Thread: Getting a better Energy deal - WHAT A JOKE!

Interesting article in today's news on printing solar panels:
Printed solar panels: Overhyped pipedream or renewable game changer? - Science News - ABC News

Cheap, not long lasting, but rapidly evolving technology. Sounds like it will be just one more cog in the wheel, rather than a complete game changer.

Towards the bottom of the article is a link to another that talks about the cost of renewables now being cheaper than new coal fired power.

Brett

I heard that talked about on RN a few days ago and it sounds very interesting. Clearly there is more development work required and by their own admission the initial tests are a pilot scheme. There are two critical issues to my mind. Firstly the ability to make the panels more affordable for everyone and secondly the concept of buying into the scheme as an "investment." I am not quite sure if I understood the radio broadcast completely, however it may be that you buy into the scheme, but the panels do not go up on your own house. However that needs some clarity. It was likened to hunting around for mobile phone contracts, although even that is a little difficult to grasp.

I recently had a disastrous discussion with a family member and it literally resulted in tears. The essence was that I was too forceful and negative in my rebuffals. I tried to point out, not entirely satisfactorily, that I was pragmatic rather than fanciful. I pointed to the fact that we have rooftop solar, which we had taken out a loan to afford and because I believed in solar, but at the same time I am not blind. I mentioned that in all these things it is absolutely necessary to visit the agendas of the various proponents. On the one hand there are the climate change denialists such as Abbott et al and at the other end are the Greens who would have all fossil fueled stations shut down and go immediately to insufficient renewable power.

I have in the past pointed out that there has to be a transition from one to the other and that secondly there has to be a plan to achieve this. neither state is acknowledged that I can see. The constant changing of governmental position has removed any confidence in the market for new installations. Power stations are huge investments and until some degree of stability and certainty is given I don't see investors willing to commit their dollars. In the two reports you linked it would have been good to see more detail. For example, a good friend who lives a little way out of town told me a while back (three or four years) that there was 2000MW of solar going in up the road from him. The reality was that approval had been given in principle and after three years or so nothing has happened at all and the cows are still grazing the grass.

I don't want to repeat too much of what I have said before in other threads and I have to declare that I tend to get fired up by people trotting out cherry picked phrases or simply not know what they are talking about (referring to politicians primarily here but some others too).

Something I would point out regards solar power (also applicable to wind power) is that in an extreme where everything was solar powered, we would require at least three times the amount of power that was generated by the old, equivalent fossil fueled stations. By the way, I refer to fossil fuels as this includes gas as well as coal. The reason is that solar only generates for a average maximum of eight hours in a day. In winter this may be considerably less. If we develop battery storage, and this is another area that requires significant development in technology, we have to generate three times as much during the day to provide for the sunless hours.

The Tesla battery in SA, the largest of it's kind, produces 100MW for a single hour. SA's load ranges, as with all states, but it is the smallest in terms of electricity demand along with Tasmania,at around 1000MW to 1800MW so to power the state a battery would have to be at least eighty but more like 200 times as large as the Tesla installation if continuity of supply was to be reasonably guaranteed. It is a positive step. but a long way off the solution.

Nevertheless, I am very pleased that new technology is being pursued as it is the way of the future.

Regards
Paul

(Disclaimer. I work for the second most efficient col fired power station in Australia.)

Yes, needing 200sq.m to run a house is a bit silly - that's half of the current size of building blocks needed. More work to do, but a good part of the mix which will no doubt have some very specific applications for short term use (e.g. where power is required for a two year project and then needs to be removed).

I'm very jaded by all the "debate"
last time I looked,
the ACT government was paying large scale solar producers something like $1.78 / kWh for solar power that retails for something like $0.22 / kWh.
around 75% of people who live in North Sydney can't access solar because they live in apartments and/or rent -- but guess who subsidies those who can access roof top solar.

as mentioned here and elsewhere until we (those within the SE Australia electricity market) have adequate storage -- battery, pumped hydro -- renewables will remain heavily subsidised.

Talking Solar...
Does any remember about 5 years ago [I think], the University of Woolongong along with Bluescope Steel made a "corrugated iron roofing sheet bonded with a solar paint" as part on an international heating and cooling challenge in China where the team won hands down on all the sustainability tests with something like 99 out of 100....

I do remember something about Solar Paint being talked about a few years ago, and thinking that would be great, but of course it depends on efficiency, life expectancy and cost.

Moree Solar Farm is selling its power to 18 Sydney Councils.

And an even better story about the Tesla battery in South Australia from a couple of days ago. You would think that might silence the critics who can't think big, but it probably won't.

Makes me wonder if a large battery attached to the Moree farm would be worthwhile. The battery seems to be excellent at keeping the power supply stable.

Brett

Until now the solar and wind farms have been unable to provide frequency control and it was the big detractor of solar within the system. I think that the advantage of the Tesla battery is more in the area of frequency regulation than absolute power. As far as actual generation is concerned it is a stop gap measure to buy some time to resolve a crisis. This is a revealing comment from the article you quoted:

"He dismissed some claims from enthusiasts who had implied that the big battery has single-handedly saved the electricity system from collapse when big coal-fired power generators have failed — it's not big enough for that.
But it has played a role and responded extremely rapidly, demonstrating the potential of the technology."

Unfortunately some people do themselves no favours by either stating or implying that something will do more than it possibly can. Equally others do themselves no favours but decrying something in it's entirety.

Regards
Paul

Like all technology, solar generation has been evolving for decades but its refinement and efficiency has improved exponentially in the last 5 years and i can almost guarantee that in the next 5 years, its efficiency will improve at a minimum of 50%+ above current standards.
Its the impatience of Mr and Mrs Average that want instant 100% efficiency now at almost zero cost to them as opposed to a % of them that invest in the technology/companies for a return on their investment.
The world is on the cusp of an unprecedented leap forward in this field and it all takes time and people to rationally critique all aspects it develops.
Unfortunately, government policy and the vested commercial interests are not as efficient at achieving this without being dragged and screaming to account.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I think that the advantage of the Tesla battery is more in the area of frequency regulation than absolute power.

Yes, that's the context that I was thinking it could be used, as AEMO said they would welcome more large batteries in the system for regulation of frequency. The Moree farm would seem (to me) to be an ideal place to add on a battery because in the event that the whole lot was dumped into the system then it probably wouldn't take all that long to recharge the battery - although I don't know what the data for recharging the SA battery is. For freq. regulation the battery may be able to be somewhat smaller I suppose.

I wonder if this is a somewhat unexpected side benefit of the battery, or whether it was anticipated? It does seem to have taken them all by surprise.

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Moree Solar Farm is selling its power to 18 Sydney Councils.

crunching some numbers.
The agreement runs for 11 years.
the solar farm will supply 440,000 MWh over that period -- works out at 40,000 MWh per year.
(and according to the Australian https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...66d26a16d3810a , that power is worth $80 / MWh, or $3.2 M / year.)

And an even better story about the Tesla battery in South Australia from a couple of days ago. You would think that might silence the critics who can't think big, but it probably won't.
The battery seems to be excellent at keeping the power supply stable.

the battery is "excellent" because it's response time is measured in milliseconds, whereas conventional systems -- which rely on inertia -- are measured in tenths of seconds

And another article today.
'Renewables capital of Australia'? Port Augusta shows off its green energy credentials - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

A couple of interesting take-aways from it:
concentrated solar thermal produces electricity at 30-40% less than newly built coal power at about $78 per Mwhr
800 hectares of Solar produces about 10x the power of the previous (old) coal fired plant. 570 Gigawatt hours per year compared to 500-540 Megawatt hours from old coal.

Paul can probably give us a current comparator for the Millmerran station which is (from memory) the second cleanest CF in the country? And perhaps an idea of how many hectares the whole operation is? Clearly solar will take up much more land, but that's one thing we seem to have in abundance, along with Sunlight - plenty of non-arable land.

Brett

That's an interesting article. I am not sure exactly how they come up with the cost of newly built coal power as the the last coal fired station built in Australia was Kogan creek in 2007 with it's single giant 750MW unit. Perhaps they are projecting the figures.

The coal fired power stations themselves do not occupy a large area: Possibly twenty or thirty acres, but if you taken into consideration the mine as well, that considerably increases. In times gone by, power stations bought their coal from a mine or mines in their area and in fact it was a good outlet for a mine to offload their inferior coal, which is what power stations burn. However, transportation became increasingly costly (the Northern Power station quoted below obtained coal from 280Km away) and the trend was to sit the power station alongside the mine. This is the situation at Millmerran. I don't recall the extent of the land our company owns but it is very extensive: Hundreds of acres. Most of it is still farmed or grazed. This land is often leased back to the original owners for that purpose.

Millmerran is the second most efficient CF station, but I am not aware of where it sits in the cleanliness stakes. All I can say there is that the supercritical stations are the cleanest in terms of carbon emissions and all six supercritical units in Australia, including the two at Millmerran, are in Queensland. I don't think there would be much between them in which is the "cleanest."

One of my pet hates is the way politicins and other people in the industry cherry pick information and the way they talk things up. I am not sure whether it is intentional or whether it is just a lack of understanding. From that article:

"When stage two is complete, the entire project will cover more than 800 hectares — an expanse nearly as big as the Melbourne CBD — and generate up to 570 gigawatt hours of electricity a year, enough to power about 82,000 households, according to its owners, Italian multinational Enel Green Power and the Dutch Infrastructure Fund.
"Note that the Northern Power Station, when it was operating, was only producing between 500 and 540 megawatts," Mr Johnson said."

They are confusing units of energy. One is Gigawatt hours per year. The other is MW/hour: Very misleading. The units of power that are quoted should be consistent to make a fair comparison. A gigawatt is 1000 megawatts. Therefore the Solar Thermal project would be producing 65MW/hr. (compared to approx 500MW/hr for the old coal station). That also assumes the solar station can generate 24 hrs per day. If it has a storage system (salt or batteries) it has to generate three times a much at least and under ideal conditions to produce 65MW/hr. Effectively the 65MW now becomes a third of that at 22MW. This assumes they have a storage system. As I recently explained to my daughter, I am a big fan of solar, we have it on our house, but I am pragmatic rather than blind. This was not well received. Daughter and I are still not talking on the subject.

Regards
Paul

Yes indeed, apples have to be compared correctly. I just assumed that Mr Johnson forgot to add the "hours" on to the end of his sentence.

I had started a post earlier which was going to compare the Mwhr per hectare between Moree and Port Augusta, but when I searched for the size of the Moree farm I got answers of 44 hectares, 350, something else, and something else again, so it couldn't be done.