Thread: Future of the Australian Electricity Market

If you are of a mind to watch videos, this one is interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38

"A New Way to Achieve Nuclear Fusion: Helion"

Lithium to overtake fossil fuels as WA'''s second-most valuable resource, WA budget reveals - ABC News

One of the statements contributors to this thread have made is that we should not be blinkered in our approach to future power sources and indeed should seriously contemplate that future power generation will be a multi-pronged attack.

In looking up Fence Furniture's link on lithium in the previous post I stumbled on this one regarding Thorium reactors. It clearly is not solely utilising thorium but a combination that vastly reduces the use of uranium by a factor of forty to fifty times:

(7) Forget Fusion: We have Thorium for Unlimited Energy - YouTube

Note where Australia is in the world reserves of thorium (about the 5.49 minute mark). However, there is a distinction between reserves and easily obtainable reserves.

I have long maintained a few advantages of thorium over uranium and plutonium. The following video debunks some of these (I am currently halfway through my second-best hat, which seems to be more palatable with BBQ sauce or soy sauce) and confirms others. The first 1.30 minutes seem to be a repeat of the video linked above, but then it diverges:

(7) The 5 Biggest Myths about Thorium - YouTube

I don't know if thorium can be used by itself. The videos above relate to a composite fuel. Perhaps the biggest issues with any forms of nuclear power generation are the cost and lead time for the build. Secondary are still the issues of safety, vulnerability during conflict (Zaporizhzhia is an example here), disposal of the waste (even if it is a smaller quantity) and de-commissioning costs at the end of a fifty year life cycle (they are huge with large sections not being recyclable).

It was also interesting to note that the renewables of solar and wind were projected to be significantly cheaper than a nuclear plant.

Regards
Paul

And just for a bit of balance the end of lithium batteries - YouTube

musk announces the end of the lithium battery - YouTube

And some more out there speculation, everyone is getting into the act so maybe WA are counting chickens that aren't hatched yet.

BYD Sodium Battery - YouTube

And that is only this week, god only knows what will be happening in ten year's time, maybe house batteries you can build yourself for all I know. I love BEV's and my son is a BYD service manager but all the speculation around them is just that and nothing more. Toyota, BMW and some machinery manufacturers are pushing hard for Hydrogen and they might yet be proven right for all anyone knows at this point in time.

Tangential to our main discussion, but in the interests of energy efficiency, this is a fascinating 12 minute vid on toroidal propellers:

From the same guy, and back on topic, Salt Batteries:

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Tangential to our main discussion, but in the interests of energy efficiency, this is a fascinating 12 minute vid on toroidal propellers:
[Video titled : "105% Efficiency Boost"}

I was very suspicious when I saw the title of the video, so I went back to the source documentation. "Suspicious" is a polite word for the excretia of the species bovine. Or yet more of the Popular Science type crap.

Now, I have been playing around with boats for 70 years, and am well aware of developments of various propolsion - conventional props, duo props, surface piercing props, water jets - all are optimal within specific operating ranges. Toroidal props have been around for over 100 years, but have never made an impression. Allegedly they are significantly quieter than other props, not as efficient, hyper sensitive to alignment issues including minor dings, marine growth and slime, and extremely expensive to machine. Realistically, with more research effort, one would expect incremental improvements in efficiency, not a massive 105%.

So I went back to the MIT source - and MIT is a very credible university. Their summary:

• Tests of prototype toroidal propellers on commercial quadcopters demonstrated thrust levels comparable to those of conventional propellers at similar power levels. Reduced sound levels allowed toroidal-propeller-equipped drones to operate without taxing human hearing at a distance half that of typical operation.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...SsUCYHGDX9BGPX

Quieter.
Comparable power.
No mention of 105%. Very cautious tone.

Oh well, at least they are quieter.

Been away for a bit and it all became vigorous!

On the Salgenx - its all basically renders, a few engineering-looking schematics and not one single installation. Ive emailed "Greg" and its not investable.

BUT the ESS inc is investable. If you want a YOLO that will either crater or go ballistic, ESS looks great. They have an actual product that ships, with real customers and an actual plan. The things can scale up the wazoo as well. Thats good.

These remind me very strongly of the Iron-Flow Rusty batteries. I'm feeling very ... positive.. about those.


Big heavy brutes and totally useless for transport, but for mega-bulk storage they will win. They are fabulous solutions (oh, the puns!)


On the toroidal props for drones. They are SILENT. Not "quiet" or some other term, but silent. They could fly by your head and one would feel the breeze first.

I'll find the video. See this video Amazing Invention- This Drone Will Change Everything - YouTube at the 13'50" section. It goes for about 2 minutes.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

On the toroidal props for drones. They are SILENT. Not "quiet" or some other term, but silent. They could fly by your head and one would feel the breeze first.

Maybe someone else is doing better research than MIT, but the MIT report definitely said "Reduced sound levels allowed toroidal-propeller-equipped drones to operate without taxing human hearing at a distance half that of typical operation...." No mention or inference of silent or SILENT - (should one shout silently?)

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

- (should one shout silently?)[/FONT]

My wife manages to do it when im trying to sleep after night shift and shes trying to tell the kids to "shut up your fathers sleeping"

Originally Posted by havabeer69

My wife manages to do it when im trying to sleep after night shift and shes trying to tell the kids to "shut up your fathers sleeping"

My wife never quite mastered that technique. Fortunately, at some point the children left home and that was no longer an issue.

Regards
Paul

I saw this for QLD:

I am sure that the media would make much of the maximum price yesterday ($14,930) , which is close to the maximum Voll (stands for "value of lost load"), which I think is $15,100, but note that the average price still remained similar to the previous days. I was not at work so I don't know what caused the price spike. Typically it would be a unit tripping at a time of high demand.

Electricity market 15 May to 17 May.png

The last entry is of course a projected figure for today.

Regards
Paul

The Tasmanian pricing remains a mystery:

You can see the live data here:

AEMO | NEM data dashboard

This links to Tassie but you can click on any State. This is a quick snapshot outlining Graeme's comment a few posts earlier:


Tasmania elec 18 May.png

Low prices at periods of high demand (0600 and 1800hrs) are the opposite of what we would expect. At this stage Tasmania has no pumped hydro, although feasibility studies are being conducted on 14 sites I read.

Regards
Paul