By Jo Nova
It’s grand final day in Australia, and awkwardly the State of Victoria risks a grid overload. A truckload of solar power will arrive at lunchtime that no one needs, and which has no place to go.
The largest single generator in Australia now is rooftop solar and it’s virtually uncontrollable. The geniuses running the national grid have subsidized solar panels and made electricity unaffordable at the same time, thus driving more householders into the arms of the solar industry.
So they’ve created an artificial market bubble — as all good communists do. We now have a 20 gigawatt capacity generator that mostly can’t be turned off, except by clouds or possibly Chinese cyberwarfare.
And where autumn and spring used to be the easy seasons, now Sunny spring days are diabolical too — hardly anyone needs their air conditioner or their heater at lunchtime, but solar watts are pouring in.
This was the situation yesterday in Victoria:
Again, the poor sods who built solar industrial parks (marked in red) have to curtail their production massively from 8am to 5pm. The red curve is supposed to look like the yellow curve. The missing red peak is wasted solar production.
As the yellow uncontrollable peak rises towards the black line (the total demand), the whole grid has a problem — more reliable cheap generators have to shut down to prevent the toxic excess electricity building up. Without the reliable generators, with their 500 ton turbines spinning at 3,000 revolutions per minute, (or 3,600 in the USA) the grid loses frequency stability, and spinning inertia, and the ability to cope when a cloud rolls over. The problem of excess solar at lunch time is also called The Duck Curve and has been known for years. It’s not like this snuck up and surprised anyone, yet here we are — courting disaster.
The ABC reported on this, but can’t bring itself to call this what is is — a “Solar Glut” dumped on the grid. Instead rooftop solar is a “juggernaut” and the grid faces a “low demand warning”, as if you personally are the problem, for not using enough electrons. Don’t blame the artificial pointless bubble of solar panels.
Rooftop solar ‘juggernaut’ risks grid overload as AEMO issues first-ever low-demand warning
by Daniel Mercer, ABC
Rooftop solar output has reached such enormous levels that authorities have begun issuing warnings about their ability to keep the electricity system from being overloaded at times.
In an extraordinary first this week, the body that runs Australia’s biggest energy market said the supply of solar power in Victoria threatened to overwhelm demand for electricity from the grid amid mild, sunny conditions.
It said Friday’s oversupply of solar was so acute that demand for power from the grid would fall below a threshold critical for keeping the electricity system on an even keel.
Even the AEMO (the Australian Energy Market Operator) calls it a minimum system load notice – not a solar surge, or a renewable overload.
And despite the toxic excess of solar panels, and that we’ve known this day would come, in true Soviet fashion, we’re still installing as many as we can (see below). The trainwreck continues.
The relentless rise of solar PV in Australia.
That would stop dead in its tracks if householders had to pay fair costs for the frequency stability, the back up power, and the storage.
The solution, according to government experts, is not to have a real market and accurate prices, it’s to give more powers to some bureaucrats so they can order battery owners to discharge before lunch and be ready to soak up the dangerous excess at midday. The battery owners don’t like that, but like an anaconda, the government gradually tightens its grip until the free market is dead. The other “solution” is to add controllers to home solar panels so the government can switch them off (which is starting to happen in South Australia and Western Australia). Solar panels owners don’t like that either, but they were sold rainbows and fairy cakes that no one could deliver.
The communist quislings complain that the market is failing us and needs more governance. But the truth is, the overlords destroyed the free market long ago. The people want reliable electricity, and if they were allowed to choose reliable power over renewable energy, the problem would solve itself.
Meanwhile, grid managers surely pray for cloudy days. Soon, some bright spark is going to suggest cloud seeding for grid stability.
UPDATE: The grid demand fell to 1817MW in Victoria, and survived but prices spiked to minus $367 today during the low minimum solar belly of the duck.
Wonderful situation brought about by never, never thinking ahead.
Force electricity costs up, and then find that people are choosing a cheaper way. Next step is to get them to instal batteries Oops! have to dump the electricity to make room for even more “renewables”.
The only “good solution” is a blackout and Moonshine Bowen getting retirement. Preferably with quite a few public “servants”.
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As I tire of remembering all the details, I suspect that Florence might bear the blame for this. Wasn’t Snowy II supposed to be operating by now?
I don’t excuse it though at all. It will break our economy, all for a scam.
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I’m looking forward to major grid collapse.
It’s the only way politicians and the Sheeple will wake up to this anti-science and anti-engineering madness.
Why keep postponing the inevitable?
Grid collapse will eventually occur anyway. It’s better sooner rather than later.
At the next election ditch the Lib/Lab/Green Uniparty and vote for conservative-oriented parties such as:
United Australia Party
Libertarian Party
One Nation
582
Good idea but who will the “experts” blame for such a failure? It will be the old coal plants or some such distraction otherwise they will have to admit they were wrong and that will never happen. The left and its acolytes always blame someone else.
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Blame? More sacrificial altars to the sun god, old Sol has a hearty appetite (cough!), okay, the sun’s representatives and spokespersons and lawyers and faithful servants have hearty appetites.
If you can’t stand the heat,
get off the rooftop –
especially at midday.
200
Come on … think! It’s obvious. If the grid collapses, it will be because climate change reduced the generation from renewables. The solution is obvious too. If we install more renewables even faster we can stop climate change, our renewables will then work efficiently, and we can all gallop off into the sunset together (if climate change hasn’t killed the horses).
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‘Killed the horses.’
Ahh – I have discovered the new green jobs we get told, incessantly, about.
Chairmen!
Sedan chairmen, in fact – to carry our ‘betters’.
Jobs for the fit and strong, with stamina, but without job security …
Or, probably, longevity, on the mandated diet of insects…
Auto
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I’ve been voting One Nation since 96 (when available). Forgive me but I’m losing hope anyone else will.
I like to complain Australians are brain dead, but I don’t think that’s correct, they just lack a sense of inquiry, apart for where the next freebie comes from.
331
The three small conservative parties need to work together to form a credible opposition to Labor, not to mention the lefty heavy Liberals. I like each of them but ‘ get your act together’.
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Reliable, dispatchable power, or, unreliable non-dispatchable power.
Pick one. You cannot have both.
The maximum penetration of unreliable power into a grid is the reserve generation in the dispatchable grid, or roughly the capacity factor of the non dispatchable power generator.
The physics cannot be cheated. The economics can only be cheated until the pollies run out of taxpayer money.
I’m stunned at the idiocy of the general population. Any thinking person can see that their costs are greater with W/S nonsense. Perhaps after the economy and grid and society crashes, a realization will occur.
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And the Chicomms are laughing all the way to the bank and world domination due to a massively weakened West.
280
Why not turn on the water heaters during the day instead of using the off peak power at night?
Or… Why not run the desal plant for 4 hours a day, when the sun shines, (oh), that’s right, it was sold to the public as a ruinable powered site but can’t actually be run that way.
Or… Why not FORCE business to install large water storage tanks for the provision of heat or cooling which could be piped around and used during the peak times.
Or… FORCE all solar panel owners to USE grid supplied power during the peak to make sure that they PAY for the large/corporate solar farms which must be losing a fortune at present. We have to keep those union superannuation funds buoyant.
Or… Do what is happening at present. AEMO is hoping that it all just fixes itself. Wait till more ruinables come on line. How many more panels, without control, can the grid sustain, 5%, 10%, or shall we talk in terms of when? This spring, next spring, 5 years?
Bowen has a plan, but you may not like it.
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My system already diverts solar to the water heater rather than the grid but when the water is hot it can’t be made hotter. I’m not buying a battery either. Maybe I could pump water up a high hill and turn off my pressure pump. Back in the day when common sense prevailed we didn’t need to do any of these things and we bought our electricity for 10 cents a kWh.
450
As I attempt to rationalise with Simon MBBS (below). Why spend your capital to complicate your life, increase your risk and pay more for your insurance when all you are doing is tripling electricity costs, destroying the quality and adding a supply charge?
160
Or why not walk away from all UN treaties and stop funding anti-Australian organisations starting with the UN but including their ABC, the BoM and the CSIRO.
600
Some good ideas Ian all centered around using excess power when available.
Hey, how about duplicating the snowy mountains scheme and pushing water uphill when the sun shines? I wonder why no sane person has ever thought of that.
60
Usually an easy way to increase demand for something is to lower the price. .
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Dear Jo,
This is so beautifully written. In my opinion never has such a Portent of Doom on this subject been so neatly, graphically and concisely delivered.
The fall out of the increase in potential and out of control frequency variations in the grid will be a disaster that will be difficult to recover from. Burnt out motors, exploding capacitors, loss of transformers; a ‘Solar Glut’ does not just mean you may lose your frozen piece of wedding cake and have to replace your fridge. We are racing towards a known tragedy. A solar installer explained it to me over ten years ago. He was watching his competitors add solar installations in the street raising back to grid voltages to enable their customer to compete with neighbours in producing power for maximum rebates. ‘Greed may be Good’ in Wall Street, not so good when the primary function of a utility is to supply dependable power with defined limits for the quality of the supply.
370
As a couple who have relied on our hospital system to virtually save our lives this last two years (my wife with triple negative breast cancer and me with prostate cancer) I shudder to think what would happen under the scenario you suggest may happen. Operation theatres suddenly devastated as essential equipment burns out, heart monitoring equipment off line, assisted breathing apparatus kaput. The death toll in the next 24-48 hours would be horrendous and the really sad thing, politically, is probably that boofhead Bowen will be long gone after the next election and will escape the blame for the disaster.
190
I would be concerned that if blackouts increase, hospital emergency power plants could be expected to run for longer times than currently – after all, surely they were designed only as short-duration power plants.
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Broadie, thank you. Your reply is so well written yourself, I want to build on it for a blog post. Can you and the other engineers here flesh out this kind of detail to explain why excess electricity is such a bad thing. Can it be said that too much electricity is every bit as bad as too little? Or are there different flavors of catastrophe? Is it easier to solve excess power than create power we don’t have?
Are you saying the solar panel installers were jigging the voltages so their customers could pump more into the system and get higher rebates than their neighbors? What happens when every house has solar…
I was told in Perth last week that sports stadium lights and other things were being switched on to use up power at lunch time. I haven’t been able to confirm this, but I’m trying.
I suspect most people think we can just throw away electricity we don’t need. In what situations is that true, and when is it breaking laws of physics? What happens when we disconnect the power plug on a solar panel? I presume it just heats up more without creating electricity? Does that add wear and tear, or is it irrelevant? How do the large coal plants cope with being on and off, and what effect does that have on the bearings, the blades, the pipes, the fuel use, etc?
We know people were seeing 253V in solar surges five years ago. I remember writing how that would increase electricity bills as well as endanger home equipment. But there is the other bigger question of “grid stability” — a lack of back up diesel crashed the Alice Springs grid in 2019 when a cloud rolled over. What does that look like when it’s scaled up from 20,000 people to 5 million?
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The coal fired system had Snowy I and it worked well.
How expensive are voltage recorders? At some time soon it may be of use to be able to back up a story. The more data then the better. WE might be able to have our own meters plugged into a power point.
20
Here am I back again.
I am trying to remember when, but unreliable power is not a new phenomenon.
So much so that many essential services, including most hospitals and some supermarkets, installed diesel backup generators.
That must have been in the ’70s.
The blackouts then were caused by strikes when Hawke led the ACTU.
Having brought the other states to heel the ACTU with Simon Crean in charge in the ’80s called the last great power strike in Queensland. Simon Crean went North to sort Joh Bjelke-Petersen out. But Joh knew the workers didn’t want to be on strike and sacked the lot of them. The workers went back to work and Simon Crean went back South with a big black eye.
There were no more power strikes, and that is now approaching 40 years.
10
One question at a time.
First the simple one. If you unplug a solar panel, or have it electrically configured via the device it is plugged into to supply ZERO power, it will suffer ZERO harm. They will generate a voltage, (equal to the Open Circuit voltage), and it will transmit zero current. The device will get hot but not to it’s immediate detriment. The heat being just from sitting in the sun, nothing to do with resistive heating, etc.
WRT the electrical connections of domestic inverters to the grid, the mains in Oz is 230VAC +5%, -10%. So on a normal day, the mains will be 230VAC, (if on +- 0%). If your inverter wants to send power back to the grid, (and noting that it must match the incoming phase), the only option is to raise the outlet voltage. This works because all power lines have some resistance. So you and your neighbour, (who for this example has no solar), both connect to the street poles, all at 230VAC. If you draw power from the lines, the voltage AT YOUR meter box will be slightly lower than 230VAC, say 229VAC. And on the poles up the street, (and electrically), closer to the generator, they might be 231VAC. So IF your inverter sends power back to the grid at 231VAC, it will go back to the pole, (it was at 230VAC), because it is a higher voltage. Your neighbour would now see a slightly higher voltage at their meter box and would effectively be consuming your generated power in lieu of the main system, at least until you stop supplying your excess, (this would pulling back toward 230VAC, or lower).
The problem really kicks in when everyone in the street is pumping back to the grid, with everyone’s inverter running at 230VAC + 10% = 253VAC. This is the upper limit of what is permitted. At that voltage, no one can supply the grid with any additional power since they can’t lift the voltage on the poles any higher and hence can’t send current back upstream. Any excess solar collected at this point is NOT used, see first paragraph.
IF you were to be a little tricky, and you rigged your inverter to read 250VAC when it was actually 253VAC, then you could pump power into the grid when everyone else was locked out. In effect, you would be the last one to be cut off. You could also fry some appliances in your own home, (where the voltage will be the highest), or you could fry a neighbours.
The higher voltage does NOT increase your power bills. You are billed for POWER used, which is ALWAYS voltage x current. If the voltage supply is higher then, (for an induction motor), the current will be lower for the same power demand. For a simple resistive load, (like a kettle), the instantaneous power demand is higher BUT the water boils faster, so the bill stays the same.
Throwing away solar electricity is not an issue. BUT, if you were using an ICE connected to a generator, then you would need to throttle back the engine or you would go into overspeed and then be out of phase, this is bad. This is really a topic all it’s own. How much time do you have to get the full picture?
100
Oops…
230VAC -5% PLUS 10%. My bad. Fat fingers.
20
Thanks for that Eng_Ian.
On the higher Voltage increasing bills, this was my post on it
https://joannenova.com.au/2018/11/white-elephant-solar-panels-force-feeding-high-voltage-raising-costs-breaking-things-shutting-themselves-down/
30
Some of the largest demand loads on the grid are electrical motors.
Motors are like generators, you can actually swap them over in a lot of cases and not need to rewire, etc.
A motor, let’s say to pull a lift up a high rise, will need to deliver a set amount of power to do it’s work. Whether the voltage is higher or lower, the same amount of work is required to be completed.
When you lower the voltage, the motor will draw the same power. BUT….. it will draw more current to do this. That extra current ALSO causes losses in ALL supply cables between the generator and the consumer. The losses are proportional to the current squared multiplied by the resistance of the conductors.
So lowering the voltage will cause more losses but NOT due to the motor loads. It is exactly the same reason that transmission lines use a stepped up voltage, the I2R losses are lower, double the voltage, quarter the resistive losses.
With regard to our voltage standards, Oz lowered to the 230VAC standard several years ago, the reason for the +10%, (got it typed right this time), is to allow all the old transformers to stay in use. They never actually stepped the voltage down for the consumer since most transformers are not capable of being tapped to a lower voltage. The winding ratio at the time of manufacture sets the voltage output and they never went street to street to change them out, (too costly).
There is an upper limit to raising the voltage to reduce losses problem, it’s called electrical safety. I’m not sure I’d want to use a toaster with an electrical lead certified to 230VAC on a full time 253VAC supply, one day it’s going to fail. Let’s hope it just pops the earth leakage protection breaker and not be an active to neutral failure which wouldn’t trigger a trip unless it exceeds the 16A, (typical), breaker in a domestic environment. Fires start like this.
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Isn’t frequency control a more serious issue?
10
Frequency control is self limiting.
Imagine I own a small generator, (actual engine, and spinning rotor type, not an inverter). That generator is electrically equivalent to an electrical motor, (apart from some smart current control to the armature windings that control the magnetic field strength and hence the voltage output from the stator windings).
If I plug that generator onto the mains supply, (not having started the fueled engine), then the generator will act like a motor and it will spin, it will try to speed up until it synchronises to the grid. Of course it will draw power from the grid to do this.
If I then let the engine start, add fuel/spark etc, then the engine will idle along, drawing some fuel and the generator, (motor), load will reduce accordingly. If I throttle up the engine the electrical draw from the grid will reduce further. When I get to a certain point of fuel added, the electrical load will be nil.
If I add more fuel to the engine, the electricity will flow from the generator to the grid. It is now a generator. The more fuel I add the more I generate.
And now the maths part. IF I have a very good conductor between my generator and the grid, (and short distance ideally), then I’ll reach a point where I can’t add any more fuel, the engine is at 100% capacity, at this point, if all things are well built, the copper windings and cables between me and the grid all handle the load. BUT, if I’m on a very long cable with very high resistance then as I add more fuel I will be forcing that cable to have so much current in it that it actually starts carrying a voltage on it. Remember, V=IR, so if the R was say 10 ohm, (a bad cable), then for say 10 amps, I could have 100V between me and the grid.
And HERE’s the tricky part. My generator is fixed at 230VAC. So is the grid. So how can there be 100VAC difference between them. Simples. My generator slips forward on the sine shaped voltage curve. I’m now making electrical power that is leading the grid, (I’ll let you confirm that my generator will be about 25 degrees in front of the grid, asin(100/230) ). And all that extra fuel I’m burning is really just making heat in the cable.
Of course, if I had a bigger engine and a worse cable, I could even get to the point where the voltage drop in the cable exceeds, (on average), the 230VAC I’m generating. At that point I could spin at any frequency I want, the high resistance cable has all the power I’m making, not the grid. We are now out of frequency control and wasting fuel.
Bad for the cable.
That’s for a small generator on a weak cable. When the cable is good and the generator is large you’ll find that adding more fuel effectively reduces the fuel consumption of the other generators on the grid. You are effectively taking their load from them. If all generators add more fuel, the frequency will increase but this doesn’t happen because one or more are used for control to set the frequency to the desired value. Obviously, these have to be big units else they get over powered by others. These generators need to float up and down on their fuel consumption to match the load and control the frequency. These generators are typically around 60% loaded, allowing for this control. To compensate the generator for not being able to run full throttle, they get paid more for this role, over and above the electrical supply value.
A loss of frequency in one end of a very large grid, (eg FNQ), means that the grid is wasting power and heating the cables. They aren’t designed to do that so they trip out on over current. And that’s why frequency control has be spread out along the grid, not just from one end dictating the terms to the other.
And that’s just the starters on a tricky subject. It really is a balancing act that you shouldn’t play around with by dropping weather dependent ruinables on.
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I understand this is what happened at Callide B where the grid was powering the generator after the plant itself had gone ‘dark’ and was not being lubricated.
00
Frequency control is NOT self limiting.
On a synchronous thermal plant, frequency is controlled by the turbine shaft speed fed into the alternator.
Whenever a steam or gas turbine reaches maximum torque capacity, any further load increase on the plant results in reduced frequency. The load is greater than the ability of the generator to provide. A reduction in frequency results in a phase imbalance between voltage and current, which produces heating in transformer and motor cores. As the frequency lowers, the current demand increases, and the voltage can drop below the ability of tap changers to compensate. This leads to a “death spiral” in which increasing current/drooping voltage, and lowered frequency, cause protective relaying lockout of generation and/or transmission/substation capability.
Because Wind/Solar systems use grid synchronized inverters to inject power into the grid, they follow the grid frequency. Because they follow, they cannot stabilize actual grid frequency.
The only way for wind/solar inverters to inject power into the grid is that they must be at a higher voltage than the grid voltage. This can lead to higher than designed overvoltages.
An AC grid is complicated in that the current, voltage, and frequency are all critical components of stability with respect to the connected load, that changes every second. It is even more complicated when considering inductive loads that require instantaneous reactive power to be provided. It is not uncommon for thermal generators to base load active power across their span and designate a specific generator to provide or absorb reactive power. Balancing the reactive power is necessary to stabilize voltage. Frequency stabilization is required to stabilize current. All of that has to happen in real time, within seconds to minutes, else the entire system collapses.
There is nothing about this system that is “self stabilizing”. All of it is active control within the limits of what can be controlled. Adding uncontrollable wind and solar that cannot supply frequency or reactive power requirement simply destabilizes an already precarious situation. The only possible “self stabilizing” influence is a reserve capacity of spinning kinetic energy in the form of synchronized turbine/alternator dispatchable generator units. Synchronous condensers can help on a local scale, but at grid scale nothing replaces a 600 ton turbine/alternator at frequency.
20
A reduction in frequency does not result in a phase imbalance between voltage and current. Phase imbalance occurs for non-resistive loads. Speeding up or slowing down a generator will not cause an imbalance. As an example, start a stand alone petrol generator running a resistive heater element. From the first turn to the last, the voltage and current will be in phase, frequency will not change that.
An imbalance does not cause heating of transformer and motor cores. Heating in a transformer core is primarily caused by DC currents. If you study the current flow on a transformer, (using a sine wave voltage, no DC offset), you’ll notice that at zero volts in, (at start up), there will be no current flow. If you run at 50 Hz, the transformer current will LAG, (if no secondary load is applied), the lag will be exactly 90 degrees on an ideal transformer. This same 90 degrees will apply whether you ramp the unit up to 60Hz or slow it down to 40 Hz. Current lag is a function of the L, C and R load(s) applied to the secondary side of the transformer and of course the physical winding/resistive properties. I’d like to know how you can force a current into a transformer without a matching voltage. Like all electronic devices, the voltage and current are dependent on the L, C and R as applied. Refer Kirchoff for further reading.
You do not have to be above grid voltages to inject power into the grid. If you have a GRID voltage of 230VAC, as established at the output of the substation near your house. And you and a neighbour have a cable from the grid, (one each), from the nearest pole. Under heavy loads the GRID will still be 230VAC, (this may be several poles back from your nearest pole), at your nearest pole, the voltage could be 229VAC. If your solar plant is running at 230VAC, (the grid voltage), the current will flow from your house to your neighbours. The 1V drop at your nearest pole is often enough to allow current flow. Remember, a load will pull the grid voltage DOWN. On an ideal system, your generation would only return it to the supply point.
I raised ‘self stabilising’ in reference to the WHOLE grid when exposed to solar inputs. As you note, they are followers. The grid maintains self stability, (freq), as long as the control genertor(s) are within their throttle range and response times. You are correct to state that a solar system, (if you could rig it to operate as an island), would not be self stabilising in reference to an external clock. However, if you have rigged it to be an island, then it would drive to it’s own clock and hence WOULD be self stabilising, (using feedback until it reaches an upper power constraint, solar input too low, etc). These island systems are used in off grid supplies and they ARE frequency stable.
eg https://www.allnaturalenergy.com.au/Inverters?product_id=231
10
Dear Jo,
I am not an engineer though have completed an engineering course with a very distinguished and qualified Dean of Engineering as a teacher. I have been employed at every level of production from cleaner up. Often charged with restarting large electrical loads on remote supplies and assessing products made on production lines that reflect variations in quality I could only relate to the variation in the way the machines attained equilibrium.
I set up and monitored production runs starting as uncontrolled disasters and then reaching a steady state allowing them to run and produce a quality product. I would argue this is difficult in Australia now without expensive filters and electronics to stabilize voltage and frequency. Hence production is migrating to China. That is aside from the HR issues and the idiotic Fair Work Act as Chinese production appears to be largely robotic anyway. My understanding of history is that the power stations controllers would phone the large factories to determine which type of the loads would be running so they could make an assumption for the day, adjusting the power factor accordingly (current leading voltage or vice versa). Now you have to add one of these to your factory depending on where your supplier is sourcing their power. On a closer to home basis irregular voltages frequencies and power factor problems can fry your fridge.
I have previously supplied a well written summary by an Electrical Engineer called Bill Finney. Unfortunately Bill being a careful kind of chap who respected authority has had a rough four years health wise. Somehow he is still alive and still as I understand it being regularly tested for Covid 19. Bill while from my understanding, gives a positive spin to the alternative forms of energy warned of potential pitfalls with the current policies. Happy to send this again. We are lucky to have benefited from these quiet human beings in what were once crafts and not just some kind of licence to charge for certification of compliance. You, I feel, are one of these humans and from this we should all feel good about what we can and have achieved and not be tricked into sacrifice and self flagellation by the Temple of Thieves.
I repeat my observation that we should all leave our screens for a regular period of time and go out and do something with, families, neighbours and community. This as I feel, is for very selfish reasons as you are going to need those close to you. Conversely, they are going to need you and this is good for you as well.
Your comment:
Waste is waste. Better to throw a stick of gelignite away then to store it next to your house in its tightly wrapped layers or as a general rule, storing useless energy and poor quality stuff at that will cost you a fortune to sanitize so it will not cause harm when someone actually does need it, is in my opinion not only idiotic but dangerous.
60
Thanks Broadie, my point with this is that sometimes we can’t throw away electricity, it has to go somnewhere, do something, and whatever that is might be bad, good, or expensive, and I don’t think the average citizen has even thought about that. Energy shalt not be created nor destroyed…
60
Eng_Ian explains from the technical side that you simply unplug and no damage done. My point was there is no savings in having the panels and the rest of the wires, electronics and batteries due to the cost, risk and nuisance. You do not need this complexity in your life.
00
W & S are obviously an unreliable toxic mess and we should be stopping any further installations ASAP.
We need more reliable base-load energy only and as soon as possible and hopefully an education program to allow the average Aussie to understand, before it’s too late.
And stop voting for Labor, Greens and Teals loonies and insist we again have grid stability and reliable affordable energy.
270
If only these was an affordable , non flammable Australian made battery everyone could afford, we could wave goodbye to the grid.
94
Just noticed an ad for Pickles auctions who are auctioning off solar panel manufacturing equipment and it looks like it’s everything needed .
30
I don’t think there is any battery technology that is cheap enough to be able to economically store sufficient power nor enough rooftop space for enough solar panels to generate enough power to supply a typical household in winter in Australia for extended periods of no sun in winter.
Unless of course we revert to a Neolithic standard of living which is the ultimate plan of the Left for non-Elites.
Of course, solar energy from the past has already been stored for us in the form of coal. That’s ready and available to go right now! If only we were allowed to use it…
340
That is where you will end up if you do not take control of your own energy needs. Howard started the rot with the “Renewable Energy Act” in 2000. I have been predicting the grid demise for more than a decade and every year the picture gets clearer.
Australia is probably the only country on Earth that can run a modern household on solar/battery for an acceptable cost. And a house using solar/battery will always be lower cost energy than a grid using solar/battery plus transmission.
112
What about high-rise apartments etc?
70
Like everything in shared living, it can only be done through the body corporate. Install a battery and as many solar panels as can be fitted in favoiurable locations. Only use grid power when it costs nothing through the middle of the day.
Rppftop solar is displacing other WDGs. So there will always be negative prices until the mandated theft is stopped. Wholesale price has been negative from 7am today.
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That is not what some professional sources think
Lazard V17 2024
https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024.pdf#page7
Domestic Roof top solar is calculated to be the HIGHEST cost source of electricity.
10
David,
I live off grid, have done for over 10 years now. It can be done and I’m not in the neolithic.
My system has 7.5kW of solar panels connected to a 48V, 1000AH battery. The electrical supply is 230VAC, via a 7kW inverter that can supply a peak of 14kW for about 5 minutes before overloading.
The batteries are gel cell lead acid. The depth of discharge is 10% or less on a typical day. In winter, even on the shortest days and the darkest clouds, I still generate close to 0.5kW at the panels for a period of 7 hours, (my panels are in three groups, one east facing, one north, one westward). That gives me 3.5kWHr.
My daily demand in winter is 5kWHr, if sunny and I’m doing the washing and other high electrical loads, etc, then this can climb to 10kWHr.
I have not used the generator since upgrading from 3.5kW solar to the new total, this was over 3 years ago.
The maximum depth of discharge in the last 3 years has been about 40%, (leaving 60% in the cells).
I have air conditioning, two large refrigerators, big screen tvs, a sound system that you can hear over the mower, a standard kettle, toaster and a dishwasher. Gas hot plates and oven. Wood fire for heat in winter, (on sunny days I use the ACs).
Summer days, with the longer day length, are not the limiting factor, even with the ACs running. And of course the house is well insulated and deciduous trees shade the windows.
70
How do you manage to keep your average winter daily usage rate to only 5kWh? Mine is 12 kWh, don’t use the A/C at all during winter. Perhaps main difference is that I use an electrical water storage heater.
10
The new Sanden heat pump water heater that Strop recommended uses 2kWh per day with the two of is the house. The old gas system used $1/day just to stay war,. Average through winter with two of is $2.20/day plus the connection fee. That includes a miniscula amount for the gas cooktop that runs no more than 20 minutes per day on a single burner.
With the initial heat up of the 316l Sanden unit, I calculated the CoP was 4. Obviously insulation is also very good. Australia is well suited to heat pump HWS unless you live in a ski resort.
20
The heat pump water heaters may well be efficient from a COP point of view, but they extract heat from the dwelling during colder temps and increase the heating requirement for the overall house. They also require some 12 M3 space to operate else they haven’t sufficient volume to extract heat. Fine in summer, but not so in winter. What is the overall efficiency? I can’t imagine it is any better than a common system.
20
Hand pick your appliances for maximum efficiency. eg High star rating. The differences in simple items like a refrigerator from 1 star to the maximum stars, (about 8), is significant. Items that are high consumers AND/OR on all the time should be the first to be upgraded for high star count.
My hot water is based on a solar heater, (evacuated tube type), it is orientated for maximum heat gain one month either side of the winter solstice. Any additional heating is gas boosted, as required.
00
Make it a rule that non-dispatchable power, of any kind, is not allowed to feed into the grid.
That weasel Howard, fake conservative, first allowed that. (No offence intended to the weasel community.)
If someone owns rooftop solar, it must be used for personal consumption only and must not be allowed to contaminate the grid. A household should have two separate completely independent circuits, one for appliances fed by their own solar/battery system, and another for grid-fed appliances. Or if they have a big enough system, they can disconnect from the grid altogether.
270
Too much practicality there David. Too much……common sense, which ain’t that common.
170
Perhaps we should consider a duplicate grid system- one system using only dispatchable power and the other a mixed system. No cross-subsidies permitted.
How long would the unreliable system remain in service?
80
The economics of the Snowy 2 project is based entirely on soaking up intermittent generation. So there will never be a rule to prevent non-dispatchable power from being connected while this project continues.
There is a massive amount of transmission infrastructure being planned or in construction:
https://www.webuildvalue.com/en/infrastructure/australias-energy-system-trasmission-lines.html
The EnergyCopnnect project is a 900km transmission line with a cost of $2.4bn. So the 10,000km will cost around $30bn. That is all justified on intermittent sources of generation.
Everyone with rooftop solar will be considering a battery. Gradually these households will move off-grid. That means all these new costs for the transmission, storage and stability control will fall onto a diminishing consumer base.
No one pushing NetZero understands how grids evolved from local generators to townships to regional coal mines. I have a friend who delivered coal in a truck to the Richmond power station in the 1970s. Yallourne started production in 1924. So 100 years ago this year.
The reason for the existing grid was to get power from the energy source (coalfields) into population centres. Transmitting electricity is far less messy than transporting coal. Any each stage of development,ent, there were massive benefits of scale.
We are now using a ubiquitous source of energy in a system that evolved to benefit from scale and the source of concentrated energy in coal fields or hydro in mountains.. It is a dumb idea and any sensible person can see that. Solar or wind do not benefit from scale. These sources of energy are not compatible with a grid.
231
No way will I ever consider a battery. I would never pay it off during its lifetime, it would never receive sufficient energy during winter to charge it, and I use too much energy on hot summer nights for it to be of any use.
If I’m going to be hit with lots of blackouts, then a small genset will be used.
60
David, that does not help the situation of the huge reduction in grid demand during peak solar hours.
The only way to do it is to remotely shut down / control/ limit the actual roof top panel output ( as proposed for SA.) to force all consumers to use grid energy to keep a minimum load on the thermal generators.
20
Chad,
If the power was dispatchable, (ie stored and ready for use on demand), then this would indeed help the grid. All you have to do is set rules to those that supply the grid, just like AEMO does to the large generators. A generator can only sell power to the grid WHEN the grid wants to buy it.
If not purchased, then no supply. That would fix the oversupply in seconds.
Unfortunately it would mean that the households with solar would have to buy storage batteries, they would have to be connected via demand based switched controls and would have to be responsive to demand changes on a 5 minute bid system. All things that are very expensive, especially the batteries.
This leaves the large grid connected solar farms. Why shouldn’t they buy batteries instead of the households? They would see an immediate win for their sales but incur a business ending capital outlay at the start, maybe that’s why they don’t do it. They are just parasitic generators on an otherwise stable grid.
60
The problem is RTop solar use “behind the meter”, nothing to do with the feed in to the grid
The point is that every kWh of roof top generation is a kWh that the grid cannot supply
Few with RT solar will willingly NOT use it as it is generated, and use grid power instead, which is what is needed to keep the grid demand reasonably stable.
10
I hope that we can go dully off grid soon, as the mess they have made of it so far can only get worse.
EVERY single time gummint tries to run something they balls it up.
191
Depends. The government actually ran a gird that provided the cheapest electricity in the world for many years. Until, the government went mad.
240
The state grids ran pretty well, even after they were “privatised”.
But it *has* been downhill ever since NEM, AEMO, etc.
130
Nope. The lowest costs were achieved after the State monopolies were eliminated and the grid was operated as a free market.
https://electricitywizard.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/consumer-retail-price-changes.png
The monopoly was eliminated in the early 1990s and NEMMCO formed in 1996. The lowest prices were achieved in the late 1990s before Howard introduced the “renewable energy theft”. RET scheme in 2000. The first wind farm connected ion 1998. So that is when the grid was destined to collapse. The only way to get more of them was to mandate theft from consumers, which was what was done.
161
A lot of people will be getting cardio in Melbourne when the grid goes down.
90
‘Toxic Solar Electricity Production’ is a very good description of the problem. People and, eventually, politicians will only wake up to it when there are some overwhelming failures on the grid and prices become unsustainable for industry and ordinary people. As we saw with the ‘Covid’ Affaire, it takes a lot of pain to remove the blinkers from the propagandised eyes.
150
That’s why the idiots want to produce hydrogen using the “excess” intermittent electricity.
80
Love how they use new terms “ minimum system load notice” – overload. Controlled outages is the other one- which are just blackouts.
70
As we can’t absorb any more solar panels, what happens to the $1,000,000,000 of our hard-earned taxes that the Government allocated to solar panel manufacturing in Australia?
More sacrifice to one of the green gods Helios?
https://arena.gov.au/news/1-billion-boost-for-australian-solar-pv-manufacturing/
And obviously it’s not thought through. How could Australian manufacturing of any kind compete with the Chicomms?
It’s a total waste of money which could have been used for something useful like paying down the $1,970,000,000,000 federal+state+local government debt.
http://australiandebtclock.com.au/
190
In fact it was the Howard government that enshrined the theft from poor consumers to help fund rooftop solar for the not so poor. Notably the theft from poor consumers to pay for rooftop solar is now much less than the theft that gets paid to the grid scale solar and wind owners.
The Australian grid has been in terminal decline since the first WDGs were allowed to connect on highly favourable terms – without guarantees on dispatch. The final phase of decline is now apparent with rooftop exporters being charged for the privilege to export lunchtime power. That encourages them to install batteries. So far there are 220,000 household/business batteries and it is the fastest growing segment of the electricity market. Many households will realise they do not need the grid. That will leave the ever increasing cost of the grid to be carried by the poor consumers who do not own a roof.
221
I own a roof, but not the towering trees that shade the roof after 12pm. I asked Crown Lands to cut a few of them down. Absolutely not of course is the reply.
140
You may be interested in this article:
https://renew.org.au/sanctuary-magazine/in-focus/right-to-light-solar-access-and-the-law/
My neighbour has listed tress and has limits on what he can do with them. Anything done has to be carried out by an authorised aborist. I paid for a large branch to be removed by his arborist because it was a structural hazard for my house and also blocking sunlight. My neighbour agreed to me keeping the wood, which took the following winter to burn. The tree is a very large swamp gum. The arborist said the removing the branch improved the balance on the tree and the wind torquing would be reduced significantly.
It is interesting that in the recent gales last month, my neighbour lost one of the massive ghost gums in his yard. THe base was not much under 1m thick. Small branches impacted on his garage but no structural damage..
81
Yes, even I bought solar panels a year ago, calculating they’d pay for themselves over 4 years, even if power prices didn’t continue to escalate. And I haven’t so far had to pay a single cent on each monthly power bill, so I’m on track.
But isn’t the “duck curve” just the daily demand curve?
Isn’t it just the case that the duck is developing an extremely fat back?
62
But isn’t the “duck curve” just the daily demand curve?
Look at Jo’s AEMO graph above. Although there are demand fluctuations they are not “duck curves”. The spike in solar at mid day just about meets 2/3 of demand at that time and coal and gas are relegated to to a fraction of their potential, at great cost to consumers who still have to pay a subsidy to keep them solvent.
60
I second Broadie’s comment, ‘this is so beautifully written’ and its a scoop.
The managers may be given some respite now that La Nina is coming, with an increase in cloudy days.
91
No sympathy from me.
They have been given a free pass on so many things.
We paid for the wires and poles.
They only work during the day.
Some days they hardly work at all.
They have smoko breaks whenever the sun isn’t shining.
They can’t give us a warning when they’re going to have a smoko break.
And they expect to be paid for this?
If a business owner had a worker like this he would be kicked to the footpath.
The grid is a mess. I agree with early commenters that a grid collapse of some form appears to be the only thing that will make the idiots in charge wake up.
Curtail the unreliable madness. We need reliable power 24/7. Renewables don’t cut it.
180
I’m just looking forward to the day when we will have spent a bazillion trillion dollars on our unreliable and overcomplicated network, and the fat heads who will have enabled this fiasco shrug and concede that “Well f**K, we should have gone Nuclear after all.”
180
We should stick to that coal right beneath our feet after all. The rest of the world with its massive population can go nuclear. I’m not scared of nuclear but if I’m living in the woods full of trees, I’m burning a fire to keep warm, not a high-tech expensive contraption.
221
I went up to the Stete forest to collect wood a couple of weeks back. Huge number of trees down in the Neerim area. Piles of wood for the side of roads for locals to collect for a couple of years.
If it is not collected and put to good use now, it will fuel the next wild fire.
110
This was all explained to me probably 15 years ago, when I was stating “Australia should roll out solar on every roof top’. Someone replied to such a post – it was probably twitter or Facebook in very early days – explaining the flaws in my plan: potential overload of an uncontrolled supply and the poor subsidizing the wealthy to reduce their electricity bills.
Made perfect sense to me and I changed my tune. Not hard. And I’m only average intelligence, so I’m not sure why it takes others so long to work it out. I would suggest they are only average intelligence too but are not exposed to the explanation. People are stuck on the “the sun is there we may as well use it” explanation, like a needle on a scratched record
Already I am reading knee jerk responses to this news of solar overload, people suggesting roll out of batteries (subsidized by magic government money of course) on every house which takes up the overload, and simply supplies your house with “free” electricity at night. Simple!
I notice that John Codagan (?) is shilling house batteries these days. Got to make a buck off those Youtube videos. But he is all in on the co2 scare is our John, and likes calling you a “mouth-breather’ if you challenge him.
150
I initially loved watching Codagans videos.
I gave up because he has a terrible habit of taking 10 minutes or more to say what could be said in 1 minute.
70
I have always thought generating electricity closer to home is a good option. Year ago I installed a 4.4 KW solar system which powers my cottage during the day and exports enough to the grid to cover line charge costs i.e. no power bill effectively. I few months ago I was offered a $3000 battery system which ended up costing $3800 for a bollard and travel. Now my battery charges within a few hours and has kept me 95% self sufficient whilst exporting energy to the grid. My behavior has improved in terms of not wasting electricity at night. Vacuuming and washing are done on sunny/windy days. Cooking is bought forward from the evening so my battery is preserved. I estimate the battery system will pay for itself in 4-5 years. My feed in tariff is 20c Kwh with AGl, and my grid source costs 35c Kwh. I notice the solar battery charges immediately there is excess solar available. A better program might offer an incentive to charge closer to midday, given the system has access to meteorological data. The company installing the battery system wanted me to shell out for a $5K system. The larger system would allow more use of electricity e.g. air conditioning but my 1872 cottage has been habitable for 152 years without it!
55
My logic and experience are similar.
My other considerations were that the grid was only going to become less reliable and power was only going to get more expensive.
41
Simon, even if you are 95% self sufficient, that’s something like 8 hours of blackouts every week that you avoid by connecting to a grid and getting back up power you are not paying for. I realize no one explained it to you (or any other solar buyer) but your neighbors who aren’t rich enough to buy solar panels and a battery are now paying part of your electricity bill for you.
It is a parasitic system. Everyone can’t subsidize everyone else.
There would be mass outrage if our electricity bills were transparently and honestly labeled so the poor could see how many dollars the rich are taking from them. I don’t want to be mean… the system is designed to bring in good people.
180
Jo, I see my battery as a hedge- like keeping bullion as a hedge against fiat monetary collapse. I would happily feed no power into the grid but the current system is set up to be grid dependent. At the moment I am sipping grid power to cover surge use (e.g. using two high power appliances at once) as the battery inverter is rated at 3KW. There is no “Blackout” as my battery has discharged 90% at most. If things decline majorly I would happily go “Off Grid” by adding an extra battery to the system (it is modular). I would love to have government fulfil the basic function of providing cheap electricity using modern nuclear power stations. I am taking a risk of fire/chemical leak but the system is small (my brother remarked that it is the size of a server UPS) and on a double brick wall 4m from any timber. If the grid fails completely, the battery system can act as a UPS. Hopefully the politicians change course prior to this.
20
In broad terms Simon you have been sucked into paying to destroy the power generation system in your country.
In exchange for tripling the cost of a Kwh of energy in 20 years, you have just forked in pre-paid capital costs for at least 10 years of supply. That is even as the beneficiary of subsidies from your neighbours who did not decide to add a mess of dissimilar metals to their roof. So I would not be so chuffed. At any time a rat can chew a wire, lightning can strike, your roof can blow away as your roof fixings have rusted away, etc. In fact your life has become infinitely more complicated with duplication of systems.
I suggest you could have saved yourself a whole lot of money by getting a 200 litre steel drum and collecting sticks to cook your food and warm your hands using something fashioned out of the drum. You are probably going to end up doing that anyway when the whole complex mess stops working.
My advice is to join a service club and get out and generally do something to get involved with Family and community around you. You are going to need them!
130
Yes. If you are using a source of energy that is much the same everywhere then there is little value in having a grid that was designed to deliver electricity from coalfields to your urban house.
The other thing off course is to just leave the grid. While you have an account, they will find ways to separate you from your money.
If you live in a temperate zone then winter will be the toughest time for the power supply. So its makes sense to have panels set up to make the most of winter.
22
All good stuff but really only implementable by a very small subset of the consumer base.
80
Aren’t you supposed to be working at your medical practice all day long, instead of vacuuming the house and washing your clothes?
40
Actually the Medical Board cancelled my registration a year ago. So I now have had 4 years “Early retirement”. Why it took three years for AHPRA to judge a non-controversial issue is puzzling me. The suppression of basic clinical judgment and practice by AHPRA is shocking. Their process is punishment enough! I have worked assiduously for 32 years and saved my income. I have not claimed any concessions or welfare as I have assets to live a modest life. As the medical system has been exposed as corrupt and without a trace of basic ethics I am not inclined to seek to practice medicine. For starters, I will not be jabbed with a genetic engineering/biowarfare failed experiment. So setting up a system which generates income is not much different than buying shares. I am certainly glad to not worry about paying an electricity bill. A gauge of wealth is how long you live a lifestyle with zero income. I am neither “Rich” or “Poor”.
70
Funny thing, Simon, is that 20 years ago we did not have to schedule our household uses of electrical energy around the daily cycles of the sun. We could use the very cheap, reliable, 24 hour steady supply of power from the nearest coal-fired power station. You have been conditioned and forced into adaptation, which used to be totally unnecessary.
170
The tale of two Grandfathers- Bill worked at the coal fired power station as an engineer in Perth. My other grandfather Charles was a bridge carpenter/surveyor. Neither man was particularly wealthy. I am not being forced to do anything! I don’t have to think back many generations to when electrons were not tamed. I walk past the Alexandra fountain that was opened by Princes Albert and George- back in the days of horses, gas lamps and primitive plumbing. The “poorest” now live with conveniences the nobility did not have 150 years ago. If the grid goes down before Nuclear comes on line or Gas/Coal get forgiven my modest system will hopefully allow some electrons to work for me. Today has been incredibly overcast and rainy- No Grid feed in today but the system recharged to 100% and covered my usage.
10
Labor has the answer! More people! We used to laugh at the cat chasing its tail but not so funny now that the tail is chasing the cat to bight its bum off. Bowen won’t have a bar of it he’ll just keep on importing RTS and windmills from China.
40
… communist quisling governance is a proven failure and we need a market that won’t fail.
60
I don’t understand why Tasmania doesn’t turn the hydro off during the period of solar/wind glut on sunny days – I understand hydro to be fast response variable – and soak up the surplus unreliable generation from the North Island.
Can anyone enlighten me?
20
The Hydro schemes absolutely do switch off. So do the wind farms and solar grid “farms”. Electricity spiked down to -$400/MWh today. No one wants to be a generator in that market if they can help it. Their bills for generation would be shocking.
How would home owners with solar feel if their bills spiked up with the market? They’d be rushing home, or using phone apps, to disconnect the panels on days like today.
A few people have accepted “wholesale” pricing structures and apparently they do notice how stressful it is, and how much time they spend watching the spot price. I would assume that will become automated. But what a loss of quality of life from the days when you didn’t have to think about managing electricity.
130
At, it turns out that Tassie is currently limited by BassLink which has a capacity of roughly 500MW…so that is the maximum “free power” the State can gorge on at any time. No wonder they want to build an additional link north!
While national energy policy remains insane, it’d be in Tassie’s interests (and not against the national interests either – so win-win) to soak up as much excess power as Australia wants to generate…after all, it’s no hardship to hold water in dams.
20
Neither is it as easy as you think to hold water in dams. When the carbon tax operated Tassie Hydro sold their water in the form of electricity for profit to Victoria. They ran their dams down to the point where they had very little hydropower saved up for when the Basslink broke and they desperately needed it.
Tasmania gets droughts too. Nothing weatherwise can be relied on.
And the Wivenhoe Dam discovered there was a price to holding free water, and that was that they had no capacity to smooth out the floods when they came.
130
You can’t hold water in dams. Only in reservoirs.
00
Of course you can. A Dam consists (inter alia) both the dam wall and the associated reservoir.
20
I live on a range of hills between two large man-made water storages, one to the North and one to the South. Both were created largely by construction of mainly earth and rockfill dam walls to allow the flooding of valleys. Both bodies of water are designated ‘reservoirs’, Silvan and Cardinia. Semantics? Likely. Cheers, mind ‘ow ye go.
20
To be fair, that’s a matter of greed and poor management on the part of the Tassie Hydro – it has nothing to do with hydro generation as such, ultimately there’s nothing bad management can’t wreck. For example, I was growing up in England at the time of the winter of discontent – the three day week and so on. All was coal generation in those days, but a miners strike and secondary boycotting put paid to coal generation very effectively.
The original idea of BassLink was to replace the mothballed emergency fossil fuel generator and to form an earnings stream in times of plentiful water. Managed properly, there’s nothing much wrong with that – it’s not terribly expensive to continue to hold the emergency coal generation capacity as a “cold spare” in the event of BassLink failing just when it’s actually needed (as it did) rather than simply useful, though diesel would probably be a better option.
While it’s true that you can’t guarantee water in the dams, hydro is not unreliable in the same sense that solar or wind is – there’s months of warning before capacity drops to concerningly levels…so, plenty of time to reboot the emergency measures. Any competent management should be able to keep the lights on in Tassie.
Finally, the Wivenhoe argument doesn’t hold water (pun intended). It makes no sense to use dams both for flood mitigation and for generation storage when both are “critical” unless the dam has such huge over capacity that it can be managed optimally half-full. Wivenhoe demonstrably cannot do this, That is a technical matter and even optimal (fat chance of that) management can’t properly fix that problem.
Tasmanian dams are not used that way – no significant population centres are protected from flood by Tasmanian dams. The dams can help some rural communities in respect of flood protection, and when it is convenient, from time to time they do, but that is not their purpose and thus there is no expectation that they will function that way.
10
In a country that loves its “BIG” attraction by major highways as per:
https://bigthingsofaustralia.com/the-big-prawn/
surely the answer is simple.
In each State a giant resistor needs to be installed in a strategic location to maximise the dissipation of useless and possibly damaging power generation.
The tourism potential would be enormous, especially if they glowed in the dark. It would be Bowen’s greatest legacy.
40
A giant flywheel might be more useful … but the resistor will be cheaper.
We could pump water uphill and watch it flow down again … how about installing another 100 fountains in Lake Burley Griffin and then switch on as many as necessary?
Consider the idea of an aluminium smelter designed to only run a few hours per day.
Bitcoin mining?!?
60
Andrew Forrest’s brain works like that. Imagining that a few free hours of electricity is worth something and that it makes sense to build and maintain any machinery that only works 4 hours a day. There are almost no industries that work better for only a few hours than for 8 or 12 or 24 hours.
Lets list the good uses of random short term energy? 1. windmills in farms to fill water tanks, and 2. to some extent solar hot water systems. What else is there?
90
Windmills were most useful in Holland to pump water in a country which is often 7 metres under sea level. It’s hard to get rid of water without pumps. Even then they were abandoned world wide when steam engines turned up, because then you could pump where and when and how much you wanted. Random energy is like random transport, appalling.
61
Sorry TdeF, meant green, poor steering.
30
Pumped Hydro storage ,…….to convert it to dispatchable .!
10
Certainly in the UK, the machinery of Government works four hours a day.
Ish.
And only five [nominal] days a week.
Not sure WFH counts … but that makes it up to five days.
Rather glad it doesn’t work 24/7/365 – think of the daft ideas they’d propose to hapless ministers!
Auto
20
The obvious one is swimming pool filters but with solar you have a pretty good idea when it’s going to be on or off … it can’t be called “random” so there’s a whole range of daily energy consuming activities (e.g. cooking, laundry, vacuum, etc) which can be done during daylight hours.
There’s also A/C which tends to align well with hot days also usually being sunny days. I would guess that this kind of load shifting is already happening. It’s easy for a family to program the A/C to turn on during the day and then they turn it off in the evening when power prices go up … rather than previously they might have left it turned off all day and then turned it on full tilt in the afternoon when they get home.
I suppose with people working from home these things tend to automatically shift to the middle of the day. Take a long lunch break, it’s healthier to eat a big meal in the middle of the day.
10
Can someone please confirm that Australian solar farms are not being compensated for electricity that could have been generated but was curtailed? In the UK compensation can be claimed by windfarms for electrons which don’t make it to the grid for whatever reason in addition to the subsidies and minimum price guarantees for power fed to the grid.
31
It’s not as if this is all new stuff. This windmill building, solar panel installing business have been going on for a quarter of a century and even today across a year, the total contribution of renewables is tiny.
You can see this from the graph in 1/3rds. midnight to 7am. 95% fossil fuel/hydro. 6pm to 12am. 80%. 8-4 50%
So (.95 + 0.90 + 0.7)/3 = 82% fossil fuel and hydro. This is on the equinox,not mid winter, another 11 degrees south with cloud cover.
The total yearly contribution of these replaceables would be lucky to be 5%
And at what cost?
Humans with 500,000 windmills and billions of solar panels have not reduced TOTAL CO2 one iota. The straight line curve of CO2 is not affected at all by any human activity,let alone the planned total destruction of what was a cheap, reliable, adequate and commandable electricity system.
Just look at total CO2, the ONLY alleged problem.
And government scientists are silent while politicians destroy Western democracies with insane carbon demands, uncontrolled immigration and endless illegal taxes buried in the electricity bills to destroy manufacturing. Plus in Australia a unique 35% CO2 tax on aircraft, trucks, manufacturing, shipping, agriculture and even being buried or going to the toilet.
50
fwiw
“Hurricane Helene Chaos: Weatherman Loses It Live On Air.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1839458116280131584
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2024/09/lol.html
50
Hilarious!
40
He was really upset. Illegal migrants. Tampa. Satan’s butthole.
My joke for the week about the man who tried to marry his ex-wife. It fell through when she realised he was just after his money.
80
Good blog Jo. I can only reiterate what many others have already said.
Without wishing any harm to anyone I would be happy to see a major grid collapse one of these sunny days . .
70
Hey, I did not send comment 29! Lines have somehow been crossed.
Was it Geoffrey Williams comment?
20
Thanks Beth. It was Geoffreys comment. I don’t know how it got under your name and his nearly simultaneously. Hmmmm. Did you make a comment that was lost?
I don’t recall this glitch before except just a couple of days ago Greame Richards found a comment under his name that wasn’t his. So yours is the second…
30
Good blog Jo. I can only reiterate what many others have already said.
Without wishing any harm to anyone I would be happy to see a major grid collapse one of these sunny days . .
[Geoffrey, this is just wierd, did you say this, or is there some glitch in the system, repeating Beths comment? – Jo]
40
This is possibly the glitch where you type a comment and someone else’s name appears on it. If you don’t notice, you post in someone else’s name. So likely Beth’s second copy of her own comment and Geoffrey will not read yours.
30
Yes Jo, the comment is mine.
I did see be Beth’s name come up and I was confused.
Perhaps there is a glitch. Hope it’s down to myself . .
[Thanks for replying. It is Odd. Can beth explain? – Jo]
40
FWIW – more Peking Pox rot
“Those Published “17,000 Hydroxychloroquine Deaths” Never Happened”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/those-published-17000-hydroxychloroquine-deaths-never-happened
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Jo The statement “The geniuses running the national grid (AEMO) have subsidised solar panels” is wrong. The Renewable Energy Target legislation forces retailers to do that. It is not under the control of the AEMO. Put blame where it belongs with the government!
John
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jpm, I was not so literal. The people running the grid (or destroying it) include the current and former governments who command the AEMO. The Buck stops at the PM.
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Jo Accuracy is of utmost importance in science and engineering! Those pushing Net Zero and the AGW fantasy indulge in such behaviour all the time and I think that we should show them how things are done properly. Otherwise we leave ourselves open to criticism as they do so often.
You cannot solve a problem that you have an incorrect appreciation of.
The RET is the main problem. Without it we might have a rational approach to the grid and its problems.
John
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jpm, I am writing accurately. The AEMO answers to the Minister. If the government was unhappy about the AEMO wrecking the grid, they can stop it.
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You mention that SA and WA are going down the path of the inverters being shut down by decree from the network managers. Same thing starts in Victoria from October 1st.
Solar Emergency Backstop it’s called.
https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/households/victorias-emergency-backstop-mechanism-for-solar
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What happens to the coulombs the panels continue generating? Burn your house down maybe…
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Well at least this is not going to happen in the UK 😁😁
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If you get a summer like 2003?
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Hello from Germany. We here have almost constantly overloads in our grid. You can check it out on this website: https://www.netzampel.energy/home Just now there is too much solar in the south and at the same time an overload at the coast from windturbines. So these powerplants have to be cut off the grid, but its owners are refunded as if they contributed their power to the grid by the german taxpayers. In 2023 we had an overproduction of 10.4 TWh of what we call “Phantomstrom”, power not produced but yet payed for. This overproduction is basically increasing from year to year. Nevertheless the plans of the governement for new plants are not at all stopped. green insanity…
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Really appreciate getting the insider story from a fellow crazy-land country.
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The usual excuse trotted out is coal fired power let us down and it can be fixed by rolling out more renewables quicker.
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Hazelwood in Victoria was running at 98% of design efficiency when it was shut down. And they completely cleared the site to prevent it being revisited. It was a tragedy. Even the cooling lake was part of the local community and stocked for fishing. The jobs supported a big community. The devastation by politicians is never ending. And nothing to do with any science at all. We are far past arguing and they never listened. Man Made CO2 Global Warming is no longer even mentioned.
Every government is waging war on CO2 and now methane and thus on manufacturing, travel, agriculture, cows, ships, planes, trucks, mining,.. No one is allowed question why.
Nett Zero is now law. And no debate will be entered into. It never was.
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Hey, I did not send comment 29! Lines have somehow been crossed.
Was it Geoffrey Williams comment?
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Again here’s the share of global primary energy consumption by source.
Again toxic W & S just 2.4% in 2023 and fossil fuels 85.3% + bio mass 6.76% = 92% of total world energy.
This is after wasting trillions of $ for decades on these toxic ,unreliable disasters and still SFA return for more BS and nonsense?
These are very simple sums yet nobody seems to understand.
So is it just blatant ignorance or are they really stupid?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy-share-inc-biomass
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In Britain from next Tuesday it will be a criminal offence to keep a chicken without registering it with the authorities. Clown country 🤡🇬🇧
Some wascals are saying register every one you buy – frozen or not.
https://x.com/Mr_Trubshawe/status/1839919057073500365
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Australian Mining is now quoting Bloomberg’s latest lunacy about a 2.4 trillion $ cost for Aussies to reach net zero. That’s 2 thousand 400 billion $ and all wasted and flushed straight down the drain and obviously no measurable change to CC or weather or temperature by 2050 or 2100.
Of course using more unreliable toxic W & S , green hydrogen, EVs, batteries, pumped hydro etc.
Why should we waste trillions of $ for a guaranteed unreliable toxic mess?
https://mining.com.au/australia-must-spend-2-4-trillion-to-meet-2050-net-zero-target/
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The world will require much more energy by 2050 and 2100 according to the UN data.
That’s about 9.7 billion people by 2050 and about 10.4 billion by 2100.
Toxic W & S only supply 2.4% today after wasting trillions of $ for zero change over the last 30 years.
How will the world generate enough energy for toxic EVs and a huge increase for AI plus many more 100s of trillions of wasted $ for a massive global increase of toxic unreliable W & S farms, batteries etc?
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Is the money wasted, though?
Or merely diverted into – ah – other pockets?
Where, of course, it could be spent, if not on dancing girls [of any gender or sex], then on nice beachfront property, more government control, and perhaps ice creams for favoured pollies …
Auto
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When Climate “scientists” talk of Climate Change they don’t mention that it does so naturally.
Greenland is now covered by a layer of ice 3.2 kilometers thick, but the latest studies suggest large parts of Greenland were ice free about 400,000 years ago (for about 14 thousand years), with scrubby tundra on the island’s northwest highlands & a forest of spruce trees covering the southern part of Greenland.
Global sea level was much higher, between 6 and 12 metres above today’s levels, the temperature was 2℃ higher than today & CO2 280 ppm.
About 320,000 years ago the temperature was almost 4℃ higher & CO2 300 ppm. 130,000 years ago the temperature was almost 4℃ higher & CO2 285 ppm. Fossils show elephants, giraffes and lions in the Thames valley, hippos in the water (and in the Rhine delta).
The sea levels were much higher than today, about 6 metres, despite early humans having no cars, nor any power stations.
30
Correct Graeme no.3 and I’ve linked to a number of those studies as well, but apparently the extremist scientists and Labor, Greens, Teals etc don’t care about the scientific data and evidence?
Willis Eschenbach has been a data analyst for about 60 years and he’s checked all the CC BS from the con merchants and also found no evidence of their so called Climate emergency. In fact the reverse is true and today Humans now live in the safest period in the last 300,000 years.
30
Here’s Human life expectancy since 1770 according to OWI Data.
In 1770- 28.5 years
In 1900- 32 years.
In 1950- 46.5 years.
In 2021- 71 years.
Oceania ( Australia, NZ and islands) is the highest continental life expectancy today at about 79.5 years.
But under 1 billion Humans in 1770 and more than 8 billion today.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy
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Another accurate article from Linnea Lueken about Lomborg’s article in the New York post this month.
Reluctantly the clueless NY Post has had to revise their BS and nonsense about a number of issues about their so called dangerous CC.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/09/26/true-new-york-post-oft-cited-climate-catastrophes-have-not-materialized/
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Joel Gilbert was interviewed on Outsiders this morning and he has used AI to talk to Al Gore about why he misled so many people about the CC BS.
A very cheeky but revealing peek at Gore and his CC so called facts and his so called predictions since the release of An Inconvenient Truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3CcBC5Q2OY
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https://resistanceactionaustralia.substack.com/p/interview-on-reality-check-radio – + curtailment + coal plants blowing off steam = $$$$
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Funny but in the past when there had been too much power going into the grid, my solar was shut off. Why all the commotion then? Are they actually causing another problem? This doesn’t sound right at all. Another ploy for the globalists to put their power into play.
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[…] UPDATE: The grid demand fell to 1817MW in Victoria, and survived but prices spiked to minus $367 today during the low minimum solar belly of the duck.Jo Nova Blog […]
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