By Jo Nova
A second big Australian “Pumped Hydro” scheme is crashing on economic rocks…
The Marinus Link cable was meant to spark a glorious renewables boom and make Tasmania “The Battery of the Nation”, instead it will cost more than a new advanced coal fired plant, provide no energy at all, and currently even the thought of it is causing chaos. New projects are on hold, factories can’t expand and Tasmania is held hostage to visions of an electricity grid designed to stop storms instead of generate energy.
The Marinus Link is a 255km cable that was supposed to be the second interconnector from Tasmania to the mainland. In theory it would cost $3 billion and carry 1.5GW of electricity. But the costs have blown out to $5.5 billion and the State Premier is balking at the new bill.
However, most of the new wind power projects in the state are awaiting the magic cable before they commit — without it, they can’t reach the real market, which is mainland Australia. But without them, the local grid doesn’t have enough surplus capacity to cover the lean times (or rather, without the cable, they can’t get access to more reliable brown coal power in Victoria).
The brutal truth is that wind power is only “cheap” (or even barely economic) if the poor taxpayer serfs pay for the five thousand million dollar cable (and the storage). If Tasmania built another reliable power plant instead, it wouldn’t need the inter-connector at all. The cables look, smell and cost like public infrastructure, but are just another hidden cost of “renewables”.
The foiled plan and uncertainty means Tasmania is in a quiet energy crisis.
Even without being built, “the cable” is causing chaos
As reported in The Australian, Tasmanian businesses can’t get energy to expand. One paper mill that runs on coal-fired boilers wants to replace them with electricity but can’t. In a state with “100% renewable energy” you’d think the state electricity corporation would be beating a path to their door. Instead Hydro Tasmania said it can’t spare 50MW of despatchable power and told the company it needs to arrange equivalent power from wind and solar generators. But the paper mill is struggling, and says it would involve “substantially higher operating costs”. Funny how the free energy always costs more?
Industry, jobs on hold as Tasmania ‘runs out of power’ and Marinus Link stalls
Matthew Denholm, The Australian
Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Michael Bailey said the state was in “another energy crisis”.
We have businesses asking the government for more power to expand and create more jobs, yet today we’ve heard that the government is turning them away because we simply do not have enough generation to meet demand,” Mr Bailey said. “If that’s not the definition of a crisis, then what is? Even the Economic Regulator has said … there is no ‘head room’ in the Tasmanian grid, which confirms the business community’s worst fears.
In the glory days of 2018 as dreamed up by Malcolm Turnbull, the second cable was originally estimated to cost $1.1 billion, and the full 5GW “Battery” of pumped hydro in Tasmania would be twice the size of Snowy 2.0 (which is currently also stalled in its own cost blowout and trapped tunnel borer).
Some Greens want to Sink the Link too
Environmentally the idea is so bad even Bob Brown and Christine Milne, former Greens leaders, have launched a “Sink the Link” campaign to stop the cable for environmental reasons. They can see now that it will unleash a wave of industrial development that will consume the wilderness.
Are these older Greens finally realizing they were tools of property developers and big industry all along? They campaigned for years for exactly this future. Now they want to stop this train?
“No one in Tasmania’s south appreciates the sell-out and industrialisation of the north that is being proposed to line the pockets of private developers and feed power to the mainland. The magnificent Robbins Island, takayna, Stanley, and forests and farmlands from Circular Head to Eddystone Point and the Central Plateau are all in the firing line. It is time that people had access to information about what is happening on the ground,” Bob Brown Foundation takayna Campaigner Scott Jordan said.
–Bob Brown Foundation
This is the state that approved a Mega Wind farm that won’t be able to operate for five months of the year lest it hurt the Orange-bellied Parrot. That’s the Robbins Island Mega wind farm: killing birds and baseload power at 300 kilometers per hour. Presumably construction of the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere is also waiting for the big cable…
See also The Tasmanian Times
Every time I read a story about the catastrophe that is renewable energy I believe we are at last turning the corner. Reality is starting to make an impact. The idea of cheap wind well away from where the advocates live is making the hosts of these monstrocities vocal and they are being heard at long last. When pristine wilderness is destroyed to save the planet even the dumbest are seeing the hypocricy. Some more media coverage such as in the Australian can make the difference. The Bush Summit in Tamworth starting today and sponsored by Newscorp is a welcome sign that some media is waking up and seeing how the wind is really blowing. Albo is in for a torrid time.
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Lawrie, I do so hope you are right. But the swamp is wide and deep. The ABC seems to be stepping up its daily propaganda and I still come across plenty of people who should know better who parrot the propaganda as scientific truth. I see no sign that this monster will fail any time soon. If it does, I suspect that it will be something completely unexpected and very sudden. So it will probably not be the truth that prevails, but a brand new lie. Such is life in the ‘democratic’ west today.
I suggest a new word for the western system: demonocracy. Read it as rule by demons, or monoparty democracy, whichever you like.
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I use the word “Kakistocracy” which is defined by wikipedia as, a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.
Unfortunately, seems to be a term that fits most Western governments these days. 🙁
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You said it;
“Monocracy”
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Moronocracy?
100
Mongocracy.
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That art must be at least 65,000 years old.
Could people spell then.
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Yes. Grunt, grunt and it was all written down somewhere or other.
30
How about fascism?
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The realisation is dawning but that is increasing the effort to shut down fossil fuel usage.
There is a growing recognition that W&S are not delivering but the rhetoric is now more urgent along the lines – voluntarily stop burning fossil fuels or we will stop you.
Biden has already stated he has effectively declared a climate emergency:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/09/biden-climate-emergency-00110486
I expect there are a lot of democrats drooling over the prospect of climate lock-downs. Get the plebs off the roads and out of airplanes.
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“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
S F Author, Philip K, Dick.
And from George Orwell:
There is no use in multiplying examples. The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.
Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
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The real value for Tasmania is to sell water via a pipeline to Victoria. A high-tensile fabric pipeline floats off the bottom, can be 6m in diameter and flow 500GL/year to a water starved Victoria. It needs a head under 10m to get to Victoria and is easily deployed.
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Tasmania needs its water Victoria can just build a desalination plant like NSW’s. Or, better perhaps, they could just ask NSW if theirs still works, and if so to please start it up and send the fresh water to Victoria. A call to Tim Flannery should be all that’s needed to get underway.
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The way to make the Sydney Desalination Plant pay for its way is to start it up and sell the bottled water to the rest of the World as Mount Kurnell Spring Water with a green kangaroo logo and it will be another export earner. And the ‘free’ wind power electricity comes from those bird choppers next to Lake George near CanBra.
As a retired Consultant with this bright idea, please send me my 1 million dollar cheque to PO Box……………..Along with all ongoing royalties.
Ta very much.
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Melbourne was spooked by Flannery and built a desal plant at Wonthaggi. The state governmnet shut down the proposed dam on the Mitchell river and turned the catchment into a National Park. lack of rain was quoted . Since then the proposed dam would have overflowed at least three times. Labor politicians are the easiest to dupe as they are the least educated.
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But of course the MSM here will ignore this story – the only energy story in the SMH business section today is headlined “AGL’s $10b shift from coal to clean power ‘on target’”, but the article does admit to nerves as the infrastructure isn’t there.
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Not completely true. The Australian now regularly runs articles about these issues, almost daily. And many of them are well-researched.
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Thinking more of the ABC and commercial TV channels, and the Channel 9/Fairfax pree.
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Not only that, but the power loss along all those Transmission lines (if ever built) will be horrendous. So those far away ‘Ruinables’ will have to work even harder. LOL.
Crash and Burn with the Phoenix rising from the cr(ashes)……………….
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…and the superconductors at room temperature wasn’t real either..
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Stupidiy eventually leads to a large dose of reality, and unreliables are a great tool to demonstrate this.
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What a mess and exactly what the sane people have been saying for decades.
The first priority is to get rid of that idiot Bowen ASAP and then quickly start to make plans for the best NEW coal plants in Tassie, Victoria and NSW.
The delusional, unreliable, TOXIC W & S lunacy should be stopped immediately and thrown in the bin.
If the latest coal plants are built now they could last for at least 60 years and longer if properly maintained.
So much cheaper than their TOXIC renewables disasters and with a capacity factor of over 90%.
The stupid Brown NIMBY is even starting to wake up and so should all the other L W loonies.
BUT again I’ll believe it when I see it.
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My enemy’s enemy is my friend. If Bob Brown and Christine Milne turn around then let’s all let bygones be bygones and work with them for a better future. We don’t have to agree with them on everything, and we don’t have to lecture them about the past especially if they have started working it out for themselves. The top priority is to stop those things.
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The adage of the scorpion and the frog might be apposite here
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What we all want & wish for is an unattainable dream so long as we have the Uniparty.
The coalition are basically silent on the issue & silence equates to implied acceptance of the status quo!! Maybe they’re thinking it’s wise to let the current bozos take all the heat then they’ll take whatever follows. We all know how politicians work.
We do hear threats of change from the said ( sad ) coalition. Guaranteed, should they win the next election we’re going to continue on this suicidal mission. Renewables will still foremost in their minds. The only difference will be in their sales pitch & a salesman minutely more intelligent than the current “ energy minister “.
When will someone ask the question, “ what will all this unreliable zero emissions nonsense cost $$$$$$ and how many degrees cooler will the planet be ( without doctoring the data ).
What will energy be priced at in 2030!! What will be the price in 2050?.
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A Senator in the US asked that question of an energy official earlier this year. I think it was Senator Jim Jordan. I think he quoted $200 trillion cost and asked the energy official ( she ) what the difference in temperature would be? Her answer was vague and completely uninformative. She was also the person who didn’t know the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere when asked. No doubt she will be the next boss at Australia’s AEMO.
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At least Graham there are some Coalition members who do know the facts and quite often quote them to listeners especially on Sky. Cris Kenny who says he is voting Yes is a strong critic of renewables and often says so.
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No, no, no, Neville.
Leave the idiot there. Protect him as best you can. He’s doing a great job ruining the economy, inhibiting the development of more productive capacity, increasing the prices consumers pay for everything they buy – including their electricity.
Eventually, even the slow witted amongst us will realise Bowen the idiot is the reason they have suffered and continue to suffer.
Bring it on. Bring it on.
The Labor/Greens will wear it for decades, as people strive to get themselves out of poverty and all that entails.
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Blackout Bowen has it covered: Rewiring the Nation – $20 billion in low-cost finance for the urgent upgrade and expansion of Australia’s electricity grid at lowest cost – to unlock new renewables, increase the security of the grid and drive down power prices.
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Thanks Robber; though I declined to continue reading past the multiply mendacious proposition which constitutes the document’s second sentence:
What we’ve underinvested in is the building of coal fired power plants.
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The way things are going, multiply that amount by 10 and it still won’t be enough.
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Baloney Old Chrissy, that $20Billion needs to have a “T” in it and might even then still be on the low side.
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So the State will bankrupt itself to provide the Marinus cable for wind farm developers who need it to extract lots of money from the mainland. In the meantime the ecology will be ruined and so will the tourist trade. Who goes to Tasmania to look at wind turbines? Tasmania would be better off using that money to extract gas from Bass Strait – even that just offshore near Gippsland where the Victorians are allowed to use it.
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Graeme there is already a gas field in bBass Strait , 12okm off the Tassi coast -the Yolla field. I think it supplies gas to the power station near Launceston. It supplied gas to the diesel engines which replaced the booilers fired by gas converted from coal. Tassie still has coal used by the cement works and paper plants.
It would be a good place to put a 600MW nuclear power plant. It could running in 2yrs if bought from Soith Korea using South Korean labour for erection.
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The “ruinables” are dead on their feet.
They just won’t lie down.
And it is costing us billions.
“Poor fella my country.”
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AGAIN here’s rock solid proof against their TOXIC W & S delusions.
This morning the King island disaster is generating SFA from W & S as usual and the Diesel is saving the day. The battery is a very sick joke.
Every day of every year it’s the same old story, so how can we power Australia with their clueless, TOXIC W & S junk?
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
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Actually Nev, even the dashboard for King Island doesn’t work. About a month ago I noticed that the reading wasnt changing so I notified the Hydro mob and they replied that it’s just the data is slow to load – which is BS. It’s stuck on this reading and like their W &S it doesn’t work n they don’t know how to fix it.
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I also notice that the windspeed meters on both King and Flinders Is are broken and have been for yonks.
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I’ve put the “success story” link in a few times now.
This morning it shows something I’ve not seen before. It shows the diesel generator providing 75 to 80% of power as usual. Wind is at 15 to 20% as usual. Solar is at 2% as per usual (at 10.14am).
What is new is that the battery is charging. Now that raises the question of why?
On my solar system the battery charges ONLY from solar. I would never want to pay full mains power price to charge my battery.
So as the great man once said, why is it so for the “success story”? Or more succinctly WTF?
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I have plenty of night time (no solar) examples where Flinders Island (the other “success story”) has been anything from 85-100% diesel/15-0% wind and the battery has been shown as charging? In the last few months during the day Flinders has more consistently used their battery to off-set the W&S fluctuations rather than turn on diesel. Curiouser and curiouser.
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A lightning strike probably scrambled the digits, they shouldn’t be charging the battery with the diesel running.
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G’day Earl,
My guess is the diesel has to produce a minimum amount of power which could exceed demand at times, so the excess is diverted to the battery?? True?
Cheers
Dave B
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Greetings David. Not across generators (diesel or electric) but the more Flinders and King get discussed the more questions are raised as in whether battery should only be charged from SorW (Forrest above) and the battery should be run down at least once a day and recharged (comment on another thread). Seems Flinders recharges the battery while only diesel is running which makes it like watching a ping pong match with the battery taking charge then dispensing charge then taking charge which begs the question why not just crank up the diesel output. Then in the case of King Island in the past they have hardly used their battery from one day to the next.
Plan is to tabulate all my observations and go to the source for some answers.
Cheers.
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And that other W&S success story, Flinders Island, is showing the same sort of “natural” operation:
Wind: 49%
Solar: 10%
Diesel: 41%
As I have mentioned a number of times Flinders has tried to go green by steadfastly making the switch on of diesel a very last resort and instead using the battery for as long as it can, often draining it. The obvious robbing of Peter to pay Paul consequence is that even in times of being “green” ie W&S are providing 100% with the battery covering the periodic generation drops (clouds and wind drops) they are NOT green because the battery backup “safeguard” is only there because diesel contributed to its re-charging.
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I love the blurb on the King Island web site.
You’re seeing in real time the dashboard for our King Island renewable energy solution. It is based on contributions from wind and solar and the enabling technologies that improve system security and reliability, such as battery, dynamic resister, flywheel and demand side management.
No mention of diesel, which is supplying the bulk of the generation. Or is that covered, silently, by “enabling technologies, ie, carbon based fuel.
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king Island: 5 windmills, 1500 people, Tas government spends 7 million a year. 1500 people!!!!! Only provides 35% is the claim. Whenever I look its running around 90% diesel. A surprise if less.
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Wind looks like it’s going to be nobbled by social licence and good old logistics, that’s apart from the things toppling over, catching fire, and being plain unreliable mechanically and electrically.
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Another problem is that the more wind you want, the less the return.
I recently posted on The Falkland Islands (like King Island in the Roaring Forties and wanting to reduce the expense of diesel fuel).
The first attempt was 3 wind turbines that dropped diesel demand by 30%. This lead to enthusiasm by the bureaucrats who tripled the amount expecting nearly eliminating the expense. The result was about 47% reduction in diesel usage, and the very old diesel machines (all well over 40 years old) have to be replaced when they cannot continue.
And on the second island, the trial of windmills pumping water uphill to make a pumped storage scheme was abandoned very early on.
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and they will still have to replace those diesel generators and the expense of it
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Tassie’s problem is self inflicted.
It has more than enough generation (3+ GW) to support its current 1.5GW peak demand.
BUT it continues to export a significant % of its capacity to support Victorias failing RE program.
If they just cut the existing Basslink connector,..problem solved. !
…and as a bonus, it might just pi55 off commie Dan 👍👍
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Yes indeed…but Tassie has to earn an income somehow…the Greens have closed down or strangled many alternatives and are working on the others.
Compost on the hoof,
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Didn’t they run out of hydro at one stage and had to import diesels, or was that only due trying to export too much hydro energy to Victoria? What would happen if their lakes and dams being to dry up if/when the next El Niño comes?
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There’s a mothballed coal fired generator, The nice thing about hydro (unlike the occasionals) is that you get plenty of warning of potential shortfalls, so a cold-spare is all you need.
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Vic only buy it to pass power onto NSW, and I expect they make a profit along the way. We are always 1000MW short of what we need, and it looks like they are buying at $55 and selling on at $125.
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I dont think that is true….
NSW has over 10 GW of fossil generation capacity , and a further 4+ GW of Hydro and wind capacity available,…whilst even the peak am/pm demands rarely reach 10 GW.
However, even during the lowest midday demand periodsof 5-7GW, there is still 1+ GW being imported ?
I believe that the “Market Operators” preferr to maximise the utilisation of the cheaper QLD and Vic coal plants , rather than use more of the expensive NSW Gas generators. ?
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It is early morning, it is a hybrid system so your assessment is a bit harsh, the solar is yet to kick in.
More to the point is not the energy being produced, which is fine but the energy actually being used by the King Islanders.
–
The important things to look at here are not explained in the Hydro’s advertising.
1. The actual demand must vary over the 24 hours but does it?
No 24 hour information supplied to prove it is real time.
–
What is needed is an assessment of whether the diesel generator is working variably or not.
How much energy is actually being demanded by users on the island which is not given at all..
How often the battery is actually being used, day and night to cover for any shortfall in the wind and solar or for extra supply if there is a run on the amount of energy needed by business at peak times.
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Otherwise these statements could be true.
Hopefully not.
The diesel generator is suppling all the power actually used.
The battery power is not being used and the amount of power said to be going th the battery is just being discharged into the ground.
The wind energy is going into the ground from the grid.
So is the solar.
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Why is the battery being included in the power needed to be generated?
Minus 132 kwatts and steady.
The battery should already be full and ready to go when needed.
It did not need to be used overnight if the wind is producing so much power at the moment.
Pure rubbish to pretend there is any energy being stored at the moment and merely serves to hide the fact that they are actually discharging and not using al, the wind and any daytime solar they get so they can pay the companies for it.
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What should be available, to clear up any misunderstanding on these concepts is the actual amount going to actual households and business in real time ( fluctuating demand) and how much is being discharged into the ground but being charged to customers produced by the not needed wind and solar and by the diesel generator during times when the demand falls suddenly.
132 k watt hours being charged for every day when the battery is already full would be very sus so surely cannot be true.
–
I realise the diesel can be turned up and down in response to demand changes but in practice it is usually easier to manage by being run at a set rate.
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Angech,
You may be reading that dashboard wrongly…
I see a “Demand” bar at the bottom and an “Output” figure also showing the demand usage. The data is claimed to be “real time” ..but that is debateable…certainly it is smoothed over some time period.
The battery is adsorbing the 132 kW as a charge rate..
..unfortunately there is no indication of the actual charge status of the battery either in kWH OR % of capacity .
If you total the 3 generation sources (wind, solar, diesel) together with the battery (+or -) , then you get the output/ demand.
How the inputs are balanced to the output is not clarified, but the intention is to prioritise the wind and solar, charge the battery, ..and use the diesels to make up any shortfall.
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Angech, adding to what Chad says, check the customer demand at the bottom of the graphic. And check it several times per day or if you have time on your hands watch it for an hour or so. It goes up and down just like the diesel generator output goes up and down. The diesel generator responds to demand.
And to my point above the proper use of a solar battery is to fill it from excess power and then use that power when wind or solar (or both) cannot meet demand. That is the daily cycle so familiar to residential solar battery users. Diesel generation isn’t (or shouldn’t be) excess power.
The battery is not built to sit there fully charged or be 80% full like a lead acid car battery. Proper design is that it will go from 100% to zero and back again each and every day. Once a day if the engineering has been done properly.
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The following is a 20minute monitor of King Island on 11 May commencing 2:07pm. First group is the concurrent levels at start of monitor and second the individual highest level that each source got to so these (2nd group) should not be read as concurrent but are their respective individual peaks during the period. In short each elemet fluctuates as does the output/demand.
2:07pm
Wind: 39kW 2%
Solar: 33kW 2%
Battery: 136kW 8%
Diesel: 1521kW 88%
Output: 1669kW/Total Customer demand 1669kW.
Highest levels during 20 minutes:
Wind: 88kW 5%
Solar: 68kW 4%
Battery: 141kW 8%
Diesel: 1577kW 88%
Output: 1787kW/Total Customer demand 1787kW
Cheers.
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Have you ever actually looked at it?
Poor motor is all over the shop.
Solar hasn’t kicked in yet, wind hasn’t kicked in yet, battery hasn’t charged yet.
Hasn’t power. The power you have when you haven’t got power.
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A few mines scattered about the place don’t look quite so bad now, hey Bob? Not when you compare them with giant windmills.
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I have flown into Moranbah in a Cherokee. There are a number of big open cut mines down there but you have to get surprisingly close before you see them. They are not a blight on the landscape. It was only ever grazing country anyway, not “prime agricultural land”.
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Just noticed comment 8.1
Is this true?
Seems like a microcosm of the South Australia system but very much more open to a FOI request, Jo.
Anyone able to do this and get figures on actual use, actual wastage and any overcharging if customers.
A full battery should never be subject to spurious charging charges and if wind and solar are in excess of need it should not be needing charging most of the time.
If the battery charging times are over an hour a day average one would have to wonder why
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Angech, the charging time will depend on how rapidly power can flow in and out of the battery. A typical home system takes around an hour or two to charge and (if you use the full current available) less to discharge. First priority each morning on my system for example is to charge the battery. Once that is done the pool filter and pool water heater kick in. The battery is enough to power my house in the evenings and usually overnight. Then the cycle begins again.
In short the hour a day average charge time is normal. That is how solar batteries work.
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Forrest, what capacity is your battery and how much power do you use in the evenings and overnight…usually that would cover both the evening and morning peak usage period .
For me that would be 10+ kWh, so a big battery would be needed , and a big solar array to recharge it quickly.
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The panels are 13.2 kW. The battery is 12.8 kWh. We typically use around 10 kWh from 5pm to 6am. There is usually just enough reserve to power the morning peak aircon load (around 3kWh).
The rapid battery charging (about an hour and a half) was a surprise. I expected it to take most of the day. Sungrow say that the battery discharge is rated to 7.68 kW. I forget the charge rate but it is similar.
00
Wow ! 13.2 kW !…. That is a big system…..and roof !
10
Anything else you need me to do for you, washing, shopping.
Hmmm, what could it be, must be the cheese!
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There are only two alternatives for emission free generation (assuming you care about emissions…and while I don’t give a damn about CO2 I’d prefer less filth in the air) – nuclear or conventional (and/or for the lucky few, small scale) hydro.
But if you’re going to go hydro, build dams and let God do the lifting through the rain cycle.
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Neither nuclear nor hydro are “emission free”. They both use extensive fossil fuel during construction.
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A characteristic of Both hydro and nuclear – unlike the occasionals (solar, wind, etc) – is that they can provide the reliable power to replicate themselves.
Any generative generative capacity requires bootstrapping of some sort.
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Correct.
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I think the construction argument is a false equivalence, everything needs to be constructed.
There is simply too many people for the small amount of intermittent power [SNIP]
If all those who bowed down to the green dream times did that, we will all be living in Mansions, their Mansions.
30
And ruinables construction then? Is that run off unicorn poo?
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…and then there is Geothermal. Good for some at the moment, and could become a real option for many if the deep drilling can be proven.
And pumped hydro , when viable geologically, is a major asset even to Nuclear and coal since it provides peak flexibility without forcing the base loads to ramp up and down inefficiently.
Storage buffers in any system can improve efficiencies and help reduce costs.
11
Tim Flannery was into geothermal wasn’t he?
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Flannerys was a rort for government grants and used flawed data on a poor location.
“Next gen” Geothermal uses new deep drilling (20km) opening up potential geothermal energy almost anywhere..not just in shallow crust zones.
IE, it could be possible to repower existing coal / gas generators using locally sourced geothermal steam.
00
Seattle also had a trapped tunnel borer, called Big Bertha. She has her own entry on Wikipedia. Eventually, the project was completed.
Snowy’s is called TBM Florence. There are also TBMs Kathleen, Nancy,and Mum Shirl (Sydney). Melbournes’ were named Joan, Meg, Alice, and Millie.
Two, from Sydney, were re-homed to Brisbane and are named TBM Else and Merle. My favorite. The last was named in recognition of Merle Thornton AM, an academic and feminist activist who famously chained herself to a bar rail in 1965 to protest the exclusion of women from public bars.
There are others, search: The unseen machines behind our biggest infrastructure projects – Infrastructure Magazine
The practice of naming Atlantic Hurricanes solely after women came to an end in 1979.
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feminist activist who famously chained herself to a bar rail in 1965
When we got here in 1966 from Scotland we were amazed to see that women were corralled in the “lounge bar” in pubs, what the English called the “snug”.
Changed days.
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Best place for them, the men need a space where they can be themselves and the public bar was it.
20
Surely the state government can just pay peoples electricity bills. The federal government has solved the national energy crisis by paying peoples electricity bills, so I can’t see why it won’t work in Tasmania.
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I can see problems in a state that has ‘Mania’ in its name.
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During the millennial drought Tassie installed a bank of large size diesel generators to power the state. But it was kept secret to avoid embarrassment. Tasmania was the hydro power house of Australia after all, wasn’t it? Australia’s battery. Might be time to renew that generator contract again or park a floating SMR ship near Launcestion or in the Derwent River adjacent to Hobart. For starters it would have to be much cheaper.
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I seem to recall that those mobile gas turbine generators were all sold on to Victoria… last seen in the back car park of the Holden plant ?
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Gas were they? I had assumed diesel. All I know is that were installed in double quick time and kept very secret. Not sure what they’d be doing at Fisherman’s Bend these days. Within cooee there is both the Newport and Laverton North gas plants that are hardly every used.
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The Tasmanian Hydro mob are addicted to the cash income from selling their power to Dopey Dan, look what happened last crisis, they ran down their stocks of water to flog the juice at a juicy price, hoping that the winter rain would replenish the lakes and dams, well it didn’t, and they ran out and had to scramble to find all the bits of their gas turbine and put it back together and to order thousands of diesel generators.
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Yes, the Tassie Hydro mob only failed to ask one little question before draining their dams. What could possibly go wrong?
90
True it seems that rather than asking what could go wrong, all that was heard was… Ka Chinggg.!
00
So we construct these industrial wind plants in the back of beyond- way out in regional parts of the state where the average city dweller never sees them. Then because the fools who planned ( I use that word loosely) the system spread these WMPI’s ( wind motion power installations or “wimpys) far and wide there is a need to then construct powerlines. How brainless. Just construct the turbines in the city where the power is required. Simples. Let’s install a bank of turbines off St Kilda and Bondi Beaches. In Tassie, plonk about a dozen in the Derwent Estuary to power Hobart. Or maybe in some parks close to our cities. Royal Park (Carlton) in Melbourne or maybe Centennial Park in Sydney. Just try one of the new turbines with blades 200 m high. Give it a year and I would bet there would be a moratorium on wind turbines in double quick time.
91
The dams and solar arrays are being built out of sight for city dwellers too. I can still remember my amazement when I saw the massive wind farm near Palm Springs in California. No wind farm of course on the Hollwood Hills.
40
Not much wind to be had in Hollywood Forrest, unless you count the Liberal blowhards. The wind in Banning Pass near Palm Springs gets wind nearly everyday and gets particularly strong when there’s a high pressure system on one side of the mountains and a low pressure system on the other, then the winds howl through the passes. Melbourne gets a similar effect at times although the hills blocking the air aren’t anywhere near as high. A high pressure system with sinking air sets up to the north. A low pressure system with rising air sets up on the south. A range of hills in between restrict the surface flow and the valleys provide natural pipelines and the winds flow into Melbourne from the north.
30
Don’t worry, as King Island will come to the rescue. LOL. Sarc/
51
What about Flinders Island? Supposedly a similar system to King Island but doesn’t get listed as a “success story”.
31
Because, like King Island it isn’t.
31
Lest they become red-bellied parrots that have ceased to be. 😁
Will pollies ever spend on essentials like THE PEOPLE and not nonsense?
Will Hobart go ahead with the planned $750M sports arena or spend it on homelessness and vaxx damage.
Entertainment and delusion first no doubt.
81
I have some AA batteries in the drawer. Would they help? 😉
41
Pumped Hydro” is a concept disturbingly similar to “Perpetual Motion”.
See also:
The “light, inelastic string” and,
“Friction-less material”, so beloved of high-school physics texts of your. I am not au fait with the current “rainbows and unicorns-laced” curriculum..
40
Don’t forget the ‘Space Elevator’ concept, that’s another winner.
00
The pumped hudro in the Snowy Mountains, coupled with mostly coal, served as the “battery”/shock absorber that gave NSW and Victoria some of the cheapest and most reliable electricity on the planet.
30
“Pumped” ? Really?
Wasn’t it a system that collected and stored water which could be allowed to fall, under guidance, onto the waiting turbine blades.
🙂
Dropped hydro, we were once a great nation
10
Most of the Snowy system is, but Tumut 3, (1500MW) is also a Pumped Hydro facility
10
I always understood that the pumped hydro in the Snowy system compensated for the inability of massive coal stations to throttle up and down quickly, thereby maximising efficiency of the system.
00
I always understood that the pumped hydro in the Snowy system compensated for the inability of massive coal stations to throttle up and down quickly, thereby maximising efficiency of the system.
Thanks Chad for clearing that up
00
I think I know what those nuclear subs will end up doing, if we ever get them.
One to power Tas, one for Melbourne, & one for Sydney. After all we wouldn’t want all those immigrants to go with out power would we!
51
I did once suggest that instead of the U.S. subs coming to Garden Island in WA, perhaps they could rotate through Tasmania.
20
Perhaps this is the back door way to nuclear power.
00
One decent 1GB nuclear station providing 24/7 baseload and Tas would be fine with hydro taking up the variable load. No need for wind being subsidised.
Maybe two would be even better.
40
A 4 X 500 MwE Hele coal unit would be faster, do-able and more socially acceptable, especially after a summer of blackouts.
50
This would be great comedy if it wasn’t so damaging. For so long we have the climate crusaders shouting from their rooftops that RE is the cheapest form of electricity and now in the execution phase we have cost blowouts on associated RE infrastructure that only blows your mind. You can now see why Twiggy bailed out and left “Loose Cannon-Brooks” to go solo to fund his 4000km link across the most active tectonic plate boundary on earth from Darwin to Singapore. If a 255Km link across a nice shallow and stable sea bed is costing $3 billion, you can only imagine the actual cost of doing the same on a scale that’s more than 12x longer over active volcanoes and will likely have more down time than Joe Biden has days off. The only up side is that we finally have Bob Brown in robust agreement with conservatives and that must be painful for poor old Bob.
70
Poetic!
00
The following link
https://www.thematica.com/the-under-the-surface-technology-thats-connecting-the-power-sector-to-a-cleaner-energy-future/
Says
I assume USD so that’s AUD$3.83 million per km for a DC undersea power cable.
The cost of this one is $5.5 billion for 255km which is $21.56 million per km or 5.6 times as much.
Based on the estimate of $3.83 million per km the cable alone should be $976 million leaving $4.5 billion left over. End stations don’t cost that much.
They always seem to come up with figures which are massively more than any reasonable estimate.
Somebody is making a LOT of money from these scams.
60
Where to start with King Island?
Diesel is 60%, exactly the same as this morning.
Wind is 19 % same as this morning.
Solar is 1%; same as this morning.
–
The battery stays says on, which is wrong as it is not outputting power , it is having energy put into it, it should say off or charging.
It does say 0% meaning it is not active and the KW in say 132, and might have been 134 this morning
–
A battery does not take all day to be charged when not used.
The 132kwatts per hour claimed to be going in when it almost certainly looks unlikely is certainly costing the community money and no doubt are being charged at a high solar during day (15kwatt as I write and impossible since it is dark in Queensland coast at moment an Tassie is a lot further south) plus whatever they can claim out of the wind output..
Not that it is needed as the battery is full.
Do they run this seemingly spurious figure day and night or do they use the battery when the wind stops blowing?
–
As said this appears very circumspect and could well be worth investigating.
–
Secondly how does the wind and solar and diesel going in 80% exactly supply the exact amount of power demanded by the households?
It is not as if they are all using exactly the same amount. Of energy all day and night.
The flywheel is running at an output of 399 Kwatt to produce this exact demand?
Rubbish.
The flywheel runs at a speed that produces 399 kwatt that keeps the power in the lines to the island at 49.6 Hz day and night whether it is needed or not.
–
I would not be surprised if said diesel generator always has to run at 60% output to generate a steady 1177 Kwatt of energy regardless of the amount of wind solar and battery available because that is the stable operating energy output the island lines need
Any extra would upset the system so does it gets discharged but is still charged?
Will have a look in an hour and see if they run any solar. Claims at night Or just bulk the wind up to a nice round 20% .
At least such round figures makes the accounting process very easy.
–
David of Cooyal in Oz
My guess is the diesel has to produce a minimum amount of power which could exceed demand at times, so the excess is diverted to the battery?? True?
–
No the battery is full so it cannot store any more energy.
Diverting energy to it as the site seems to show cannot really occur.
The only time the battery might be needed is if the sun and wind both stop and the diesel generator stops working
Not a good thing to. Do as the flywheel speed need to be kept constant and the battery cannot go for very long.
In practice if sun and wind both stopped you increase the generator output, not turn on the battery.
[Found in the bin. – LVA]
10
A little clarification…
Those % figures represent the proportion of the maximum capacity of each generation source.
IE, 374 kW /19% wind suggests there is a maximum of 2000kw of wind generation available (note they say 2,450 kw was originally installed.)
1% of wind at 15kW, implies 1500kW total capacity (450kW originally ?)
Likewise the 60%, or 1177 kW from Diesel , suggests there is 2000kW total capacity available ?
. The battery is stated as being 1500kWh capacity, but may have been upgraded ?…but if it is used at night and needs a full recharge, that 134 kW will take several hours to complete.
There is no indication of its state of charge ( empty or full )
However, like you, i have confidence in any of this data as it is just inconsistant, and they have definitely changed the equipment..wind turbines and solar added , batteries changed, even the diesel generators replaced,…. over the years.
00
The Python Prophecies have a sutra for this situation.
“What have the Romans ever done for us?”
https://youtu.be/7Xad5Rl0N2E
Aqueducts, medicine, safe streets.
At least here in the US, the Empire is now failing to deliver.
And Caesar Biden loves his son Caligula.
(Curious historical fact for which I am a direct witness, there was a small movie theater in Georgetown in the 80s that ran ‘Caligula’ non-stop for years.)
The Romans produced public sector projects that exist to this day.
How do you think those windfarms will hold up?
Don’t you have a freshly dug Tunnel to Nowhere in OZ?
The Romans were magnificent tax collectors.
Yet were unable to conceive of the magic of Virtue Signaling.
Tax the peasants to build a moment to Virtue.
It falls down.
Tax more to replace it.
Repeat.
Fly your private jet to a Climate conference.*
*(Stop by a private island on the way.)
30
My late father lived and worked in Tassie back in the early to mid 1950s. He used to tell us of how back then it was all very positive. Lots of new industrial developments (eg Bell Bay smelter opened in 1955) and a real “go ahead” attitude. He worked for the the Hydroelectricity Commission, building dams and pipelines.
The difference from then to now is stark. Back then new development was welcomed thanks to the jobs it bought and the prosperity that was generated.
Now, we have the “progressives” (surely a complete joke) rejoicing in a “great leap backwards” as new development is priced out by ridiculous power prices and a “nimby” attitude to development, with jobs generated seemingly frowned on.
I know which world I would rather live in, and funnily enough I think the vast majority prefer the former to the latter, which is just a road to poverty and deprivation.
50
There is now more than enough real world data on the awful economics of Net Zero, or even net one-half,
to allow us to call those still flogging green fantasies at taxpayer expense reality-deniers. Trigger words
seem to be the only thing that gets thru to them, although I do fantasize from time to time about an app that
pops up on a newly charged cell phone login screen telling the User “This recharge was done with power from a coal plant,
and mail sent during use of this recharge will be appropriately tagged — Sent from my coal recharged iphone — do you accept?”
30
Cut the bloody cable they already have
Support Tasmanian business
00
Unfortunately ,That will never happen.
Tassie peobably earns more $$$s from arbitrage of Victorias surplus midday solar, and their own Carbon Credits for hydro……than they would from any business venture set up in Tassie.
..Its all about the money !
00
Real time energy dashboard Shows 15kwatt of solar at 10.40 pm at night.
Other figures are unchanged from yesterday.
If the site connection is right they are claiming solar power when there is not any.
00
Yep, ..exactly the same as previous days
Stuck in a “Real Time”. warp !
00
There is an ap for the energy dashboard different in some ways to the one linked here.
Any overproduced energy by the wind is still claimed as input though it has to be discharged and not used and the battery is seemingly rarely used hence any power claimed going to it is also possibly being discharged instead.
Paying for the diesel that works anyway and double paying for any renewables fed into but not needed by the system.
10
Currently diesel on 100% 1960 kwatts
5 kwatts power solar plus 56kwatts power rooftops so having to waste that as demand very close to 1960 watts as well.
Hope they do not need extra heating on the next 2 cold nights!
00
No,
Grid demand or generation, does not reflect the total CONSUMPTION of the customer base.
…. any RT solar being used, ( or any other private back yard generators) will simply reduce the demand on the grid.
10
The K I project dashboard is unreliable at best. ….just a random number generator at worst !
Although it looks “live”, the numbers never change whenever i open that page.
Further, depending on where you look, either on the Hydro Tass site, or any other site, it is impossible to get an accurate agreement on exactly how much wind, solar, battery, or even diesel capacity is actually installed….let alone actually still functional or available.
For instance, before this “project” started, there was 6 MW. of diesel capacity installed..and there are multiple reports of a 200 kW of wave generation connected to the grid since 2021.
……but no indication of it on the “dash board” ?
10
Chad:
I understand that Flinders Island has the same (or similar) system as King Island but it doesn’t get mentioned by the Publicity people.
Much like the Falkland Island, the Thursday Island scheme and the El Heirro (wind/pumped storage) in The Canary Islands (Euan Mearns a few years ago).
Years ago, (1977) when I was in Orkney where tidal energy is now a “big thing” I was looking at the view from the cliffs on west Orkney when one of the locals suggested that the cliffs sometimes collapsed into the sea below. He mentioned that recently they had had someone very keen on the cliff as a tidal wave generator. The enthusiast had a scheme where by the incoming waves would drive air up shafts (internal in the cliff) and push a turbine and then the falling wave would draw air through the blades increasing the output. The enthusiast wondered about removing the rocks at the cliff base (which would interfere with the waves). He was told that those rocks were the last to fall from the last years cliff collapse.
(He hadn’t heard anymore about that scheme since, neither have I).
In Shetland they had an idea to use their (small wind farm) to heat hot water, which could then be circulated through homes etc. to warm them, while the diesels could continue without being disturbed. Shetland needs such heating most of the year, and the ‘hot water’ was a great way of storing fluctuating energy. Never heard any more about this, apparently it didn’t appeal to the bureaucrats in London.
(I notice that Orkney and Shetland are exploring the idea of becoming part of Norway).
10