More fake news: Miners are only switching to solar because they can’t get access to cheap coal fired power.
“Miners switch on to renewables”
A better headline would be: Renewable targets make electricity so expensive miners are forced to switch to renewables.
The money quote:
Emily Alford is a principal consultant at Oakley Greenwood … [she] told The Weekend Australian that solar generation cost about $200 a megawatt hour five years ago, and had dropped to about $70-$80 now.
Compare that to 53 year old Hazelwood coal power which was selling electricity for $30/MWh in it’s last month of operation. When brown coal stations set the price in Victoria they were winning bids at prices like $13/MWh.The cheapest electricity in the world comes from 30 year old brown coal plants.
The $70-$80 estimate is artificially low. Unreliable power makes the other baseload generators more expensive, adding $30/MWh to gas generators for example. Because the back up generators have to be there, not earning money while solar feeds in, they have to charge more to recoup those costs in a shorter working period. Doh. So add that cost to solar, not the gas.
Compare the real costs and weep:
I’ll repost those graphs from a year ago from the AER report on the closure of Hazelwood:. These are the price setting winning bids by different fuel types. It’s a better way to understand the real cost differences.
The following graphs show the percentage of time power stations located in various regions of the NEM were involved in setting the 5 minute dispatch price in Victoria (vertical bars) and the average price of the offered capacity which was involved in setting that price. –– Appendix C, AER, 2018
Brown coal:
Brown coal bid setting winning bids. The AER report on the closure of Hazelwood:
Bayswater coal plant used to be able to win bids at $40/MWh (or it used to have to bid that low to win). Thanks to the RET (Renewable Energy Target) destroying some of the cheapest power, that’s not happening any more. Costs are up and competition is down.
Black coal, winning bids from The AER report on the closure of Hazelwood:
One gas plant. Not cheap to start. Not cheap to finish.
Gas power, winning bids from the AER report on the closure of Hazelwood
As I keep saying: Solar power reduces fuel costs, but makes capital, staff, maintenance, and land costs more expensive.
Solar looks “cheap” when compared to expensive alternatives. Nobody mention coal:
Ms Alford says an initial push to justify installation of renewable energy generation on the grounds of pure carbon abatement, as part of the miner’s social licence to operate, has been overtaken by the cost benefits of adding solar or wind generation to the mix.
“We’ve got to a stage now with renewables where the commercial benefit outweighs any social licence consideration. Renewable generation is becoming a commercial no-brainer from a cost and economic point of view,” Ms Alford said. “If you’re burning diesel you’re burning cash, and on the east coast if you’re burning gas you’re burning cash.”
Solar power is only a “no brainer” economic choice because the electricity market has been brainlessly wrecked by the Renewable Energy Target and a host of other subsidies.
All journalists need to be reminded of the invisible elephant in the room. As long as they are not comparing a generator to brown coal, they aren’t looking at all the options.
From past experience, every time there comes a need to build a new plant to replace an old coal fired plant, something strange and illogical happens.
In 2012 it was Kurri Kurri Aluminium smelter.
Then it was the automotive industry in Australia.
No electricity shortages, just shut down workplaces.
Everyone on government support.
KK
201
Solar degrades as soon as they are installed..fact. Is that even considered they WILL need replacing regularly, at huge expense.
Fixed generators like in coal or hydro stations have decades of life, per unit. Tony, lets have some numbers..
151
In the globalist envisaged utopia of a deindustrialised borderless world, you’ll be free to leave the West and walk or swim to your next job in a prosperous, low wage manufacturing based economy where you’ll reacquire a semblance of liberty.
The resultant depopulation of the rural landscape and the gentrification of the urban environment with a service economy replete with maxed-out eco-virtue signalling (no private transport, driverless rentable cars, small green spaces and smaller hermetically sealed living areas, meatless diets, wrapped in the rainbow ideology of division, exclusion and inequality) might last a short while, a period stretched somewhat with the aid of jackboots and guns.
The Green Death is depopulation, deindustrialisation and disintegration.
The clock is ticking down.
130
Morris (Strong) would be proud of that world..
10
Right On.
How much worse can the radio and print and TV, the media, get before people realize that there’s a limit to how much you really need to focus on constant Victimhood and how that effects your Feelings.
Australia has “Transitioned” over the last 50 years from being a society in a healthy growth and development phase to being media controlled serf bots.
KK
60
This is all true, the full cost of solar and wind impacts aren’t very visible, it’s this insidious lack of transparency that means the average punter thinks solar is cheap. There is no doubt that renewable are driving up price and driving down reliability, but our politicians still willfully ignore the facts. I find this behavior incomprehensible. The only politician I trust that is willing to say anything is Malcolm Roberts of one nation.
Meanwhile state labor is trying to build a solar complex on prime tillable agricultural land in a flood zone, in an area that is technically cyclone prone but definitely prone to hail the size of golf balls and bigger.
Last time Australian conservatives got my vote but this time it’ll be one nation. This nonsense has to stop and to do that we need to put Malcolm Roberts into the Senate (QLD senator)
411
Good idea.
111
Libs’ Craig Kelly is as much across the detail as is Malcolm Roberts. Unfortunately, neither has a high media profile. Other than Tony Abbott, Cory Bernardi is the only other politician who could prosecute the case. Instead, he’s playing his cards close to his chest.
Here in Victoria, his Aus Conservatives party is active with meetings but entirely absent in media reports. Compared to blowhard Clive Palmer, with his $30 million ads, or media chanteuse Pauline Hansen, Cory is very much the dark horse of the minor parties.
I hope he knows what he’s doing.
110
That’s the problem with Cory, because it’s controversial he doesn’t speak out. This is the behavior of a political animal, an inhabitant of the swamp.
Malcolm Roberts on the other hand isn’t afraid to challenge orthodoxy and ask the really hard questions, like why are we installing solar panels and batteries when they don’t even address the supposed problem (don’t actually reduce CO2.)
He is a proven performer when he was in the Senate before, asking tricky questions of the csiro, bom and chief scientist, much more so than Cory.
It’s not One Nation I’m trying to get into the Senate, it’s Malcolm Roberts the candidate that needs to be there.
10
Tony Abbott could prosecute the case? Hardly. He’d be a laughing stock as he’s had more positions than the Kama Sutra on climate change. First it was climate change is crap. Then he signed Australia up to the Paris Agreement, promising a cut in emissions of between 26-28% of the 2005 levels by 2030. Then he said we should follow Trump and leave the Paris Agreement a position held for about two years unil Malcolm Turnbull was deposed. Then last month he said we should stay with the Paris Agreement. What his next position will be is anyone’s guess but prosecute the case? Really?
12
Malcome Turnbulle was not deposed.
He deliberately made it very plain that he:
1. Wasn’t trustworthy in that he was entrusted with the task of looking after Australia.
2. Was more interested in living in New York than Australia which, as everyone knows, is filled with people who are not as smart as little Mal.
3. Petite Mal, as his friend Emmanuelle Macron calls him, has important business to sort out with the U.N. and the Great Big Barrier Reef Foundation.
4. There’s no truth to the rumour that MalEx444 is getting a million a year to fill the role of the GBBRF roving ambassador from his base in New York.
He wasn’t fired, he wanted to be let go.
And he was.
KK
10
“Wasn’t trustworthy in that he was entrusted with the task of looking after Australia.”
That sentence really doesn’t make sense. What on earth does it mean?
“Was more interested in living in New York than Australia which, as everyone knows, is filled with people who are not as smart as little Mal.”
That didn’t happen until he had left Parliament. And if true, why isn’t he there now?
“Petite Mal, as his friend Emmanuelle Macron calls him, has important business to sort out with the U.N. and the Great Big Barrier Reef Foundation.”
You may be right but I very much doubt it
“There’s no truth to the rumour that MalEx444 is getting a million a year to fill the role of the GBBRF roving ambassador from his base in New York.”
But as he isn’t based in NY clearly the rumour isn’t true. Did you think it was? If so why? And in any event he doesn’t need a million per year seeing as he has in excess of $200 million and contributed $1.75 million of his own money to the 2016 campaign. Your point sounds very flaky
“He wasn’t fired, he wanted to be let go.”
If what you claim is true then why didn’t he just say “I’m out of here?” It would have eliminated all the planning and plotting by Abbott and Dutton
11
But for how long will he be a One Nation Senator or even a Senator?? Longevity of One Nation MPs is often just the blink of an eye before they’re gone. Voting for that party has often lead to very disappointed voters. You’d probably be better off with Clive.
00
Malcolm was reliable for One Nation, but It doesn’t matter, we know what Malcolm thinks, whether he is a senator for ONP or an indie he will prosecute the case just the same.
Malcolm also chaired the Senate enquiry that led to the banking royal commission. Pity the Senate committee recommendations got lost in the RC fallout. The RC didn’t cover the same territory as the Senate. A bunch of stuff still needs to be attended to there too. I hope he will finish what he started there too.
30
But after the debacle of his dual citizenship he failed to gain a seat in the state election ad as ON is losing ground to UAP he may very well not be elected in May either. He doesn’t seem someone on whom one can rely.
11
Jo, I read this,
And came away bamboozled.
And I’m not a dopy idiot.
Electricity is a complex thing.
And thus us ordinary punters can easily be baffled.
And into that bafflement step
The unreliable, lying renewable brigade.
Please, please tell it simply, plainly & clearly.
Bill
40
The main point was “fake news” about industry using renewables.
72
The electrical engineers have a better grasp of the subject. Elsewhere there is talk that maybe renewables are not fit for purpose.
If you go straight to the comments they are dismantling Judith’s post.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/04/20/energy-security-and-grid-resilience/
61
Eg That article by Judith Curry is USA centered and within that, focussed on the needs of the USA military and intelligence agencies.
It does not offer very much at all in my opinion, which is relevant to us in Australia.
20
That’s why I read and participate in this blog.
50
Renewables simply create unpredictable output and this potentially makes the power grid unstable.
Coal based power generation has economies of scale for cost of power that renewables just cannot match. It is also much better at providing a stable 50 hz output across a large part of the grid.
Simpky put – the only way renewables are cheapest is because they have shutdown all coal based powerstations and its only renewables running……aka a stitchup.
160
“There are serious opportunities for those who lead and missed opportunities for those who do not lead the transition to advanced energy sources and grid diversification.” Trust him, he’s a Vice Admiral. That’s even better than a broadcaster. Wonder if our sailor is a Living National Treasure yet. He’s going the right way about it.
Ew. They never stop, do they?
See how Climate Etc works? Keep the skeps close to the IPCC corral, flatter them, agree with them even…then give ’em a good dose of consensus before they know what they’ve swallowed. Got ’em again, Judy!
“It turns out that a large number of people from the CIA, NSA, DOD, military etc. come to the Reno-Tahoe area to retire.” Gosh, lots of neighbourly ex-spooks just spendin’ their autumnal years polishin’ their EVs together and thinkin’ of opportunities for the rest of us. It’s like they never retired!
60
“It turns out that a large number of people from the CIA, NSA, DOD, military etc. come to the Reno-Tahoe area to retire.”
Yup…keep a rump of the intel agencies in one spot to allow an emergency “reboot” if they lost a chunk of them….
The standing joke is Batemans Bay holds enough ex-govt people to reboot canberra should it disappear in a glowing cloud….
60
‘Keep the skeps close to the IPCC corral, flatter them, agree with them even…’
Any hope that she might be an honest broker in this debate has flown the coop.
40
Lenin — ‘The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.’
I hope more people are starting to see through the Curry show. I hope.
20
Curry is a lukewarmer, not a skeptic (like me). She is in no sense a “broker” whatever that metaphor might mean. The great value of her blog is that most sides in the climate science debate are relatively well represented. It is by far the best place to see the scientific debate in action. This is tremendously useful when alarmists claim here is no scientific debate.
But if you want a one sided skeptical site, hers is definitely not the place.
31
I disagree, David. I’ve been hanging around climate sites for a while. My first encounter with Judith Curry was when she was a haughty defender of the IPCC and blaming only “communication” for any failures. (Before that she had been less polite with skeptics, as I found when I did some scouting around). Her specialty then, as now, is long, navel-gazey word salads about “uncertainty” to distract and deflect when necessary.
Next thing you know she’s kinda-sorta on our side but keeping us linked up with the climatariat and inserting sharp little pills of consensus in amongst the lollies.
Now she’s right at home living near “people from the CIA, NSA, DOD, military etc”. Because she’s one of them.
30
Agreed she is very luke warm, and so are allot of other ‘anti’ sites when you read the fine print. They continuously refer to CO2 and Methane as ‘green house gasses’ that gives them away.
30
Reads ok to me Bill !
30
What’s your background Robert ?
It may give you an advantage & insights,
That many do not have.
02
Only what I read Bill , the nuts and bolts of the story make sense to me and it’s not exactly a state secret that coal is cheaper than wind or solar .
Remember dangerous Dan increased the state impost on brown coal by 300% but coal was still the cheapest form of generation in Victoriastan.
Most of my limited knowledge comes from reading up on subjects like this so I have a basic understanding of a variety of subjects also life experience.
81
The foreground is always more important; unless you are considering a retreat.
11
Bill, Feedback helps. Which part was the problem. Is it the bid graphs? You won’t be the only one. Please ask…
50
You will understand why I am passing this onto you, a brilliant photographic record
Libya’s Legacy, Before NATO’s Destruction in 2011
Let us hope much is still standing.
It will download with https://y2mate.com/youtube/Z5Ja4rBwR8k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Ja4rBwR8k
graham.
00
Look at the graphs again Bill.
Loy Yang B Brown coal $10-19/Mwh
Bayswater Black coal $38-93/Mwh
Torrens Is Gas $71-142/Mwh
That is a huge cost advantage to the Loy Yang B brown coal. Victoria should be powering the nations manufacturing industires as well as Aluminium smelting. Yet the Andrews government is casting all that away!
60
Bill,
download the pdf and on Page 5 is
Table 2.1 volume weighted average spot prices ($/MWh
_________________Qld___NSW____Vic___SA___Tas
2015 Average______57____41______36___55___48
2016 Average______71____62______52___90___96
2017 Average_____109___101_____ 96___119___99
These are annual averages (from the Quarterly figurs if you want more detail).
20
Jo, what you wrote is fine.
But those charts are just plain confusing.
00
Does this help?
The spot price of electricity is set by bidding in five minute blocks. All the generators put in an offer saying how much they can generate and at what cost eg: Loy yang might offer to do 1GW at $14/MWh. If demand is 25GW for that five minute period, the AEMO accepts all the lowest bids until it gets the full 25GW of supply. The highest winning bid that is accepted then sets the price for all the winning generators. The generators who bid higher than that get told they aren’t needed and get nothing.
So sometimes Tas Hydro will bid -$1000/MW, but this is so they are definitely included in the winning pool. They will probably get paid, say $80/MWh.
When we had more brown coal there were many times when brown coal could supply all the needed electricity and therefore set the price. When that happened, the spot prices were (as shown above) very cheap. After Hazelwood shut the price leapt because now the demand exceeds the supply from brown coal most of the time, and thus black coal/hydro sets the winning bid.
Remember all the other brown coal gens are probably very happy about this situation. (Less competition). They are all making out like bandits and being paid at the same rate the black coal winning bids are now setting prices at.
Lord help us on days when gas, wind and solar set the winning bids. Armageddon comes when diesel gens set the price. But even diesel gens (around $300/MW) are a bargain compared to the $14,500MW cap price. (Why was that number picked, I’d like to know?)
Those bid graphs give us a much better idea of what the real cost of generation is, though generators do play games, so no single bid necessarily explains anything, but the clear average price setting by brown coal is vastly cheaper than anything else.
The situation is slightly complicated in that there are separate states, and some interconnectors between them. When the interconnectors are running at full speed the prices can be very different in different states.
It would be interesting to know how the interconnectors affect bidding and whether, say, Queenslanders pay more because of the interconnector or less.
50
And what will be the true cost of hydro produced by the big dams like lake Eildon, currently 36% full and lake Eucembene currently about 40%. While the full rivers draining these impoundments are passed off as irrigation demands, one wonders how much is in fact electricity supply companies making sure that the lights stay on in Melbourne.
Lake Eildon has about 30% recharge rate, however if it continues to be dry the actual fill of course is unknown. It does not look good for irrigators in 2020, I would guess there will be cut backs to the Goulburn valley food bowl water allocation. Who calculates or accumulates these costs against renewables. I know the last 3 weeks in Victoria have been particularly stable, standard Autumn weather, windmill out put must be very low.
130
I went past the Lake George windmills on Friday and Monday last.
First time they were turning slowly: all sixty or so drawing current to maintain structural stability.
Monday they were dead stopped.
101
Capital Wind Farm, 15,000 acres (6,000 hectares), 67 Wind Turbines, nameplate capacity 140 MW.
Capacity Factor applied 42-49 MW.
Liddell coal fired Power Station 4 generator units nameplate capacity 2,000 MW (capacity factor 1,900 MW.
Therefore Wind Farms required to duplicate Liddell 45.
There is not enough suitable land within the area covered by the electricity grid to replace power stations with wind turbines.
100
I’ve been past them a few times and have never seen them turning.
20
G’day KK,
Do ya reckon they’re stopped because they can’t afford the power to drive them? Or is it that such power is just not available for them?
Cheers
Dave B
20
Now that is an interesting point.
The power needed to turn 60 of those massive blade sets would be huge, and expensive.
The bearing friction and rotational inertia would suck a lot of juice.
Thank God for Snowy 2 just a few hundred ks down the road.
KK
00
Just wondering, for these mining companies, are the renewables projects off grid ?
(the article was paywalled)
I did see a mention of diesel use replaced by a solar and battery setup, which could make economic sense for remote mine sites and save a lot on grid connection.
50
I’m not able to see how renewables and battery could be cheaper and more convenient than diesel generation.
Perhaps if all that’s being done is recharging mobile phones but there’s more likely a heavier load than that.
51
It’s the cost to run power out to these remote locations. They wouldn’t be powering mine operations, perhaps electric fences 100 km away. It’s a common enough practice on farms.
10
Most large-scale mining in the Pilbara region of WA is powered by a large power grid system, mostly deriving power from gas-powered stations located on the coast, close to the gas sources. This grid system is not connected to the SW grid system in the lower part of WA, including Perth. In between there are isolated towns still running off diesel.
20
Alan Jones & Peta Credlin just opened their Sky News program by saying they are locked out of their respective residences in Macquarie St. Sydney! seems the situation is now under control:
23 Apr: news.com.au: Hundreds evacuated due to gas leak at Sydney Opera House
A gas leak that sparked the evacuation of hundreds of people from the Sydney Opera House area on Tuesday afternoon has been capped.
by Frank Chung
Fire and Rescue NSW said just before 7pm that gas company Jemena had capped the leak at the entrance to the Sydney Opera House site.
“Firefighters have completed gas monitoring. Exclusion zones have now been lifted and patrons allowed to return to the concourse and adjoining restaurants,” FRNSW wrote on Twitter.
About 500 people were evacuated after an excavator hit a gas main during construction works just before 3pm.
Macquarie Street was closed in both directions with motorists advised to take Albert Street instead and expect traffic delays.
2GB reporter Tamara Wearne posted a photo on Twitter from the site.
“People have been evacuated from the building, part of the Botanic Gardens and a nearby residential block,” she wrote earlier in the afternoon.
“NSW Police have blocked off the forecourt. Still a strong smell of gas.”…READ ON
https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/hundreds-evacuated-due-to-gas-leak-at-sydney-opera-house/news-story/ee6ee24ee9f0db0d163235f624921897
40
An excavator hit a gas main?
There are procedures to ensure that this doesn’t happen.
31
Also mentioned Was Bill Shorten’s image is being left off a lot of candidates advertising paraphernalia, his image is toxic in quite a few seats .
60
Yeah…you can see the outline of the unions hand up his back…..
51
It’s funny you say that, every time I hear him talk he has an air of disinterest, like the ” I don’t know what She (Gillard) said but I’m sure she’s right” comment. Everything he says seems to exude disinterest, backed by the fact he knows nothing about the detail of any of their policies, like for example, what the impact to the economy is, or how many degrees of warming he will prevent.
00
Remember when he first appeared on stage as the public union face of the big mining disaster.
Slimey, showing the sort of leadership to be expected.
20
nonetheless, this will be theirABC’s talking point:
23 Apr: RenewEconomy: Renewables clearly the answer as Bob Brown marches on Adani mine
by Giles Parkinson
Another major report has underlined the case for renewable energy to provide the lowest cost, most sustainable solution for Australia’s energy needs – noting that fossil fuels are still heavily subsidised while renewables need little more than policy certainty and guidance.
The new report, from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), came as a convoy led by former Greens leader Bob Brown attracted many thousands of people to its rallies as it moved north to the site of Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, before a planned return for a final, major rally in Canberra…
https://reneweconomy.com.au/renewables-clearly-the-answer-as-bob-brown-marches-on-adani-mine-81037/
22 Apr: IEEFA: IEEFA update: Why renewables are the solution for Australia
The case for policies that accelerate investing in renewable energy
Renewables are the lowest cost, most sustainable solution to Australia’s energy policy crisis and potentially one of the country’s largest export industries of the future, according to a briefing note published today by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
The briefing note, Why Renewables are the Solution for Australia: The Low-Cost Source of New Electricity Generation (LINK), highlights recent technological advances that have made renewables one of the country’s fastest growing industries, and Australia a world leader in battery storage.
Author Tim Buckley, IEEFA’s Director of Energy Finance Studies Australasia, says the integration of renewable electricity generation is already being achieved at a world-leading scale in the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and South Australia, with Victoria and Queensland recently lifting ambitions for 50% renewables by 2030 and, as a result, unlocking large-scale regional investment and employment opportunities…
“Renewables are deflationary,” said Buckley. “Once built, there is no fuel cost, with proponents primarily bearing only the interest cost on their debt capital. And like storage costs, renewable costs are expected to continue to fall some 10% annually over the coming decade due to economies of scale and accelerating technology gains.”
Further, renewables are clean and sustainable, use almost no water, and once built, create no air or particulate pollution, nor do they discharge carbon emissions, said Buckley…
In addition to investing in renewables, Australia needs to reintroduce a “whole-of-economy” price on carbon emissions as the low-cost solution to achieving the deep decarbonisation of the entire economy. Australia should also belatedly consider an outright ban on any new thermal coal mine development, consistent with its Paris Climate commitments, and particularly given that Australia is a top-three exported-emissions nation globally, according to the briefing note.
“The inevitability of renewables is not happening fast enough in Australia to deliver on Paris,” said Buckley. “Without a national energy policy, this leaves a growing stranded asset risk, as recently highlighted by both the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority, as well as the Bank of England. Australia must step up and take advantage of this increasingly low-cost, sustainable solution for its energy future – today.”
http://ieefa.org/ieefa-update-why-renewables-are-the-solution-for-australia/
20
meanwhile, outside of Australia, everyone seems to believe RE is more expensive, including in the US:
22 Apr: Forbes: Unreliable Nature Of Solar And Wind Makes Electricity Much More Expensive, Major New Study Finds
by Michael Shellenberger
Solar panels and wind turbines are making electricity significantly more expensive, a major new study by a team of economists from the University of Chicago finds (LINK).
Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) “significantly increase average retail electricity prices, with prices increasing by 11% (1.3 cents per kWh) seven years after the policy’s passage into law and 17% (2 cents per kWh) twelve years afterward,” the economists write.
The study by Michael Greenstone, Richard McDowell, and Ishan Nath compared states with and without an RPS. It did so using what the economists say is “the most comprehensive state-level dataset ever compiled” which covered 1990 to 2015.
The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: “All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy,” they write.
Last year, I was the first journalist to report that solar and wind are making electricity more expensive in the United States — and for inherently physical reasons (LINK).
Solar and wind require that natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries or some other form of reliable power be ready at a moment’s notice to start churning out electricity when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, I noted.
And unreliability requires solar- and/or wind-heavy places like Germany, California, and Denmark to pay neighboring nations or states to take their solar and wind energy when they are producing too much of it.
My reporting was criticized — sort of — by those who claimed I hadn’t separated correlation from causation, but the new study by a top-notch team of economists, including an advisor to Barack Obama, proves I was right.
Previous studies were misleading, the economists note, because they didn’t “incorporate three key costs,” which are the unreliability of renewables, the large amounts of land they require, and the displacement of cheaper “baseload” energy sources like nuclear plants.
The higher cost of electricity reflects “the costs that renewables impose on the generation system,” the economists note, “including those associated with their intermittency, higher transmission costs, and any stranded asset costs assigned to ratepayers.”
But are renewables cost-effective climate policy? They are not. The economists write that “the cost per metric ton of CO2 abated exceeds $130 in all specifications and ranges up to $460, making it at least several times larger than conventional estimates of the social cost of carbon.”
The economists note that the Obama Administration’s core estimate of the social cost of carbon was $50 per ton in 2019 dollars, while the price of carbon is just $5 in the US northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and $15 in California’s cap-and-trade system.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/04/22/unreliable-nature-of-solar-and-wind-makes-electricity-much-more-expensive-major-new-study-finds/#3ef4f6c14f59
90
That is an excellent article.
Michael Shellenberger has written similar articles before and this is a great update.
00
Interesting Pat.
And what’s also of significance is that we on this blog, and being unpaid, managed to highlight all of those points found in what is, no doubt, a very expensive “study”.
KK
50
Pat I live in South Australia. I know how expensive they have made power here.
That’s the simple obvious fact..
All the rest is hyperbolic propaganda by idiot savants
In a journal which is urely for the writings of such idiots.
81
The cost of solar is largely irrelevent when it comes to grid power alternatives. The sad reality for the green zealots is that it is an intermittent power source that only works effectively for a few hours in the middle of each day, provided there are no clouds, meaning you need to make the same initial investement in diesel generation plant regardless of the size of your solar investment. When you crunch the numbers, diesel by itself always works out cheaper for sites needing 24/7 power, without a grid connection.
However, this story aside, the really absurd situation with RE lies in what’s occured following the deployment of excessive wind power in SA and now in Victoria. Here we see state governments now using even more taxpayer dollars to install subsidised home solar and battery systems to help people avoid having to use their excessively expensive wind energy. If funding one source of RE to help people avoid the high cost of another source of RE wasn’t bad enought, in this case they use absurdly expensive solar + batteries to replace the very expensive wind power.
This all goes to prove the zombie apocalypse is real and expanding. In the real world they are known as the Greens.
192
Well put.
Green Zombie Apocalypse.
52
It does reek a bit of “Yes Minister”….
10
8 Apr: SBS: AAP: Wind farms more accepted, watchdog says
Wind farm commissioner Andrew Dyer says there have been just under 300 complaints made about wind farms since late 2015, with the majority about proposed turbines.
“This result could indicate that once a wind farm is built, operating and things are settled down post construction, there’s a high degree of acceptance of the wind farm,” he told a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra on Monday.
***”A lot of work was done to dispel some of the misinformation that was going around.”
Only eight complaints were made about operating wind farms in 2018, he added…
***A report on the health impacts of both audible and inaudible sound from wind farms will be available in 2021.
23 Apr: Irish Times: Kerry wind farm expansion generates opposition
Dozens of turbines under construction in county that already has more than 300
by Anne Lucey
Kerry, along with Cork and Donegal, already has the highest number of wind farms in the country. More than 300 turbines have been raised in designated areas in Kerry, the county’s acting senior planner, Damien Ginty told councillors last year.
Thirty-eight more are under construction there; 10 are awaiting decisions from An Bord Pleanála (ABP) and eight are being judicially reviewed, he said. It is believed that dozens more have planning permission.
Currently, the second-biggest wind farm in the country, Grousemount, is being constructed along the Cork-Kerry border by Kerry Wind Power Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ESB.
The wind farm, stretching from the highest pub in Ireland, the Top of Coom, across 32 townlands, is due to commence operation late this year, but turbines are already visible from Moll’s Gap and from parts of the Killarney National Park, including much of the Kerry Way.
Kerry TD Danny Healy-Rae faced the anger about wind turbines of Sliabh Luachra locals at a meeting in Gneeveguilla called to raise funds to campaign against another wind farm.
“He was run out of it,” said one of those present…
23 Apr: EnergyReporters: Irish wind sector struggles with rates and residents’ opposition
The Irish counties of Kerry, Cork and Donegal have the highest number of wind farms in Ireland and their development is facing increasing opposition from residents.
The wind-power sector also faces wider concerns about its long-term commercial viability…
Many more are believed to have planning permission but Irish commercial rates could put wind farms out of business, said Grattan Healy, chairman of the Irish Wind Farmers’ Association…
“Following the 2001 Valuation Act, the Valuation Office set about a revaluation of all rateable properties in Ireland,” the wind sector chief said. “Up to that time, wind farms were paying roughly the same rates per megawatt of generating capacity as other electricity generating stations and were fully accepting and happy to contribute to the local authority in support of their communities.
“However, the revaluation has in some instances tripled or even quadrupled rates for wind farms, while not doing anything similar for other generators. Such large increases amount to unfair government policy.”…
Healy said wind farms were paying many times more in rates than plants that were using fossil fuels. He added that high rates put off investors and putting community groups off wind…
Healy told The Times: “Existing wind farms were developed under support schemes and relied on the fixed price offering for electricity generated as being sufficient to cover all reasonable costs. Projects achieved bank approval on that basis and have contributed enormously to the task of reducing emissions, securing energy, creating employment and supporting communities.
“Now the state, through its valuation office, has decided to hugely increase the tax level on those same projects. This is an indirect form of retrospective change. Indeed, the increased tax may in some cases exceed the total support paid under the department’s support scheme, which defeats the whole purpose…
https://www.energy-reporters.com/environment/irish-wind-sector-struggles-with-rates-and-residents-opposition/
21
23 Apr: AFR: Solar thermal has big future despite SA project collapse: adviser
by Angela Macdonald-Smith
Australia risks missing out on a highly promising renewable energy source if it turns its back on solar thermal technology because of the collapse of SolarReserve’s high-profile $650 million project in South Australia, according to energy adviser Simon Currie, the former global head of energy at Norton Rose Fulbright…
The failure of the ambitious project, which was supposed to come online in 2020 and supply power to the state at $78 a megawatt-hour, below average wholesale prices, has come as a setback to the emerging solar thermal sector in Australia. The process provides baseload solar through a combination of solar and thermal storage, and unlike solar PV, can also provide services that help stabilise the grid, like conventional thermal generators…
Mr Currie said it would be a mistake to dismiss CSP technology for Australia, pointing to the very bright future envisaged for the process by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and large-scale investment pouring into it in the Middle East and China. He cited a forecast from IRENA that CSP will attract $US1900 billion of investment by 2050 and highlighted the ideal hot, dry climate conditions that can be found within Australia…
A report for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (LINK), which has backed Vast Solar, RayGen and SolarStor, and also supports the Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute (LINK), said last August that concentrated solar thermal technology would be the lowest cost solution to meet electricity demand when coal generators shut down in about 2030. In its base case, it estimated some 3.94 gigawatts of plants would be built in 2031-40…
https://www.afr.com/business/energy/solar-energy/solar-thermal-has-big-future-despite-sa-project-collapse-adviser-20190422-p51g50
41
It’s flopped in the USA.
It’s flopping in South Australia
I wonder how much filthy lucre
This propagandist
Has spent on shares in this dodo
power supply ?
100
Firstly, the OPERATORS claimed that the electricity would cost $172 per MWh (before any subsidies) so it is unlikely that they would make any money now that the RET Certificates have dropped in price. They couldn’t even break even with subsidy at SA’s inflated price.
Secondly, the supposed output was inflated beyond what could have been achieved. (Simple calculation output (135 MW) multiplied by 3200 hours of sunlight per year = 432GW, not the 600 claimed). Whether the figure was inflated by the vendor or by (Labor) govt. press agents is not known but surely the Media should have done some simple checking.
NOTE: that is an optimistic figure for Pt. Augusta (31-3200 p.a.) and some of those hours would be early in the morning or late in the evening when the angle makes generation low.
Thirdly, even with $220 million subsidy on offer the project was cancelled. Perhaps they should have claimed they could save the Great Barrier Reef?
Fourthly, if run as a 24 hour operation (as some fools at reneweconomy seem to “think”) it could at BEST generate only 49MW but in practice less. It could only pay for itself if it supplied during the high demand times when SA’s electricity prices go up even higher. In such times as gas fired diesel (such as the new AGL station) would be competing, and not relying on it being sunny that day.
30
22 Apr: Deutsche Welle: Germany: Protesters oppose SuedLink wind energy cable
by Jane Mcintosh
Protesters have voiced their opposition to the SuedLink extra-high voltage line bringing wind-generated energy from the north to the south of Germany. Locally produced energy is the protesters’ preferred alternative.
On Easter Monday, there were a series of protests in Germany against the SuedLink project.
They included about 2,000 people who traveled to central Germany, near Schweinfurt, to protest the proposed 700-kilometer (435-mile) long underground energy cable running from the north German coast to the south.
Some of the participants objected on the grounds of the multi-billion euro costs of the project, others that it had not been thought through properly. One participant told public broadcaster ARD that she disliked the idea that it might be used by foreign companies. Farmers suggested the cable would heat and disrupt the soil, making it less fertile for growing crops. Many felt they were not being listened to by the authorities.
SuedLink is being developed by TenneT, the Dutch-German transmission system operator and TransnetBW from southwest Germany…
The protesters would prefer small and decentralized stations using power produced near where it is used and have proposed an alternative plan to divide Germany up into 80 areas which would each produce electricity for the end user…
A federal decision on the SuedLink route is expected by the end of the year.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-protesters-oppose-suedlink-wind-energy-cable/a-48437451
reminder:
5 Feb: Bloomberg: Germany’s Power Grid Overhaul to Cost Billions More Than Expected
By Brian Parkin
Germany’s plan for new power cable “autobahns” to take wind and solar energy from the north to the south of the country is set to cost billions more than envisaged.
The grid upgrade will cost as much as 52 billion euros ($59 billion), 53 percent more than was budgeted for in 2014, the companies building the north-south high-voltage links said in a joint statement. Two more of the super cables are needed on top of the three already planned in order to meet the government’s new green power targets, the builders said.
The revised blueprint spells bigger electricity bills for a nation that already shares with Denmark the highest retail power costs in the European Union. Grid upgrade expenses are tacked on to consumers’ bills…
“Overhauling the national grid to take a new green power target will definitely cost power users more — how much we can’t say,” Peter Franke, vice president of Germany’s energy regulator Bnetza, said in an interview in Essen…
Dutch government-owned Tennet Holding BV is building the Suedlink cable, the largest and most expensive stretch of the new grid. Amprion GmbH is focusing on cabling transmission along Germany’s western border, 50Hertz GmbH is responsible for the eastern region and Transnet BW AG for the southwest.
The revised plan also raises the possibility of further delays in the project.
Just 150 kilometers (93 miles) of the super power highway was constructed by 2018. Another 5,700 kilometers needs to be added by 2025, the targeted completion date of the current, three-line plan, according to the Economy and Energy Ministry’s website.
Peter Altmaier, the Economy and Energy Minister, said last year that progress achieved in enhancing the grid was a “catastrophe”.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/germany-s-power-autobahns-will-cost-billions-more-than-expected
30
Renewables are still more expensive than coal. I have carried out a review of the LCOE of new coal compared with GenCost 2018 (published by CSIRO) and I show the results in the diagram below.
It is evident from the above diagram that the cost of wind power (with 6 hours storage) is approximately 2½ to 3¼ times the cost of existing coal power and approximately 2 to 2½ times the cost of new coal power.
90
But where Angus is the diagram ?
31
My link to the diagram didn’t work.
I’ll need to revisit my HTML for posting images.
00
Image should be available from this link:
https://imgur.com/nyxU7xY
00
29 Mar: RenewEconomy: Coalition grants permit for Australia’s first offshore wind farm
by Sophie Vorrath
Plans for what would be Australia’s first offshore wind farm, the massive 2000MW Star of the South off the coast of Victoria, have taken a small step forward this week, after the project finally got the green light from federal government for a site exploration (LINK).
The federal Coalition said on Friday afternoon, after months of delay, that it had approved a deed of licence to allow the ***$8 billion project’s developers, Offshore Energy, to undertake resource exploration for the wind farm off the Gippsland coast.
It said the licence would allow Offshore Energy to undertake exploration – only – in what are Commonwealth waters between 8-13 kilometres offshore from Port Albert.
The plans for the ambitious project, first formally unveiled in June 2017 but in the works for another five years before that, propose the construction of 250 turbines – enough to generate one-and-a-half times the energy of the now-closed Hazelwood coal-fired power station…
MUA deputy national secretary Will Tracey said the exploration licence did not allow construction to start and was simply about allowing the use of floating buoys and platforms off the Gippsland coast to gather wind and wave observations,’ the Gippsland Times reported (LINK).
“We have a major wind project that would create thousands of jobs and provide clean, reliable energy for more than a million Australian households, but because of their ideological hatred of renewable energy the Morrison government appears to be actively stalling its development,” he said…
“The Star of the South offshore wind farm will be a game changer for action on climate change and Australia’s energy system,” said Pat Simons, Friends of the Earth’s renewable energy spokesperson.
“This is what transition looks like,” he added, noting that the breakthrough follows Thursday’s news of the Delburn Wind farm proposal at a plantation site in the Latrobe Valley – the former Victorian coal hub, which is also where the Star of the South would connect to the grid via an underground cable…
https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-grants-permit-for-australias-first-offshore-wind-farm-26073/
30 Mar: ABC: Ocean off Victoria’s Gippsland could be home to first offshore wind project
By Jarrod Whittaker
If it proceeds, the Star of the South would be the first of its kind in Australia and generate 2,000 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 1.2 million homes…
(Offshore Energy chief executive Andy Evans) said his company had picked Gippsland because of the strength of its offshore wind and its proximity to the transmission infrastructure in the Latrobe Valley, which produces Victoria’s coal-fired power…
The granting of a licence to Star of the South comes a day after another company announced plans for a wind project in Gippsland.
OSMI Australia wants to a build 53-turbine wind farm in pine plantations near the former Hazelwood power station, which closed in March 2017.
The 300-megawatt Delburn wind farm is expected to cost between $400-$500 million with construction set to begin in 2022 if it’s approved.
Like the Star of the South, OSMI director Peter Marriott said his project picked its location because of the Latrobe Valley’s transmission infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of transmission infrastructure and with the closure of Hazelwood that’s opened up a lot of spare capacity in that network that’s already been built,” Mr Marriott said.
“So we’re looking to connect this project into an existing 220KV line that sits in the north of the project site and it’s on the project, which allows us to connect to the power infrastructure already without building any new power lines. So all the power cables associated with this project would be underground.”…
The Star of the South and Delburn wind farms have received support from Victoria’s environmental groups.
Pat Simons from Friends of the Earth said the two projects could allow the Latrobe Valley to become a hub for the Victorian wind industry…
***The Latrobe Valley has struggled to recover from the privatisation of the coal-fired power industry in the 1990s when thousands lost their jobs…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-29/australia-first-wind-project-gets-exploration-licence/10953598
20
Offshore wind.
The madness must be stopped.
50
Proposed turbines are 8MW
16,263 GW annual for 1.5 times Hazelwood (1360MW @91%CF by 8760 hours )
= 7.4 MW from each turbine every hour all year to match 1.5 times Hazelwood.
= 93% Capacity Factor
As the current installed offshore wind farms are reporting CF’s from 37 to 45% it seems they expect better wind conditions than anywhere else in the World even in the Polar regions, where the turbine at North Cape, Norway was reported to be 75%.
IT is far more likely that at best this scheme cannot match Hazelwood at all.
(Readers north of the Murray river PLEASE NOTE – despite what you may think Victoria IS NOT inside the Antarctic circle).
10
I am still flummoxed by this insistence that renewables are becoming cheaper . My logic is this. If one has a system that has a base load generator and has a renewables system added to it , it is impossible that the dual system cannot be cheaper than a single system. A base load system can meet the systems needs alone , but a renewable system can’t without a base load backup. A + B cannot ever be cheaper than A alone.
This seems pretty logical.
190
Can?
40
Well put Zig !
70
IF the capital cost of the power stations was very low and the cost of fuel was very high, then it could be conceived that a dual system might be cheaper.
However in our reality the reverse is the case and hence the hybrid or dual system costs a lot more.
50
23 Apr: DownToEarth.org: Solar and its challenges in India
India needs a more comprehensive approach in order to achieve the target of 100 GW by 2022
By Pratha Jhawar
Mercom India, a clean energy research organsation, has reported that the installed solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity has reached over 28 GW as of December 2018.
However, this accounts for only about 5.5 per cent of the total global cumulative installations…
Mercom noted that in calendar year (CY) 2018, India added 8.3 GW of solar capacity. It has observed a 13 per cent dip from the previous year, when the solar PV installation addition was 9.6 GW. The total installations globally accounted 104 GW for CY 2018, during which China and the US added 44.3 GW and 10.6 GW respectively.
India has a target of installing 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022 and is still 72 GW short of it. To achieve this ambitious goal, a ramping up of the yearly targets is the need of the hour. Yet, the challenges are immense.
Firstly, to achieve the 100 GW target, India needs to invest $65 billion in the next four years. A major part of it has to be raised within the country, as the renewable sector could so far attract a foreign direct investment (FDI) worth only $7.5 billion in the last 18 years (2000-2018), according to a report by the India Brand Equity Foundation…
Second, the factors causing negative growth of the solar sector in CY 2018 — the confusion along the GST and the import duty on solar equipment — are yet to be resolved completely.
Thirdly, on the domestic manufacturing front, India fares worse. Various efforts by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) to attract bids for the development of the Inter-state Transmission System (ISTS) connected Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Power Plant since May 2018 has been in vain…
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/energy/solar-and-its-challenges-in-india-64116
23 Apr: PV Mag: PV plants in China under greater pressure than wind farms — Fitch
Chinese solar plant operators must contend with higher financial costs than companies that run wind farms in the country. And delayed subsidy payments are only complicating their woes, the ratings agency reports.
by Brian Publicover
PIC: A panda-shaped PV project built by Panda Green Energy
The credit profiles of PV plant operators in China are “weakening,” based on their 2018 financial results, while those of companies that operate wind farms in the country have started to stabilize, according to a recent report by Fitch Ratings…
“We do not expect a quick fix to the subsidy delay,” the ratings agency says. “The shortfalls in the Renewable Surcharge Fund will only grow bigger, as China has been reluctant to raise the CNY 19 ($2.83)/MWh surcharge levied on power consumers to avoid higher electricity prices.”…
Fitch Ratings notes that 76% of the 174 GW of solar that had been installed in China by the end of 2018 was plugged into the grid in the 2016-18 period. However, just 30% of the country’s 184 GW of cumulative wind capacity was installed during that period.
“The solar-panel installation boom in recent years has severely bloated the operators’ balance sheets,” says the ratings agency…
However, Fitch Ratings acknowledges that solar and wind operators reduced capex in 2018, as their investment appetite has waned ahead of anticipated cuts to the country’s feed-in tariffs. It believes that some solar operators will probably have to sell off assets to raise liquidity, given the difficulties associated with refinancing at present.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/04/23/pv-plants-in-china-under-greater-pressure-than-wind-farms-fitch/
00
Thanks for laying it on the line again, Jo.
I’d add one other factor: the internationalisation (excuse ugly word to describe ugly thing) of Australia’s energy supply. Coal is domestic in ways that even gas cannot be domestic. It is constant in ways hydro cannot be constant. Lithium can be mined here, but it has to become an import to be of use here.
So it goes beyond cost.
This magnificent trump resource, Australian coal, is being substituted in Australia with masses of imported, perishable hardware, dated as soon as it leaves the Asian showroom. The fact that much of it has been manufactured in Asia with Australian coal is no doubt a source of mirth to the globalists when they get together for a care burning at the Owl Shrine. We should be less amused.
The War on Coal is a war on me.
180
I do wonder whether this is just a game to preserve coal deposits for the Elite to use post WW3?
If you can get coal mining shut down *now*, post hostilities, you have nice little 300+ year supply all to yourself with a greatly reduced population ( and the ones left will be slaves ).
The greens and Left are just useful idiots in the bigger game…..
70
Hard to say what their long game is with regard to coal, Steve. But we should not count out any creepy agenda.
It’s clear they don’t care how much coal we mine and turn to cash for the moment. But we are not to use it domestically with thrift and we are not to modernise or develop it. Cynics and shills like Gillard are trained to refer to it as a “valuable export” or as “durrdy coal”, depending on audience. Are we to take comfort from the fact that solar and wind are manufactured abroad using the Australian coal they are meant to replace in Australia? Or are we simply expected not to notice? Do Australians really believe there is an Asian atmosphere and an Aussie atmosphere…and never the CO2 of the twain shall meet?
Big Green wants us to use coal as an export cash cow and as a neglected drudge at home as we string out more joke technologies and pretend that you can mainstream these antique/boutique contraptions that are doomed to fail outside their hopelessly narrow functions. The bigger the waste, the more they like it. Now that money can be conjured and is only real when poor silly mugs have to pay it back, maybe they feel waste doesn’t matter any more.
It’s a mystery how they hope to get away with it and how they expect to be believed. On the other hand, they do seem to be getting away with it. Luciferians posing as tree-huggers and Bambi-patters. Go figure.
30
a rant before signing off.
I keep hearing media discuss Australia & EVs – both positively and negatively – yet I never hear anyone, when referencing charging them at home, bring up the fact millions of households in Australia have multiple vehicles.
I’ve seen 6-figure numbers for 4 and 5 vehicles per household, but can’t spend time looking for those precise figures right now. however, note:
Australia: Number of cars per household
Derived from the Census question:
‘How many registered motor vehicles owned or used by residents of this dwelling were garaged or parked at or near this dwelling on the night of Tuesday, 9 August 2016?’
2 motor vehicles: 3,025,454 households
2 motor vehicles: 1,505,374 households
https://profile.id.com.au/australia/car-ownership
media that is critical of the attempts to force Australians down the EV path need to ask – how will these millions of multi-vehicle households find the hours & means to charge them all overnight?
worth checking full article below:
21 Mar: DriveZero: Beginners guide to charging electric cars in Australia
Level 1 Chargers
As you can see, Level 1 is essentially just charging your EV from a regular power point. It won’t charge your car very fast, but if you’re not driving too far each day it can be fine for many people.
If you left your car charging overnight – for example for ***10 hours – then you’d be gaining around 100-130 kms of range.
As most people don’t drive anywhere near that distance everyday they shouldn’t have any problems. Each morning they’ll wake up with a “full tank” and be good to go…
Level 2 Chargers
You will find Level 2 chargers out in public but you can also install them in your home too.
Whilst most Level 2 chargers at home won’t normally go above 11-15 kW, many public Level 2 chargers go all the way up to 22 kW, and giving a good amount of power they can fully charge even large battery cars in ***4-5 hours…
Level 3, Types of plugs, ETC…
Summing up!
***The state of EV charging in Australia is pretty good. There are many public and often free chargers and the compatibility is high too…READ ALL
https://www.drivezero.com.au/charging/charging-guides/electric-car-charging-guide/
***I don’t see how many hours for Level 2 chargers at home to reach 11-15 kW (am presuming 4-5 hours refers to public Level 2 chargers).
40
Jaguar EV road test in Australia, note recharging issues and range anxiety …
https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-reviews/jaguar-i-pace-se-73253
30
Thanks for that link.
Labor’s Electric vehicle policy
Is utterly dopey.
This Jaguar costs $120,000+ to buy.
20
Great article Dennis. Imagine trying to do that road trip with a car load of “Are we there yet” kids on a hot day. I’ll stick with my trusty ICE thanks.
30
Indeed Graeme, “range anxiety” …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcfb5Hak78Q
20
A medium-range Tesla EV would have a battery around 85kWh. If we add say 10% extra to fully charge the battery from flat, then around 95kWh is required. With a high-power Level 2 22kW charger, it will take 4-5 hours, so the figures sound about right.
10
I should slso comment that I believe the terms “Level 1”, “Level 2” etc. are Tesla’s terms for its series of chargers, and not a universal charging standard for EVs.
11
I understand that Level 1 is standard 240V and Level 2 is 415V and then commercial levels at recharging stations.
00
No matter what price they put on their bid, everyone gets the same half hourly averaged price for the electricity they generate.
Pretend it averages out across the day at $100/MWH.
Just the brown coal element in Victoria, well they generate an average of 4200MW each and every hour, so in a 24 hour day, they receive 4200 X 24 X 100, so $10.08 Million.
Every solar plant in the Country averages 740MW across the 11 hours they generate power, so they receive 740 X 11 X 100, or $814,000, and that’s 8% of what the brown coal generators get. It’s actually less than that, because at both ends of the daily solar Insolation Curve for power generation, when very very little power is being generated, it won’t even register on an individual power plant scale.
Solar power can bid as cheap as they want to as far as I’m concerned.
In total, every solar power plant in Oz is currently delivering less than 2% of all the required power on a daily basis.
If they had to bid a true price, even at break even, without the extra they make from their certificates, no one would buy their power, umm, unless they were forced to that is.
Solar power is not cheap, not reliable, not a constant supplier, and not even a tiny supplier.
Tony.
191
Thanks Tony, always informative.
These reports of how ‘cheap’ RE power is should include the largesse being given to the RE companies to be in business as their bids take into the subsidies into account (I suspect).
THe RE companies should also be required to guarantee the non-intermittent supply at their name-plate rating, or a high percentage of same, if they wish to connect to the grid.
30
Yes, but when investors can attract finance based on federal and state government support for their business venture, when the business can write off the assets against high electricity pricing based income before tax and sell their shares to unsuspecting buyers before the assets obviously become liabilities ….
Bingo!
20
also a recent India report-they are short of Metallurgical coal-go Australia..
The top 10 biggest thermal power plants in India
[Search domain http://www.power-technology.com/features/feature-the-top-10-biggest-thermal-power-plants-in-india/%5D https://www.power-technology.com/features/feature-the-top-10-biggest-thermal-power-plants-in-india/
The 10 biggest thermal power stations operating in India are all coal-fired, with seven of them owned and operated by state-run National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC). Power-technology.com profiles India’s 10 biggest thermal power plants by installed capacity.
10
I recently watched a re-run of an old program (from 2007) about a company that created a prototype solar device that used a segmented parabolic mirror (80 mirrors in a device about 30m across) that focused the sun on one end of a Stirling heat engine which spun an alternator to create electricity (each unit was rated at 25 kilowatts). The company that created this device envisioned a large piece of land covered with many of these units to create a “utility scale power plant”. Since this program was 12 years old, I wondered how this project turned out so I googled the company. They went bankrupt and got bought out. Then that company was purchased by another company. As far as I can tell, the device never went into commercial use. Too bad, as it seemed like a good idea if they can just work out a way to keep the mirrors clean, reduce the amount of land required by the system and figure out how to make the system work when the sun doesn’t shine.
20
RicDre:
And that system set a “record” for conversion of sunlight into electricity of 32%.
Mind you it was set early one very dust-free morning at minus 8℃.
10
Very interesting, I did not know that. I did a quick google on that and found an article that said that record was set in Jan, 2008 and beat the old record of 29% set in 1984. Also I found another article from May 2016 that says a group of engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) created a new solar cell that achieved an efficiency of 34.5%. At this rate of improvement, they will have raised the efficiency of the conversion of solar energy to electricity to at least 36% by the time the world ends in 12 years.
21
Peter Ridd wrong – their abc Newsflash!
It’s worse than anyone first thought!
“However, Dr Ridd’s views on the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef were not on trial in this case.
The decision was confined to his industrial rights and the judge made no comment on the validity of his climate views.”
“Dr Brodie was an author on one of the studies criticised, and said Dr Ridd cherry-picked papers.”
“Dr Brodie says if anything, the predictions made by reef scientists underestimated how fast the reef would feel the brunt of climate change.
“Our predictions weren’t wrong, they just weren’t extreme enough.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-04-23/peter-ridd-reef-science-climate-change/11026540
Extreme enough?
These people are sick.
David Attenborough: too much alarmism on environment a turn-off
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/04/attenborough-dynasties-ecological-campaign
70
If someone systematically lies to everyone, and has no apparent remorse…..well…..what do you call that?
51
Climate science
61
Every time I read one of these ABC Science articles online, I see the box asking if I want more of the same via my email.
Bugger me ! Why would I want such junk science flooding my email box ?
Not my ABC
Just my taxes paying for junk science reporting .
Is there a ‘prize’ for the best distributer of junk science ?
I’m sure the ABC could win year on year for decades !
22
Most popular MSM science is faux science, nothing based on anything real, published or not. They are totally clueless and none of the journos could possibly understand a paper if they read one. What they dont know is that a large percentage of published papers are falsified in a few years. Science in all disciplines is (supposed to be) evolving, at least it should be. All the MSM et al want is sensationalist headlines and articles to sell advertising space, esp on the NET.
51
https://notrickszone.com/2019/04/19/new-german-study-shocks-electric-cars-considerably-worse-for-climate-than-diesel-cars-up-to-25-more-co2/
Might ruin someone’s day
41
The Born Lucky article has been posted before but it is important to study what has been happening in the renewables industry.
It’s clearly all about climate change hoax based globalism and socialism politics and wealth creation by profiteers at our expense with assistance from our politicians, yet we all now understand that from a practical point of view the RET is Mission Impossible, we are being ripped off.
https://stopthesethings.com/2017/03/13/born-lucky-stars-align-perfectly-for-pms-son-with-mammoth-bet-on-wind-power-outfit-infigen/
20
There are comments, read the article and then consider …
“All about protecting (Malcolm Turnbull’s) progeny? Well, there is no other reason that remotely makes sense. What an amazing thing that MT personally calls the Tesla battery man, why not ask an expert to do it and report back – what odds that Turnbull resigns as soon as he fixes a sale for Infigen? The rort gets dirtier every day and the punters just keep on falling for it.”
Article March 2017 and resigned and retired late 2018?
00
There are comments, read the article and then consider …
“All about protecting (Malcolm Turnbull’s) progeny? Well, there is no other reason that remotely makes sense. What an amazing thing that MT personally calls the Tesla battery man, why not ask an expert to do it and report back – what odds that Turnbull resigns as soon as he fixes a sale for Infigen? The rort gets dirtier every day and the punters just keep on falling for it.”
Article March 2017 and resigned and retired late 2018?
10
Brown coal in motoring terms is the equivalent of E10, both are cheap, neither is good for the environment
29
If a modern brown-coal power station was built, basically the only emissions would be H2O and CO2, both of which are ESSENTIAL to the environment.
CO2 is currently in short supply in the atmosphere, and an increase would be highly beneficial to all life on Earth.
E10 is only cheaper because of the way government does the tax on petrol.
111
Do you live anywhere near a brown coal fired generation plant Fitz ?
If you do you will know that the Latrobe valley has pretty good air quality nowadays.
60
I drive along the Latrobe Valley at least once a year and can confirm that the air quality is good.
60
So are you saying that when Hazelwood was operating the air quality was bad? sort of proves my point. If price is the only consideration then we should remove all environmental protections and make it even cheaper.
29
I did not say that Fitz.
You did.
I travelled for decades through the Latrobe valley
When Hazelwood was operating
And even stayed at Churchill, the nearby town
for a couple of weeks once.
Air quality was good.
The real air quality issue was
The Maryvale paper mill
Near Traralgon
Now that stank for decades.
So where do/did you live that
Makes you an expert on the air quality
Near Brown coal power plants ?
80
All I did was look at the victorian EPA, the air quality was not good. You don’t live near one either so that is a stupid statement
also like in the Hunter, it takes years off your life if you live in the Latrobe
http://report.hazelwoodinquiry.vic.gov.au/part-four-health-wellbeing/health-wellbeing-background/health-latrobe-valley.html
so spare me the ‘I spent a couple of hours driving in my air conditioned vehicle’ and therefore I am an expert in air quality.
210
Peter that was the sabotaged coal mine fire situation.
Not a problem now, I drove past a couple of months ago and stopped to refuel not far away.
I hate it when diversions are set up to attempt to prove a point that is pointless.
71
you can go back before the fire, and the air quality was worse than it is now.
18
Not quoting from the discredited Latrobe Valley report again Peter? The one in question was written by an activist doctor, and was mostly based on an aloso-discredited New Jersey report. The Latrobe Valley report was strongly criticised by local Valley health professionals, who pointed out that there were many others significant health factors in the region, such as a higher-than-normal incidence of smoking.
71
some references wold prove you point, there being none I conclude that this is just a smokescreen /sarc off
18
Ok Peter, references you shall have, and there is no need to be sarcastic – it never helps in any adult discussion.
The key one is The Australian, 26 February 2018, Chip Le Grand article. Traralgon GP Paul Broughton stated that it “was a long now to draw”, while Committee For Gippsland chief executive accused the EPA of soliciting a “prescriptive and narrow vein of feedback “.
The DEA submission was based on a study by Ben Ewald, a Hunter Vally GP and environmental activist. Dr Ewald applied the New Jersey study figures to the Latrobe Valley to draw his conclusions, and admitted that he didn’t take into account other drivers of low birth weights. He also said that more research was needed.
The CSIRO study “ACARP Trace Elements in Coal No 02” stated that there was no environmental impact on the use of thermal coals.
There are many more refs – these will do for a start.
30
Where do you live thats makes you an expert of the Latrobe Valley Peter.
.Answer the question
10
good choice “ACARP Trace Elements in Coal No 02″ – did not sample brown coal.
As to the choice the reference I provided compared the Latrobe with the rest of Victoria, health is worse in the Latrobe.
Finally to have 2 coal areas (Latrobe and the Hunter) both experiencing higher mortality is more than mere coincidence
03
I did not know that you had to live in a particular spot to become an expert. What great news! I’m now expecting you to shut up about everything not directly related to the Adelaide Hills.
03
Where do you live thats makes you an expert of the Latrobe Valley Peter ?
.Answer the question.
You are avoiding answering. I wonder why ?
Perhaps because you have actually no idea beyond what you read online.
No actual experience at all !
20
Bill, I live in New South Wales, on the mid north coast. Will that satisfy you?
02
Fitz only “thinks” he is an expert.
I see no evidence to back that up, on any subject whatsoever.
Sort of a “1 out of 10” on all subjects.
20
Peter, yes, the health of the folks in the Latrobe Valley IS worse than other areas. But what the local health professionals are saying is that there are LOTS of other factors that would be related to this difference, and the biased study clearly ignored these other factors.
There were other refs that I could have supplied, but I had folks working in my house at the time so had to cut it short.
00
When anyone claims that solar is now the cheapest source of electricity in Australia, ask them to describe and cost a workable 100% solar-powered grid.
Point out that when the sun doesn’t shine, there must either be massive amounts of storage, or a 100% reliable coal or gas generator available as well. So double the investment, not only in the generators, but also in the network.
Dr Finkel, in his report to the government in 2017 in his role as Australia’s chief scientist, reported large scale solar cost as $91/Mwhr without backup, and $172/MWhr with 12 hours storage.
If solar was cost competitive, there would be no need for renewable energy targets and government subsidies.
90
Like I’m the Premier’s nephew and I get to pick the eyes out of the best peak hour bus runs to run my bus company tender. Why can’t the rest of the tenderers picking up the other runs and times match my tender pricing? Duh!
10