pmccarthy

I looked up the Yackandandah story. If the battery itself cost $200,000 as reported, then the installed cost would be around $300,000. It is a 274 kWH battery. It would keep ten houses going for a day, or 20 houses going for 12 hours. Yackandandah has 1800 people, say 450 houses, so a 12-hour supply would require 22.5 of those batteries at a cost of $6.75M. I guess it can be done but a diesel generator would keep going as long as you kept the fuel up to it.

Grid batteries last minutes not hours or half a day. They are for smoothing.

In Vic there are protest against power lines and offshore wind in particular, which have stalled development. I believe this is true in farming zones generally and hobby farms particularly and probably in the green part of Australia generally. To get anywhere near the renewable uptake needed to meet demand they will need to bring in draconian laws.

I generally agree with Octave. But the risk of not achieving solar+ wind as replacement for coal seems much greater than the risks associated with nuclear. If only because nuclear is the established technology used by most advanced countries, whereas what Australia Is trying to do for base load is a giant experiment. We can all have a view on its chance of success. I put it at about 5%. And Australia has more uranium than any other country, by a long shot.

I have been reading up on nuclear power. It is close to impossible to come up with a defensible argument about nuclear cost in Australia. The CSIRO report itself says “there may be no meaningful comparison that can be made between overseas nuclear electricity prices and the costs that Australia could be presented with in building new nuclear”. The time to build would be dominated by the delays in permitting and public protests, which could add a decade to any carefully estimated design and construction schedule. However, similar delays are likely to apply increasingly to the building of renewable grids and generating sites. In response to Octave’s earlier question, Dutton proposes seven nuclear plants. He says SA and WA will have small modular reactors only, with the other five getting either small reactors or larger-scale plants, depending on what is deemed to be "the best option". So, let’s assume four small-scale plants and three big ones. Small modular reactors are operating in China and Russia, though many western designs exist. They are typically 300 MW per unit, though of course several units can operate at a site. Large reactors are typically three times that size, say 1200 MW. So, Dutton’s plan might give us 4800 MW of capacity. Australia’s 273,106 GWH per year converts to a continuous average of 31,176 MWH. So, Dutton’s nuclear proposal would provide 15% of Australian electricity. However, as wind and solar may have less than 50% availability, the installed instantaneous capacity of these would need to be about 10,000 MW to replace the nuclear option. And even then, they would not provide base load which would have to come from coal and gas. The Federal government’s current target is to have 82% renewables by 2030. In 2022 this was estimated to require forty 7 MW wind turbines every month and 22,000 500W solar panels every day until 2030. As we are now well behind this build schedule and renewables are currently at 35% (2023) this is clearly not going to happen. The above is my own research and estimates. I hope you folks accept that it is fact-based and unbiased.

That’s what I was doing, high zinc. But my engine was fully rebuilt only a couple of thousand miles ago, so the synthetic is OK.

I just changed the engine and gearbox oils in my 1949 classic to fully synthetic. The engine now on 5-50 gets pressure up much quicker and has a much more stable pressure when driving. I did a lot of research before making the change. The gearbox should change smoother on synthetic but I haven't noticed any difference.

As a start I have looked at what our needs are. Next step after this will be to look at possible contributions from nuclear or other sources. A starting point is to look at current electrical energy consumption. Quoting from AEMO (Australian Energy Statistics, Table O Electricity generation by fuel type 2022-23 and 2023 | energy.gov.au ) Total electricity generation in Australia remained steady in 2023 with an estimated 273,106 gigawatt hours (GWh) generated. Renewable sources contributed an estimated 95,963 GWh, making up 35% of Australia’s total electricity generation, up 3 percentage points on the share in 2022. The largest source of renewable generation was solar (16% of total generation) followed by wind (12%) and hydro (6%). Fossil fuel sources contributed 177,142 GWh (65 per cent) of total electricity generation in 2023, down 3 percentage points on 2022. Coal accounted for the largest share of electricity generation, at 46% of total generation in 2023, down from 47% in 2022. These statistics cover all electricity generation in Australia, including by power plants and by businesses and households for their own use. So if the aim is to replace fossil fuel we need to replace 177,142 GWh or 65% of current production with something. But remember we are also replacing fossil transport fuel, switching from diesel and petrol to more electric. The ABS says ( Survey of Motor Vehicle Use, Australia, 12 Months ended 30 June 2020 | Australian Bureau of Statistics (abs.gov.au)) In total 33,019 megalitres of fuel were consumed, 49.0% petrol and 49.1% diesel, the relative usage of diesel has increased to be equal with petrol for the first time. 33,019 megalitres of fuel is only 3,900 GWH of electricity after considering thermal efficiency, so only about 2% of total energy needs. Perhaps we can ignore vehicle fuel in further discussion.

That is because Canada runs on hydro power. They don't call it electricity, they call it hydro. As in "our house is connected to the hydro," which just means the grid.

And by the way, how is Australia placed for supply?

Taking it a step at a time, I assume no one disputes the safety angle. If we can agree on that we can move on to cost and timing.

The "facts" quoted here by the Albanese sycophants are 75% nonsense. I can post "facts" which are soundly based but get howled down each time. This has been going on for several years here. The bottom line is that I am seen to be a "denier" so everything I post is fair game. I sometimes forget that and post something, only to get beaten up again. I am a slow learner. My colleague the late Ian Hore-Lacy spent 40 years advocating for nuclear power in Australia. He ran the Uranium Information Centre in Melbourne and wrote several books. He had two science degrees. But people here would ignore his work I'm sure because he had worked for the Rio Tinto group. I wish he had lived long enough to hear Dutton today, he dreamed of nuclear getting a hearing. So, if I quote "facts" from Ian's work. how will you respond? It's like the bloke in Salem who said there are no witches. He was shouted down. "Of course there are witches, we burned a dozen last year! That is proof!"

This seems to be the labor party kumbaya thread. An ugly and dangerous place to visit.

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I hope OK recovers and comes back. I don't know what his views were, but I can certainly understand the impact of negative attacks. It is quite depressing to be attacked personally for genuinely held and soundly based beliefs.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think Keith Richards was there.

It would be an anus horribuls.

I don’t even know the names of the teams after 46 years in Victoria.

That sort of nonsense is going to tip the balance in favour.

He played an IRA guy once. A really moving part. I have forgotten the name of the movie. ( not the Eagle has Landed)

You need a Lab test. They are a great dog

This month was $240 for me. Plus $145 for gas.

I nearly hijacked OME's blog to respond to a highjacked theme, but I will continue here. This is the difference between prediction and actual events. Is the number of global natural disasters increasing? Gianluca Alimonti &Luigi Mariani ABSTRACT We analyze temporal trends in the number of natural disasters reported since 1900 in the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). Visual inspection suggests three distinct phases: first, a linear upward trend to around mid-century followed by rapid growth to the turn of the new century, and thereafter a decreasing trend to 2022. These observations are supported by piecewise regression analyses that identify three breakpoints (1922, 1975, 2002), with the most recent subperiod 2002–2022 characterized by a significant decline in number of events. A similar pattern over time is exhibited by contemporaneous number of geophysical disasters – volcanoes, earthquakes, dry landslides – which, by their nature, are not significantly influenced by climate or anthropogenic factors. We conclude that the patterns observed are largely attributable to progressively better reporting of natural disaster events, with the EM-DAT dataset now regarded as relatively complete since ∼2000. The above result sits in marked contradiction to earlier analyses by two UN bodies (FAO and UNDRR), which predicts an increasing number of natural disasters and impacts in concert with global warming. Our analyses strongly refute this assertion as well as extrapolations published by UNDRR based on this claim. See Is the number of global natural disasters increasing?: Environmental Hazards: Vol 23 , No 2 - Get Access (tandfonline.com)

Bill Gates and Dick Smith are both greenies at heart. No vested interest in nuclear, it just makes sense.

One thing I would add is that the world does not have enough available mineral resources to deliver the "electrification" being forced upon us by left wing politicians. That is not just cars, but grid, generation and storage. So, it cannot physically happen. Once that is accepted, we can make more realistic plans for the next 25 years.