Effectively — the AEMO (the Australian Energy Market Operator) is the taxpayer funded advertising agency for the Renewables Industry. The point of the latest AEMO super-report, apparently, is to get Australian taxpayers or consumers to foot the bill for the high voltage lines that the unreliable industry desperately needs but can’t pay for itself.
The AEMO has declared we need to rush to cough up $12.7 billion to build new interconnectors in Australia. That’s $500 from every man woman and child and let’s call it what it is, a Gift Card for the Renewables Industry. The net benefit of all that money will be to allow wind and solar industrial plants to connect their unreliable product to the grid we already have, and to the storage products that we still have to pay for, and all so that their green electrons will make the weather 0.0 degrees cooler in a hundred years. Australians alive today will pay now and basically get nothing but views of more criss-crossy-steel-wires and spires, and more wind towers too. Sing Hallelujah.
The 104 page Blueprint imagines all kinds of scenarios except for an actual free market, true competition, consumer choice, or whether it makes any sense to use our national grid as a global climatic weather controller. It’s a fantasy document which includes four flavours of future electrical icecream: “Slow”, “Progressive”, “Step” or “Hydrogen Superpower”. Will that be a double-scoop with Spiderman topping? Yes indeedy — and with $28 billion dollars of imaginary savings to go. The word blackout appears no times. Nor is there a scenario for a “Cost effective” electrical grid. (Remember them?)
The Hydrogen Superpower fantasy comes straight out of Marvel comic. Wait til you see Figure 12 — the Hulk Strikes the Australian grid, or at least scrawls wild lines on a graph. Is that a 500 gigawatt 100% renewable grid by 2050 or just Hopium I see…
It’s rare to see this much abject nonsense in a single story. Perry Williams at The Australian just took the junk prospectus and ran it:
Put renewables on fast track, says AEMO
Australia must accelerate a move away from coal to renewables and storage and urgently sanction more than $10bn of transmission projects to escape the ongoing threat of blackouts and high power prices amid a national energy crisis.
Follow the logic: if having a bit less coal causes a crisis, then how exactly, will having no coal solve it?
The Australian Energy Market Operator, which runs the national electricity network, said the country was undergoing a “complex, rapid and irreversible” change to its energy system…
Is this the same “irreversible change” that is currently reversing all over Europe? The one where Germany, France, the UK, Austria and Poland are all using more coal.
And isn’t the follow up just a tiny scary?
an irreversible” … that would need a nine-fold increase in wind and solar capacity by 2050 to meet the nation’s net-zero emissions targets.
Apparently this kind of “rapid” irreversible transition is only 11% of the way out of the starting gate, but already falling over, costing a bomb, and we have to do this nine times more.
But wait. Renewables will not only make floods nicer, and fish happier, it make us safer from enemies?
“One source of energy that no geopolitical situation can interrupt in relation to our supply chains and that’s the sun to our land-mass and the wind on and off our shores. That’s good energy security and storing that is a matter of national security,” Mr Bowen told the National Press Club.
What if the enemy just attacks at night and when there is no wind? Except probably they won’t have to attack at all. As we go broke, they can just buy the nation out from under us.
There they go again: The AEMO calls coal and gas volatile, and renewables cheap
The energy supply crunch that forced the suspension of the country’s power market for the first time this month underscored the need for the Australian electricity grid to curb its exposure to the volatile commodities of coal and gas and fast-track cheap renewables backed up by storage, the AEMO said.
The price of coal and gas isn’t volatile, it’s not going up and down, it’s gone up and stayed up — because it’s so essential, everyone has to have it and they want more than they can get. And the true price of renewables isn’t cheap, it’s just hidden — like this giant report pretends to hide that twelve billion dollars worth of interconnectors are entirely frivolous parts of a good grid powered by centralized reliable power. We don’t need them: the Renewables Industry does.
“I think recent events in Australia and overseas have really just underscored the need for urgent investment in renewables, firming and transmission so that we can de-link ourselves from these international factors and provide Australian homes and businesses with the most affordable, secure and reliable energy,” AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman told The Australian.
Since when was coal and gas an “international factor” for a nation which is the worlds largest exporter of coal and third largest for gas?
The costs of these renewable-interconnectors are staggering
Just throw money:
The Marinus Link across the Bass Strait will cost at least $3.8 billion and generate zero watts of electricity. Theoretically it will allow 1.5 GW of electricity to slip through, but for the same price, we could build a whole new advanced coal plant instead. Various iterations of governments here have already spent $200 million just on the feasibility study. Ten years ago they could nearly build a whole gas plant for that, one that wouldn’t be essentially useless for five months in a row if a shark chewed on it.
The VNI link will cost $2 – $3 billion and make it possible for groups of renewable investors to make profits they otherwise couldn’t have. Humelink will be some kind of nightmare of $3b – $5 billion.
The unreliables are dead without these new transmission lines:
To put it in perspective a very annoyed high honcho at Snowy Hydro was not happy with the draft version of this document a few months ago and complained that the AEMO wasn’t pushing hard enough for faster “investment” in the VNI line which, ahem, just happens to be nearer to the Snowy Scheme, and which they wanted a lot more than the link to their competitors in Tasmania. In that complaint he quietly gave away that these transmission lines are essential in a life and death kind of way for renewables.
[Snowy Hydro] has previously warned the lack of transmission could kill the transition to renewables – with a string of major players weighing into the debate – and singled out concerns over infrastructure as a major issue that needs to be confronted to ensure supplies can flow to users.
Renewable developers and network operators are worried a pipeline of power generation and clean energy supplies faces delays or gridlock unless major electricity transmission projects are delivered across the national power system.
REFERENCE
AEMO 2022 Integrated System Plan (ISP), Press release
I don’t see Perth on that map.
91
I don’t see Perth on that map.
That’s because it is not connected to the National Grid.
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Why don’t they connect Perth to the national grid?
After all, neither money or engineering logic is a consideration.
And think how WA politicians could boast of becoming “the Saudi Arabia of “renewable” energy” or some similar inane nonsense that may issue from their mouths.
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“Why don’t they connect Perth to the national grid?”
I don’t know the real reasons but it is probably because it is too far and too costly and would be rendered obsolete by renewables. There is resurgent talk of a gas pipeline to Moomba but ‘expert’ opinion is divided. However a 580km kilometre gas pipe line to the Goldfields has just commenced and that may have a bearing on the various opinions. It has also been suggested that natural gas from the Canning Basin could be piped East but again opinions are divided
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-26/west-east-gas-pipeline-mooted-amid-energy-crisis/101167730
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-27/gas-pipeline-in-outback-wa-goldfields/101101812
39
Ian, the goldfields are already connected to the Pilbara gas via a 1400 km pipeline that continues down to Esperance on the south coast. Was put through in 12 months and I believe only cost around $400 million. Easy to push pipelines through the outback of WA.
50
Another comment gone AWOL
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No, no and NO, David. The very last thing WA wants is to be connected to the “National” grid, with all its dubious pricing arrangements, states propping up other states with expensive power and the coming unreliability. We doing find by ourselves thanks.
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If this plan goes ahead, none of us will be on the map 🙁
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They come out with this plan just as we reach the point where further loss of coal power will take us past a critical tipping point. Yes Virginia, there are tipping points!
As you can read here, a tribute to the windwatchers who tried to warn us.
They may never feature in annual honours lists and an American president may never say of them “Where did we get such men?” but in years to come, when the sun goes down and the wind supply becomes critical to keep the TV on, we will remember them!
Carve their names with pride!
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Correct, as usual Rafe. And here’s more evidence from USA historical data that the 1930s were more subject to “heatwaves” than subsequent decades. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/06/hot-enough-for-you.php
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Erasmus, heat waves go back a very long way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heat_waves
Japan is having a heat wave at the moment which is described as the worst since a heat wave ~150 years ago (1875).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-28/heatwave-hits-japan-breaking-tokyo-temperature-record/101190334
So the way I read that they had very serious heat 150 years ago, so at least the current heat wave is precedented.
50
very true Rafe, as anyone who has looked at naval history back in the sailing days, rowing boats were regularly launched to tow the ships when they were becalmed – sometimes to keep idle crew occupied but often to avoid a lee shore when wind was gone and currents were dangerous.
180
Yes that was a regular problem for sailing vessels, but of course eventually, sometime, renewable energy filled the sails for a while.
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To use the current warmist logic, the solution for any sailing ship in becalmed seas is simply to hoist more sail.
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Perfect!!
40
It must have been a massive effort to tow a sailing ship with a row boat (or two).
Thankfully the steam engine was developed.
The first steam ship was the Pyroscaphe of 1783.
The first steam ship to cross the Atlantic substantially on steam power was the Curaçao in 1827 although the title is also claimed by SS Royal William in 1833.
The first steamship purpose-built for scheduled trans-Atlantic crossings was SS Great Western in 1838,
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I wonder how many Australians realise that steam power is coal fired power stations?
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As indeed is nuclear.
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https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/doldrums.html
Also a map indicating the horse latitudes.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/horse-latitudes.html
Twice sailed through the doldrums in the Atlantic in the 1970’s in a oil powered liner. Very noticeable the almost totally smooth ocean surface compared to the North Atlantic.
40
Hang on, William; if there is no wind, how can there be a lee shore….?
10
You just have to look at the wind/solar performance in the UK over the past few weeks to see the folly of renewables. Five days generation followed by 5 days wind drought, ad infinitum.
They’ll be asking for more money for batteries next, as well as more (double) of unreliables to recharge the batteries when the wind does blow.
http://Www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
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“Previously it did not matter whether the sun shone or the wind blew because the wind and solar plants were just expensive ornaments attached to the grid.” [My bolding]
Love it!
10
They are deqd, with or without what ever 😀 They never really “lived”, so can’t die, like a virus 😀
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Where are they going to put them? Further to a previous post regarding the termination of the Ben Lomond( 500mw installed capacity) where can these ghouls go? As Jo points out this mob are parasites pure and simple. Bottom line is: no blow no go!
80
the dead parrot sketch comes to mind
60
We gave up windmills(along with the Stanley Steamer)a hundred years ago because they were unreliable.And some DH with-out a brain is trying to tell us that THEY are a viable proposition??????REALLY??????
20
That puts it into perspective.
Now add all the other costs for other subsidy-harvesting schemes.
It will be thousands or more likely tens of thousands per person.
Money we don’t have and have to borrow, without any consideration of how it might be repaid.
Federal, state and local government debt Is already over $1,539,000,000,000, over $59,000 For every man, woman and child.
https://australiandebtclock.com.au/
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Is the $500 before or after the $275 Albo is going to save us having to pay.
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In VIC we just got $250 election year dollars just for looking at the Govt energy compare site. $275+$250 means we are done.
30
If you look at the site are you bombarded with emails or calls?
31
It’s in the plan.
30
I was about to paste the same comment. The per person figure is powerful and helps the public make sense of mind bending numbers. For instance, lets say the transistion to renewables costs ~$1Trillion. That’s $40,000 per person. Are we happy with that? $1 Trillion is hard to get our heads around, but $40,000 per person makes it pretty obvious it is an obscene amount of money to spend for no detectable benefit.
Why can’t the LNP quote these per person figures, we need these per person figures out in the public discourse before we plow head first into the brick wall of reality and blow up our economy.
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Because the LNP mostly support the scam and Morrison failed in his duty to extricate us from it as President Trump did.°
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President Trump refused to allow the US to sign the Paris Conference 2015 Agreement on emissions reduction, but the Turnbull Government of Australia signed the Paris Agreement during April 2016 and the Minister returned to New York during November 2016 to ratify that Agreement, obviously as an act of defiance when Trump had rejected the Paris Agreement.
As former PM Abbott observed at the time or soon afterwards, there would be little point in arguing got repeal of the Agreement given that Australia was on track to achieving the target and had exceeded the earlier Kyoto Agreement emissions target, being one of the few signatory nations that did. In other words based on the international political situation Australia was in a better position continuing to achieve the target while many other signatory nations were not.
I believe that too many Australians have a very narrow view of politics, mostly ignoring the international pressures relating to maintaining relationships with key allies, foreign affairs generally, trading relationships, etc. And the influence and powers of the United Nations through member nations. For example, both the US and the UK attempted to push Australia via COP26 to ban coal, to raise the Paris Agreement target and timing and to commit to net zero emissions by 2050. Probably if POTUS Trump was still in office Prime Minister Morrison would have been supported by the US and the UK at COP26?
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I saw a great way to understand just how big a trillion is. Can’t remember where, so apologies for due credit there.
If you earned $1 per second, it would take 11 days to make a million dollars.
If you earned $1 per second, it would take 31 and a half years to make a billion dollars.
And if you earned $1 per second, it would take 31,688 years to make a trillion dollars.
So that’s how enormous a trillion is. It shook me seeing it in those units.
41
All of this money being spent, ask yourself, whose pockets is it going into?
Follow the money trail!
370
One example, coal mining and the difference in the price of exported coal compared to coal used in Australian coal fired power stations?
30
When I see these figures of how much money “needs” to be spent on the latest subsidy harvesting scheme, they make up a number like “$12 billion” or “3.8 billion” etc. to make it sound as though someone has actually sat down with a spreadsheet and obtained quotes to come up with an accurate estimate of costs.
But I don’t think they do that.
I believe they just dream up a large, impressive-to-the-ignorant-sounding figure, knowing that no one in government, opposition or the Lamestream media will ever question the vast amount of money proposed to be spent and then they work out how to spend it.
The result is that everyone involved in the project lines their pockets with vastly overcharged goods and services with no oversight. And beyond that, the “estinate” is then found to be five times too little leading to even more rorting of taxpayer funds.
There are examples such as Snowy Hydro 2, the new refrigerator for business scheme in Vicdanistan mention in the last thread, the $440 million give to the Great Barrier Reef foundation which shocked everyone, including the foundation, etc..
The rorts are endless (others are the Westgate Tunnel, NDIS, desal plants etc.).
(For overseas readers “rort” is an Australian word meaning “a fraudulent or dishonest act or practice”.)
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This explanation of “rort” from Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms seems particularly appropriate:
350
Very good find RicDre.
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Dad, Dave and Rowjay:
[Apologies to non-Australians. Google translate won’t work. — Jo. ]
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Nice one Rowjay. A bit of humour never goes astray.
For us Aussies it is very understandable and straight to the point.
70
Bourbon and Rowjay
Thems windmill fellas have got their bloomers in a wad, but they’re hanging in there like a hair in a biscuit! Trouble is, their fancy talk is slicker than snot on a door knob. Whats to do about em with their ugly as homemade sin contraptions?
Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit – they’re putting more up by the old Bacon’s after fillin their wallets fuller than a tick. I swanny that they’ll be our undoing.
Y’all have a goodin
40
“But I don’t think they do that.”
No, they charge $200million to get those figures! That’s the start of the rort..
“Various iterations of governments here have already spent $200 million just on the feasibility study”
70
David,
Think about it as funding the ABC (at current levels) for ten years.
30
Coincidentally the UK has just signed a contract for four 3800km underwater cables to be laid between morocco and my home county of Devon.
https://www.smart-energy.com/renewable-energy/subsea-cables-to-deliver-renewable-energy-from-morocco-to-the-uk/
It will bring power from a massive new wind and solar project in morocco.
So we will have plenty of cheap power in future as what could possibly go wrong?
280
Gosh, the Russians or Chinese would never want to cut those, would they?
We have a similar mad scheme in Australiastan.
It is a proposed 4,500km long cable along with Big Battery which can carry 2.2GW from a solar subsidy farm in the Northern Territory to Singapore. What could possibly go wrong?
Of course, we have other undersea links proposed between the mainland and Van Diemen’s Land to supplement an existing 290km link. It is mostly used to transfer hydro power to the mainland because the mainland no longer has enough proper coal, gas or hydro generation to cover windless and sunless periods.
260
Again, without coal/gas.. where are the materials going to come from for these projects. !
180
Don’t you worry about that. It’s the vibe that matters.
160
Yes David, one of Mike Cannon-Brookes’ virtue signalling schemes. No consideration(and no complaints from environmentalists) given to the massive damage to very sensitive and delicate desert ecosystems, and no thinking as to how they are going to keep the solar panels clean from the desert dust – it doesn’t rain often. And how are these thousands of panels going to be disposed of 10-20 years later.
Clearly those claiming to be doing this to save the environment have no consideration whatsoever for the actual environment.
Also, I wonder how much of the power generated in this folly will actually be delivered after being transmitted thousands of kilometres.
160
M C-B will make his dosh from it. The intention was never for the thing to actually benefit society. Don’t be naive now.
100
I would be worried about the impact of cyclones on such a massive solar array.
30
Isn’t that seabed seismically active, what could possibly go wrong.
70
Unjustifiable economic and engineering Insanity Rulz.
Go world, what’s going on!
130
Sounds like a rebuild project I met back in BC.
It was pointed out to the building designers that the bore that watered the place put out 3000 gallons an hour and it didn’t throttle down so their new spray system would hgave to use the lot.
Came the day of turn on and there was a problem – negligible water coming out of the spray system. Easily explained with the pipe sizes they had used.
40
Exactly. It’s not like the Russians and Chinese don’t have subs.
30
Hmmmm. Where to emigrate to?
110
A Red State in the US would still be preferable to what we have here, but good luck getting there. Biden doesn’t want educated, literate, numerate, law-abiding, English speaking coming to his country. Go to Mexico and cross the border, no one will stop you, LoL.
230
Dr Mike Yeadon did exactly that, according to a recent interview with James Delingpole!
He was beginning to wonder if he was safe in the UK>
80
Nowhere in the West! Somewhere immune to the global warming madness..
Africa needs educated managers badly, as does South America, plenty of work in both. SE Asia and the Middle East are just too foreign, China would be difficult, but Russia sounds like a place that will go ahead.
If they make it a miserable place where untrustworthy politicians believe in fantasy then people will leave.
50
We no longer have a democracy and what’s being done in the name of “Saving The Planet” is arguably the most extraordinary Evil ever known.
Our national media crew luxuriate in the largesse of the Australian TaXXpayers while reading out fright news splashes handed to them by our Political class fresh back from Davos or its associated prep schools.
Make no mistake, we are at war, but the enemy are mostly well disguised so we don’t know where to strike, but strike we must; in the words of the one who perhaps started it :
Its Time. Arise Australia
431
12 Billion for 10,000 km of transmission lines. OK. That’s AUD 1.2 Million per kM or AUD 1.92 M/mile.
This sounds low. The referenced article sounds like a “sales pitch” with little but guesswork as a foundation.
In 2010, the estimates were USD 1-3 Million/mile or about AUD 1.45 M – 4.35 M / mile.
https://www.transmissionhub.com/articles/2012/10/wecc-report-building-transmission-in-the-west-costs-1m-to-3m-mile.html
Here’s a 2019 Transmission Line Cost Estimation Guide ( USD, Miles, etc )
https://cdn.misoenergy.org/20190212%20PSC%20Item%2005a%20Transmission%20Cost%20Estimation%20Guide%20for%20MTEP%202019_for%20review317692.pdf
Additionally, there will be a “need” for new substations, switch gear, substation fencing, metering, bus bars, right of way purchase, access roads, maintenance, etc. Where are the “estimates” for those?
My guess is that AUD 12 Billion is merely a “down payment” on actual costs which are likely 2 to 3 times that estimate.
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Yes, undoubtedly there will be an unexpected “Blowout” during construction.
180
All this Lance, after we paid billions to “gold plate” our transmission infrastructure in the Noughties.
This nothing other than reverse engineering the current grid to run the supply back to the coast. Let the renewables investors cover this small engineering problem as they are choosing the sites for their investment
110
That $12 billion is just a preamble, just like the white elephant Snowy2 that went from 2 to 14 Billion.
100
Its very low Lance. Once our union movement is done with it, the cost will be stratospheric.
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Certainly is a low cost, half the EnergyConnect transmission line cost at A$2.4m/km. I doubt that the projected cost is adequate.
30
Here is Eric Worrall’s take on this thread:
Claim: The Wind Turbine Industry is Running Out of Money
Essay by Eric Worrall; h/t JoNova;
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/30/claim-wind-turbine-industry-running-out-of-money/
I particularly like the picture included in Steve Case’s June 30, 2022 2:11 pm comment to the article:
https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Bird-Chopper-1656623393.6941.png
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The 2030 goal of most of the West is to have significantly more solar, windmills, batteries and electric cars.
I think calling it “renewable energy” is actually a misnomer because of the immense amount of largely non-renewable and non-recyclable resources that go into making all this. I have done some calculations and don’t think there is enough neodymium, lithium, cobalt, and other rare earths in the entire earth’s crust to even reach the 2030 goal, let alone sustain it.
As an example, an electric car contains roughly 10kg of lithium in its battery. If the world needs a billion of these cars by 2030, then that’s 10 million tonnes of lithium, about half of the total estimated reserves. Add in the giant Tesla battery storage for electricity grids and you’ll probably exceed this. Let’s not forget the devastating environmental impact of actually mining it!
And yet we have over 300 years of coal reserves in Australia, but “we can’t use that because it’s not sustainable”. Yeah because lithium is.
320
Apparently the new renewable energy future includes rooftop solar, storage batteries and the family electric vehicles all connected to the household system, vehicles required to be plugged in when parked at home or office, and the energy supply masters will control your system and supply in or out as the grid requires.
The EV will become an important link in energy supply, apparently.
31
Intermittent or unreliable energy both have a ring to them.
20
They used to say that it wouldn’t be necessary for the Soviets to send an army to take over Australia, just a phone call would be enough. Without electricity, the phones won’t work, so the Chinese (who have taken over from the Soviets) will have to send an army after all. I’m trying to work out whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
140
🙂
40
We could ‘update’ our telephone system to the sound-powered phones we used to use on navy ships. No electricity required.
Cheaper still, let’s get the tin can and string phones out
90
tin can and string?
Requires that you be far too close to the neighbors
40
How many windmills are needed to replace a coal power station?
Let’s use Liddell as an example. Liddell Power Station is a coal-powered thermal power station with four 500 megawatts GEC steam driven turbine alternators for a combined electrical capacity of 2,000 megawatts. However, as at April 2018, its operating capacity was assessed at 1,680 megawatts.One unit has been shutdown with the remaining three to close in 2023.
Assume Liddell can currently deliver 1,200 MW reliably 24×7.
At an average 30% capacity factor, it would require 4,000 MW of wind turbines, about 800 eyesores scattered across the countryside. And each 400 MW wind farm costs about $1 billion, plus the costs of additional transmission lines.
But wait, sometimes those windmills will deliver 2,500 MW, and other times zero. So now we need to store surplus power, and then release it when required.
A 500 megawatt battery is proposed to be built at the site of the Liddell power station, but I couldn’t find info on how many hours those batteries will deliver power. (In SA the 100 MW battery can deliver that power for just over 1 hour.)
Then there are proposals to add a 500 MW gas/”green hydrogen” generator. Energy giant AGL will partner with Fortescue Future Industries, chaired by Dr Forrest, to carry out a 12-month hydrogen feasibility study on the site of the Liddell and Bayswater coal-fired power stations.
150
Thanks Robber,
drove past the Bayswater – Liddell complex a week ago, it’s impressive and covers a lot of ground, but nothing like the land grab needed for those 800 wind turbines.
130
Having a look online at the wonderful free windmill set-up near Lake George on the entry to Canberra gives so idea of the problem. Those 40 money spinners occupy an area about the same size as the Bayswater Liddell plants and infrastructure.
Because of the need to “catch the wind” those forty or so turbies use an area of 75 km2, so if we extend that to the 800 turbie equivalent they require 1500 km2 or a space of 50 km length and 30 km width.
And don’t mention the cost and lifespan and CO2 produced in erecting this dysfunctional fantasy world expression of Wokeness.
Duplicity squared.
210
KK:
So on that basis to power Australia from wind would require 27,000/ 120 or 337,500 km2 or 4.5% of the total area.
BUT WAIT, there’s more, you would need to add the area for transmission lines plus big batteries (about 20,000) plus extra for all that increased usage (EV’s,+replacing gas heating with heat pumps,+hydrogen generation+desalination plants for ditto etc.)
Suddenly breeding unicorns seems more believable.
100
A $ billion here, a $ billion there, and pretty soon we’re talking real money.
60
The figure I have for wind farm area is 17 sq km for every GW installed.
30
Last week someone I know asked me “could I explain the stupidity over hydrogen”?
He had worked out that it would be unreliable, dangerous to store and transport (and use). Not bad for a 80+ retired accountant.
He then departed for warmer climes (Qld where he tends to spend the winter months) as the global warming has been very slow reaching the Adelaide Hills.
180
According to Piers Akerman writing in the Sunday Telegraph June 26, 2022 figures for renewables taken from AEMO/CSIRO data is;
* Wind Turbines more than $12,372/k W
* Large scale solar more than $14,882/ k W
Compared to nuclear $5,596/ k W including design, construction and commissioning. Existing coal fired power station sites could be utilised.
Gas and coal with carbon capture and storage at $10,280/ k W
The above costs do not include the new transmission lines for renewable energy.
40
There is no need for “carbon capture”
CO2 does not cause “global warming”
Svante Arrhenius was elevated as the founder of AGW belief system with his CO2 warming conjecture. He was ignored for many decades after Knut Ångström and his assistant Herr Koch showed that changing CO2 concentrations did not affect the amount of IR absorbed by the air.
It was only after socialists saw the political benefits of climate alarmism that the conjecture of Arrhenius was resurrected from the scientific graveyard.
91
And that’s the core of the origin of the myth.
Everyone should read this.
60
So, in the 1940s, US military scientists and engineers were the instigators of a socialist plot?
35
I’ve got a plot.
When August comes around I want to plant some lettuce.
40
Lettuce in Canberra is best left until September / October due to frost.
The lettuce is a C3 plant and needs heaps of sunshine, CO2, fertiliser and water.
Three of which are deficient there!
Fertiliser comes in truck loads from parliament house though!
40
It’s worth reading the original Arrhenius paper of April 1896, or at least a translation. In the translation I have is this comment: “Contrary to some misunderstandings, Arrhenius does not explicitly suggest in this paper that the burning of fossil fuels will cause global warming, though it is clear that he is aware that fossil fuels are a potentially significant source of carbon dioxide, and he does explicitly suggest this outcome in later work.”
In a later paper “Worlds in the making”, Arrhenius did comment that some extra warmth might be beneficial.
70
G’day Dennis,
Any idea of the cost of a coal plant without the CCS which is not only unnecessary, but also counter productive as CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant, and if it causes any warming at all that effect has reached saturation already at current levels.
Cheers
Dave B
60
Yes. Remove the CCS requirement and coal and gas energy becomes a lot cheaper.
40
Dennis, the CSIRO figures from GenCost are faulty and should be ignored. For a start, the comparison lifetime is too short – 30 years. Need to compare energy sources over the longer lifetimes of coal, nuclear and gas, when wind and solar would need replacing at least once. Also the CF values are wrong – wind is set at 35%, when in Aust. it’s 29%, from Tony’s data. There are other serious flaws.
60
You could carpet an entire state with solar and wind farms, but at night when a wind drought occurs, all of it will be absolutely useless at supplying energy. It doesn’t matter how much wind and solar is installed – what really matters are the unplanned outages that have to to be managed.
60
How many windmills are needed to replace a coal power station?
Let’s use Liddell as an example (1,200 MW reliably 24×7) …….
As Graeme#4 says, you could carpet an entire state with solar and wind farms, but at night when a wind drought occurs, all of it will be absolutely useless at supplying energy.
So the number of windmills needed to replace Liddell’s 24×7 supply is (1200 / 0), which is quite a lot of windmills.
50
The amount of energy required every day is basically known. So all that’s left to determine is how many days’ backup you need to specify, to achieve some (unspecified?) reliability figure. Of course, the renewables advocates say only one day, but others have come up with a more realistic 3-4 days, even one week.
40
TonyfromOz can ransack his wind data and emerge with an empirically backed estimate of how much storage to supply; I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a month or more.
30
We have to stop making the MISTAKE of using the 30% factor for windmills when working out how many we need. If the wind isn’t blowing, then even an infinite number of windmills is NOT ENOUGH.
So stop using a 30% value. Use real data. With a blocking high centred over south west NSW, you can exclude 95% of ALL wind generation from Vic, SA, NSW and a good half from Qld.
That blocking high is going to be in place for a period of three days, statistically, you could get one straight after another with the only gap in between being the cold front that blows in so fiercely that it is beyond the capability of the windmills, ie no power then either.
How many windmills would you need to build in FNQ to supply the grid? How many conductors would that require? What if they are still rebuilding them after a cyclone cut a swath through the FNQ grid the previous summer?
Should we expect blackouts? Should we accept that the government is not responsible?
I’m thinking pikes and heads to roll but I’ll let the people decide that outcome.
In short, STOP using the 30% value, it’s pointless, the windmills do not provide back up. Batteries are not big enough to cover a few hours, don’t even think of a week or two.
Stop this train, the sane people want to get off.
100
This comic posted by @DaveCullen on gab seems appropriate to the discussion:
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/110/051/697/original/a26fb6f208a3c6a3.jpg
110
Excellent!
30
Good one.
Last night I saw a protest March along the shores of the harbour here in NovoCastria.
The cries and posters seemed to be requesting retroactive pregnancy termination be allowed.
Mostly youngsters and few pushing prams, disturbing how people can be led to indignant protestations over poorly defined concepts.
120
The Australian is looking more and more like The Guardian every day and Mr Williams’ frequent contributions are merely wind and solar promotion material masquerading as news.
180
Perry Williams takes every junk proposal about renewables and posts it without any thought.
I assume that the Editor in Chief has some plan e.g. providing an outlet for the few commentators who bend that way. I’ve given up reading the waffle under his by-line.
140
“to carry out a 12-month hydrogen feasibility study on the site of the Liddell and Bayswater coal-fired power stations.”
What will they use for power to create the hydrogen ??
Where will they get the steel and other materials to build all these new NON-PRODUCING interconnects ?
180
Building interconnectors in the first place seems to be an admission that solar and wind are so unreliable that any electricity which happens to be randomly produced can be shared with those less fortunate.
80
Is Tasmania building extra hydro storage dams to allow it to produce more electricity ?
If not, the extra interconnect is pointless.
120
Has Van Diemen’s Land got any more places to dam?
The last time they tried to build a dam was on the Franklin River and that didn’t end well…
110
If you look at the two biggest hydro stations dams, they are nearly empty.
60
“they are nearly empty.”
Now.. another Basslink breakage needed ! 🙂
60
It’s so they can import all the excess power from Snowy 2, silly. 🙂
60
I believe that the Marinus Link is primarily to export power from the proposed Robbins Island wind farm – that’s why it plans to come ashore where shown.
30
The AEMO insists we need it: https://www.marinuslink.com.au/2022/06/market-operator-says-marinus-link-must-be-built-urgently/ Just another part of the energy tapeworm emptying Australian pockets.
40
So 10,000 kms of transmission lines and thousands of windmills to be built on native animal habitat. Where are all the environmentalists?
160
It was about the only good thing Bob Brown, late of the Greens Party, has done. He is opposing a huge Wind install in his part of Tasmania.
80
Yes, and that’s why the Tasmanian Hydro want the federal govt to pay for Marinus Link. I believe that due to these protests, already they have shifted the proposed transmission line path out of the forests, onto adjacent farmland.
30
The “Ausnet Towers” protest here in Victoria tried another ploy. They wanted Ausnet to put those transmission lines underground. Knowing that this would massively increase the cost.
40
The AEMO Board is not really qualified to direct the energy market.
https://aemo.com.au/en/about/our-people/our-board
100
Looks like a clown show.
120
What on earth is a “ Non-Executive Non-Independent Director”? That sounds like a doozy of a job for someone with no electrical engineering experience.
30
But at least they look like meeting the diversity quotas…
130
If you think wind and solar is bad, wait until they start pushing “green hydrogen”.
It will be either made from coal with subsequent capture and burial of CO2 (good luck with that!). Or made from intermittent electricity from unrelibles. But that will need tens of thousands more, say windmill unreliables, in addition to the tens of thousands (with Big Batteries) that have to be built to replace coal power stations.
Then there is the absolute nightmare of handling liquid hydrogen in a consumer or industrial environment. There is a good reason why even rocket organisations apart from NASA avoid using it.
Do these people who promote this have no clue about handling such cryogens? Imagine every car with an LH2 tank, plus distribution stations. There are multiple issues of handling LH2 including materials (e.g. hydrogen embrittlement), safety, sealing (it leaks through everything including solid metal) etc..
These fools are operating without restraint, scrutiny or oversight and they have nothing to lose either – your taxes pay for their folly and enrich them no matter what they do.
200
It will be interesting to see what might happen when two of those cars stack into each other.
30
So undergraduate degree in economics and politics can be converted into a PhD in Marine Ecology? How is that possible? Where is the Honours or Masters degree? What on earth are the prerequisites?
Where is the biology, botany, zoology but more importantly the physics, the mathematics, the chemistry, the computer modelling. No wonder he believes in Hydrogen power!
And where does he propose to get the hydrogen? From fossil fuels. That’s no miracle. It’s absurd.
The cunning plan is to strip off the nasty carbon and bury it. Then having thrown away 2/3 of the incredibly valuable energy, he can cart it around a dozen degrees above absolute zero at enormous cost to keep it liquid. What part of that is even passing sensible?
There is a world shortage of fossil fuels and demand is skyrocketing and prices going through the roof but Dr. Forrest is proposing throwing most of the energy away to prevent the creation of CO2, which is the most desirable gas in the atmosphere.
Did anyone tell him all life on earth, all marine life in fact and all plants and insects, fungi and phytoplankton are made from CO2 and H2O almost exclusively? We are carbon lifeforms or more accurately, carbon dioxide life forms. And the world’s biosphere has rocketed in size in the last 30 years thanks to increased CO2, contradicting all the nett zero fantasy science.
He joins Dr. Tim Flannery as a very silly person and quite obviously has no idea of chemistry.
However he at least had the commercial common sense to demand the people of Australia subsidize this mad scheme. Trust me, I’m a doctor. And even the rains which fall will not fill the dams. Hydrogen will be a super energy source. But it already is, except carbon is even bigger. And it is hydrated carbon dioxide which powers all life on earth. Carbohydrates.
50
40
How many times have people come along around here trying to say the renewables industry is not subsidised?
140
There is already considerable opposition to these powerlines in Victoria. Anyone who drives to Ballarat from Melbourne and then out the Sunraysia Hwy will see a lot of landowners have put up protest banners about the “Ausnet Towers”.
100
Further to that, there was a large protest outside Vic parliament house in March. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-03-08/farmers-gather-at-parliament-house-to-protest-against-ausnet/100890982. ( sorry the ABC was the only link I could find). My favourite quote from the protest -“”Wake up, you dickheads.”
50
Good one.
Last night I saw a protest March along the shores of the harbour here in NovoCastria.
The cries and posters seemed to be requesting retroactive pregnancy termination be allowed.
Mostly youngsters and few pushing prams, disturbing how people can be led to indignant protestations over poorly defined concepts.
60
Duplicate
20
“retroactive pregnancy termination ”
Is that abortion after you are born, wouldn’t that be murder.
50
Actually, that worried me a bit at the time: obviously didn’t understand. Sarc
More like suis hide.
20
Each of the protester’s mother’s should obviously undergo a retroactive pregnancy termination…
No-one will be missed.
70
Of course the SH SINK of the REAL planet Earth is already at NET ZERO co2 emissions, while the NH is the SOURCE of the extra co2 from Human activity.( see CSIRO data)
If any of that extra co2 in our atmosphere is really a problem is debatable and so far Humans have thrived for over 100 years ( or 200 years) and are much healthier and wealthier as well.
AGAIN the increase in population is astonishing with…..
2 billion by 1927 and global life expectancy under 45 years.
3 bn by 1960. life exp 50 yrs
4 bn by 1974 life exp 58.4 yrs
5 bn by 1987
6 bn by 1999 life exp 66 yrs
7 bn by 2011 life exp 70 yrs
7.9 bn by 2022
8 bn by 2023 life exp 73 yrs
So no need to change anything and obviously we should only build RELIABLE, BASE-LOAD coal, gas, hydro or nuclear for our future energy requirements.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/life-expectancy
30
But any teal will tell you that many humans will make the earth’s crust collapse.
40
Nearly all the Australian population is along the eastern and south eastern seaboard..
We still haven’t capsized ! 😉
80
But you are tilting downwards compared to the western seaboard, so I’ve been told.
40
Ha! so it wasnt that 4th glass of wine!
30
Was it the island of Guam which might tip over if everyone moved to one side?
50
Yes, according to one dimwit U.S. politician, who probably wishes he never said that.
40
I saw this public announcement yesterday and was astonished that AEMO could come out with what is a political policy statement.
Who exactly, in charge of policy ? Is AEMO that politically powerful ?
120
‘Our role is to manage the electricity and gas systems and markets across Australia, helping to ensure Australians have access to affordable, secure and reliable energy.’ (AEMO)
Massive fail, they must believe CO2 causes global warming or they wouldn’t have adopted a system that is expensive, insecure and unreliable.
130
With all that extra hi-power electrical switch gear required..
It might be worth reading this… https://hackaday.com/2021/11/10/sulfur-hexafluoride-the-nightmare-greenhouse-gas-thats-just-too-useful-to-stop-using/
40
Well, while we will all end up with more metabolic disease from fluoride interfering with our thyroid function, at least, in theory, we should have good teeth!
40
How about we:
1. Cut the Interconnects and make States deal with their own madness.
2. Make the Spot market based upon 4hr blocks not 5 minute blocks that only favour intermittent providers and make the whole network unstable.
3. Make inner city areas the priority for load shedding.
130
Best idea yet !, inner city power use is more concentrated with all the HVAC on hi- rise and electric trains, trams, lighting and soon cars, plus they almost exclusively vote green so they should shoulder the bulk of the pain.
90
Or,.. How about we make every consumer responsible for suppling their own power ?…
…..even more unrealistic !
So, how about we dissolve the States completely, and make electricity supply a Federal responsibility ?
…Seriously, a grid supply is more effective when it is as large as practical. But it needs a uniform approach to generation and consumption.
10
The $12bn is today’s estimate using last year’s coal. The real cost will be factors higher due to the galloping inflation in cost of coal and gas that is needed to build all this fancy new stuff.
The great concern is that there are no sensible assessments anymore. Kery Schott’s departing remarks as she left the ESB was that all the infrastructure needed should come from general revenue as it was such a high additional cost that consumers would not be able to bear it.
Once spent, these costs will end up in retail electricity price. The capital gets a guaranteed return. The banks and big business love it. It is a virtuous cycle of wasting money that simply burdens all consumers while making wealthy wealthier.
Plant trees. If you do not have the land then move to where you can and work from home or home as a base.
80
I want to know who’s advising these people.
It now seems that Electrical Engineering has been taken over by Arts/Economics graduates who think Ohm’s Law has something to do with the property market.
“Umm, excuse me, I’m an Electrical Engineer, and none of all this is correct at all.”
Shut the f*** up! ….. I know boats! (best TV ad ever made)
Tony.
230
As an Engineer as well, could not agree more.
The first test of any project is, will it work? With Renewables the emphatic answer every time is NO. No they will not impact the climate at all and No they will not deliver reliable and cheap power.
220
You can get almost anything to work if you throw enough money at it. All project developers should ask the question – does the project offer value?
Answering that question requires a good deal of due diligence. The failure of all projects aimed at reducing CO2 is that literally no one has done due diligence on the absolute garbage that climate models spew out.
In 2000, CSIRO predicted that the Nino34 region of the Pacific would be 2C warmer now than it actually is. It has the temperature regularly exceeding 30C – a physical impossibility.
60
Rick
You have to make sure something is going to work before one even looks at costs. Co2 is not driving any climate change, so measures being pushed out to address climate change via Co2 reduction will be complete failures no matter how much is thrown at it.
Yes, some projects respond to greater cash splashes, but as you say, where is the value. We could spend the billions on alleviating world poverty and I would suggest that is a far better use of it than handing it to carpetbaggers in subsidies and handouts…
30
As I have said here before, I spoke to a recently graduated engineer a while ago and he had never heard of a Carnot cycle heat engine.
What are they teaching these people?
110
Not much, it would seem.
110
As a “lowly” Mechanical Engineer with an EE Power engineer brother, I’d like to ask a simple question.
Let’s just roll up all the costs that RE needs to be effective: Transmission lines, batteries, etc, and amortize all of those costs into a rolling 20 year average, including solar panel, battery, and turbine replacement and maintenance costs. then let’s represent those costs per actual delivered kWh based upon a backward average of actual production over a 24 hr period for at least 1 year per representative unit averaged over at least the last 5 years to obtain a representative rolling average.
Then, let’s include the coal/gas/nuclear (?) costs to back up the RE failures at night or wind droughts for every hour, 24/7/365 for at least 5 years rolling average.
After that, let’s propose the kWh cost at retail level to the consumers and see if that is what they wish to become obligated to pay. You know. Transparency, Engineering, Full Disclosure, Accounting Principles.
Nah. It was just another fantasy. That was some pretty good single malt. Oh well.
120
Ditto TfO, I have the same reaction from people who should know to investigate more and even colleagues in the electrical field who have swallowed the renewables bumpf.
I posted the following in the HeraldSun in response to an article – it was rejected!
What can you do?
See wind energy table here anero.id/energy/wind-energy Capacity factor over a year is around 20 – 30% of installed capacity. This theoretically means if you remove 3,000 MW of fossil fuel generation you need to add 10,000 MW of wind power to cover it. Which means you need 2,500 turbines based on 4 MW per turbine. Not only that you need the power line infrastructure to connect them to the grid and add compensation equipment to allow for the disturbance their intermittent operation causes to the grid. Last but not least you need the locations to clear the natural habitat and realise the deaths of flying birds of prey and bats that will occur.
After 15 – 20 years you need to do it all again on a new site since that is the lifetime of wind turbines, most of which ends up as landfill besides the concrete base which remains in place forever. As we know from experience wind power still needs back up from continuous power generation when the wind stops during times of high air pressure over Australia (typically summer and shoulder seasons).
If you look at the King Island wind installation they depend on diesel generators to back up for insufficient wind (often). See now here hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island Using 60% diesel gen and 19% wind contribution – they call this a success story!
40
More good times for the King Island installation which, they say, “… provides a glimpse of what’s achievable in renewable energy.”
(at about 12:15 AM)
Wind -11 kW
Solar 0 kW
Battery -5 kW
Diesel 1441 kW
Output 1425 kW
30
Jo
Every day I log onto your blog and see you cataloguing complete nonsense policies and catastrophic waste on projects that will not work, and will do absolutely nothing except line the pockets of renewables carpetbaggers, and be used by immoral politicians to falsely claim to be helping.
I also look at theconservativetreehouse.com where Sundance daily chronicles the descent of the US into what can only be described as utter madness of corruption and fascism.
On Telegram I have Craig Kelly and others chronicling the accelerating mortality and all sorts of disasterous implications from injections for covid which were never ever safe and effective, and in fact are turning out to be the complete reverse.
We are on a very very dangerous track where our civilisation is literally being destroyed by the incompetent, but also, there are those with zero principles who obviously have an agenda which only benefits them, and wrecks it for the vast majority.
When will people wake up to this disaster?
211
The dogs (us) bark but the caravan (them) moves on.
They are not interested in what we say or want, and our elected representatives in the majority do not listen to their constituents and are guided by international politics.
150
Dennis
Unfortunately it appears as though we will have to crash the bus before the passengers finally realise the driver has no idea at all.
Hopefully at that stage enough people have been beggared by power bills, thrown out of work by power prices, sickened by dangerous injections and have had v negative impacts from govt thugs rolling out dangerous policies. And hopefully action is swift to bring those to account who have caused this mess.
History tells us this will happen at some stage as the descent into madness quickens. Trouble is we don’t have to go through the massive pain ahead, its all avoidable, if people would actually taken an interest in the world around them instead of infatuations with themselves etc.
60
A Chinese company already owns and operates the largest windfarm in NSW using Chinese wind turbines.
China ominates the market for solar panels and wind turbines.
Germany relied on Russia for natural gas and that worked out well.
Australia will rely on China for its energy future
That will work out well as well!
150
Image posted by Steve on WUWT
https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Bird-Chopper-1656623393.6941-258×300.png
50
A couple of articles ago I mentioned that former stock market animal Tilt Renewables had merged with the Powering Australian Renewables Fund in a complex $2.75 billion transaction to create Australia’s largest developer and generator of renewable electricity.
What interested me is who is behind this homegrown renewables behemoth PARF?
And according to that impeccable source, Wikipedia, the Powering Australian Renewables Fund is a consortium comprised of three big players: AGL Energy, Australia’s biggest listed energy company; a QIC infrastructure fund (Queensland Investment Corporation being a state government owned investment manager); and the Federal Government’s own much hyped Future Fund.
As you can imagine, these guys are well-connected politically at both state and federal levels.
This explains much of the mess we are in. They have decided Australia needs a large dose of renewables, and by golly they are going to give it to us. Remember Krudd’s Building the Education Revolution and the $800k toilet blocks? They will Build the Renewables Revolution one solar panel and windmill at a time and force those green electrons down our copper wires.
It will require a plethora of contractors. Toyota Hilux dealers rejoice!
110
The profits are government guaranteed. There is no longer a working market in energy supplier.
The proposed $12bn on new transmission line explode as the unions fight for a bigger slice of the pie. There is no effective control on the capital expenditure. It will be what it will be. It is all guaranteed a return of around 10.5% on equity. How does that compare with your money in a bank term deposit.
No matter how wasteful these things are, the are guaranteed a return as a long as there are captive consumers unable to make their own electricity.
80
Oh well. Back in the day when Victoria’s electricity supply was completely state-owned, the SEC was said to be 80% overstaffed. One way or another, the government will mess things up.
30
OFF TOPIC, re Dr Zev Zelenko passed away.
(Partial obituary, copied.)
Dr. Vladimir “Zev” Zelenko, the man who discovered and implemented the treatment for Covid-19 that over the past two years has been responsible for saving millions of lives worldwide, has passed away after a long battle with cancer. He was 48.
Born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1973, Zev’s family immigrated the United States in 1977 and settled in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York.
He attended Hofstra University where he earned with a B.S. in chemistry with high honors. He then went on to the Buffalo School of Medicine where he earned his M.D. in 2000.
Zev had a family medical practice in Monroe, New York in 2020 during the onset of what would become the Covid-19 pandemic. As a physician who masterfully combined the skills of both critical thinking and the scientific method, and who shaped their application out of his love for both God and patients, Zev was not content to sit back and wait for politicians or public health officials to settle upon a prescribed treatment path. People were dying. He began searching almost immediately for a method of treatment.
Aided by initiative, good fortune, and from his account divine intervention, he discovered such a treatment in combining Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), zinc, azithromycin, and other various drugs, especially steroids, and creating what has come to be known as the “Zelenko protocol.” The key to the protocol was very early intervention to treat the virus inside the cellular level before it could break loose and develop into a full-blown respiratory disease.
Up to the time of his death, Zev had overseen the treatment of approximately 7,500 patients using his protocol and experienced only three patient deaths. The use of the Zelenko protocol has spread worldwide.
(I will post the rest in the next open thread.)
250
My wife and I have used a modified version of the Zelenko protocol.
Both our duaghters were forced to get the “Jab” and both still got COVID.
Even though my wife and I were close contacts with our daughters neither of us got COVID
RIP Dr Zelenko
190
Thanks David.
RIP Dr Zev.
90
In an interview with our own Craig Kelly, Dr. Zelenko at the end said that while he believed we had a rocky road ahead, he could also see a glorious future. May he be enjoying his own glorious future. What a loss. ToM
70
Over the last decade Australia reduced its CO2 emisions by 6% (Round of applause)
Over the same period China and India INCREASED their CO2 emissions by 100 times Ausralia’s reduction.
Now Australia has an “Energy Emergency” and for what benefit????
120
None.
40
Since when did AEMO, that alphabet organization charged with ‘running’ our power generation, have the expertise to design and price an unreliables add on.
70
When nobody is obviously or actually in charge, others will try to fill the vacuum.
Their motivations will vary.
50
“When will people wake up to this disaster?”
The day the heat won’t go on, and there’s no food for the kids.
That’s what it will take to get people out of their tribal bubbles.
70
Sorry, #39 should have been #32.1.
Luddites ‘R Us.
40
Apart from anything else, it’s a fundamentally engineering error to allow non-dispatchable generators to connect to the grid.
Unreliable (i.e. non-dispatchable) sources should only be allowed to connect to a grid via a means of storage such as a battery and that should be factored into their cost, which of course would make them even more useless and expensive than they already are.
90
Grid scale batteries are extremely expensive to begin with and are environmentally damaging to produce.
They would also need to be replaced every 10 years or so.
A coal fired power station is generally good for 50 years and in some cases up to 70 years!!!!
When the coal-fired power plant at the Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah started up, Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for his fourth term as president. The top music hits were sung by Bing Crosby, Jimmy Dorsey and Dinah Shore. D-Day was still a couple of months away.
People born that year are now collecting Social Security.
Yet 70 years after opening, the power plant north of Salt Lake City hasn’t yet retired. It is, depending on how you calculate it, the oldest in the USA. And it’s still running with the original boilers, steam turbines and fans to power the company’s smelter and crushing operations.
100
Wikipedia
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) performs an array of gas and electricity market, operational, development and planning functions. It manages the National Electricity Market (NEM), the Wholesale Electricity Market (WA) (WEM)[1] and the Victorian gas transmission network. AEMO also facilitates electricity and gas full retail contestability, overseeing these retail markets in eastern and southern Australia. It is additionally responsible for national transmission planning for electricity and the establishment of a Short Term Trading Market (STTM) for gas.[2]
It commenced operations on 1 July 2009,[3] superseding several state-based and cross-state organisations including the National Electricity Market Management Company Limited (NEMMCO), the Victorian Energy Networks Corporation (VENCorp) which was responsible for the efficient operation of gas and electricity industries in Victoria, the Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council (ESIPC) which was responsible for the effective operation of the electricity industry in South Australia, the South Australian operations of Retail Energy Market Company (REMCo)), Gas Market Company (GMC) and Gas Retail Market Operator (GRMO).
In March 2017, AEMO sought to reassure the public that the closure of the Hazelwood Power Station, which has a capacity of 1600 megawatt, would be offset by the availability of three mothballed gas-fired stations, which have a combined capacity of 830 megawatts, and large industrial businesses agreeing to time-shift their electricity use in the event of an emergency. The addition capacity would be provided by the Pelican Point Power Station in South Australia, Tamar Valley Power Station in Tasmania and Swanbank Power Station in Queensland.[4]
In 2017, AGL Energy reaffirmed that it intends to close the Liddell Power Station in 2022.[5] The closure of this and other coal-burning power stations in Australia has led to the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, to seek advice from AEMO on extending the life of a number of them,[6] to head off future power shortages.[7] Turnbull said the government had been advised that if the Liddell plant were to close in 2022, there would be a 1000MW gap in base load, dispatchable power generation.[6]
In May 2018, AEMO warned solar and wind projects in north-western Victoria of potential curtailment to their generation profiles. In particular, the 220kV transmission line that links Ballarat, Horsham, Red Cliffs, Kerang and Bendigo was the focus of their announcement. “If further development proceeds as suggested, this will add to the thermal constraints in this area”, AEMO warns.[8]
AEMO has several departments within such as Engineering and Design, Forecasting, National Planning, Operational forecasting, Markets and Strategies as well as administrative, safety, peopleculture and human resources departments. AEMO is the semi-governmental body that acts as the information source for the industry’s and manufacturers outlook on the national electricity policies, forecast as well as future plans. The organisation is owned 60% by the Government and 40% by industry and market participants. AEMO has offices across the country in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide as well as a handful of regional offices.
70
Soaking up the unemployed into safe Govt jobs, all part of the Nation Building Authority… Rob Sitch would have a field day with it!
“AEMO has several departments within such as Engineering and Design, Forecasting, National Planning, Operational forecasting, Markets and Strategies as well as administrative, safety, people culture and human resources departments. AEMO is the semi-governmental body that acts as the information source for the industry’s and manufacturers outlook on the national electricity policies, forecast as well as future plans. ”
They’re certainly doing a piss-poor job so far!
80
Know thy enemy. Corrupt public servants at work.
51
“provide Australian homes and businesses with the most affordable, secure and reliable energy,”
A contradiction in terms, who writes this dribble.
50
The cost of building a renewable future
Regulators, politicians and industry players are debating how best to build and pay for a system that no longer uses coal-fired power. The short answer is that consumers’ bills are only headed in one direction.
Jennifer Hewett
The rise in millions of residential and business power bills starting from today is only the beginning. Unless the energy market changes dramatically, prices for all consumers will keep accelerating next financial year too.
The soaring price of oil, gas and coal globally is leading to a belated recognition that “fossil fuels” are still required and in drastically short supply right now.
The constant refrain that renewables are cheaper as well as cleaner may be true in the long term. In the medium term, it conveniently omits arguments about who pays what for the cost of the additional transmission lines and storage that help make wind and solar power systemically viable.
Hint. Most of that cost eventually gets passed onto consumers’ bills.
And despite Chris Bowen’s enthusiasm about the eagerness of the private sector to invest far more in transmission and renewables, the hurdles to doing so quickly haven’t been eliminated by a new federal government declaring a political truce with the states.
The transition of the energy market also requires the difficult balancing act of keeping enough coal-fired and gas-fired power in the grid until there’s sufficient investment in renewables, transmission and storage capacity to replace them.
The release of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s “integrated system plan” is an attempt to describe how the national electricity market can achieve this shift over the next 30 years in the cheapest, fastest and most reliable way for consumers. Many of the practical questions about how best to do this cannot be neatly answered now, even in a sober 100-page report.
That’s not really the fault of regulators like the AEMO or the Australian Energy Regulator or the Energy Security Board. The details of how the energy market is transforming itself in ways that were largely unimaginable even a decade ago have confounded most predictions, no matter how “expert”.
The pace of advances in technology and management of the grid will only increase. But the unwieldy combination of state and federal governments, regulators, local planning approvals and having the right financial incentives or framework in place to encourage more private sector investment more quickly moves far more slowly.
Yet AEMO’s prediction that far more coal-fired power will shut down by 2030 than has so far been announced by Australia’s generators only makes the need to deal with the gap between expectations and financial and physical reality more urgent.
AEMO’s chief executive Daniel Westerman describes the amount of investment required as “staggering”. At the moment, for example, coal still accounts for around 60 per cent of generation in the national electricity market despite its decline being both rapid and irreversible.
According to the vote by various industry and consumer groups as part of AEMO’s lengthy consultation process, renewables are expected to account for 83 per cent of generation by the start of the 2030s.
Even if that exact percentage is not correct, the direction is clear.
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Retaining a “social licence to operate” is not just a problem for the coal and gas industries.
Not only does no-one want to build any new coal-fired power stations. The maintenance of existing and ageing equipment in this market is ever less commercially sustainable. But the accelerating withdrawal of coal compounds the private sector’s reluctance to invest in new gas generation to provide “firming” power for renewables without financial support from governments. The federal government is responsible for the construction of the Kurri Kurri power plant in NSW while EnergyAustralia’s Tallawarra B is being built with backing from the NSW government.
The general view is the proposed development of a “capacity market” – to effectively pay generators to have firming power available as needed – might include gas (despite Victoria’s objections) as well as pumped hydro and batteries. But coal is still likely to be excluded, given political and environmental sensitivities.
To cope with the need to rapidly increase investment in wind and solar as well as batteries and pumped hydro projects such as Snowy 2.0, AEMO is focused on the need to simultaneously build another 10,000 kilometres of new transmission links to connect generation and storage with users.
“What we have outlined is a road map for investment in Australia’s national electricity market to ensure that Australians have access to affordable and reliable energy, and we know the most affordable and reliable energy going into the future is firmed renewables with transmission,” Westerman said on Thursday.
The five big projects the regulator cites as most urgent to progress are the Hume Link connecting Snowy Hydro, the VNI West interconnector between NSW and Victoria, the Marinus Link connecting Tasmania to Victoria, expanded transmission to the renewable energy zone in northern NSW and a boost to the greater Sydney transmission ring.
According to AEMO, the estimated $12.7 billion cost will deliver net market benefits more than double that.
But projects are bogged down in arguments over the share of payments and returns expected by various governments and industry players as well as cumbersome state and local government planning approvals, including resistance by some communities affected. Retaining a “social licence to operate” is not just a problem for the coal and gas industries. Managing such differences is likely to test the post-election spirit of greater collaboration between governments and industry – not to mention consumers.
Nor are energy experts all in agreement. The dead-end future of coal may be clear but not the transitional role of gas. Critics such as Bruce Mountain of the Victorian Energy Policy Centre also question the cost of interstate transmission lines and the validity of a capacity market compared to mandating renewable electricity storage targets in the same way the original renewable energy target for generation worked.
Households and businesses will be more interested in the one-way direction of their bills.
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Some relevant Roger Scruton quotes:
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To be a “Hydrogen Superpower” would require Australia to be a nuclear energy Superpower.
Australia is #1 in Uranium reserves with more Uranium than Kazakhstan (#2) and Canada (#3) combined
Looks like the perfect solution
Was this covered in the AEMO report?
Or was AEMO obeying its political masters?????
How many Chinese made solar panels will be need in sunny WA for Australia to become a “Hygrogen Superpower”?
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It looks like the ‘Achilles Heel’ of this s&w madness are the transmission links, let’s mobilise the nimbys to block the building of these links through forests, save the endangered animals.
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How much will they waste on this hydrogen folly before they discover it won’t work, I can tell them that right now.
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Mate, it’s the vibe, and you must call it “Green hydrogen”, otherwise they’ll send the boys around.
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Zalli Stegall is on board, that’s good enough for me. You don’t get much more credible than that.
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The Caring Climate Change/Global Warming Believers and Their Love for Gaia/Mother Earth
Woke Climate Change Hypocrites Leave Trash EVERYWHERE Following Greta Thunberg ‘Save The Environment’ Appearance in Glastonbury (VIDEO)
While we are all familiar with the hyper-delusion and psychopath-level hypocrisy that is prevalent among the elitists, this duplicitous behavior can be found throughout the climate-obsessed within the leftist hierarchy. Instead of hopping on their private jets and yachts in defiance of their stated agenda, the masses are beholden to a lesser form of self-righteous denial that is equally inconsistent with the green agenda.
And this stinking hypocrisy was on full display this week when Greta Thunberg, the young face of the green movement, made an appearance last week at the Glastonbury Festival 2022.
Thunberg was given the festival’s main pyramid stage to preach about climate and environmental ‘justice.’ Facing tens of thousands at the packed event, she screeched for the people of the world to come together in order to heal the planet and protect it from the evil no good humans and their fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, the buzz from the mass formation psychosis must not have lasted very long – within minutes of Thunberg leaving the stage, the attendees cleared out, leaving a disgusting mess in their wake.
Pictures from the event show what looks like a massive trash dump, with chairs and litter strewn across the entire area. They created a literal sea of trash – I don’t think this is the type of coming together she was talking about.
They must have been tired after a full day of virtue signaling.
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All this is neither cheaper nor faster than nuclear.
If we were to place a nuclear plant in the middle of the Bowen Basin coal district there would be an immediate local market for the draglines on the coal fields but because those draglines are currently fed by a 275kV line from Gladstone and through to Townsville it can power the metal refineries in those cities and Copperstring [a HV line to the metals provinces] can power the west where a lot of OCGas is used.
These transmission lines then become redundant and $12 bill pays a lot of the power station.
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Who will pay ???
Increasing RE by 9x the existing deployment is modeled to cost us $350B, but as we know these numbers are always fudged on the low side. We’re probably talking something close to $1 Trillion and the there is the ongoing issue of RE only having a 20 year lifespan, meaning we need to support an enormous and ongoing replacement spend.
There are a few obvious points here than can’t be ignored.
– There is no way we can deploy 9x the volume of RE infrastructure than we are doing currently. It’s simply impossible due to resource constraints and at best we might be able to deploy 2x, but that’s it.
– We don’t have sufficient funds in an already bankrupted budget and crippling national debt
– The cost of energy would rise by over $3000 per household per year to support this plan. That would drive residential users off the grid and the entire cost of running the grid would be born by business, which would quickly collapse
– We would become 100% dependent on China for all energy needs and this would lead to a loss of sovereignty and we would effectively become part of China.
– All agriculture and transport would collapse and we would have a mass starvation event and a total loss of law and order.
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It has taken (around) fifteen years to construct the 76 listed wind plants on the AEMO, with a total Nameplate of 9854MW, spread across the length and breadth of the five States, with 65% of that Nameplate concentrated in the South East of South Australia, and Central Western Victoria.
The plan is to increase that ninefold they say.
So that’s another 90,000MW of wind Nameplate.
If the largest wind plant in Australia is around 500MW, that’s 180 of these behemoths.
Umm ….. WHERE?
With a five year lead time from thought bubble (for an actual plant) to commissioning and power delivery, when do they need them by.
At around a Billion per plant, where’s the money come from.
But the biggest of these is WHERE will there be 180 NEW humungous wind plants, and keep in mind, they need to be replaced ….. lock stock and tower every fifteen to twenty years.
TEN a year is 18 years, and then start ALL OF IT all over again.
Naah! Tell em they’re dreamin!
Tony.
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It might seem like it’s mathematics, but I’m certain that these people saying all this have absolutely no concept whatever of what it actually required ….. what it all means.
Tony.
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Ask a teenager where money comes from. You’ll get the same answer as the Govt.
“Who cares, this is what I want”.
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When we were young and not flush with money, we denied our very young kids something one day and explained there wasnt enough money that day. The oldest said “cant we just go to the ATM and get some more?” 🙂
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The area in SE SA and Vic you speak of is the only area where wind MIGHT be viable – it is in the roaring forties. The rest of this great land is just not very windy.
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oh well the roaring 30 somethings really, but close
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The old sailors rode the roaring forties on the Circle Route from the Cape Of Good Hope to Australia and did a lefty to the Spice Islands.
What was good enough for these hearty men is good enough for me.
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Not to be too picky Tony, but Challicum Hills wind farm (Ararat, Victoria) started construction in 2002 and completed in 2003. So your “around 15 years” is actually “around 20 years”.
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Right now wind and solar are propping up the grid by supplying a massive 13% between the two , batteries are showing 0%.
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Tony,
a little snippet. A wind farm near Burra in South Aust. (possibly Hallett owned by AGL) pays out $80,000 per turbine per year to local farmers for use of their land. A farmer with 10 turbines on his land is “doing nicely” unlike the poor electricity user who contributes to AGL with high priced bills. With that sort of return one can imagine who Cannon Brooks wanted to turn AGL into renewables only.
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I was under the impression each turbine paid the landowner about $5,000 per year, but $80,000. Wow!
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David,
It stuck me as unlikely but the source was consistent and likely to know what his near relatives got. He had “no skin in the game” but (in my opinion) not envious nor exaggerating.
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Evidently we have to spend endless trillions $ around the world because we somehow have a looming Climate CRISIS / EMERGENCY/ or even an EXISTENTIAL threat?
And apparently we now have to WASTE trillions $ on TOXIC S & W globally to fix this very dangerous problem?
But who really thinks about their delusional claims?
Can we easily prove they are wrong about the looming threat to the Human race?
Here’s the African data for population and life expectancy since 1950.
1950 population 232 million life expectancy 36 years.
1970 pop 363 million life exp 46 yrs.
2000 pop 810 mill life exp 53 yrs.
2022 pop 1400 million life exp 63.8 yrs.
The combined 53 African countries are poor and should be our worst example, but the past 72 years years have seen the highest population increase in Human history, plus today we also have the highest life expectancy as well.
How is this possible if we’re facing a Climate CRISIS?
In fact since 1950 we’ve seen record improvement and a very BENIGN climate.
AGAIN here’s the UN African data from Macrotrends site.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AFR/africa/life-expectancy
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Check your pockets
Climate ripe for trade deal with Europe: business
Madrid | Anthony Albanese’s embrace of climate action, his reset of relations with France and Russia’s war in Ukraine have generated momentum in Europe for the conclusion of the stalled free trade agreement, says Simon Crean, the former Labor leader and chairman of the European Australian Business Council.
After Mr Albanese said on Wednesday that talks would resume by October, following his meeting in Madrid with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Mr Crean said the atmosphere was ripe in Europe for a deal.
Mr Crean was speaking to The Australian Financial Review from Brussels after having led a delegation to Paris of about 30 senior business and industry representatives from sectors ranging from energy, mining, water, infrastructure, aviation, agriculture, education and defence.
They met French Trade Minister Franck Riester, as well as the Movement of the Enterprises of France (MEDEF), the nation’s largest employer federation.
Mr Crean said not only had Australia’s assistance for Ukraine created goodwill, the crisis was also stoking a need for an alternative source of energy and critical raw materials.
“It’s not only because of the reset that Labor’s victory has created, it’s the Ukraine crisis,” he said. “They are genuinely looking to Australia.”
Mr Crean, who on Wednesday was in Brussels with his delegation to meet members of the European Parliament trade committee, said the Europeans regarded a free trade agreement (FTA) as a priority.
While no one was prepared to put a time on when it could be concluded, there was potential to “get agreements of substance”.
“There is absolutely no doubt that there is a palpable change in attitude towards Australia with the election of the Albanese government,” said Vicki Thomson, CEO of the Group of Eight universities and a member of the delegation.
“There is now a window of opportunity to capitalise on this reset and of course the support of France is integral in the successful negotiation of the FTA with the EU,” she said.
“The visit by Trade Minister Don Farrell has been viewed as hugely positive and in many ways we are the warm-up act for the PM’s meetings in Paris later this week.
“What has provided an opportunity to break through is the Australian government’s different position on climate change. That has meant that Europe are much more willing to re-enter negotiations and to progress this agreement.”
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There’s an article about this in today’s SMH, includes this:
” European Union trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said an agreement could be reached next year but insisted climate change targets would have to be part of the outcome, exposing Australia to sanctions if it failed to honour pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The EU is holding out against Australian demands for bigger quotas for beef, lamb and dairy exports while demanding new rules that would stop Australian food producers using European geographic names such as parmesan cheese and Parma ham. ”
Free Trade?
Cheers
Dave B
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“Free Trade?”
Doesn’t exist! The only free trade is when Govt is not involved at all, no tariffs, no restrictions, no licenses.. Every Govt took their country’s trade by the throat and choked it, & now they just let a little more happen for virtue signalling.
NZ burned the trade restriction books back in the 80s, and successive Govts have slowly taken all that power back.
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Tucker Carlson: Democrats Are Rounding Up And Raiding Homes Of Political Dissidents, Imagine If Trump Did This
Energy prices, which are the key to any economy, have skyrocketed. That’s happened on purpose. This administration has done that both with the sanction regimes against Russia and its emphasis on, “green energy.” As a result of those two factors, you’re seeing the biggest rising gas prices in American history. And at the same time, you’re seeing a move to green energy forms that we buy from China – solar panels, wind farms, the components for those come from China. So effectively, you’re seeing a transfer of our energy grid from American control to Chinese control. This is an attack on the most basic institutions in American life. This is handing sovereignty over to our main global rival. It’s bad for America. In fact, it’s the worst possible thing for America.
So in a functioning democratic system, this should be a problem for the people trying to do it. You can’t undermine the country you lead and expect to continue to lead it in a democracy and the Biden , knows this, and that’s one of the reasons that the signature tactic of the Biden administration, this is our topic tonight, has been the criminalizing of American politics.
Why have a political debate when you can just arrest people who disagree with you? And that has happened. Far below the media radar since the day Joe Biden was elected. And tonight, to show it, we want to go through a litany, a list of Americans who have been arrested, detained by federal law enforcement on the orders of the Biden administration, not because they committed recognizable crimes, but because they disagreed with the political aims of the Biden administration.
Now, again, you’re not reading about this in The New York Times because the rest of the media are pretending that it’s not happening. And instead, they’re focused on the January 6th Committee, which has taken, in fact, a lead role in this effort, rounding up enemies of the state. The entire process is a farce, and that was proved yesterday. If you watch the hearings yesterday, you know how absurd it is.
Democrats, with the help of Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, called up a star witness who testified she heard someone else say that Donald Trump attacked a Secret Service agent and tried to carjack the presidential limousine. Think about that. The President of the United States tried to seize control of the presidential limousine that he wasn’t driving? It didn’t make any sense. And then by the time that Secret Service agents who were on the scene denied the story to NBC News and other news outlets, nobody cared. They weren’t even pretending that it was true. The initial story was the point. The shock value was the point, not the factual basis of it. That’s what passes for rigorous investigation in Congress at the moment.
But no media outlet is going to revisit their decision to turn over their airwaves to the January 6 committee, even after yesterday’s debacle. It is, in fact, a show trial. It is absurd by definition, and its absurdity is the point. The absurdity of it, the hollowness of it, sends the message, “We run the justice system now. You are powerless.” And that is the same message the Biden administration has sent to America for the last year-and-a-half, with the help of Merrick Garland, the most political attorney general in history.
Here’s a list of the things they’ve done because no one else has assembled it.
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SCOTUS has ruled against government intervention to limit CO2 emissions.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-limits-federal-power-curb-carbon-emissions-2022-06-30/
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The Supreme Court sharply curtails the authority of the EPA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions that are believed by some to cause climate change. In a 6-3 ruling, the court sides with the Constitution in adopting a sane reading of the Clean Air Act.
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Media misrepresentations.
SCOTUS has not ruled against “government intervention”.
Same with abortion.
Like always they ruled on the process by which government intervenes.
Details.
Constitutional due process.
The two arch enemies of the Left and their media mercenaries.
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More on judges upholding the Constitution at Ron Clutz’ blog.
https://rclutz.com/2022/06/30/huge-supreme-court-curtails-epas-authority-to-fight-climate-change/
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There is no cure for stupid.
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Natural selection?
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‘Mad scramble’ across Europe to return to coal and gas
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When will some fool in government either State or Federal float the idea of converting the existing coal generators to the burning of biomass to provide electricity? I expect this will receive rapturous pre-programmed applause from the ” greens ” who are really just the patsies of the billionaire predator class. They will do what they are told. Biomass is carbon neutral – so the science goes.
” We need to talk about biomass ” the ABC headline will read.
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I didn’t know wind and solar plugged in to the transmission grid, that’s the 400-800kv long distance lines.
Wiki Graphic for the UK Transmission and Distribution Grid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_distribution#/media/File:Electricity_Grid_Schematic_English.svg
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