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

I doubt that Mr Johnson forgot to include "hours" at the end of his sentence.


570 GW hours over a year (8760 hours) works out at 65 MW per hour.
For comparison, a typical wind turbine is rated at around 2.4 MW, so the solar installation is equivalent to about 27 wind turbines.

The decommissioned Northern Power station was generating around 4,700 GW hours per year -- about 5.5 times as much

Originally Posted by ian

I doubt that Mr Johnson forgot to include "hours" at the end of his sentence.


570 GW hours over a year (8760 hours) works out at 65 MW per hour.
For comparison, a typical wind turbine is rated at around 2.4 MW, so the solar installation is equivalent to about 27 wind turbines.

The decommissioned Northern Power station was generating around 4,700 GW hours per year -- about 5.5 times as much

Ian

Things are not quite as good as that. A coal fired station can indeed achieve close to that barring unscheduled trips due to such things as tube leaks and routine maintenance: Think around 90% - 95% perhaps, although very few stations do this because of the competitive market pricing structure. However the solar station only has the benefit of the sun playing on the PV cell,or reflector plate in the case of solar thermal, for around 8 hours on average even with solar tracking. It also assumes no cloudy or rainy days. Cloud and rain affect solar thermal more than they do PV, which is more disadvantaged by excessive heat (efficiency reduces progressively at temperatures above the relatively low point of 25 C).

So if there is a storage facility, some of that power generated through the daylight hours has to charge the storage system: About 16 hours worth. Hence my earlier comment that the system would only deliver about a third of that 65MW. Of course, my figures are supposition and significantly rounded to make the sums easy, but I'm sure that people can get the drift.

Looking at the Port Augusta installation the first stage appears to be 110MW. There is one further stage scheduled and the possibility of a third stage. Final output should all that happen would be around 300MW so how Mr.Johnson could refer to the old station only producing 500 to 550MW is, how shall I say, "mischievous."

Regards
Paul

This may seem a silly question but I’ll ask it anyway.
What are the costs both physically and environmentally to make these fancy batteries
plus are they recyclable at end of life?

I ask as about 20 years ago I read that German law makers passed a law saying that all local manufacturers must either use components that can be recycled at end of life of the manufactured goods or take the goods back.

As Bushmiller said earlier, there is a lot of ‘mis-information’ around this whole subject. Some of it is unbridled idealism and some of it is cynical politics and lobbying. Crowie has hit on another of the dark corners of this discussion and I’ll try to explain it but only after telling everyone that my detailed knowledge is now about 2 years out of date. As Crowie said, Germany and ( I think) ALL of the EU, mandated several years ago that all Government financed and/or legislated projects must comply with both ISO9000 ( series) and ISO14000(series) standards. ISO9000 is quality assurance and ISO14000 is environmental assurance. ISO14000 demands a disposal path at the economic end of life. TO DATE, lithium ion and related batteries DO NOT have an accredited disposal path. This is why you will note that there have been no European car manufacturers offering electric vehicles. They have designed, developed and prototyped some of the most stunning electric vehicles but these have not been available for sale because there is no validated disposal path for their batteries and hence they cannot comply with ISO14000. America does not require ISO14000 and is very cautious with even ISO9000 and so the Tesla style of battery is freely available for sale. Australia (thankfully!) is closer to Europe and definitely requires ISO9000 and selectively requires ISO14000. When the ‘Tesla style’ technology was offered many years ago, it was rejected because it did not; and could not, comply with ISO14000. However, once the brown stuff hits the fan.......
5 years ago, a disposal path for lithium ion batteries was accredited within ISO14000 and so NOW we will start seeing European electric vehicles and hang on to your hats because they are amazing.
This ISO14000 disposal path is not a path to clean destruction but a path to re-use. This re-use revolves around the batteries getting ‘tired’ of a daily re-charge cycle. Their accredited disposal path is their removal from a daily re-charge regime (=electric vehicle) and re installation in a long term recharge regime ( = substation emergencypower and stability support), in other words, all ISO14000 accredited electric vehicle batteries, will from now on, be available for very cheap substation load and stability support. The “Tesla miracle” in SA will soon be regular business all around the World but in an environmentally sustainable way.
As for the general argument about renewables, I’m sorry but for someone who has been inside the industry for many years, I can’t see any solution for Australia’s short term power future but another 2 coal fired power stations which we need to have started at least 3 years ago! There are potentially 2 mid term technologies, a sudden and currently unexpected technology break through in storage .....or nuclear.
The nuclear solution however has such bad press that Australia WILL suffer major power black outs while we sit around waiting for someone else to drive the sustainable technology break through.
We desperately need the very talented experts within Australia ( certainly not me!) to be listened to!

Thanks Fletty for that information.

It was something of which I was completely unaware. One of the major flaws for nuclear power, but by no means the only flaw, is the disposal of waste issue. How would Europe and the world cope with ISO14000? In fact how does a country like France with a very high nuclear power plant component (around 75%) already comply with this today?

My understanding is that the Fukushima disaster was exacerbated by the storage of spent rods in the containment area. In other words they had not dealt with the waste at all and kept the spent material on site, primarily because there is currently no acceptable path.

Regards
Paul

I'm not convinced that the spent fuel rods at Fukushima were kept on site for lack of an acceptable waste disposal system.
As I understand the system, spent fuel rods are stored at the power plant / reactor till they have cooled enough to be safely transported to a "recycling" facility.
(spend fuel rods from Australia get sent to France for recycling / reprocessing after which the long term (and stabilized/immobilised) radionuclides are returned to Australia for long term storage.

A similar system operates in France.

This is an exert:

"It’s also true for spent fuel rods sitting in the pool. They’re all hot and radioactive, right? These fuel rods have to be cooled for anywhere between five to 10 years before they’re safe enough to be taken out of these pools and put into dry cast storage. Until they are safe enough for that, they need constant attention. They need a constantly operating cooling system to keep them covered up with that water, or we are talking about the same kind of meltdown that you see in an active reactor that has been shut down for some reason.
The difference is that with the spent fuel rods, it’s probably worse. I realize this is a tough time to say worse. I’m not saying it to be upsetting. I’m saying it because I think it is frankly less upsetting to actually understand what’s going on than it is not to understand.
This is understandable. The reason spent fuel rods could be even more dangerous than a shutdown active nuclear reactor is because of two things. First: a spent fuel pool that loses its cooling system and has all of its water evaporate is a potentially greater source of a radiation leak than a reactor is, simply because there are often more fuel rods in a spent fuel pool than there are in an active reactor."

The full article is here:

What's the deal with spent nuclear fuel? | MSNBC

Of course as I have stated many times, everybody has an agenda. so here is one that may be sympathetic to the nukes. It is from the U.S NRC. I would draw attention particularly to point No.2 and the industry standard of ten years.

https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html

Regards
Paul

Ps: My apologies to the OP, FenceFurniture, as we have taken this off track. In our defence it is actually difficult not to be sidetracked as the issues are so interwoven.

This is an exert:

"It’s also true for spent fuel rods sitting in the pool. They’re all hot and radioactive, right? These fuel rods have to be cooled for anywhere between five to 10 years before they’re safe enough to be taken out of these pools and put into dry cast storage. Until they are safe enough for that, they need constant attention. They need a constantly operating cooling system to keep them covered up with that water, or we are talking about the same kind of meltdown that you see in an active reactor that has been shut down for some reason.
The difference is that with the spent fuel rods, it’s probably worse. I realize this is a tough time to say worse. I’m not saying it to be upsetting. I’m saying it because I think it is frankly less upsetting to actually understand what’s going on than it is not to understand.
This is understandable. The reason spent fuel rods could be even more dangerous than a shutdown active nuclear reactor is because of two things. First: a spent fuel pool that loses its cooling system and has all of its water evaporate is a potentially greater source of a radiation leak than a reactor is, simply because there are often more fuel rods in a spent fuel pool than there are in an active reactor."

The full article is here:

What's the deal with spent nuclear fuel? | MSNBC

Of course as I have stated many times, everybody has an agenda. so here is one that may be sympathetic to the nukes. It is from the U.S NRC. I would draw attention particularly to point No.2 and the industry standard of ten years.

https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html

Regards
Paul

Ps: My apologies to the OP, FenceFurniture, as we have taken this off track. In our defence it is actually difficult not to be sidetracked as the issues are so interwoven.

Paul,
I'm not trying to disagree with you.
the point I was trying to make, which you have provided in detail above, is that the spent rods need to cool before being "reprocessed" or "recycled".
My mind boggles at the complexity of safely moving hot spent rods to an off-site cooling facility.

Perhaps the "error" at Fukushima and similar installations is that the spent fuel rods are stored in an "open" pool rather than inside a containment vessel.

Originally Posted by ian

Paul,
I'm not trying to disagree with you.
the point I was trying to make, which you have provided in detail above, is that the spent rods need to cool before being "reprocessed" or "recycled".
My mind boggles at the complexity of safely moving hot spent rods to an off-site cooling facility.

Perhaps the "error" at Fukushima and similar installations is that the spent fuel rods are stored in an "open" pool rather than inside a containment vessel.

Thanks Ian

I may have misunderstood your direction.

It is worrying to my mind that these so-called spent rods ( the half life of Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239, being the isotopes commonly used, are mind boggling. The shorter lived material is something like 24,000 years) are hanging around for up to ten years. In other words more than ten times the amount of fuel that is actually being used.

I did not realise that some reactors had an open pit. That makes the phrase "containment area" seem something of an oxymoron. I think many mistakes were made at Fukushima, not the least being built on a fault line and secondly initially lying about the extent of the catastrophe. Neither had I realised how old the station is: Over fifty years old!

This is information on containment areas for anybody interested and also points to fundamental differences of design between the PWR (Pressurised Water Reactor) and the much older BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) design, which was the Fukushima model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building

Regards
Paul

BMW have had European built electric cars since 2013/2014 - i3.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3

There is also Mercedes, Volkswagen, Bollore, Renault.

Some started sales as early as 2011

Two more Solar Farms under construction (inc the largest to date):
Two of Australia's biggest solar farms set for NSW, as market operator looks at how to manage power grid - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

There seems to be a momentum shift happening. I wonder of the mainstream media reports on al of this? There is no chance that I will be doing that research.....

Just had a quick look at The Guardian (just about the only other news site i look at - are they MSM?). Can't see any reference there but they do have this:
https://www.theguardian.com/sustaina...-for-consumers

Originally Posted by ian

...

The decommissioned Northern Power station was generating around 4,700 GW hours per year -- about 5.5 times as much

No, it really wasn't. At its very best when it was new in the 1980s-early 90s, it achieved 96% availability of 2x250 units (= 4200 GWh). Although it was later nominally re-rated to 2x260MW it never really achieved that availability again, due to problems, mostly with tube leaks. It got progressively worse after that as it could not compete in the market, then in the last years it was running with one unit or other mothballed, so wasn't producing more than 2000GWh.
If your numbers include Playford, that was another nominal 4x60MW alternators. But that never ran all of them together, since the 90s. In the early-mid 2000s that was refurbished but to the best of my knowledge never ran in a meaningful way in the last decade.

SWK

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

...

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.

No, it is one of the man reasons the battery was put in. Just that it is hard to get this message across as the majority of people only understand battery = back up storage.
I wrote about the uses of batteries as part of an electrical system (back in 2015) on these very web pages:

"In fact a system like this does more than just shift the peaks, it actually has 7 functions, the easier explained ones are;
In the very short term (less than seconds) it can stabilise frequency and control power quality (ie the timing and shape of the ac waves).
At slightly longer time periods (some seconds) it can act as spinning reserve, that is, for outages caused by loss of a big generator it can quickly pick up load and help the remaining generators which are trying to share that extra load.
At the minutes to hours level it can detect if the power requirements have gone over a defined maximum level and "shave off" short term peaks and for longer time periods it can shift the loading level around..."

What AEMO were saying as reported in the ABC article that you linked to upthread was that they were surprised the spinning reserve response was actually happening in the sub second time period.

SWK