Siso

some figures on what it would take to power a large tractor on batterys

The early turbines where connected to the grid directly but had slippage like an induction motor. When they went faster than synchronous they were a generator, when they went slower they were a motor. some of the smaller ones even had a motor mode. The newer turbines are full inverter like your home solar panels. The GT we have at work has a rotor weight of over 150 tonnes plus the weight of the generator rotor. This is more that the weight of a 4.5MW wtg Nacelle. These turbines follow the frequency of the grid. If the grid drops to much the turbines drops off. See 2016 SA blackout was caused by 450MW of wind not being able to ride through the grid drops caused by the earth faults at the transmission towers. But what would I know, only worked with them for 12 years.

We are seeing some these hanging under the smaller transmission lines around the midnorth of SA. Right in the middle of Wind turbine country. https://www.energyknowledgebase.com/topics/voltage-regulator.asp The grid is synchronous but WTG's aren't. The earlier ones were just large squirrel cage motors over driven hooked straight to the grid. The higher percentage of synchronous generators kept the frequency stable.(Vestas V82 1.65MW) Newer turbines have full or partial inverters. Not so common now but google DFIG wind turbine generator. The stator is connected directly to the grid, the inverter connects to the rotor and artificially moves the magnetic field around to give 50 Hz at the stator. Once it gets above 3/4 power, the rotor starts generating as well and this goes through the inverter the other way and gets put back on the grid. Vestas V90 3MW, V80 (2 MW). Someone was smoking some pretty wild sht. Gas, coal and nuclear run at the exact speed to get the right frequency. 3000, 1500 RPM in Australia depending the number of poles in the generator. The weight of these rotating generators and turbines are what give a traditional grid its inertia.

Australia should be in the top 3 with our resources. have a look where we were in 2000 https://www.comparethemarket.com.au/energy/features/changes-in-electricity-prices-globally/ Steam = reliability and stability if it is not to old and well maintained. Solar is reliable as it turns off reliably every night😁 Solar loses efficiency the hotter it is. Older turbines shut off above 40 degrees. Newer ones start to constrain themselves from 35 degrees(can't remeber exact temp and shut off at about 43 dgrees. It isn't just steam plants. GT's lose a bit as well as it gets hotter.

Not saying anything about free lunches, just the misleading press releases that the state government release. People really only care what they get in the mail every 3 months.

Its not the local area that is the concern. It is when Queensland has a day of little wind and solar and SA has excess. We are talking several GW worth of transmission. Nuclear is able to be wound up and down, it just has never had to be in the past. Duttons plan is not to replace the whole grid with nuclear, just enough to take care of the black, brown and orang lines at the bottom of the graph here. Open Electricity: NEM. Dispersed source are good, but the need to be reliable. EG peaker gas plants. As far as the SA power prices it is wholesale prices. As a homeowner who gives a crap. It is retail the average person cares about. Remember Wind and solar is the cheapest form of electricity, it is the extras that cost the money. Syncons, battery's, energy connect and other transmission. All the voltage regulators we are seeing on the power lines around the country that weren't needed when we had synchronous generation.

Nuclear is a serious possibility for Australia. We need to look further than politicians carrying on. Even the CSIRO don't take albo's 600 billion seriously. We don't make all the solar and wind we can use yet, we just can't transport or store it in the places we need it. Australia has a long skinny grid and the transmission is going to have 1000s of km of under utilised transmission which sill needs the same amount of maintenance as a fully used system. Not very good business practice for the country unless you are one of the company's building and running these assets. Both sides do agree with solar and wind, their just seems to be one side that is smart enough to realise that wind solar and batterys can not do it by themselves. The costs won't be way up. We will need gas turbines that will all be needed only a few times a year. More underutilised plant. Even if they are only needed for 5% of the load, chances are this 5% may be need once or twice a year which means we will still need a large amount of capacity.

Sometimes hard unpopular decisions need to be made. We had the same problem on Kangaroo Island a few years ago.

While I am not really a Dutton supporter, I hope he does get in and his NP gets through. Have been watching power prices for about 15 years now. When I started the price in SA was variable, but as the penetration of renewables increased it got more and more volatile while wild swings. We are starting to see the same volatility recently in Queensland and NSW now as the percentage of renewables increases. It will make any high energy using industry less and less viability which will affect jobs for our kids. Unfortunately even if he does get in I fear he will still have a hard time getting things done.

We will see, unfortunately

I go back to original comment, nothing ever gets cheaper. We apparently have "cheap" wholesale energy in SA, but it doesn't transfer to retail.

How can it not be, have done a fair bit of reading and don't find it convincing. People aren't going to give the money they save from battery's to their neighbors that haven't got them

Its ok for those of us that can afford the batterys, its the ones that can't that are going to suffer more.

I feel hypocritical as I actually work for one of these.

When has the price of anything gone down apart from electronics? Unfortunately the power grid is run by large international company's who number 1 object is profits. Nothing wrong with that except it is a necessity we are talking about that everybody needs. This will make it harder for the people doing it tough.

They are paying now though!

We could go back to the old saying, fusion has been 20 years away for the last 50 years

They have plenty of offshore wind turbines and is a smaller country so don't need the 1000'a of km of transmission to be built. They are also interconnected to France and Norway, but still want to build their own NPPs

And yet the UK are going to build more NPPs. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/biggest-expansion-of-nuclear-power-for-70-years-to-create-jobs-reduce-bills-and-strengthen-britains-energy-security

So you are saying any extra heat the nuclear plant puts out against coal and gas is worse than the green house warming the emiisions from coal and gas? Can't see that mentioned in the article.

Just expanding the information you put out there.

Gen 3 reactors have a large tank of water to cool an over heating reactor just sitting there, in the very rare case it may overheat. (passive cooling) Coal also needs water for dust suppression in mines and crushing plants. Cooling can be done with sea water if available. France did have trouble once in 2022. It is only a matter of using larger heat exchangers. They still abate more CO2 then any other technology for the footprint and possibly cost. The countries that are doing the best in this regards are France and Sweden. Denmark have been trying to do it for 50 years and still have a coal fired power station See https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR/72h/hourly. A bit of interesting reading here for people who think it is windy somewhere https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2024/06/13june-lowwind/ There was a roughly 3 month wind lull in April , May and June last year. https://wattclarity.com.au/market-operations/eventful-days/2024-q2-wind-lull/

Pumped hydro doesn't generate power, it stores it from somewhere else. Hydrogen needs to compressed a great deal and refrigerated to liquify it for good storage which loses more efficiency. Solar has less than 30% capacity factor.

Nuclear power uses about the same amount of water as coal. It also gives emission free water desalination when needed. Just making the point they don't need anymore cooling than other technologies.

Nuclear power stations don't put out anywhere near the heat than the CO2 they displace from coal or gas stations.