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BHP is throwing its weight around to stop the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) saying what most miners want on climate change. What coal company wants lobbyists not to lobby for coal? The gauntlet is down — Which heavyweight will blink first? In one corner — The MCA — the main lobby group for miners. It’s very effective, and wants to dump the renewables target (“yay” say most miners!). In the other corner — BHP –which has just threatened to quit unless the MCA stops being skeptical of climate change. Thing is, BHP is the largest member of the MCA, providing 17% of the funding. The colossal miner is so big, it can do its own deals. Essentially, the Minerals Council needs BHP more than BHP needs the Minerals Council. BHP is testing it’s power. A tough test for the MCAIn Australia, the MCA is influential enough that their fierce anti-mining tax campaign helped to bring down a Prime Minister and when industries want to threaten governments they talk of running a campaign “like it”. If they fold and serve their largest client, effectively burning off almost all their smaller clients, then the smaller clients should quit and form their own new entity. They provide 80% of the MCA funding, and for the MCA not to lobby for Australia’s second largest export industry is bonkers. The world’s biggest miner BHP said Tuesday it would leave the World Coal Association and review its membership of the US Chamber of Commerce membership to show support for action on climate change. BHP said it also disagreed with the US Chamber of Commerce’s rejection of the Paris Agreement and a carbon-pricing policy, and would decide on whether to leave the organisation by March. The miner said it would remain in the MCA as the firm was still benefiting from its membership, but threatened to quit the Australian group if it did not refrain from lobbying in favour of coal power. BHP is a coal miner — so why does it want the main miners lobbyist to NOT lobby for coal? Do the test: Either BHP cares about the environment, or … it has more to gain from being “fashionable” on climate and pandering to bigger powers. Follow the power chain. The government is the largest entity now in any western nation. There are huge advantages in favors from governments on offer here, and banks too. BHP is so big it has private meetings with Prime Ministers to create policies that might theoretically be not be so friendly for smaller competitors. BHP is so big it uses 120 megawatts just at Olympic Dam (about 5-10% of the total power supply in South Australia). It’s so big that it can even float the option of running its own coal plant, though it may work out cheaper if the Australian taxpayer builds an interconnector to black coal in NSW. The rules are different for a player this size. Seven advantages to BHP:
If BHP control the Minerals Council they can demand even better deals on all kinds of tax and legal arrangements. (See what happened after the Resource Rent Tax campaign.) All they have to do is tell ShortenTurnbull (Turnborten?) that they will set the Minerals Council on them if XYZ clause is not added to the new policy. If the MCA caves here it shores up BHP’s already immense power, and shows the MCA is merely the tool of BHP. Can all the other miners afford that? December 19th, 2017 | Tags: Australian Politics | Category: AGW socio-political, Big-Government, Politics |  Print This Post | | The situation with our most hated energy assetAustralia’s big four banks are fighting over themselves to turn down the chance to profit from coal loans and tell the world. Months ago, Westpac went on a low-coal diet, declaring like a kind of vegan-keto-banker that they won’t consider a loan unless the coal mined has at least 6,300 kilocalories per kilogram. Presumably they will lose weight, or at least lighten up by a few shareholders. Last week our National Australia Bank announced they are waiting for the carbon capture fairy to conquer some laws of chemistry and economics before they finance coal mines again. (Though they limit themselves to spurning only new customers and “thermal coal” in a kind of have-cake-eat-half-the-cake policy.) But while the small-fish Australian banks advertise their doogooder star status, financial institutions in Canada are putting $2.9 billion towards building new coal plants overseas. And in the last three years, Chinese banks have casually smashed $630 billion dollars into coal. (Notably, even the Chinese don’t want to put money into Adani coal in Australia, the political environment here is that bad.) The rest of the world is definitely not watching the Australian Banks. Global coal consumption has been flat for a few years, but in a new report, the IEA predicts coal use will grow again ’til 2022, at least in a subdued way. This appears to be singlehandedly due to Narenda Modi, who announced in August that the rest of India should get electricity and by next year, so 40 million households are to be connected at a cost of $2.5 billion USD. Soak in those IEA Key Energy Statistics 2017: Most of the renewables above will be in the form of underwater turbines on steep slopes near large bodies of water. The other on this graph is not solar PV or tidal power, but Nuclear. Not dead yetGrowth in coal use has flattened for the last five years, prompting decrees for the eager Guardian that it is variously in decline, at a turning point and on life support. Instead, the IEA predicts that it will pick up again. The situation as it was from 1971 – 2015.  IEA Key Energy Statistics 2017, page 38. Note the huge impact wind and solar have had on global total energy use in the last 40 years (marked in fluorescent glowing yellow 🙂 ):  4: Other includes heat, solar thermal, and geothermal. Still a fossil fuel powered world. h/t Pat …. Outback couple build solar farm to prove fringe-of-grid power generation needs
In Normanton, 500 kilometres north of Mount Isa in north-west Queensland, the Scoullers built a solar farm big enough to power an area almost twice the size of Tasmania, in a move to prove to stakeholders the benefit of positioning power generation sites at the end of the grid. In old fashioned terms, the “farm” produces five-megawatts. But yesterday, Tasmania didn’t use 5MW it used 1,072 MegaWatts. So this solar farm would have supplied 0.2% of the houses and businesses on an area “twice the size of Tasmania”. The only Tasmania-sized-areas that would be functioning on 5MW are in the empty desert or the Great Southern Ocean. And we wonder why some Australians think solar power is a no brainer. If this little farm can supply 120,000 km2, we just need another 60 like it, and we could do the whole continent! ABC journalists are not good with numbers. If only they had a billion dollars a year perhaps they could afford a specialized science team that understood that units of electricity are not reported in square kilometers. Oh wait… Keep reading → December 17th, 2017 | Tags: ABC, Solar Energy (PV), TAS (Tasmania) | Category: Energy, Global Warming, Renewable | Print This Post | | Here’s another “breakthrough” fusion claim. Thing is, one day, one of these will work. Something like this: Boron Hydrogen, Fusion, click to read about aneutronic fusion. In the meantime, knowing that the future is nuclear, and the only question is when, we should burn all the coal we have while it is still worth something. UPDATE: Everyone knows that fusion is the perennial baby of Hype-n-Hope. It’s easy to criticize, but why miss the chance to crush a few mantras instead? The renewables industry talks about how inevitable renewables are, so lets talk about the inevitable Fusion-Future that makes the “renewables” surge a temporary blip that will be superseded. The Fusion-Future adds urgency to coal use now — a real use-by date (albeit with blurry print). PS: Yes, The Greens are going to hate it. A private energy generator, outside government control, not needing hand-outs, and one that solves “climate change” but without subsidies and strings. These companies might say what they think! They’re a power threat to global parasites. Remember: a dependent company is an obedient company — one that cheers for big-government. Australia spends $5 billion a year installing inefficient, non-competitive renewables. Instead, we could be spending that money on gene technology and nuclear power research. How much would that change the future for our children? We’re vying to be the top ranking self-sacrificing global sucker that strives for importance by offering to cripple its own economy to appease Climate Gods. Or we could lead the world in nuclear power and medicine. (They’re asking for $20m. Are we a quarry or a leader?) At least this hopeful idea is an Australian production. Heinrich Hora has been working on this for decades. (See this from 1981). The caveat: As long as “they don’t uncover any major engineering hurdles…” Yeah. But when fusion does work, the entire climate industry, renewables, panic-merchants and co. becomes an ant-hill in history. The Australian: Laser tech advances hailed as way to clean, cheap electricityby Graham Lloyd: The paper said simulations had shown 14mg of hydrogen boron could produce 300kWh of energy, opening the way for “an absolutely clean power reactor producing low-cost energy”. “Now, in eight to 10 years I would expect to have small-scale reactors made from present-day technologies.” Professor Hora said solar panels and battery storage were a viable solution for outback regions. “But for the big centres our reactors would work to replace present power generation,” he said, adding that about $500,000 was needed for seed capital, a further $20 million over two years and “if all develops as expected” a further $100m to complete design of the reactors. The press release: Laser-boron fusion now ‘leading contender’ for energyA laser-driven technique for creating fusion that dispenses with the need for radioactive fuel elements and leaves no toxic radioactive waste is now within reach, say researchersA laser-driven technique for creating fusion that dispenses with the need for radioactive fuel elements and leaves no toxic radioactive waste is now within reach, say researchers. Keep reading → Now they tell us!Climate warming to weaken wind power in northern hemisphere, increase in Australia: studyAfter building 341,000 wind turbines, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, now climate modelers reveal that winds will decrease in the Northern Hemisphere! Warming temperatures caused by climate change are set to weaken wind energy in the northern hemisphere, a study shows, lessening the amount of wind power produced for wind farms. However the southern hemisphere would see a boost in wind, which could potentially turn north-eastern Australia into an attractive investment for energy companies. Rush, invest your money now. The theory called polar amplification has the success rate of a coin toss. Buy a wind farm in NE Australia! Luckily wind speeds are not also influenced by cloud cover, jet streams, oceans currents, forest growth, atmospheric tides, solar factors, magnetic fields, ozone levels, cosmic rays, or butterflies. Otherwise this study might be inadequate, uninformed guesswork being used to inform investment decisions!  Look out for Polar Amplifiers. Click to enlarge. Key points:
Theoretically the North Pole is warming, and getting closer to temperatures at the equator – which reduces any reason for wind to go anywhere. So the big question is: will the wind farms be able to change the climate before the wind stops?
The second question: how did ABC subed’s let that first “key point” pass and what happened to the commas?
Wind usually derives its energy from an instability in the atmosphere, and in the northern hemisphere a major source of that instability is the equator to pole temperature difference,” he said. “We all know that the tropics are warmer than the arctic, but because the artic is warming at a much faster rate than the rest of the world — including the tropics and the latitudes — that temperature gradient is lessening. “That is a well known phenomenon called polar amplification, or artic amplification.” Yes, polar amplification, is called “polar” for a reason, and it’s wrong. The South Pole is a Pole too. (And Arctic has a c in it.)
But wait til you hear why winds are speeding up in the Southern Hemisphere:It found in the southern hemisphere the difference between the average land and sea temperature was increasing, which would push greater wind production. “As we know most of the southern hemisphere is dominated by ocean, relative to the northern hemisphere,” Professor Karnauskas said. So in South America, the southern half of Africa and Australia, greenhouse gas warming was expected to increase the temperature over land faster than over the ocean. “The land-sea temperature difference in the southern hemisphere is actually increasing because the land is warming up so rapidly relative to the ocean,” he said. “So the winds are able to derive greater energy from that temperature difference or instability.” Call it cartoon science. Two dimensional and with reasoning by the Road Runner.
To be fair, the ABC didn’t ask a skeptical scientist for their opinion on the science but they did ask a climate scientist for his opinion on investments:
US could face drop in wind energyFor Australia, Professor Karnauskas said he expected there would be a boom in wind energy for the north-east of the country. “This information may prove key in allocating resources and planning, for example where and when to build new farms and how to deal with differed maintenance with older wind farms,” he said. “And helping to fine-tune the blend of renewables supporting the every growing regional energy consumption. “It doesn’t mean that wind energy should take the place of any other part of the portfolio that’s in a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Professor Karnauskas’ study reported the central United States could face a 10 per cent drop in available wind energy by 2050. And by the year 2100, that could be up to 40 per cent. The idea that the Trump administration could use the report to push for a drop in wind energy investment was something Professor Karnauskas said he was nervous about. “Wind power is and should remain considered as an important part of the portfolio of renewable investments as part of the broader strategy to reduce carbon emissions,” he said. The ABC didn’t interview wind farm critics either, but they found space to interview a wind farm activist:
Andrew Bray, from the advocacy group Australian Wind Alliance, said he doubted a predicted boost in available wind energy in Queensland would make much of a difference in the level of wind farm investment. He said there was already enough wind to go around. “There’s incredible wind resources all across Australia,” he said.
Twelve times over! All we need is infinite money, and unlimited free lithium and cobalt. A gift. A gift at half the price.
Let’s use the $1b ABC budget to buy up wind farms and let the ABC run off those profits. But cancel that damn RET first.
UPDATE: The researchers say there are three problems with GCM’sJo says “just three?” The first… The resolution … is typically on the order of 1–2° or ~100 km. The second … is that wind turbines integrate momentum from wind across the rotor disk, typically 40–120 m above the surface, whereas… wind information is available only at a height of 10 m and on standard pressure levels (for exmple, 1,000 mbar, 925 mbar, 850 mbar, and so on). The third potential limitation of GCMs is the provision of monthly mean fields, whereas winds fluctuate at much higher frequencies… Someone tell the researchers not to worry. The GCM’s other limitations include that they can’t predict the global temperature, historic long term temperatures, nor the regional, local, short term[1] [2] variations, they’re wrong about polar amplification [3], and can’t get the upper tropospheric pattern right either [4] [5]. Being comprehensive, they also fail on humidity[6], rainfall[7], drought[8] and they can’t do clouds[9]. See the references here. December 14th, 2017 | Tags: Polar Amplification, Wind, Wind speed | Category: Art, Atmosphere, Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | Tips and other stuff…. Who cares about 50% more emissions? China is powered by 65% coal. A new study in China compares cars with internal combustion engines to electric cars. Qiao et al estimate that from cradle-to-gate electric cars use about 50% more energy and produce around 50% more emissions. (Thanks to Kenneth Richards at NoTricksZone.) All Greens should hereby recycle their EV and buy a gas guzzler. This is not even “lifetime costs” which include disposal. These results will come as no surprise to people who remember the detailed study in Norway of 2012 which found that “…in regions where fossil fuels are the main sources of power, electric cars offer no benefits and may even cause more harm, the report said.” In China, these electric cars are powered by 65% coal. Call them “coal-fired-cars”. The largest single difference was with the battery. Below, marvel at the results of the Chinese study. (ICE means Internal Combustion Engine. BEV means Battery Electric Vehicle.) Not. Even. Close. If you think CO2 matters, oil powered cars beat coal powered ones.  ICE = Internal Combustion Engine: BEV = Battery Electric Vehicle. By every measure Electric cars use more energy and emit more CO2. Even if electric vehicles are powered by the wind, there are other costs. For the UK to power a national electric fleet they’d have to turn Scotland into a wind farm. (We need stationary batteries to supply the mobile batteries. Add up the losses.) In Australia there are estimates that each extra electric car could cost another $2000 per year in network and generation costs. (Let’s add that to the registration cost for an EV shall we?) Keep reading → Matt Ridley writes the letter Theresa May should send to the EUFor 40 years Britain has propped up the EU with nothing in return but complaints and insults. The fifth biggest economy in the world can offer foreign aid to the failing EU but on the same terms as other needy states. BRITAIN SHOULD GIVE THE EU £20 BILLION EXTRA AS AN ACT OF CHARITYDear Angela, Emmanuel and others (cc Donald, Jean-Claude, Michel), I enclose a cheque for £40 billion as agreed. However, you will notice that it is post-dated March 30, 2019, and that it will bounce without a free-trade agreement between us, as I mentioned on the telephone. We are delighted to be in a position to be so unilaterally generous, and sorry that you find yourselves in such dire need of our help. We cannot help feeling that a little more financial discipline on your part might have avoided the need for such a large sum. For instance, we notice that all Eurocrats can draw generous final-salary pensions when they get to the end of their lucrative careers, throughout which they will have had handsome allowances and expenses and have paid specially low income tax at a flat rate. In Britain we regard this as regressive, or “unfair”, and are unhappy that hard-pressed British workers in, say, Sunderland should now be asked to guarantee the pensions of such wealthy people, when they have no such guarantee themselves. Is manners to much to ask for? We realise you cannot agree among yourselves whether to cut the budget or increase the national contributions once the second largest net contributor leaves the European Union, so you are desperate for us to help you out. That we have filled your coffers for 40 years in this way, always giving more than we received, might in some circles have elicited a measure of gratitude. However, we are surprised on looking back through the files to find no such letters of thanks, but rather quite a few reprimands, insults and aspersions. Let’s call British support what it really is: You will also notice that the cheque is drawn from our foreign aid budget (given the political chaos in Germany, Italy and Spain, this seems appropriate) and counts towards our 0.7 per cent of gross national income spend on aid. This means you will have to fill out forms certifying that the money was not wasted. These must be returned to the Department for International Development punctually, and failure to comply may result in fines. I am sure you will understand that this is necessary given that the money would otherwise have gone to help starving and sick people in Africa. Read the whole fabulous letter with his digs at the BBC, at The Rational Optimist Matt Ridley for PM, I say. h/t mothcatcher A Sunday Mail survey (paywalled) shows that despite SA having more “free, cheap and clean” renewable electricity than just about anywhere in the world, the number one biggest issue for most South Australians is … “electricity”. And despite all the renewable jobs created, the second most common concern is “jobs”. Going for the Paradox-Trifecta: most strangely of all, with elected leaders who are leading the largest energy transformation since civilization began, the third “biggest issue” facing South Australians is “political leadership”. Thanks to Eric Worrall, who describes South Australians as “the world’s renewable crash test dummies”.  … SA has an election coming up in March, but at the moment voters there are caught in the bind between the reality of electricity shocks, and the belief that “renewables are cheap”. Will the local Libs (the opposition) have the spine to stand up and speak the truth and make this election about energy and climate, or will they pander #metoo, and lose the unloseable? Will the Libs get the message here? Most South Australians like the sound of renewables, but when it comes to the crunch, and the issues they will vote on, electricity prices and jobs will rule. This is a bubble ripe for the popping. As for political leadership — sucking up to global bullies and namecalling parasites is not leadership. Speaking up against the dominant paradigm and against the fashionable memes is. Saying things that are unpopular but true is leadership. As long as Liberals wait for the opinion polls to change (and produce even more obvious results than this) they are not leaders. In agenda-setting results on a cornerstone issue for the March state election, more than 3500 respondents overwhelmingly ranked affordability and reliability as the most important components of electricity supply in the Sunday Mail Your Say, SA survey. Forging a renewable energy industry was also popular among respondents, demonstrating support for solar, wind and batteries. This indicates a clear public distinction between perceived hip-pocket and job creation benefits of renewable energy and the costs of curbing carbon emissions. “Transforming our economy” is code for using power generators to control the climate. It was slightly more popular with the under 25s (31%) than older folk. By 65 years and older, only 20% were still under the delusion that the biggest issue facing SA is that the state government should force an energy transformation in order to get better global weather. That this number is any positive integer at all is a mark of how pathetic our national debate, media reporting and education system is. Wait – The state leading the way on renewables is a backwards laughing stock?Early results of the same survey showed that nearly 9 out 10 South Australians are aware of how silly their state looks: “… other results are a serious wake-up call — an overwhelming 89 per cent feel that SA is perceived unfavourably by the rest of the nation, while 73 per cent expect life will be more difficult in the future. The negative perception of SA as a “backward state” — or worse, a “laughing stock” — still haunts us, evidenced by the survey’s comments and almost any internet thread discussing our problems. Apparently it’s hard to be a tax burden on the rest of the nation while trying to do a no-brainer obvious energy transformation which no where else in the world is leaping to do to the same extent or without seven interconnectors to coal and nukes. There is incredible arrogance in thinking that that there is no good reason the rest of the world has “missed” the simplistic solution to energy. December 11th, 2017 | Tags: Electricity Cost, SA (South Australia) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | … PMSML stands for Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level, though there is nothing permanent about sea-level data — like all obedient climate change data, it’s subject to change fifty years later — and the adjustments are as large as the trends. We’ve seen this pattern in so many places. Now Cliff Ollier and Albert Parker have shown it in the Indian Ocean looking at Aden in Yemen, and Mumbai in India (and other places, and other data). Kenneth Richard at No Tricks Zone goes through it at length. James Delingpole calls it TideGate. The New York Times says nothing (just like last time). Parker and Ollier conclude that at Mumbai, apparently the sea levels were “perfectly stable over the 20th century”. At Aden, sea levels trends are rising at a pitifully small quarter of a millimeter a year during the twentieth century. (And that’s their upper estimate). The lower estimate is minus five hundreths of a millimeter a year. Looking at other sites as well they estimate a rise of …”about zero mm/year” in the last five decades. zero. This, they say, agrees with other things like… coastal morphology, stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating, archaeological remains, and historical documentation. (But not so much with climate models). Across the world there are scores of scientists all looking at everyone else’s adjusted data and saying to themselves “my raw data doesn’t look right”.  Tide Gauge Hut in Aden | Photo IOC Gloss Suspicious adjustments?Graph (a) below shows the segments of raw data from Mumbai tide gauges collected from 1878 – 2011. There is a breakpoint change in 1936 with a 677mm drop. But the red series ends in December, and the green series starts the following month in January. (We wish there was an overlap, but at least there is no gap). The red line trend goes slightly up, the green line goes slightly down. But add them together and thanks to the magic of unexplained modern adjustments, look at Graph (b)! The effect of CO2 is revealed! Amazing what scientists can find these days. Especially ‘mazing how the ground under these gauges seems to be rising so that it hides the effects of climate change. A conspiracy, I tell you.  Fig. 2 Mumbai tide gauge — Monthly average mean sea levels. a) raw data. (PSMSL 2017f). b) Revised local reference (RLR, adjusted) data. (PSMSL 2017g) Unlike the mainstream team Beenstock et al took the less conspiratorial approach and assumed that the land would be randomly subsiding and rising. Satellites confirmed that the placement of gauges was fairly random with respect to changing sea levels. Instead of trying to correct for that at each station individually, they just averaged the lot. Beenstock estimated the trend in sea levels across a thousand gauges was just over one millimeter a year. In Mumbai the PMSML team convert a small negative trend to a significant positive one: Keep reading → December 9th, 2017 | Tags: Adjustments to data, Sea Level | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | “Air-conditioning” of The Great Barrier Reef begins soonTo calm a few panicking people, the Australian Government will pay for large fans to circulate water on a minuscule portion of the 2,300 kilometer long Great Barrier Reef. The reef creatures, which have been coping with higher temperatures and bleaching for two hundred million years, will hopefully avoid the moving parts. Marine life adapts to heatwaves by chucking out the symbionts that don’t thrive in higher temperatures and replacing them up new inhabitants that do. If the fans achieve anything, it may stop this natural process (called Symbiont Shuffling) thus possibly making small sections of the reef more vulnerable to future heatwaves and El Ninos. Who knows?  Fans like this are used in the United States to circulate water. Mark this one up as a pagan symbolic idol that symbolizes our grandiose delusions of weather-control. Federal Government spending $2.2m on giant ocean fans in bid to protect Great Barrier ReefEight huge reef mixer fans are planned for the Great Barrier Reef in far north Queensland, in a trial project that hopes to reduce the damage caused by coral bleaching events. The Federal Government has announced it will contribute $2.2 million to the three-year pilot project, which will result in solar-powered rotators being placed at Moore Reef off the coast of Cairns. Floating water fans: The slow-moving ReefMix fans mounted on floating pontoons create water currents by gradually drawing cooler water from up to 30 metres below to the surface. Comfortable coralsAnthropologists of the future can study this as a primitive turn of the century fantasy. Some old folks are missing out on air conditioning and heating because they can’t afford it, but a few lucky zooxantheallae will be spared from their natural fate. The field trial is designed to protect a 1 square kilometre patch of reef from the worst effects of bleaching. “This intervention will never save the whole of the Great Barrier Reef, but it will be important for some of our particularly valuable tourist sites, which of course are 64,000 jobs,” Ms Morris said. The Great Barrier Reef covers 344,400 km2. Thie $2.2m cost may protect 0.0003% of the reef. The cost to “protect” the whole reef would be $757 billion dollars. Keep reading → December 7th, 2017 | Tags: Bizarre claims, Great Barrier Reef, Satire & Parody | Category: Funny stuff | Print This Post | | I’ve had requests for an extra unthreaded. Sometimes the weekend is too far away…  The shape of normal AC Electricity: 50Hz (230V) and 60Hz (110V) Nobody says much about FCAS in public — but it’s become a hot topic among Australia’s energy-nerds and electricity traders. It never used to be a big deal, because we got it at very low cost from huge turbines — from coal, hydro, and gas. Suddenly, it is costing a lot more. As I discovered below, in one month FCAS charges in South Australia rose from $25,000 to $26 million. Wow, just wow. What is FCAS?FCAS means”Frequency Control Ancillary Service”. With an AC (or alternating current) system, frequency is everything — the rapid push-pull rhythm that is the power. FCAS is a way of keeping the beat close to the heavenly 50Hz hum (or 60Hz in America and Korea). Network managers cry when things stray outside 49.85Hz or 50.15Hz. So controlling the frequency is a very necessary “other service” supplied by traditional generators, but not so much from intermittent renewables. Large spinning turbines “do” FCAS without a lot of effort. And the cost used to be a tiny fraction of the total electricity bill, but it is rapidly rising in Australia, thanks to the effect of the RET (Renewable Energy Target). Academia and the ABC finally mention FCAS this weekNever heard of FCAS? When there is a problem with renewables, the legacy media and academics don’t want to mention it. But when renewables have any benefit, let the free advertising flow. FCAS has been a growing problem for years as the level of renewables increased. Way back in 2011 the AEMO forecast that 20-fold price rises in FCAS were coming (see below) but all our academics at The Conversation and journalists at the ABC were silent year after year. Lo, this week, The Conversation and the ABC suddenly discover FCAS. Apparently it’s OK to mention it now, because the much loved giant battery of South Australia may have the antidote to the problem that was never said: In addition, the incredible flexibility of the battery means that it is well suited to participate in the Frequency Control Ancillary Service market. The Frequency Control and Ancillary Service (FCAS) market is less known and understood than the energy market. Having discussed FCAS in order to rave about The Battery, it was time for a green-academic to say something bad about coal. On cue: The role of these markets is essentially twofold. First, they provide contingency reserves in case of a major disturbance, such as a large coal generation unit tripping off. The services provide a rapid response to a sudden fall (or rise) in grid frequency. Those naughty coal turbines, just tripping out like that a couple of times a year (or decade) or so, what ever it is. Let’s not mention that wind and solar are tripping on an hourly basis. The Conversation author is Dylan McConnell, researcher at the Australian German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne. His priorities: “Size matters but role matters more”As the Australian consumer would put it: “Forget the role, and tell me the cost!“ The Convo-ABC doesn’t mention the cost. So I did some digging, and oh, what a surprise? In 2011 FCAS costs in the National Electricity Market were predicted to rise 20-fold in a decadeThe AEMO warned about the rising costs of FCAS in 2011. Back then they predicted charges for FCAS would rise from $10m – $200m by 2020 and the sole cause was “intermittent energy” and the RET. Even so, this is a small part of the total energy bill which is more like $12-$20 billion. The following major findings relate to Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) in the NEM: The Regulation requirement increases substantially in response to the LRET. The Regulation requirement increases from the present value of ±120 MW to around ±800 MW in 2019-20 in scenarios with the LRET. This increase is entirely driven by the projected increase in intermittent wind generation installed. In the absence of the LRET the Regulation requirement increases only slightly to ±200 MW due to demand growth. Regulation costs increase substantially in scenarios featuring the LRET. In response to the increased Regulation requirement, ancillary service settlements increase from $10 million pa2 (for Regulation + Slow Contingency services) to around $200 million pa in scenarios with the LRET. As the Regulation requirement increases, more expensive FCAS bids must be utilised, increasing FCAS settlements. However, it is noted that if the FCAS market were to increase so substantially it is likely that many generators will change their FCAS bidding strategies in ways that are challenging to predict, so these results should be considered to have a high degree of uncertainty. The application of a carbon price would exacerbate this effect. Regulation costs remain small compared with energy settlements. Despite forecast increases, Regulation and Slow Contingency service costs remain small in comparison to anticipated energy settlements of $12 – $20 billion pa ($50 – $80 /MWh) in 2019-20. What does FCAS cost today? It only took 2 minutes of searching to find these projections from 2011. Shame the Melbourne University and ABC don’t seem to think cost is important to the people who may be paying their grants and salaries. The Roaring price spikes of FCAS:Usually the cost of FCAS in South Australia is about $840 per day across the whole state but in October 2015 it rose from $25,000 a month to $26 million! What is FCAS? by Tennant Reed, on AiGroup (Australian Industry Group) Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) is a market through which electricity generators are paid to slightly raise or lower their output in order to keep the electricity system within its operating frequency of 50 Hertz +/- 0.1 Hz. The frequency drops when generation reduces or the load increases, and vice versa. It is usually a very cheap service: SA requires about 35 megawatts of FCAS, which is usually purchased from interstate suppliers for $1 per megawatt per hour (or $840 per day across the whole state). In October 2015 the SA FCAS market price repeatedly spiked to the cap price of $13,000 per megawatt per hour while the interconnector was largely down for upgrade work and FCAS had to be procured within SA. The three local providers (AGL, Origin and Engie) bid extremely high prices to supply FCAS. Once prices exceed a high price threshold for 7 hours, AEMO is able to impose a lower cap of $300 per MW per hour for one week. Prices spiked, were capped, and spiked again repeatedly through October. The total cost of this episode, split across energy users and generators, was around $26 million – rather than the $25,000 FCAS would ordinarily have cost. Time to pay attention to FCAS methinks! It may only be a small part of final electricity bills, but it is changing more than most other components. Something is going on… Comments by Rod Stuart and here, may help other readers get up to speed. Commenter Robin Pittwood recommends Kiwithinker for posts about grid stability. H/t Robert and Peter, Rod Stuart, Robber. Image: Wikimedia Commons by Pieter Kuiper December 7th, 2017 | Tags: Electricity Grids, FCAS | Category: Electricity, Energy, Global Warming, Renewable | Print This Post | | Climate change causes … more crops.Climate change threatens our food supply, our grain harvests. It causes wars, droughts, sometimes floods, shorter growing seasons. And we all know Climate change is here. We can see it out the window. Plus 2017 is one of the three hottest years ever. Somehow all these bad events happened at once and added up to the world’s largest cereal crop ever.  … It’s doom gloom and fume all the way down: How a warming world is threatening supplies — The Guardian Climate Change May Reduce Some U.S. Grain Harvests by Half –– Bloomberg  … “World wheat inventories are currently pegged at an all-time high despite a downward revision since October. Global stocks of rice and coarse grains are also set to reach record levels. The increase in wheat and rice stocks largely reflects an anticipated accumulation of inventories in China, whereas for coarse grains, the expansion reflects higher end-of-season maize stocks in South America and the United States.”
— FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief
If you care about the poor and starving, drive your car, then sell it and buy a bigger car, drive across your nearest continent. Then do it all again.
Before the world shifts to nuclear power (which it surely will) get that plant fertilizer out of the ground.
The world is watching one volcano in Bali, but it’s sobering to think there may be hundreds of others going off, and almost certainly ones we don’t even know about. The article Is the Bali volcano making us warmer or cooler? by William F Jasper, reminded me of Ian Plimers words about there being squillions of undersea volcanoes so I found the 2007 paper, by Hillier, that tried to count them. Trying being the appropriate word. Volcanoes are biggish things, but when they are under one or two kilometers of water they are hard to hear, hard to see, and, by crikey, we know more about the moon than the bottom of the Marinara, and it’s only 11km “away”. People are constantly discovering new volcanoes, like a 3,000m one off Indonesia that no one realized was there til 2010. It turns out the second largest volcano in the solar system is apparently not on Io, but 1,000 miles east of Japan. It’s the size of the British Isles, but who knew? A few months ago a team found 91 new volcanoes under Antarctica. (This is getting serious, someone should talk to the Minister for Lava!)  … Not only can we not predict when volcanoes will erupt, we don’t even know how many there areThe scope of our ignorance on the sea floor is really something. There are 1,500 active volcanoes on land, but on the sea floor we are still discovering them all the time. at least 39,000 of them rise one kilometer off the sea floor, but there are suspicions there might be up to 3 million, holey moley. The Hilliers paper estimates that 24,000 submarine volcanoes were not yet discovered in 2007. Wikimedia is trying to list them. Good luck. Does hot magma leaking into the oceans that we havent measured and don’t know about, change the currents, the temperature, and eventually our weather? If it’s a bit hotter at one end of a trench than the other, does the water flow alter? Has the big ball of magma got anything at all to do with ENSO/AMO long term trends? Your guess is better than a Global Climate Model. So here is the closest thing we have to kind of being “A Map”.  …Hilliers 2007
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