The climate change debate continues.

[Siso]

Like I said, inverter based systems have a lot more to go wrong. Ask Spain. There won't be much on the news about it as it is not what the world wants to hear. No one really heard what happened in SA wasn't publicised either. I had to look at the AEMO report to find out the details. We heard little about it and I was working on a windfarm (not one of the ones that tripped off) when there was a lot of the old steam engines on the grid there was enough inertia to react to load changes. Worked for many years. I am not a fan of coal. 

 

As far as underutilised plant, yep the lines may be underutilised in the early morning periods. With intermittent generation they may be underutilised for weeks at a time. The underutisation of coal has been bought in because of the weather dependent intermittent parasitic generation we have put on the grid. We still need it and they still need to make money. Intermittent generation makes power more expensive. Cheap when its running, really expensive when its not.

 

No one said it was just a flick of the pen to extend the life of a NPP but it has been done and obviously economic to do so. Newer plants should be easier, especially if they have 80 years in mind. Is 600 million really expensive for a large plant with potentially a large capacity factor. The windfarm I was on and cost $400 million for 111MW with a capcity factor of somewhere between 29 and 33% 15 years ago. All the large tech companys are looking at using np power. Even looking at restart the remaining TMI reactor. A close on 50 year plant.

 

No one is saying intermittent generation shouldn't be tried but making stupid targets and throwing a heap of tax payers money towards it is not the way to do it. Are you willing to back Australia s future on this. We can see what is happening in the UK and Germany. UK is importing 1000's of tonnes of woodchips from America so they can say they don't use coal anymore. How stupid and ungreen is that . They are also paying windfarms for not being able to get the power on the grid. Is this how the CIS is going to work in Australia. At least they have some NP and building more.  The funny thing is Australia has no hope of getting to its targets. We are at currently 40 % after 15 years and want to get to 80% in 2035. The second 40% is going to be a lot harder because of the extra storage and grid infrastructure that is needed. 

 

France exporting approx 12 GW at the moment @ 52g CO2/kg

Germany 448gCO2/kg

UK 218gCO2/kW

 

 

[facthunter]

A lot of counties don't have the sun and wind we have there's also tidal which works every day with the tide going IN OR OUT. When you put  steam into the equation it's less efficient and when failure happens it's a sudden Loss of a Large amount and May take ages to fix . It is only efficient at near full output and can't be varied quickly. Brand NEW coal Plant is costly. Carbon Capture and storage is a Myth.  Our demand pattern has changed. Most people run airconditioning and have a fair bit of  refrigeration. Heating water directly by electricity (Elements) is an expensive way of doing it.  

 Solar by concentration can Produce very HIGH temperatures. That's helpful for specialised processes, yet to be realised.  No one can deprive you of solar. Yet.   Nev

[red750]

53 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Heating water directly by electricity (Elements) is an expensive way of doing it.  

But that's what the Vic Gov't want. We have a gas hot water system, had it for 45 years. Within a couple of years we'll be required to replace it with electric.

[octave]

29 minutes ago, red750 said:

But that's what the Vic Gov't want. We have a gas hot water system, had it for 45 years. Within a couple of years we'll be required to replace it with electric.

The electric hot water that is installed now is generally not the old-fashioned resistive hot water system, but heat pump hot water systems. These systems are very energy efficient compared to resistive electric or gas. 

 

I believe there are substantial rebates for upgrading to a heat pump, so probably worth looking into.

 

 

[facthunter]

They will Install Heat pumps FREE and they really cut the Power usage.   I had to PAY for mine and it's still the best thing I've done regarding Power.  Nev. 

[Jerry_Atrick]

This seems to be reasonable article re renewables.. prices dropping, but the risks if renewables investment does not continue and mismanaged roll out.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-04/aemc-flags-fall-in-power-prices-as-renewable-energy-surges/106098392?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

[nomadpete]

I like the concept of having independant power sources.

Once I get an EV I won't care who owns all the oil wells. My driving cost is not going to rely on some foreign cartel setting the price of fuel.  I won't care about the anti renewable lobby. nor will I care about grid stability.

 

Furthermore, I suspect that quite a lot of others are following this same path.

[Jerry_Atrick]

That is also my plan

 

[Siso]

Notice with price dropping they only talk about the wholesale price of electricty, not the actual price to consumers which includes all the extra infrastructure, transmission, syncons  etc

[octave]

15 minutes ago, Siso said:

Notice with price dropping they only talk about the wholesale price of electricty, not the actual price to consumers which includes all the extra infrastructure, transmission, syncons  etc

Whatever way we go, there are costs.    Do you really think that building nuclear power plants will not impact your bill?

[kgwilson]

I had a heat pump in my last house and it was tied in to the solar system so I never paid anything for hot water. My current property has solar hot water with a manual electric switch for the internal  resistive element. Since the 4th of august i have switched it on once for about 3 hours when we had a week of cloudy and rainy weather. In Victoria I imagine the elctrice system would need to be on more often.

[Siso]

No, I think it will be less though in the long run. Maybe not for me but definitely my kids. It will also be better for industry. Paying large industry to cut back production as a part of energy security seems a bit backwards. I feel we don't look into the future enough.

That is one thing China has going for it. They have a multi decade plan and pretty well stick to it. Our governments are only looking at now. Easy just to blame previous governments. Just I trade off. Still rather what we have, otherwise we wouldn't be able to have these discussions as easily if at all.

 

I do definitely think there is a place for intermittent generation, just not at the expense of the generators that can run every day, 24 hour a day. If you have a look at open NEM there is always a black and brown line at the bottom with the intermittent swinging wildly above. It would be good if we could wipe that out with some synchronous generation. I have provided a link to a page that shows the " spillage" that SA already has and will get worse as the penetration of renewables increase. He calls it dumping. Someone will be paying for this spillage. While the graph looks pretty good in the article as far as renewable coverage, We are going to have to remember we are going to have times like the screenshot from June this year.(SA grid)

 

https://substack.com/inbox/post/178755915

 

Open nem.pdf

[facthunter]

Considering the Cost of ignoring climate change has to be part of the PLAN. Nev

Edited 16 hours ago by facthunter
typo

[onetrack]

If there's power spillage, it shows electricity is being generated and could be used, but it's simply going to waste. So the simple solution is to store or use that currently wasted energy. That's where big batteries or other forms of power storage come in. Hydroelectric dam water could be pumped to substantial height with surplus electricity, if the system was properly organised.

 

The current system is simply disorganised, and money needs to be thrown into it to ensure it become organised. In future, I see AI playing a big part in organising surplus power to be distributed to prevent generated power loss.

 

China currently has huge amounts of solar power being generated, but lost due to disorganisation. They are  throwing money at it to try and solve the problem. There's a "fossil fuel" mindset amongst many that cannot get their heads around fossil fuels always being required to "back up the grid". It's not. It just requires a grid organised to deal with the more unpredictable power generation style of wind and solar.

 

W.A. is pouring billions into huge batteries, this is needed to stabilise the system and to provide the backup needed for windless and heavy cloud days. There's probably a lot more can be done, and I believe generating power where it's needed, rather than generating it 500 or 1000 or 5000 kms away, and then distributing it via very expensive and hated power transmission lines, is wasteful and costly.

[Siso]

As you can see in the screenshot, we could double the intermittent generation and it still wouldn't be enough. This would more than double the spillage shown in the article. Once storage is full, there is nowhere to put it.

 

The cost of climate change, while I believe it is happening I think the rate of change is grossly exaggerated. remember old mate saying The dams will never fill up again- Tim Flannery.  And as said before, Australia cuts it carbon emissions tomorrow it will make no difference. I just want it fixed in a sustainable way, not sending the country broke. Indonesia have heaps of coal, they are looking at NP. They have been looking into it for some years. Sensible I reckon for our close neighbor.

 

https://jakartaglobe.id/business/indonesia-plans-first-nuclear-power-plant-by-2034-eyes-partnerships-with-russia-and-canada

[facthunter]

CO2 in the atmosphere, Acidity of the ocean and it's temperature are Measurable quantities and the figures there are all BAD. A NEW Normal is a change. Glaciers all recede.  NONE grow. New  record Highs. Sea rise for TWO main  reasons . TEMP increase and Melting  non floating ice . BOTH increase the Volume of sea water Plus to a lesser extent Silting.  IF much Himalayan Ice (the 3rd pole)  melts about 1/3rd of the worlds Population will face starvation. WE are ALL interdependent,  in todays Complex World. Nev

[octave]

As I have said previously, I am not philosophically opposed to nuclear, but amongst other things, an economic case would need to be presented. The other issue is the timeline on nuclear. I get that SMRs are being developed and even a couple are in operation now (Russia and China). How long would it take for us to develop the expertise to build our own, or do we get in the queue to buy one from the Russians, the Chinese or the US?.  Until these nuclear options are available and built do we spend money on refurbishing old coal or building new coal? All of the scenarios would result in bigger power bills.

 

Your link that talks about a "death spiral" and lumps Australia in with Pakistan, I think, is inaccurate.  Pakistan’s grid is in trouble because of long-term under-investment, big subsidies, high losses and widespread non-payment. That’s not a rooftop solar problem. Australia doesn’t have those structural issues, and we actually plan our grid developments years in advance through AEMO and the ISP. You did tell me I could not use Denmark as an example because Australia is not Denmark. You know what else it is not Australia? Pakistan

 

2 hours ago, Siso said:

I do definitely think there is a place for intermittent generation, just not at the expense of the generators that can run every day, 24 hour a day.

And in fact, pretty much need to run 24 hours a day. Coal can be somewhat throttled back, you can't really stop burning fuel when demand is low. It is a bit like keeping your car idling in for when you need to go out.

 

3 hours ago, Siso said:

Notice with price dropping they only talk about the wholesale price of electricty, not the actual price to consumers which includes all the extra infrastructure, transmission, syncons  etc

Would this be different with the cost of developing and building nuclear? 

 

The predictions of death spirals and the grid falling over are not new. I recall dire warnings that if we had more than 20% renerwables on the grid. The yardstick keeps being moved. When wll th grid fall over (other than the usual faults)?   

 

I dont say that all this is easy (neither is building NP) problems are being solved all the time.  Just because we have relied on inertia from coal generators it does not mean that thius is the end point of technological development.  We have more and more batteries and grid forming inverters, synchronous condensors etc. 

 

 

[Siso]

Yep and all the pacific islands were supposed to be under water by now. It is a serious situation, but Australia shutting itself down is going to make no difference. Maybe all these stop oil protesters need to head to China or India and blocking the roads over there to make some impact. China and India are pushing farwrd with NP as well as renewables. India is loading fuel into its first fast reactor. Fast reactors have the potential to use the long lived part of the spent fuel from light water reactors.https://theprint.in/science/india-is-building-a-500-mwe-reactor-thatll-breed-more-nuclear-fuel-that-itll-consume-how-it-works/2770409/

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/fuel-loading-begins-at-indian-fast-breeder-reactor

 

Bit of reading about importing woodchips to make electricty in UK

 

https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/drax-subsidies/

https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/the-uks-largest-single-source-of-co2-emissions-is-a-wood-burning-power-station/

[Siso]

Yep, Australia isn't Pakistan. The point I am making is the mount of spillage that is happening already in SA during high intermittent times and the amount of gas and coal(from Vic) that we are using when there is not much intermittent gen. The spillage is going to get worse as the amount of intermittent farms increase. Someone is going to have to pay for this. Have a look at how much the Max spot price for electricity has risen in the last 10 years. The price has gone from being variable with the demand to being volatile. This raises uncertainty with the retailers, so to cover themselves they bang the price up.

 

https://wattclarity.com.au/other-resources/glossary/market-price-cap/

[facthunter]

Spillage is a weird term and would be Linked with accidental contamination which it IS NOT. ANY switching of a synchronous grid has to be done carefully. That is well understood. The Beating Heart has a rate 50 Hertz and if it contacts when the sine wave is opposite all hell will break loose. Phase balancing done Poorly is ALL wasted energy also. . On the B 727 Panel (a Synchronous bus system where ALL generators we connected together using a Constant Speed drive there was a Gauge reading electro regenerative values (back EMF) labelled KVAR's)  Kilo Volt Amps Regenerative. The total output of the 3 Generators was reputed to be able to Power a Town of about 10,000 People. If a generator Misbehaved (OVER or UNDER volted) you could  "disconnect the CSD" which could NOT be  restored in flight and you had to be sure ESSENTIAL Power was selected to a Running Generator and Limit electrical Loads.  This is all on the flight engineers Panel.   Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

On 03/12/2025 at 10:04 PM, Siso said:

Like I said, inverter based systems have a lot more to go wrong. Ask Spain. There won't be much on the news about it as it is not what the world wants to hear. No one really heard what happened in SA wasn't publicised either. I had to look at the AEMO report to find out the details. We heard little about it and I was working on a windfarm (not one of the ones that tripped off) when there was a lot of the old steam engines on the grid there was enough inertia to react to load changes. Worked for many years. I am not a fan of coal. 

From what I read, it wasn't reneweables that caused the issue, but they certainly didn't help the issue because there are no ruddy biug flywheels to take the load. 

 

There is a lot more to go wrong, as are a lot of technologies that advance. But, as thorughout technological development through history, somethinng goes wrong and we learn from it, adjust the design and move one. There are other ways to stabilise a grid than relying on spare capacity of conventional power stations. The reality is the generation side is changing and the transmission/distribution side has to adapt to meet the changes. 

 

On 03/12/2025 at 10:04 PM, Siso said:

As far as underutilised plant, yep the lines may be underutilised in the early morning periods. With intermittent generation they may be underutilised for weeks at a time. The underutisation of coal has been bought in because of the weather dependent intermittent parasitic generation we have put on the grid. We still need it and they still need to make money. Intermittent generation makes power more expensive. Cheap when its running, really expensive when its not.

That really depends on how the generation, transmission, and distirbution network is developed. I would say the generation plant is awfully expensive when it is not in use. However, due to the distributed nature of renewables, I find it poretty inconceivable using a mix of generation technologires, there would be no generation going one somehwere in a regional area. No sun, no wind at the same time over various microclimes probably happens. Batteries come in, and they can be distributed; there can be a place for a much smaller fossil or wood-burning generation networ. or nuclea to pick up the slack 

 

Also, remember, when a facility goes down, the total generation capability of that facility goes down - that is expensive. You can lose a panel/cell or an array of them, but the rest of the facility will still generate. When plants go down, and they do with alarming regularity, the cost is huge. In the nuclear days, if we could save a day of an outage, way abck then, it s was £1m/day saved. 

 

On 03/12/2025 at 10:04 PM, Siso said:

No one said it was just a flick of the pen to extend the life of a NPP but it has been done and obviously economic to do so. Newer plants should be easier, especially if they have 80 years in mind. Is 600 million really expensive for a large plant with potentially a large capacity factor. The windfarm I was on and cost $400 million for 111MW with a capcity factor of somewhere between 29 and 33% 15 years ago. All the large tech companys are looking at using np power. Even looking at restart the remaining TMI reactor. A close on 50 year plant.

When you have the infrastructure there, yes, it is economic But, how much does, say, $650,0000 get you up and running fairly quickly with renewable generation? You can then say, yeah, but youhave to upgrade the grid.. Well, the grid is being upgraded anyway, but even with renewables, it is continually being upgraded, so grid upgrade costs aren't really relevant. But, lets say they are.. How much will your nuclear facilities cost. At last count, local facility here is up to USD$45bn projected and years late.  Australia doesn't have the experience at nuclear builds.. TYhat buys an awful lot of generation for whatwe have experience in - renewables. 

 

On 03/12/2025 at 10:04 PM, Siso said:

No one is saying intermittent generation shouldn't be tried but making stupid targets and throwing a heap of tax payers money towards it is not the way to do it. Are you willing to back Australia s future on this. We can see what is happening in the UK and Germany. UK is importing 1000's of tonnes of woodchips from America so they can say they don't use coal anymore. How stupid and ungreen is that . They are also paying windfarms for not being able to get the power on the grid. Is this how the CIS is going to work in Australia. At least they have some NP and building more.  The funny thing is Australia has no hope of getting to its targets. We are at currently 40 % after 15 years and want to get to 80% in 2035. The second 40% is going to be a lot harder because of the extra storage and grid infrastructure that is needed. 

I am not sure about Australia, but taxpayers money is used here to prrop up all generation so the consumer doesn't have to pay the full price of it. I am sure I read somewhere Australia does to. This is usually through tax credits, contracts for difference, guaranteed loans, low-interest givernment loans, grants and the like. So why shoudl renewables be excluded from the list? On that basis, yeah, I would be happy for out taxpayers funds supporting it (and I am in no way connected to the industry at all, anymore). In addition, the benefit of lowest CO2, even compared to whole of life nuclear, is good for the planet, as well as, in the case of nuclear, not having to have the cost of waste storage and maintenance, etc, which are rarely refleted in the costs of the CO2 equations. To me, the good it can doe far outweighs the need to subsidise it in its maturing stage. 

 

The UK is importing wood chips for two reasons. First, although I think it is a fallacy, to reduce emissions. In fact, per kw. coal prodices lower CO2 emissions because of its energy density, except in he theortetical perfectly managed forestry - which it isn't. But secondly, an on island 1/33 the size of Australia and with twice the population, it is hard to put caol plants too far away from anyone. The toxic pollutants emitted by caol, even considering scurbbing, and miles worse than wood burning pellets, so it is also an air-quality thing. The UK still has good quantities of mineable coal.. but it it still a silent and slow killer of many people with repiratory disorders.  So, there is method in what you see as their madness.

On 03/12/2025 at 10:04 PM, Siso said:

France exporting approx 12 GW at the moment @ 52g CO2/kg

Germany 448gCO2/kg

UK 218gCO2/kW

 

 Again, this is point in time.. But, I agree that Germany was completely nuts to abandon its nucelar generation ihn the wake of Fukishima. I think towards thei end og Merkel's chancellorship, she became a little nuts. Germany have been talking about restarting their nulcear facilities as they were mothballed in generally very good condition. I am not sure what has come of it. The UK dilly-dallied for decades over its energy policy and it is paying for it now. 

 

France is predomionantly nuclear powered and has been investing in nuclear since god-knows when. When I last looked, all nuclear generation was, and i think still is owned by EDF. Although quoted on the French bourse, it is something like 90% owned by the French government. If it had to operate as a real company, and charge eelctricity at commercial rates like the rest of it, there would be another French revolution. And they stick dogmatically to their guns.. The EPRs they are building out are a lemon, but vive le France - they are too proud to change tac. 

 

But, these were original nuclear generators when renewables weren't what they are today. If Australia wants to go nuclear, it may pay to wait.. because there are billions being thrown at fusion. Yeah you get the radioactive waste (tritium), but you don't get the quantity, and there is no fallout, outside the containment area in the case of an accident as when you stop the reaction, the radiation stops.