2009. In 2011 Gillard split the RET into large scale and small scale components. The large scale remained at 20% or 41TWh by 2020. In 2015 Abbott reduced the large scale to 33TWh by 2020 but the system to remain till 2030.
The LGC price has tanked over the past year or so making life more difficult for the subsidy farmers:
http://www.demandmanager.com.au/certificate-prices/
60
That link illustrates how confusing and dopey the RET system is.
Yet another unnecessary dud & expensive aspect of the AEMO grid being presented as an advanced feature’ !
Balls !
Best to kill it Completely !
72
Clearly not a Melbourne resident then , they arent having regular outages. Nowhere near it. We live in NE VIC and have periodic blackouts (usually short) , sometimes in clusters but not frequent enough to be alarmed about. Still we have set up with a generator as the trend is clear and I suspect inevitable.
110
you are right – I am outside of the City of Melbourne and live in the hills to the north. Close enough but without gas, piped water and sewage. I tried to get far enough away so that the suburbs would not overtake me. I am also above 300 metres – so sea level rise will never be an issue either – Lol
80
PS – I only say Melbourne Resident as no-one outside of Victoria would otherwise have a clue where I live if I used my actual (very small) village
70
We’ve had more blackouts in our area since November but no idea why ,some are quick some longer .
Last one was in town (Wangaratta) on Monday but caused by something in Glenrowan although we are halfway our power was ok , there are two main lines running between the two .
20
Ned Kelly?
20
Two power outages today in Donvale an inner Melb suburb. Both brief but enough to cause our personal computer and electric clocks to stop for a restart. Is happening about twice a week over the last 2months. When the PC goes quiet I think calm before storm and fear for industries that rely on computers not stopping, like the Traffic Fines Office and AGL billing department.Geoff
20
Jo. Perhaps you know of this but was new to me…
I reckon this report by a reputable Physicist/Engineer/Analyst deserves permanent link next to “Skeptics Handbook”. Highly commend the PDF document for your reading.
The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking — by Mark P. Mills [March 2019]
Executive Summary
…..
This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing—
or can undergo—a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.”
* Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)— while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh.
* Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%.
* Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a wind turbine, the Betz Limit, is a maximum capture of 60% of kinetic energy in moving air; commercial turbines today exceed 40%.
* The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for
every pound of battery produced
Read Online here:
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible
OR Download the PDF here:
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf
About Author:
Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he co-directs an Institute on Manufacturing Science and Innovation.
…
Table Contents:
Contents
Executive Summary………………………………………………………….4
Introduction…………………………………………………………………….5
Moonshot Policies and the Challenge of Scale……………………….5
The Physics-Driven Cost Realities of Wind and Solar………………7
The Hidden Costs of a “Green” Grid…………………………………..10
Batteries Cannot Save the Grid or the Planet……………………….11
Moore’s Law Misapplied………………………………………………….13
Sliding Down the Renewable Asymptote…………………………….14
Digitalization Won’t Uberize the Energy Sector…………………….16
Energy Revolutions Are Still Beyond the Horizon…………………..18
Endnotes………………………………………………………………………20
====Also..============\
“According to the authoritative S&P Platts report, China is adding 1,171 coal-fired power stations to its existing 2,363, Japan is adding 45 to its 90, South Korea another 26 to its 58, the Philippines 60 to its 19, India 446 more to its 589, South Africa 24 to its 79, Turkey 93 to its 56 and even the EU (with some prominent anti-emissions members), is adding 27 to its 468.”
============
These greens really careless about poor and disadvantaged of the world who have far bigger problems NOW that harmless CO2 elevation in 50 to 100 years time: what a waste…
“With realistic assumptions about technology, and the optimistic assumption that the EU’s climate policy is very well designed and coordinated, the average of seven leading peer-reviewed models finds EU annual costs will reach €2.9 trillion ($3.3 trillion), more than twice what EU governments spend today on health, education, recreation, housing, environment, police, and defense combined.”
— Bjorn Lomberg 10 Oct 2018.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/un-ignores-climate-fighting-costs/
================
[Thank you! – Jo]
50
hey look, a hockey stick graph! Two can play this game 🙂
43
From real data too
20
IMHO, this very predictable outcome is very much related to two significant issues: Day Ahead Firm Bidding of intermittent generated power To Contract, and financial responsibility by the generators for costs of “ancillary services”.
The renewables crowd effectively dumps power onto the grid whenever it happens to be generated, whether or not a load for it exists. As well, they “push off” the critically necessary issue of voltage and frequency stabilization onto the synchronous generators and do not bear the proportionate cost of providing those services.
These are “fatal flaws” that destabilize the overall grid.
Day Ahead bidding to Contract means the bidder/generator “absolutely guarantees the amount of power they have contracted for” and they do so with the responsibility to “make up the difference” if they fail to provide what was bid. They must make up that difference at their own cost. Without limitation. That’s what an absolute bid means. No excuses.
The need for increased ancillary services is directly caused by the renewables intermittency and lack of contribution to either voltage stability or frequency stability. In a proper world, the group causing the need ought pay for the remedy. They don’t in AU. The rest of the grid is left “holding the bag” for those ancillary services. It is amusing that such critically necessary services are called “ancillary” when the role they play is absolutely paramount in times of voltage or frequency variation or collapse.
If these issues were addressed by making the intermittent crowd responsible, the economics would drive out the intermittent suppliers in short order.
Just a thought.
Info on these issues for those interested
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/analysis/the-rise-of-ancillary-services/
https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/PDF/Guide-to-Ancillary-Services-in-the-National-Electricity-Market.ashx
What I find amusing is that the green crowd sees provision of ancillary services to be a new and profitable market to be filled by new investment at attractive profit levels. “It’s not a Bug, It’s a Feature”. Little mention is made of WHY this added expense is needed or WHO caused the need for it in the first place. I would not be so amused if it were happening on the US grid. I’d be extremely upset.
160
Lance, the following “Born Lucky” link explains our situation and obvious insider trading that many benefit from at energy consumer’s expense …
https://stopthesethings.com/2017/03/13/born-lucky-stars-align-perfectly-for-pms-son-with-mammoth-bet-on-wind-power-outfit-infigen/
40
Lance, why isn’t it happening in the U.S.? Don’t we have higher penetration of renewables (the perfect words) in some states? We certainly have RPSs calling for it.
50
David. Renewables in the US provided 18% of total power. AU has some 40% renewables, and 83% of that is unevenly concentrated. Tasmania achieved more than 87 per cent share of renewable energy including hydroelectricity. ACT reached more than 46 per cent and SA more than 43 per cent.
NT are at 3 per cent with Queensland and WA slightly more than 7 per cent. So, the AU wind is heavily concentrated in South Australia. Tasmania has a lot of hydro which is dispatchable ( if there’s enough reservoir reserves ).
Texas is a good example of what you are speaking to in the US. The difference is that TX is coupled to the SPP by a zero length HVDC tie and TX has ample spinning reserves to make up whatever differences occur. South AU is precariously hanging on because they retired a lot of thermal generation and their Connector is insufficient to make up the difference.
In a US Grid, the synchronous generation is spread out fairly evenly in 250 to 400 mile (approx) circles that overlap. Each power subgrid or “pool” has a load flow established the day before that points out where high load areas are expected and subsequently the possibility of voltage collapse and frequency issues. They identify a specific synchronous generator, in advance, that has capacity to inject or absorb reactive power. This is called the Designated Swing Unit. The DSU varies from hour to hour according to a projected plan and as warranted by real time SCADA information. If necessary, a new DSU will be identified. As needed, operators “tweak” the exciter, rotor, or stator windings to inject or absorb reactive power to stabilize voltage at specific nodes.
UK and AU have lost a lot of that capability by shutting down their thermal units. Not all power is equal. There is Real Power, Reactive Power, and Apparent Power. Synchronous units have to provide Apparent power. The vector sum of the Reactive and Real power. The common inverters on solar/wind units cannot provide reactive power. Nor do they have sufficient capability to provide the necessary Apparent power without significant assistance from the synchronous plants.
Hope this helps.
250
Brilliant Lance. Thank you.
Now please, help us with “reactive power” — is that the way a large turbine responds to the changes in load by slowing down or speeding up to bring the Hz back to 50 (or in your case 60). Is it — in a sense — reacting to the changing grid? Or is there another reason the term is used? If this is correct, reactive power comes from coal, gas, nuclear, hydro and biomass.
110
Jo
There are two different issues you are talking about the have been merged as one here and a previous query. They are inertia and droop.
Adding synchronous condensers increases the inertia, though only a fraction of what an old Rankine unit does. (the generator is only about 15% of a full 500MW unit) Adding inertia make the grid slower to react to inbalance – effectively stiffening it. The final straw that caused SA to have the blackout was after the interconnector tripped, the rate of change of frequency of the system that was too much to allow the load shedding protection to work. There wasn’t enough inertia there. That is why they changed the grid operates there, mandating the number of GT units on and shedding wind/ solar to compensate.
Droop is how the load on a unit changes with a change in frequency. As the grid slows down, the governor increases the fuel burn or water flow. This puts more MW on the generator terminals so reducing the inbalance. They also back off load if the frequency goes up. There is also a deadband there so small frequency changes does not affect the output.
Needless to say, wind and solar don’t have any inertia and no real droop.
80
To add to the complexity, reactive power is something different again.
Because the electricity is generated by rotating plant, the peak voltage may occur at a different time/ phase angle to the peak current. The system is most efficient when the peaks are the same. As the peak current moves further away from the voltage, it means the actual current has to increase to get the same “true” current. This actual current has a true power component and reactive power component at right angles to it. True power does the work. The reactive power adds to the electrical stress on the components, without helping the work, so needs to be minimized. The current can either lead or lag the voltage. Leading is negative reactive power, lagging is positive reactive power – inject or adsorb terminology. As the current changes, voltages changes too, but that just adds to the complexity without aiding understanding.
Grid reactive power can be changed by a variety of methods; taking transmission lines in and out of service, using static capacitor banks or synchronous condensers, or just changing the magnetic field strength on the rotors of conventional plant. With a well distributed grid system, like Lance earlier described, the last is the most efficient option.
70
In addition, livening up lines after an outage means a careful “re-inflating” of the line, electrically speaking, to a steady state before allowing load, as all lines have their own electrical characteristics that play into the overall grid behaviour.
10
Reactive power is a way to consider the phase relationship between voltage and current in an alternating current network.
Reactive power is a consequence of having capacitance and inductance in an alternating current network. Capacitors store electric energy and release it each cycle. Inductors store and release magnetic energy each cycle.
If you know anything about a capacitor then you should know it requires current to store energy to enable the voltage to build up. The current LEADS the voltage. Similarly an inductor requires voltage applied to build up current so the current lags the voltage.
When lossless capacitors or inductors have an alternating voltage and current applied there is a a lot of energy transfer but no work being done because they are lossless. With pure capacitance, the current leads the voltage by 90 degrees. With pure inductance, the voltage lags the power by 90 degrees. Both current and voltage are present but there is no power consumption because they are out of phase; just a lot of energy being shuffled about. The apparent power is just the multiple of voltage and current or VA (Volt-Amps). Real power is given in units of W (Watts). Reactive power is given in units VAR (Volt-Amp Reactive). VA is the vector sum of W and VAR.
In a network it is undesirable to have out of phase current because it adds to transmission losses and larger voltage difference between the generator and load making the system less stable. Most loads on the grid have more inductance than capacitance so generally current lags voltage unless corrected. A synchronous motor will act as a capacitor if it is overexcited to balance the lagging current.
40
The frequency in an AC system is controlled by the rotational speed of the turbine shaft at a synchronous power plant. A variety of control schemes are used to maintain that constant shaft speed, throttle valves/ poppet valves/bypass valves controlled by a negative feedback loop controller. Generally, they try to maintain 50 Hz +/- 0.0165 Hz or 60 Hz +/- .01 Hz. US frequency is actually 60 +/- 0.001 Hz in most cases. The alternative power generators synchronize to the Utility frequency so they are “in phase” with the grid. Otherwise sparks fly and things blow up.
A system loses frequency control when the turbine shaft speed is too fast or too slow. Too slow is the big problem because as the frequency lowers, the loads draw increasing current which makes the problem even worse. Inverted renewable power simply follows whatever synchronization pulse exists on the mains, they don’t correct it and as such are not helpful in stabilizing the frequency.
AC mains voltages vary in they system according to their purpose. Local 50 Hz secondary distribution voltages are typically 380 – 415 volts with primary distribution at 5.5 kV or 11 kV, sometimes 33 kV. Transmission line voltages can be up to 768 kV. Substations have devices called Automatic Tap Changers (ATCs) that can step the voltage up or down in 2% increments over a total range of +/- 6% to compensate for voltage variations downstream of the transmission and primary distribution lines. Wind and Solar inverters inject their power at the 380-415 volt lines and then that power is either consumed locally or “reverse flows” back through the local transformers to the secondary distribution mains or, if there is enough of it, back to the primary mains through a substation. Every time power passes through a transformer, one loses 2-4% of that power to the iron core of the transformer and the magnetic fields in the transformer, as well as any resistive losses at physical connections.
In an DC power system, the current is always in phase with the voltage. There is really only “real” resistance to consider, except for the initial charging of the transmission lines at startup where the inductance of the line is a significant instantaneous load. Power V x A, is always Real.
AC Systems are best understood using an XY plane with a Unit Circle centered at 0,0 overlaid upon the axes. The AC sine wave “rotates” around the circle and the axes are used to graph the complex resistance in the system.
In an AC power system the voltage may “lead” the current or “lag” the current. There is “complex resistance” comprised of Real resistance, Inductive Reactance and Capacitive reactance. AC Power has 4 components. Real power ( V x A ) vector pointing Right, Inductive Power (V x A Reactive +), vector pointing Up, Capacitive Reactance ( V x A Reactive – ) vector pointing down, and Apparent Power or kVA total, Vector at some angle in the RH quadrant of a reference circle with respect to the horizontal axis. The angle between the apparent power vector and the real axis is usually called Phi. The Cosine of that angle is the Power Factor. PF represents how much Real Work is being done. Sin(Phi) is the amount of Imaginary work being consumed in magnetic fields and capacitors. Apparent power is what the Synchronous power plant has to produce to make the system work.
Real power, aka True Power, is measured in Watts, kW, MW. Reactive power is measured in VARs or kVARS, MVars, Volt Amperes Reactive. Total or apparent power is measured in V A, Volt Amperes, kVA,MVA .
Capacitive VARs cancel out the influence of Inductive VARs, but are expensive and must be located near the source of the inductive VARs.
The Reactive VARs change the phase relationship between the voltage and current. Once the system Power Factor falls below 0.80 or so, generation has a difficult time keeping up with the increasingly inductive load. The system becomes overly inefficient.
There are “some” newer design inverters that can mimic reactive power but they are expensive, not the norm, and have limited power handling capability. Think “flea” against “Wooly Mammoth” . In practical terms, reactive power in sufficient quantity at appropriate times, in useful locations, only comes from a synchronous power plant. When a system goes into cascading voltage or frequency collapse, the system needs massive injections of reactive power in a matter of seconds to minutes or the whole thing crashes. If the frequency cannot be stabilized by sufficient torque at the generating plants, then the system crashes.
I hope this helps and made some kind of sense. At least, one might gather that the Grid is a bit more complicated than most people allow.
60
Geez Lance, you take me back to 1961, Sydney Uni, Physics III, as if you were quoting from the same text on AC Theory. Remember, we used to have to pass the exams with tricky math examples too. Tonight sleep will be with a cold sweat. Geoff
30
Lance, Thanks for this explanation of how AC power system work. This takes me back to the Electronics courses I took many years ago (um, maybe 40 years ago) before my career path took an abrupt turn from Electrical Engineering to Computer Programming.
20
Our Physics 1 for agriculture got to include AC power for the first time. When questioned as to why it had been included the answer was “You will find it very useful later”
First use took about 25 years to happen and was in understanding leads and lags in simulation.
Second use is having some idea of what Lance et al is describing here.
00
Fabulous discussion! Should be published somehow.
Mind you I was kicked out of electricity lab in uni, for burning up my table and shorting up the big power board, in two separate fiascos. They offered me a C to never come back and I took it gladly. Still even I can follow most of this explanation. Many thanks to all.
11
Lance I have green thumbed your explanation.
But I will be honest.
It was completely baffling to me.
It is not and has never been an area of personal expertise
Even though I am curious/interested.
But the key issue, is that I suspect that maybe 1 person in 10,000
In the general public understands AC & Dc power
And that is why it is so easy to sin webs of lies about unreliable solar & wind.
10
Now imagine trying to teach this to a bunch of eager faced young students all looking at you like you’re speaking a foreign language.
All done with vector diagrams and a trusty Casio fx-100C, which (luckily) resolves those vector diagrams for you.
Knowing the input voltage and the frequency, find XC and XL and circuit resistance. Resolve the vector diagram for Impedance.
Work out the total current flow in the circuit. Work out the Capacitive Current. Work out the Inductive current.
That gives you a three arm vector diagram, a horizontal and two opposite vertical axes. Resolve the vertical axes to one axis.
Resolve the Current Vector diagram.
That will then give you Apparent Power. True power is along the horizontal axis.
The angle difference between Apparent and True Power is the power factor. (cosine of that angle)
Power factor must be higher than 0.8, between that and 1.0, the closer the better
Vector Diagram – Parallel Circuit
Tony.
20
Missed a step.
Power equals I squared R.
Tony.
00
Now imagine, if you will, that on top of every high rise building sits a huge aircon unit, to deliver conditioned dry breathing air into and out of that building, conditioned on the way in. These are all inductive Loads, huge compressors, in the high hundreds of KW, some in the MW range, and that’s the HVAC that Lance mentioned. On startup they draw as much as six times their running current, so they are left on at all times, set around the same temperature, hence warmish in Winter, and coolish in Summer relative to the outside ambient temperature.
Add all of them up and you can imagine where the bulk of that 18000MW Base Load comes from, eh!
Ever wondered why, when they have rolling blackouts or load shedding, they usually start with rural areas or high residential areas. They just can’t turn off those inner city (any city) areas, because at start up when they try to bring them back on line, they have enormous problems.
Tony.
40
Thanks Lance. Until somebody does a tertiary degree in Physics or Electrical Engineering, this all seems like arcane nonsense.
You can’t just skip to the end. Understanding takes a lot of education, a fair bit of maths, and a lot of time.
Ideally you also do the advanced courses in machine perturbation (what happens when heavy electrical loads are applied to a spinning generator). Thats REALLY funky stuff.
How many of the people running the power grid have electrical engineering degrees?
20
Jo, If possible, could you make a “reference section” of the collected “Lance” comments.
They give an excellent run-down of the issues surrounding the introduction of intermittent unsynchronised power supplies onto the grid.
30
Just in case you have not realised it, grid power will get more expensive.
Ultimately it will be lower cost to make your own than buy from a grid trying to integrate an ever increasing share of intermittent energy. There are no benefits of scale with intermittent wind or solar. A rooftop can produce lower cost power than a remote large scale wind or solar generator.
60
Great news for those with a favourably oriented and located rooftop they have control over. For others, not so much.
50
Petrol or diesel generator is still an option. Maybe a small gas turbine.
https://www.bladonmt.com/
There was also a ceramic fuel cell. But they might have gone broke.
https://www.intelligentinvestor.com.au/company/ceramic-fuel-cells-limited-CFU-11324/announcements
20
Another green dream that sucked the fools’ money into its bottomless pit.
“On 1 March 2015 it was announced that the company had appointed voluntary administrators.[4] In accordance with section 3.4 of ASX Listing Rules “Guidance Note 33 Removal of Entities from the ASX Official List”, Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd was removed from the official list by the ASX under listing rule 17.12 from the commencement of trading on Monday 5 March 2018.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_Fuel_Cells
You might want to note the names for future reference:
http://www.cfcl.com.au/page187.html
40
Sadly though, there is always the ability of government to “change the rules” so as revenues drop from people going off grid, taxes will be introduced to compensate the power company / government coffers. An example is in the past we just received a power bill or water bill however these invoices have now morphed to contain things like electricity consumption $ x, supply charge $ x. If you get a water bill in Melbourne you are invoiced for water, supply charge, sewage and drainage, a charge for parks maintenance etc. Without doubt if enough people produce their own power they will be levied the government to make sure we remain controlled.
50
Id suggest if you dont have rooftop you control, you wont be in any position to run a generator either. The rooftop infers space and distance from neighbours.
20
I suspect that the government will not let the cost of grid power rise too high for residential consumers – they will subsidize it somehow with taxpayer funds.
So we still pay dearly for renewables, but it be more hidden.
90
Now, there’s an idea.
Maybe they could send the poverty stricken a cheque (say for $75) just before an election, or something like that.
90
So they were right electricity will get cheaper the more renewables are added ! Because it will get to the stage that it’s cheaper to buy a generator and supply your own .
40
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yes, that’s what we need, a government framework! It will create “certainty” although its a certainty of outcome you probably dont really want.
70
Rob Leviston posted this under Mission Impossible: 100% Renewables. Thanks Rob.
Ah! C’mon! The folks over at Renew reckon we can go 100% easy as!
Just have a gander at his article!,
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-100-renewables-could-be-cheaper-quicker-and-easier-than-thought-18462/
And after you’ve had a giggle, post your thoughts!
Well, where to begin.
“You always hear what is supposed to happen when the wind don’t blow and sun doesn’t shine. Let me tell you that is complete crap, that has absolutely never happened in the last two years”. Um, every night the sun doesn’t shine?
And wind? Despite 6,100 MW nameplate capacity, average wind 1,600 MW, lowest week 800 MW, lowest day 140 MW minimum 1,100 MW mimimum.
Roger Price, CEO of one of Australia’s leading renewable energy data company’s and project developers, Windlab, proposed a 100% wind and solar scenario with 32,000 MW of wind (up from 6,100 MW), 16,700 MW of large solar (such precision) up from 2,600 MW , and 32,500 MW of rooftop solar, up from 8,000 MW. So he proposes total nameplate capacity of 81,200 MW of generators to meet an average demand of 24,000 MW, peak 34,000 MW.
He then added 28,000 MW, or around 115,000 MWh of daily storage (i.e just 1.15 days of storage). This came from existing pumped hydro (22,000 MWh), three million household batteries (32,000 MWh), and the ability to use 10 per cent of an electric car fleet of 10 million vehicles (50,000 MWh).
No mention of the challenges of synchronisation, or a week where wind only provides 4,000 MW instead of the average 9,500 MW, or a high wind midday where generation will exceed 40,000 MW. That would require a lot of very rapid pumped hydro. And no mention of the requirement to charge and discharge your electric vehicle at the right time to balance demand. Would all drivers please park your vehicles and feed the grid so we can cook dinner and run the air conditioner!
And then, the magical bottom line: “When you put that together … you get firm renewable power for less than $70/MWh.
130
Rob Leviston is a total bull crap artist.
Why cannot some body ( any body ) sue him for misinforming and misleading the public with his propaganda B/S
84
Bill, Rob just linked the Reneweconomy article and comments I’m sure he found them amusing unless I’ve missed something?
51
If an apology is due him I give it. But anything from Reneweconomy is suspect propaganda.
42
Apology accepted Bill! Everything from Renew is pure propaganda BS!
50
Thanks Rob !
🙂
10
Really Bill? I only shared the link to the Renew article! Read s-l-o-w-l-y, before you spout off! Sheesh!
50
Pure techno-fantasy. How do you synchronize the AC coming from 13 million separate little batteries? Not possible. Also add in the cost of all the inverters. And yes, low wind for a week. If it could be made to work, which I do not believe, it would cost trillions of dollars. The storage on those car batteries is not free.
Fantasy is the new reality.
150
“Fantasy is the new reality.”
Delusion is the new “reality”….
40
The engineers in the power industry will know what the problem is, the idiot politicians calling the shots dont. This would have been totally predictable and probably was but ignored. Renewables cant provide FA in reliability. Just from the graph Tony posted thread before last, the ‘green’ bits will never charge all (fooligan) Shorten’s pipedream electric car fleet. – ever!
40
Suggested correction
“The engineers in the power industry will know what the problem is – the idiot politicians calling the shots
dont“.30
How much land will need to be cleared to increase wind farm capacity by 500% and solar farms by 600%, plus transmission and connection components. Whatever it is, that area of vegetation will no longer be using CO2 and emitting oxygen, or producing food.
How much coal, iron ore and other minerals will need to be shipped overseas to make the components, then shipped back, transported to the remote areas and installed and how does he plan to get the coal requirements past the Greens who want to ban all coal mining.
I saw an ad recently for a business that cleans solar panels. I presume that solar panels need cleaning to maintain their efficiency. Another overlooked cost, if it’s not done the solar panels become less efficient.
All we hear is about the benefits, no talk about the costs or risks.
70
I believe Rick Will included the maintenance costs in his summary of solar panel costs. If I remember correctly, he also included opportunity costs – i.e. How much you would make by investing the panel system cost.
10
The first error seems to be that because the wind has blown and the sun has shone (ignoring the night for solar) for the last two years, it will happen for the next 20 or 30 years.
The second error seems to be that they have scaled it up, so they must be assuming that they can find other suitable sites based on two years of data.
30
I think their first error, is seemingly assuming that wind blow’s constantly, or at least that power output from these dervishes, is somewhat consistent? Why else would someone think that these things could produce meaningful power all year round?
I know I have seen comments from the deluded Green, that they see a turbine spinning lazily, and think that it is providing meaningful power!
Anyway, anyone who follow’s TonyfromOz, regular daily generation reports, patently knows that the output from both wind and solar, bears absolutely no resemblance to the load curve!
30
Mr Price and Windlab develop and invest in renewable energy, primarily wind, in other words they make money out of renewable energy.
I read the article and I could see no reference to climate change. The question is whether Windlab, when considering a site for a renewable energy project, considers the risk of climate change in their predictions of weather. After all, if the wind blows more than average, or the sun shines hotter than usual or there is a flood, climate change is blamed.
They have selected a site at Kennedy (180 km north of Townsville) in Queensland to establish a wind and solar facility. Presumably that’s the site where the wind has blown and the sun has shone as required for the last two years so it’s always going to happen. Have they considered the risk of climate change, like floods and cyclones, for which climate change is blamed in their consideration. It seems not. Just because these events haven’t happened in the last two years doesn’t mean they won’t happen more than once in the next 20 or 30 years.
It seems to me, that they don’t believe in climate change so they don’t consider it as a risk, but they rely on investors who believe in climate change to make money
40
Lest get real, if there is , and maybe its looking like maybe, there is a big fall in temperatures, due to solar downturn, yes its started already, either windmills will be frozen or blow out do to increased gales, solar will die out. Only Hydro (uncertain), coal and nuclear will survive a full ice age, and problems in a mini.
50
Robber:
My impression was that the majority of commentators there BELIEVE.
They believe that rising CO2 IS CAUSING rising temperatures, because rising CO2 must cause temperatures to rise.
Therefore they believe that 100% renewables is essential, and it will be easy and cheap.**
And that money from the Government is provided by the Fairy Godmother (hence the frequent claims that money for projects CEFC, ARENA etc. is essential).
** The constant repeat of the claim that renewables are getting cheaper and will cut electricity costs is questionable, and seems to be a misapplication of Moore’s law for semiconductors. Wind turbines cannot become smaller and more crowded together. And one optimist claims the new Vesta 2MW turbine generated 40% more; either the original design was quite inefficient or the Betz limit has been ignored.
20
I’ve just done a survey about autonomous vehicles, including questions about the benefits. Not one question about costs or risks. It seems to be the same with EVs, and energy from renewables. All we hear is the benefits, nothing about the costs or risks.
100
It annoys me with sales pitch on EV that the cost differential ($50K plus for EV and $20K minus for a conventional petrol engine vehicle) is not considered, until the $30K has been recovered the fuel/energy price difference is not an advantage.
And what about the batteries pack? That is a replacement part and maybe around 8 years, so the cost is also a fuel/energy expense.
I cannot see a cost advantage for EV buyers.
80
There are none, Dennis.
Let me give a comparison on a weekly basis of major costs for an Hyundai Ionoq (all electric) vs a Toyota Yaris Ascent (petrol) – assuming 12,000km driven per year. Based on the RACWA’s costing methodology:
https://rac.com.au/car-motoring/info/buying-a-car/running-costs#/12cc3b6a-8ca1-497d-89f4-4ca6c099e71d-pane-1
Hyundai Ioniq: Electric
Range = up to 230km in ideal conditions; Battery = 28kWh; Price Aus$49,000 to $54,000 (use $52,000)
Costs:
Costs per week for electricity at 3.8 cents per kilometer = $8.77 (round to 9.00)
Cost per week for depreciation over 5 years (assume mid-price of $52,000) = $133.00
Cost per week of money at 4% per annum = $40.00
Cost per week to service vehicle = $0.00
Insurance costs per week = $30.00
TOTAL weekly costs = $212.00
Toyota Yaris Ascent petrol
Fuel consumption = 5.8litres/100km; Price = Aus$15,990
Costs
Costs per week for fuel (ULP) at 7.2 cents/km = $16.62 (rounded to $17.00)
Cost per week for depreciation over 5 years = $52.00
Cost per week of money at 4% per annum = $13.00
Cost per week to service vehicle = $6.00
Insurance costs per week = $14.00
TOTAL weekly costs = $101.00
Cost differential = $212 – $101 = $111 per week.
Why would anyone go electric?
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/04/labor-cars-plan-means-higher-emissions-more-pollution-more-coal-use-threatens-grid/#comment-2124642
80
Thank you Sam.
Despite government interference very few Australians, in my opinion, would consider an EV once appraised of the costs and limitations.
40
Its the same as people who have spent tems of thousands of dollars on a large panel/battery set up crowing about their “free” electricity. The dont have the ability to evaluate and really understand the investment they have made. Probably a mixture of naivety, virtue signalling and the need to be an early adopter regardless of price. People used to queue up the buy overpriced Iphones too.
50
It’s an absurdity the battery on wheels and anybody taking it seriously has a major gullibility handicap well worth a trip to our new NDIS offices where compensation may be arranged.
60
The other lie is that theres plenty of oil, billions of barrels, millenia worth. THEY dont want you to know this. Brainwash the public on the electric car scam, scare them into buying price gasoline out of any market.
40
You mean, like they catch fire, and you can’t put the fire out? And you might end up a crispy critter?
Or the autonomous part will drive straight under a semi? Or over a cliff?
Yeah right! Only benefits! The rest is just meaningless noise, haha!
20
The latest Tesla problem is that instead of following lane markers, the cars will deviate if there are other road markings such as turn arrows. Another software patch coming up…
30
I do not believe my ears !
Neil Mitchell – that famous apologist for “moderate politicians” talking about that problem right now on 3AW.
50
I just saw a survey of electric power customers asking “Should we use more low cost, reliable renewables?”
How about low cost flying pigs?
160
David,
Honestly, I thought there would be an avalanche of callers telling Mitchell how stupid that idea was.
No, not one.
They prefer to discuss B. Joyce ex-wife becoming a body-builder.
Could the last person leaving Australia please switch off the lights…
80
Many people who were students after the Whitlam Labor socialist education system commenced cannot work out change without look at a cash register balance.
I was impressed recently watching Sky Outsiders interviewing a high school student about climate change protests, she said that until she studied economics she probably would have joined them.
Last year I advised a relative who had purchased a new vehicle to do the maths regarding hire purchase cost and she/they were shocked about the added cost.
90
Will there still be any lights to switch off?
41
My answer would be ‘Yes – definitely – sign me up’ – as soon as there are ‘low cost, reliable renewables’.
80
They know that wind and solar are free John.
sarc
40
Typical leftists – redefining words/phrases to only provide one sided answers….
70
Twenty minutes ago I was listening to ABC 891 news.
And guess what they actually mentioned this item of news from the AEMO and how unreliable wind & solar were causing the problem.
I almost choked on my morning tea !
Whatttttttt ? The ABC being open and honest ?
Well I never…
The greenist censors in the ABC must have been still asleep..
131
Cautionary admission following the Australian Financial Review and The Australian reports probably.
30
Perhaps just a gimmi that they can call up in the future and say; Hey, we did run this article back in 2019. See, we knew!
30
Sneeky devils those ABC’s greenies. Eh?
30
Like I said, the main reason to mention this is that it shows we need an “end to the energy wars” and a bipartisan agreement that we should spend $100b on renewables because $50b is not enough.
We probably need another 3 or 4 government funded QANGO’s as well.
140
Jo is you being quietly sarcastic ?
or should I red thumb you ?
🙂
31
There’s no end in sight, Jo.
Here’s an old saying in federal government departments and it is spoken of proudly, not bashfully:
“There’s nothing as permanent as emergency stop-gap funding.”
30
Coming back from work and once again all the wind farms from Ararat to Ballarat are stopped, nothing happening.
Tell me again how much storage will be needed to cover a day of no generation?
60
In the 1990s Conservative governments like Jeff Kennett in Victoria sold off the functional power stations. People cheered as we would no longer have strikes at the worst possible time. At State level and Federally the government sold off the banks and Telstra and Australia post. It was a great time for smaller government. Labor and the Unions were not happy.
They have had their vengeance. Stephen Conroy’s NBN was created on the back of a beer coaster. The Greens had their way in creating a useless National Energy grid to take stable, adequate energy out of the hands of the State government and create a fragile monster determined to concentrate power in Canberra
So far the number of major agencies allowing the ‘free’ market to operate, especially under the Renewable Energy(Electricity) Act 2000 and its children.
Federally we now have at first count
Australian Energy Market Commission https://www.aemc.gov.au/
Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) https://www.aemo.com.au/
Australian Energy Regulator https://www.aer.gov.au/
Clean Energy Finance corporation https://www.cefc.com.au/
Australian Renewable Energy Agency https://arena.gov.au/funding/programs/
Clean Energy Regulator http://www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/
and many other groups and committees and all the original State organizations plus those for gas and oil.
While people bang on about the evils of capitalism, this is the massive secret Australian Socialist government interventionist agenda at work. Controlling the power literally and federally. No one voted for this.
Consider that all these are new groups created to make sure the government controls the energy and that we obey the UN/IPCC/EU mandates on Carbon Dioxide and carbon credits to Kazakhstan and the Bankers of Brussels and Zurich.
Plus Courts like the NSW Environmental Courts, stacked with former activist judges who decide that coal is evil and should not be mined. State Governments who ban forestry, fishing and gas and oil exploration.
And people wonder why power prices are going through the roof? The RET is only part of the answer. This has been the takeover of the Electricity market by the Federal Governments to make sure we comply with the edicts of that massive unelected socialist organization, the United Nations. They throw great parties. Ask Julie Bishop. Julia Gillard. Helen Clarke. Poor old Kevin Rudd. Couldn’t get a spot.
200
Who said we needed an National Grid anyway? Power, like the raw materials on which it is based, was always a State province. Like Education, Health, Police, … The Federal government was responsible only for Customs, defence and trade. Canberra always wanted power, like Brussels. So they have grabbed it.
This whole grid mess has been created by stealth in Canberra by public servants over 20 years by an endless spiralling series of Federal Acts setting up bodies and grabbing power. This is the work of the backroom Greens in the Canberra swamp. How many thousands of people are now ‘administering’ our energy in committees.
And when it all blows up, they blame the ‘capitalists’. It’s Venezuela in slow motion.
140
Like Venezuela, we have infinite energy which other people want and they do not want us to use it.
So we will be forced into manufacturing poverty, sending coal and cash overseas to the socialists of the UN and EU. As is so obvious in the UK, the EU and even the US, democracy itself is under siege by self serving politicians.
Conspiracy theory? No, look at how far we have sunk in under 20 years. Who would have thought Adelaide would be without power after blowing up critical power stations? Tasmania would run out of both water and power because the politicians sold it to the grid. We cannot afford our own gas, which is shipped overseas. Even the gas from the NW Shelf goes to Singapore by boat.
How obvious can it be?
150
You mean obvious its time to leave this country, to let it become another Venezuela?
All options are on the table….
I suspect unlike Venezuela, once Australians blood is up and peopel are sufferening, it could get ugly.
If you see foreign troops under the UN banner turn up for “peacekeeping” as it all breaks down, you have your answer. I pity the foreign troops though if they do turn up…it may be like entering another vietnam….
40
Wonder if Venezuela managed to restart their grid yet .
20
“AMEC could have pointing out the costs of trying to turn our national grid into a weather-changing-machine.
Instead they are changing the rules and adding synchronous condensers, giant spinning discs to create some artificial stability.”
>> “trying to turn our national grid into a weather-changing-machine.” – Bingo!
h/t dennis, comment@bolt, tips
50
China to the rescue!
3 Apr: TheWest: Could Great Wall sell Australia’s first all-electric ute?
by Sam Jeremic
Aside from claiming an impressive 500km range, Great Wall is staying quiet on the specifics of electric ute, which would be the first of its kind sold in Australia.
It’d be a brave move given Australians haven’t shown a fondness for Chinese or electric vehicles in the past, however Great Wall Australia is keen as it believes local buyers are “ready for a paradigm shift”…
It will sit on the same platform as the all-new Haval H9, with both vehicles to be made at the company’s new AUD$1 Billion Chongqing plant…
Australia will also definitely get a more “urban-based” ute, which is expected to be the volume seller…
Power-wise, we know the new utes (aside from the EV, obviously) will have a turbo-diesel engine paired with an eight-speed automatic.
Great Wall Australia says the utes will most likely replace the Steed, depending on pricing…
The brand will have high hopes for the new ute, given the Steed took some of the gloss off Great Wall’s return to Australia as a factory-backed organisation when it achieved a two-star ANCAP crash safety rating – the same as the V240 it was replacing…
https://thewest.com.au/lifestyle/motoring/could-great-wall-sell-australias-first-all-electric-ute-ng-b881157504z
4 Apr: Stuff.co.nz: Are you ready for an electric ute from China?
by Richard Bosselman·
Does an all-electric one-tonne utility make sense?
That’s a question Great Wall Motors seems set to answer, and in doing so might well become the first utility maker to take the electric highway in New Zealand…
So far GWM has only indicated the EV will have a range of 500km. It is not clear whether the EV draws off the Adventure or an Urban Spec edition also planned for NZ-market release next year…
Though only a doublecab has been shown, there will be a single cab and a choice of long- and short wheelbases.
The powerplant is still a mystery – pundits suggest it’s a four-cylinder, either the 2.0-litre turbodiesel that has served in the H9 or a new like-capacity turbocharged petrol plug-in hybrid. It’ll drive through an eight-speed gearbox…
The ute will be built at a billion-dollar facility in Yangchuan alongside a refreshed H9.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/111779553/are-you-ready-for-an-electric-ute-from-china
30
Hybrid technology makes better sense than pure EV, I understand that Sydney taxi drivers are very happy with their Toyotas.
20
no space for the AEMC review on Fran’sBreakfast; more interested in:
AUDIO: 7min22sec: 4 Apr: ABC Breakfast: Great Barrier Reef bleaching events destroying coral’s ability to reproduce
Australian researchers say the ability of coral to reproduce has been severely compromised by mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017.
The study, published in the journal Nature today, found the settlement of new coral larvae fell by 89 per cent in the wake of the ocean heatwaves…
Guest: Professor Andrew Baird, Research fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/bleaching-events-destroying-corals-ability-to-reproduce/10969330
Fran did find space for:
ABC Breakfast: House Committee approves subpoena power for release of full Mueller report — World News with Matt Bevan
no space for AEMC report on ABC AM either, but they did find space for this:
ABC: AM: Democrats fight to release full Russian election meddling report
by Zoe Daniel
30
Jo, can I suggest that Lance’s comments (and others from Real Engineers like TonyFromOz) be somehow corralled into static reference posts? When the inevitable happens, and the latest blackout, political grid design exercise, or similar outrage occurs, the references will serve as a ‘Well, we Tried to Warn you’….
160
I’d second that motion, except that when the grid collapses (as it will, it is just a matter of time, the way things are going), who will be able to see that it was forecast?
Regards,
Vlad
10
can anyone access this? just heard Ray Hadley talking about it. seems someone had sent him this article, not sure:
GREEN POWER: Free high speed chargers coming to Warwick
Warwick Daily News-28 Mar 2019
While the Southern Downs Regional Council backed the idea, Mr Wilson said it was hard to find an Ergon Energy transformer with enough spare capacity to power the chargers…
https://www.warwickdailynews.com.au/news/green-power-free-high-speed-chargers-coming-to-war/3684514/
20
One August morning in 1968, watching Russian tanks rolling through Prague on TV screen, I was crushed.
It was not fear of enacted Emergency Army Draft but powerlessness and isolation: not a single word of objection was heard from 250 million people. Was it only me?
I did not expect anything but joyous approval from the the papers but my parents, other adults – normal good people, said nothing to me.
Some close friends sincerely believed it was either us or NATO, no third option; others – more mature and sober than me, also kept their mouthes shut.
Later I learnt that half of dozen people went to the Red Square holding A4 placards “Hands Of Czechoslovakia”.
Jo, thanks for being there.
100
Correction – Hands Off Czechoslovakia !
80
3 Apr: WA Today: Synergy faces up to $1.3b in fines after allegedly gouging millions from WA customers
By Hamish Hastie
***Government-owned retail provider Synergy will front the electricity review board and could face nearly $1.3 billion in fines after allegedly overstating the costs of generating electricity in 2016 and 2017, leading to an extra $40 million to $102 million in revenue.
As a result of a two-year investigation into nearly 15,000 wholesale electricity market trades by Synergy over 15 months between 2016 and 2017, market watchdog the Economic Regulation Authority on Wednesday alleged the generator overstated the cost to produce the energy in 12,908 of those cases…
Synergy generates about half of the energy consumed in the South West and changed the calculations for its fuel and generator start-up costs in 2016…
Ms Cusworth said the breaches could have boosted Synergy’s revenue by between $40 million and $102 million and increased the total cost of electricity settled in the market by $100-192 million…
Maximum penalties for breaches of market rules are $50,000 for the first contravention and $100,000 for subsequent instances…
The spokeswoman was quick to note the investigation related to wholesale electricity and was not related to retail tariffs, which are set annually by the state government…
Energy Minister Bill Johnston leapt to the defense of Synergy and said the ERA misinterpreted how the company was calculating gas prices.
“What the ERA is saying that you should use the spot price of gas when of course what Synergy is doing is using the actual cost of gas,” he said.
“The idea that you should sell electricity based on an artificial interpretation is wrong.”
He also criticised the ERA’s pursuit of these issues.
“The ERA has made a number of decisions that are very disappointing if you take the attitude of looking after the ordinary consumers in this state,” he said.
“I’m concerned about the way the ERA is making these decisions when they are not taking into account the impact on consumers.”…
https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/synergy-faces-1-3b-in-fines-after-allegedly-gouging-millions-from-wa-customers-20190403-p51agk.html
ABC’s account omits the fact Synergy is govt-owned:
3 Apr: ABC: Power retailer Synergy accused of price-gouging customers up to $100 million
By Nicolas Perpitch
The regulator found Synergy’s behaviour was directly related to its market power. It is the largest generator in the WA wholesale market, with 30 individual generators…
It said there was a likely flow-on effect to households because it created an environment of higher prices in the market, which the Government would have had to consider when deciding on electricity prices for retail customers, including households.
Synergy has denied retail customers were affected by the pricing issue…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-03/power-retailer-synergy-found-to-have-overcharged-customers/10967182
30
3 Apr: Accuweather: Water gushes down spillway of America’s tallest dam for 1st time in 2 years
By Amanda Schmidt, AccuWeather staff writer
By Monica.Bielanko
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) opened the flood-control spillway at the Oroville Dam in Butte County, California, on Wednesday, April 3. The newly constructed main spillway has not been used since it crumbled in early 2017 following frequent heavy soaking storms that winter, threatening to flood California communities, including Oroville…
It’s been an unusually wet winter in California, and more storms will strike the region in the coming months. Snowpack also remains high throughout the state. On Tuesday, a snow survey at Phillips Station found snowpack at 200% of average, and statewide snowpack is 162% of average. It was the fourth survey conducted this year.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/oroville-spillway-passes-first-major-test-since-repairs-in-2017/70007881
2 Apr: Oroville Live Stream 2 April 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCQmIklHMkY
30
behind paywall:
3 Apr: WeeklyTimesNow: Vegans plan for ‘biggest’ action ‘the world has ever seen’
by Andrea Davy
FEAR of another vegan invasion on a Darling Downs farm is escalating, with activists discussing an event for the biggest animal rights action “the world has ever seen” on social media.
In the events section of the Dominion: Documentary Facebook page, a meet up is scheduled for April 8 — the anniversary of the film’s release.
On the Brisbane event’s page, the organisers tell participants to “make sure your fuel tanks are full and car pool to the meeting spot”.
“We will share the exact meeting spot and more details closer the time (sic) to avoid the plans being sabotaged,” the page states.
“We hope that you can join us to make this the biggest animal rights direct action the world has ever seen.”…
The news comes off the back of last week’s vegan attack on Lemontree feedlot and dairy at Millmerran, where more than 100 activists stormed a family farm…
Facebook: New Start Time – Dominion Anniversary Action (Brisbane) 8 Apr 2019
230 going · 661 interested
Please note: new start time – 1.45 am.
An exciting new change has been made and we need to meet earlier. Make sure your fuel tanks are full and car pool to the meeting spot. Lets limit the number of cars as much as possible. We will share the exact meeting spot and more details closer the time to avoid the plans being sabotaged.
We hope that you can join us to make this the biggest animal rights direct action the world has ever seen…
In order to protect the plans from sabotage, they will be kept completely private. We ask that you respect this by not asking details about the plans on the day and also not speculating what might be planned. It’s important to not communicate about any plans, known or speculative on any form of electronic communication.
We hope that together we can show that the future of the world is a compassionate one that excludes the exploitation of others…
CORE VALUES – We expect all participants to adhere to our organisation’s core values: http://www.aussiefarms.org.au/core-values.
This includes the acknowledgment of all oppressive systems and the interconnectedness of them. While we are an organisation for animal rights, we will not tolerate human oppression within it. We are committed to being supportive, inclusive and respectful of all beings regardless of ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, faith, ability, class, or species. This means we will not tolerate abuse, hate speech, discrimination or discriminative language being used.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2466037470091067/
10
Pat
#4.1.1.2.1 in action?
00
How is it that this ignorant totalitarian philosophy attracts so many adherents?
Just another unintended consequence of the past forty odd years spent dismantling the education system is my guess!
50
it’s those ***”less reliable” coal-fired power stations; more RE with storage is the answer; otherwise no worries:
4 Apr: SMH: ‘Unprecedented’: Energy operator in daily fight to keep lights on
By Cole Latimer
The energy market operator is being forced to intervene daily in the electricity grid as an influx of renewable energy and ageing coal-fired power stations make the system unstable.
The Australian Energy Market Commission’s (AEMC) latest grid performance report found the “unprecedented change” caused by an increasing level of wind and solar power has forced the power system to change faster than expected and that it was failing to keep up…
The grid instability is being caused by less predictable, intermittent wind and solar power flowing into the network coupled with ***less reliable coal-fired power stations…
The safety nets include calling on big energy users like smelters and manufacturers to power down to reduce electricity demand, curtailing wind and solar power when it over-produces energy or forcing generators to push more electricity into the grid during peak demand periods…
A number of safety nets were used in January, in Victoria, when a combination of coal-fired power station failures, wind farms running below capacity and record high temperatures forced AEMO to carry out rolling blackouts across the state to keep the grid from failing.
More than 200,000 Victorian households had their electricity temporarily cut while manufacturer Alcoa was forced to power down its Portland-based aluminium smelter.
The AEMC said the continual use of security safety nets is costly and would mean the historically high power prices would likely not fall…
The AEMC said this could be alleviated by investment in more generation and back-up power for intermittent renewables…
AEMC chief executive Anne Pearson: “Our market needs investment in generation to drive down prices [through more power supply], and private investment needs certainty for this, the best way to drive down prices is to give certainty through policy.”…
Investment in renewable generation is expected to hit $20 billion in 2018 and 2019 but slump from 2020 onwards.
Ms Pearson added that the increasing intervention in the grid should not raise concerns of more blackouts.
“This power system is under pressure but, by-and-large, reliability is being maintained, the lights are staying on,” Ms Pearson said…
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/unprecedented-energy-operator-in-daily-fight-to-keep-lights-on-20190403-p51abh.html
50
But there’s nobody at home, Ms Pearson. Especially in Federal Parliament and at the AEMO.
70
Looking at the FCAS graph there is a definite step up in March 2017, most likely caused by the Hazelwood closure.
40
3 Apr: GWPF Press release: State of the Climate 2018: Global Warming Is Not Accelerating
The World Meteorological Organisation is misleading the public by suggesting that global warming and its impacts are accelerating. In fact, since 2016 global average temperature has continued to decline.
That’s according to Norwegian Professor Ole Humlum, whose annual review of the world’s climate is published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Last week, the WMO issued its own review of the climate, which insinuated that global warming was worsening. However, Professor Humlum points out that the data tells a very different story…
LINK
https://www.thegwpf.org/new-report-global-warming-is-not-accelerating/
40
3 Apr: ClimateDepot: The Sun’s Magnetic Field Is Ten Times Stronger Than Previously Believed, Scientists Reveal
LINK GWPF: The sun’s magnetic field is ten times stronger than previously believed, new research from Queen’s University Belfast and Aberystwyth University has revealed. The new finding was discovered by Dr. David Kuridze, Research Fellow at Aberystwyh University…
https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/04/03/the-suns-magnetic-field-is-ten-times-stronger-than-previously-believed-scientists-reveal/
20
Effectively, we are seeing 3 points of view playing out.
1. Aspirations towards an ideological goal take precedence over economics and physics, without limit.
2. Status quo experience with reality guides both the present and the future.
3. Power and Wealth can be gained by either providing what is needed at an affordable price and paying heed to reality, or providing what is Wanted at an exorbitant price can be hidden from the People long enough to gain wealth and power, after which nothing else matters.
Point 1 seems to be where the Greens are coming from, Point 2 exemplifies the last 100 yrs of experience and present day reality, Point 3 is how the Politicians and other parasites view things.
Bear in mind: Reality has the last laugh. No matter what one aspires to, wants, or thinks they can scam, at the end of the day, Reality wins.
In the meantime, we must all appear tolerate what is taking place up unto the point where it threatens our existence or our actual limit for the tolerance of blatant stupidity. I’d advise voting as if your very lives depended upon such commitment. It very well might.
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Some poor devil just into his eighth decade had a letter published in Spectator Australia last week lamenting that for the first time he would not be going to the polls on election day as there are to be “no visible nor viable choices” and no idea of national leadership in the coming Australian federal election.
Australia has no Donald Trump candidate; on offer is a shameful gallery of Tweedledums and Tweedledees so there is no choice available for a life-dependent ballot.
I’m supposing that this election will produce a very badly behaved rabble of a coalition which will collapse within months leaving a much sadder and wiser electorate to remedy the mistake it made this time round. And no, we still won’t have a Trump.
60
Bill Ocasio-Cortez.
The latest fashion direct from the communist
Democrats U.S.A.
Bob Brown used to say “Global Warming,and catastrophic global warming”.
Well Bill is an idiot and a catastrophic idiot.
70
Around that
https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/redpowerphotos/monthly_2019_04/9C43036C-BC09-4FB2-89CA-143E649E88C6.thumb.jpeg.200e39a0d60bab0ec55e113357a2841a.jpeg
20
Suggest Bill Occasional-Cordtex
(Cordtex is a brand of detonating fuse)
40
The nonsense will not stop until decision-makers finally realise that experience from many other countries shows the impossibility of mixing more than about 20% of ‘renewable’ electricity with the fossil fuelled, hydro or nuclear major grid.
This is an economic impossibility in the sense that once you exceed 20% the incremental costs rise sharply, to unsustainable levels.
It is also a physical impossibility, because laws of physics dictate intermittency of wind and solar and these will always have a probability of periods with no to negligible electricity production from renewables.
The sooner we all accept these limits, the happier we can be.
Geoff
70
Absolutely correct Geoff Sherrington. Pity there’s no limit to greed eh! The financier’s picnic will continue –the fix is in.
50
don’t call them socialists:
3 Apr: ClimateChangeNews: French police tap counter-terrorism unit to quell climate activists
‘It’s beyond disproportion’, says group that has removed 27 portraits of Emmanuel Macron from town halls, as ‘green scare’ spreads in Europe
By Natalie Sauer
When Marion Esnault and ***comrades began removing portraits of president Emmanuel Macron from the walls of town halls across France they expected to get into trouble.
But last week, it emerged that their protest – up to 27 portraits so far – against what they say is Macron’s failure of climate leadership, has become the target of an investigation involving France’s Bureau de la Lutte Anti-terroriste (Blat), the office of counter-terrorism operations.
In correspondence leaked online, and reported by environmental publication Reporterre, Marc de Tarlé, deputy director of the judicial police, urged police forces to “counter this phenomenon” by contacting the Bureau de la Lutte Anti-terroriste (Blat), France’s office of counter-terrorism operations, and asking for help to investigate the group, known as ANV-COP21 (Non-Violent Action COP21)…
“We had thought that the repression we’d faced until now – all of the police custodies, the police searches, and the four trials with many incriminated activists – was out of proportion for a symbolic action,” said Esnault. “But for them now to call on the Blat, it’s beyond disproportion. There are no words. We are considered terrorists when we’re citizens aware of the climate crisis and the current ecological catastrophe.”…
Heather Albarrro, an associate lecturer in political ecology at Nottingham Trent University, said there were signs of a resurgence of “green scare” – a phenomenon in the mid-2000s during which the US government persecuted environmental activists. At its height, the FBI labelled the Earth Liberation Front as the nation’s lead domestic terrorist threat…
Albarro said the key message of the green scare was that authorities “weren’t clamping down on these activists because they were a threat to life per se. What they are is a threat to the status quo in the sense of growth-oriented capitalism”.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/04/03/french-police-tap-counter-terrorism-unit-quell-climate-activists/
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1 Apr: LexingtonHeraldLeader: AP: Protesters interrupt McConnell remarks at Kentucky event
By BRUCE SCHREINER
Nearly a dozen protesters, affiliated with a group urging action against climate change, stood up during the event at McConnell’s alma mater, the University of Louisville…
Campus officials said no charges were being filed against the protesters.
UofL spokeswoman Cindy Hess later said a campus representative told the demonstrators they could stay as long as they weren’t disruptive but later asked them to leave as the demonstration continued. Campus police walked out with them, she said…
The protest on Monday was arranged by the “Louisville Hub” of the Sunrise Movement, a national initiative of people wanting action to halt climate change, the Courier Journal reported.
“We have a right to speak our opinion and voice the urgency of stopping the climate crisis,” the group posted on its Twitter account Monday. “If the only way we, your constituents, can reach you is through events like this, then we will show up.”
The group also supports the Green New Deal…
https://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article228681609.html
18 Mar: Yale e360: In Germany, Consumers Embrace a Shift to Home Batteries
A growing number of homeowners in Germany are installing batteries to store solar power. As prices for energy storage systems drop, they are adopting a green vision: a solar panel on every roof, an EV in every garage, and a battery in every basement
By Paul Hockenos
(Paul Hockenos is a Berlin-based writer whose work has appeared in the The Nation, Foreign Policy, New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlantic and elsewhere)
“They convinced me it would pay off in ten years,” explains Paris, referring to Enerix, a Bavaria-based retailer offering solar systems and installation services. “After that, most of our electricity won’t cost us anything.” The investment, he says, is a hedge against rising energy costs. Moreover, the unit’s smart software enables the Parises to monitor the production, consumption, and storage of electricity, as well as track in real time the feed-in of power to the grid…
The Parises are one of more than 120,000 German households and small-business owners — and an estimated 1 million people worldwide — who have dug deep into their pockets to invest in solar units with battery storage since lower-cost systems appeared on the market five years ago. “No one expected this kind of growth, so fast,” says Kai-Philipp Kairies, an expert on power generation and storage systems at the RWTH Aachen University in western Germany…
The price tag of a home storage system depends on the size of the house or business, the owner’s energy needs, the building’s access to sun, and the quality of the panels, batteries, and management systems. For a small house with just 20 panels, one can expect to pay about $8,000 to $11,000 for the PV array and roughly the same amount for the battery and DC/AC power inverter. The largest home batteries go for around $34,000. And for an extra $500, advanced devices connect the system to household appliances and optimize energy use, as well as regulating feed-in to the grid. With such top-of-the-line technology and lots of sunlight, an owner might save as much as 80 percent on electricity bills, according to Solarwatt, a Dresden-based outfit manufacturing smart tech…
Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects that within 20 years the global energy storage market, of which home storage is just one part, will have attracted $620 billion in investment…
***The downside of the battery bonus, explains Kairies, is that “under today’s conditions it takes about a decade to pay off the battery from savings on energy bills. But most of the lifespans of these batteries today aren’t much more than 10 years, at most 15 years. Then you have to buy a new one.”…
Regardless of the type of battery, home energy storage units can help smooth out fluctuations in electricity production, a function known as “balancing.” When the grid is flush with power, for example, grid operators can pay battery owners — even ones with no solar array attached to them — to store the excess for them. When the grid needs power, home and car batteries can feed energy into the grid. Experts say balancing is critical to the larger project of a low-carbon world…
https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-germany-consumers-embrace-a-shift-to-home-batteries
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Any person who cannot apprehend the deep psychological disorder in “people wanting action to halt climate change” should seek counselling but I doubt a solution exists to the self-ingrained ignorance which drives the tin-eared climate justice crowd.
You’re a full blown news service Pat and save all of us who visit this site hours of tiresome trawling every day.
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***whenever!
2 Apr: EnvironmentJournal: UK power grid could be zero carbon by 2025
by Jamie Hailstone
Britain’s power grid could run entirely on zero-carbon electricity by 2025, according to a new report.
The report by National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) states that by 2025, the UK’s electricity grid will be able to operate ‘safely and securely at zero carbon’ ***whenever there is sufficient renewable generation online and available to meet demand…
The National Grid ESO is a separate company within the National Grid group, which relies on a mix of energy from different sources to balance the system and ensure that electricity is always there when people need it…
The full report is available to read here (LINK).
https://environmentjournal.online/articles/uk-power-grid-could-be-zero-carbon-by-2025/
10
great. Federal Govt won’t sign off on Adani! Qld Labor MPs unhappy!
Embattled MPs ask why Adani coalmine hasn’t been signed off
The Australian – 4 Apr 2019
A delegation of Queensland MPs have held an urgent meeting with Scott Morrison at parliament house this morning expressing concerns that … plan has not been signed off by Environment Minister Melissa Price…
what is wrong with the Coalition Govt?
60
Just heard this on the Bolt report and couldn’t believe it Pat , if only the Libs could spend their time fighting the opposition instead of themselves.
40
robert rosicka –
the Adani thing just makes me furious.
but what makes me really angry is, if I can’t find any correction from Shorten on the charging time for EVs, then it’s highly unlikely anyone watching the morning TV program would know he corrected himself.
the way I see it, Shorten got away with two lies – the charging time and the deceptively clever suggestion $200million could set up charging stations Australia-wide, tho he clearly knew it would cost a whole lot more.
tomorrow, I will try to find these quotes from Shorten. as I never watch these morning shows, I can’t recall where Bolt said Shorten actually said them.
40
They say he has admitted to giving the wrong charging time but it probably won’t make any difference to those that believe and have faith in the cause .
As for the Libs , what can you say ?
10
can’t see any link to the letter:
3 Apr: ClimateChangeNews: Global energy agency asked to stop normalising dangerous climate change
60 business leaders, scientists and investors call on the International Energy Agency to reframe its annual report to promote a path to climate safety
By Natalie Sauer
In a letter to the head of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol, signatories, including the chair of the Mahindra business group Anan Mahindra, Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte and scientist James Hansen, called on the Paris-based institution to “make clearer that [its] business-as-usual scenario… charts a dangerous course to a world with between 2.7C and 3C of warming”…
Authors asked that the IEA bring the Sustainable Development Scenario in line with 1.5C of warming and the section be made the report’s central reference…
An IEA spokesperson told Climate Home News that the NPS was “not a normative scenario or an outcome that we would like to see; we have consistently used this scenario to highlight the need for much stronger policy action in order to meet the world’s sustainable development goals”…
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/04/03/global-energy-agency-asked-stop-normalising-dangerous-climate-change/
10
nothing in the article mathces the headline!
4 Apr: SBS: AAP: Govt admits own high electric car goal
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says Labor’s plan to dramatically increase the number of electric cars in Australia means the energy grid needs strengthening.
“There’s going to be more demand on the grid from some of these types of reforms,” Mr Frydenberg told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
“They haven’t costed the backup and storage that’s needed, they haven’t costed what the impact on the change in the existing energy mix is.”…
Motoring body the NRMA is calling for a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars as early as 2025.
It’s started building its own network of charging stations, with 10 already built and 30 more underway.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/govt-admits-own-high-electric-car-goal
Bolt just had Bill Shorten on some free-to-air tv or radio program this morning, umming and aarhing about how long it takes to charge an EV. he eventually says 6-8 minutes and the female presented said “yes” as if in agreement.
I think there was another bit of madness, but I turned back to the tennis.
can’t find a single mention of this interview online so far.
40
Just realised the ABC aren’t going to town on this issue at all nothing but silence .
10
am sure Shorten said 6-8 minutes, but this says 10. it doesn’t matter.
true, the other thing Bolt played was Shorten offering to put up $200 million for charging stations across the entire country. of course, he then mentioned the States, which presumably would be told to cough up the billions extra required.
Bolt also said Shorten corrected himself later about the charging time, but I can find nothing on any of this.
20
oops, forgot the link:
Catallaxy Files:
from comments:
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
#2979570, posted on April 4, 2019 at 7:05 pm
New electric car charging station: $200 million will see you right for an Australia-wide network.
Anther back of the beer coaster allocation, bringing you another Labor NBN thought bubble.
Shorten thinks it will take ten minutes to recharge; lowest is 30 mins and most will take 6 hours.
Bolt looking now at Shorten’s Budget reply.
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/04/03/wednesday-forum-april-3-2019/comment-page-4/#comments
40
Good luck with THAT….
30
It seems to be a losing battle (war?) in that the Greens succeed implementing their solution using their faux science theory end up creating chaos in a governing unit which, in turn, causes hordes of people to migrate to saner reasons. Which brings the very people that voted for the self-destruction into sane regions and overwhelm the “native” voters….and the cycle repeats. Sort of like Green cancer. And it will, for sure, destroy the host.
30
This sounds like a good description of what happened when the Green Californians migrated to Oregon, Washington State and Colorado.
20
Remember “Don’t Californicate Colorado”
Shows you need more than number plate surround slogans
20
I wasn’t going to say anything about giant spinning disks. It got my attention of course. But what can you say about it? Only about 1,000 things wrong with the idea and I’ll bet people who know a lot more about the subject than I do will point them out.
But I can no longer resist repeating something I’ve already said.
50
For your jocular pleasure:
This is part of the latest Greens’ newsletter:
https://greens.org.au/platform/renewables#electric-vehicles
“Hi GD,
We are in a climate crisis and there is no time to waste. We know that if nothing changes, global warming poses an existential threat to us all. We need a zero carbon Australia by 2040.
Six years of dysfunctional conservative government has failed miserably to deliver a plan to reduce pollution.
The Greens are committed to re-powering our economy through clean energy. We need action now. Today. In fact, we needed to start yesterday.
Transport contributes almost 20% of carbon pollution in Australia. To reduce our transport pollution we need to shift people out of polluting cars and into clean electric vehicles, and onto public transport and walking and cycling.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are better for our health, cheaper to refuel and maintain, and emit no pollution when powered by renewable energy.
Australia continues to be a dumping ground for old, polluting vehicles and until the government steps up to the plate, it’s only going to continue. Unlike the major parties, the Greens have a plan for our future. Our plan will see us join many countries around the world like Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, in ending petrol and diesel car sales by 2030. This is what real action on climate change looks like.
READ OUR ELECTRIC VEHICLE PLAN
Under our plan, big automakers would be forced to bring electric vehicles to Australia, we’d tax the rich to help people afford them and we’d build a national fast charging network to ensure that wherever you drive, there’s always somewhere to charge close by.
If the major parties were serious about taking real action on climate change, they would be on board with a fast transition to being carbon pollution free by 2040. Unfortunately, they’re not.
The Morrison government’s $400,000 allocation for a national electric vehicle strategy in the budget is a joke, especially when they have allocated over 25 times as much in luxury car rebates.
And Labor’s plan isn’t much better. Instead of taking the immediate, bold action we need to tackle global warming, Labor have proposed the half-measure of 50% EV sales by 2030 with no plans about how to get there.
Unlike the Liberal and Labor parties, the Greens refuse to accept donations from big corporations, like major automakers, seeking to buy influence. We’re the only party to understand that, if we’re truly committed to meeting our Paris Agreement commitments and reducing toxic pollution, we need to transform the way we transport goods and people.
DOWNLOAD OUR PLAN
Stopping the damage from climate change means embracing progress and technological solutions. Those who refuse to put in place this rapid plan for a smooth transition are simply standing in the way of progress.
The time for half measures is over. The time to act is now.
Let’s build a future for all of us.”
———————————-//
Unfortunately, almost 50% of the population will believe that.
40
What a load of utter greentard garbage .
70
“Those who refuse to put in place this rapid plan for a smooth transition are simply standing in the way of progress.”
Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense.
— John McCarthy, 1995
00
I wouldn’t describe the Australian power generation grid as being “finely-tuned”. More like “delicately balanced”, perhaps even “precarious” or “unstable”. Adding even a few GW of out-of-control generation will tip the entire mess over the edge. A real tipping point, not one of the made-up global warming types.
Why is anybody surprised that 200,000 homes in SA and Vic were blacked out this summer?
10