Thread: Future of the Australian Electricity Market

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

I'd say it's doubtful whether Chernobyl or Fukushima will ever be truly cleaned up

Nope, yer wrong Mr B. Vlad the Impaler wants Ukraine back so he can finish the clean-up job properly.

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

Three Mile Island reminds me of a Terry Pratchett anecdote...."I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a US restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought me Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce."

Re. Chernobyl cleanup, and with the British Post Office debacle to consider as well, better increase the order to two VERY big carpets, disasters for the sweeping under....

After all this nuclear stuff, a breath of fresh air. Have you wondered how wind turbines are constructed and in particular the larger machines. The following link explores quite a few aspects including the fabrication of blades, construction on site and out at sea as well.

Amazing Way They Build the World Largest Wind Turbines! (youtube.com)

Regards
Paul

decommissioning costs only happen IF you turn them off...


I think there's meant to be an announcement semi soon about what origin actually intend to do with Eraring as its meant to turn off next year? even other coal stations are having jabs at them

Delta Electricity on LinkedIn: 2024.05.01 Delta Statement on Eraring Life Extension


Screenshot 2024-05-07 214140.jpg

Originally Posted by havabeer69

decommissioning costs only happen IF you turn them off...


I think there's meant to be an announcement semi soon about what origin actually intend to do with Eraring as its meant to turn off next year? even other coal stations are having jabs at them

Delta Electricity on LinkedIn: 2024.05.01 Delta Statement on Eraring Life Extension


Screenshot 2024-05-07 214140.jpg

HAB

A very good point and I am sure Delta will be most keen to her Origin's response. Logically, I would expect the NSW government to take a large electrical breath on this one before indulging the money grabbers. I would like to know the terms of the purchase. Did it make mention of any potential exit and if it should be offered up to the best bid, for example? I think you are implying that origin have not had the expertise to manage a station well and if you are implying that, I would tend to agree with you. I would need to know what their coal price is and their break-even point before commenting much further and I doubt they will be ringing me up any time soon to confide that.

Apparently, NSW had the opportunity to buy Eraring back a couple of years ago but either declined or the negotiations fell through:

Energy crisis: NSW government knocked back Origin offer to sell Eraring power plant (archive.org)

Regards
Paul

all of the people on "Amber" and the other "market priced" electricity plans might have been hurting in NSW yesterday.


AEMO had to step in and limit the market price due to lack of supply

Originally Posted by havabeer69

all of the people on "Amber" and the other "market priced" electricity plans might have been hurting in NSW yesterday.
AEMO had to step in and limit the market price due to lack of supply

Yep, just had a look at the bill for the day. $33.72 + connection etc (and there's a lot of "etc") for 7.93kWh usage peak, compared to $3.73 for 11.42 kWh Controlled Load.

Total usage cost for the last 30 days $138.31, so yesterday's peak is 24.4% of the total usage cost, but a miserable 1.75% of the total kWh for the same 30 days.

I have decided to compare it all at the end of a full 12 months cycle, and I'd say (at this point) Amber is not worth the grief of explosive price volatility. Even if they are 5% less overall I couldn't be fagged looking all the time, and charging around like a crazy person (easy there.... ) fretting about what needs to be rationed. I'd prefer to just continue with frugal usage and no grief.

EDIT: BTW, I knew at the time that the prices were crackers because I was sent an alert (late, as usual) to say there was a spike which lasted for about 3 hours. Prices for the 6 minute interval that I saw were $18.nn per kWh. Overall prices for the period are now deleted from the chart online (too old)

...just as thy imaginary friend's will be done.

Snowy Hydro boss doubles down on project timeline despite slow progress and budget blow-out - ABC News

I haven't read the article, and probably won't because the headline says it all (by omission): what if climate change produces catastrophic persisting-it-down (often abbreviated to pissing down) rain that bogs everything?

Should we run a book on what month in 2027 calendar year CEO Dennis Barnes resigns? If we do, I'll take October because people who "think' like that can never see the end until it's the end. I dare Mr B will take the risky option with a higher return of mid-2025!

Originally Posted by havabeer69

all of the people on "Amber" and the other "market priced" electricity plans might have been hurting in NSW yesterday.


AEMO had to step in and limit the market price due to lack of supply

HAB

Thanks for that info.

There is a contingency clause in the market pricing whereby the maximum price at VOLL (Value Of Lost Load) can only persist for a certain amount of time. I can't recall the duration exactly, but think it is either 3 hours or five hours. After that point AEMO steps in, as they apparently did yesterday, and reduces that humungus figure down from $16,000+ to about $300. Of course, during that relatively short period, anybody who was online and generating has made a fortune. It is the moment when the thermal stations run their emergency diesel generators to cash in. Anybody who was offline you will find down at the pub crying into their beer!

Regards
Paul

Interesting, in Vic the amber price was on the high side of normal but only by a few cents.
In fact over the week or two prices have been on the higher side, but nowhere near 'spike' territory.
I put it down to the weather, cold and still..

Originally Posted by russ57

Interesting, in Vic the amber price was on the high side of normal but only by a few cents.
In fact over the week or two prices have been on the higher side, but nowhere near 'spike' territory.
I put it down to the weather, cold and still..

What was the Vic weather yesterday? Up here in the Blue Mountains, and also down at Penrith there was considerable sunshine and not a lot of rain to speak of (that I experienced in either location). However, that's not the whole story for the seaboard, I'm sure. I have a feeling that this might show how dependent we are becoming on Solar input (which is great, but...). Chaps in the game might be able to help us with figures perhaps. I've been getting spike msgs for the last 3 days, maybe 4. It's been raining here for ten days.

The point being that if there is heavy cloud around there's not much solar input which will drive up demand on ff generation....but why so late in the day (16:00 to 19:30) when there's no sunshine anyway (yes I know it's peak, but it's always peak time then, sunny or not, earlier in the day). I mean it's not like we are using stored solar power during peak, and there was nothing in the store for those spikes to use.

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Snowy will be done by Dec 2028...

Please define "done". Is it related to the taxpayers getting done over?

Haven't heard anything about Florence the tunneling machine recently. Is it busy beavering away or is it back in hibernation?

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Please define "done". Is it related to the taxpayers getting done over?

Done – finished

Ken Done – Aussie Artist

'ken done – finished badly