Thread: Future of the Australian Electricity Market

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This is global heat yesterday.

Source: Climate Reanalyzer

Originally Posted by woodPixel

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This is global heat yesterday.

Source: Climate Reanalyzer

As we were travelling home form NSW yesterday I heard on the radio that Southern England was being decalred a disaster area as the temp was exceeding 40°C. I lived in the UK for thirty years and never ever saw any temp close to that.

Regards
Paul

World's first ''sand battery'' can store heat at 500C for months at a time. Could it work in Australia? - ABC News

The idea of storing heat in sand to warm homes through winter may, on the face of it, seem too simple to work.
The world's first commercial "sand battery" stores heat at 500 degrees Celsius for months at a time.
It can be used to heat homes and offices and provide high-temperature heat for industrial processes.
Thermal storage could displace gas in industry and remove up to 16 per cent of Australia's emissions, experts say.
Drop a load of cheap builder's sand in an insulated silo, heat the sand with renewable electricity, and then tap the stored thermal energy for months on end.

Hot air blown through pipes heats the sand in the steel container by resistive heating (this is how electric heaters work).The sand is able to store heat at around 500–600 degrees Celsius for months, so solar power generated in the summer can be used to heat homes in the winter.
It can store up to 8 megawatt-hours of energy, which is the capacity of a large, grid-scale lithium battery.

Hot air blown through pipes heats the sand in the steel container by resistive heating (this is how electric heaters work).The sand is able to store heat at around 500–600 degrees Celsius for months, so solar power generated in the summer can be used to heat homes in the winter.It can store up to 8 megawatt-hours of energy, which is the capacity of a large, grid-scale lithium battery.

Maybe hook it up to the houses of Parliament?

Originally Posted by BobL

Maybe hook it up to the houses of Parliament?

What, and suck what little energy they have out?

All-in-one solar tower produces jet fuel from CO2, water and sunlight

One hundred and sixty-nine sun-tracking reflector panels, each presenting three square meters (~32 sq ft) of surface area, redirect sunlight into a 16-cm (6.3-in) hole in the solar reactor at the top of the 15-m-tall (49-ft) central tower. This reactor receives an average of about 2,500 suns' worth of energy — about 50 kW of solar thermal power.

This heat is used to drive a two-step thermochemical redox cycle. Water and pure carbon dioxide are fed in to a ceria-based redox reaction, which converts them simultaneously into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, or syngas. Because this is all being done in a single chamber, it's possible to tweak the rates of water and CO2 to live-manage the exact composition of the syngas. This syngas is fed to a Gas-to-Liquid (GtL) unit at the bottom of the tower, which produced a liquid phase containing 16% kerosene and 40% diesel, as well as a wax phase with 7% kerosene and 40% diesel — proving that the ceria-based ceramic solar reactor definitely produced syngas pure enough for conversion into synthetic fuels....

The team says the system's overall efficiency (measured by the energy content of the syngas as a percentage of the total solar energy input) was only around 4% in this implementation, but it sees pathways to getting that up over 20% by recovering and recycling more heat, and altering the structure of the ceria structure. "We are the first to demonstrate the entire thermochemical process chain from water and CO2 to kerosene in a fully-integrated solar tower system," said ETH Professor Aldo Steinfeld, the corresponding author of the research paper. "This solar tower fuel plant was operated with a setup relevant to industrial implementation, setting a technological milestone towards the production of sustainable aviation fuels."

"The solar tower fuel plant described here represents a viable pathway to global-scale implementation of solar fuel production," reads the study.

Originally Posted by BobL

Maybe hook it up to the houses of Parliament?

Meltdown ???

Originally Posted by woodPixel

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What is the problem? It is the other side of the world, miles away!

I chanced upon this article regarding the possibility of Nukes. Interesting and amusing at times. A no holds barred demolition of the nuclear prospect.

In particular I did take this extract as significant.

"Ziggy Switkowski appeared before O’Brien’s inquiry in 2019 and said there was no coherent business case to finance an Australian nuclear industry before adding: “I have emphasised that one of the things that has changed over the last decade or so is that nuclear power has got more expensive rather than less expensive”.

Regards
Paul

I'm sure there are a couple of companies that get rich every election/government change. There the ones doing the "feasibility studies" for nuclear power and the high speed train on the east coast to melbourne,

Originally Posted by havabeer69

I'm sure there are a couple of companies that get rich every election/government change. There the ones doing the "feasibility studies" for nuclear power and the high speed train on the east coast to melbourne,

You are so right !!

But don't forget, each government is looking to appease those inner city voters who think Australia should spend hundreds of billions connecting Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne with high speed rail -- because we're a wealthy country so should have HSR.

And those RARA voters who want the regional population boost that a HSR project might deliver.

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RARA = Rural And Regional Areas

Electrify 2515 plan to adopt renewable energy, EV car lease in Illawarra suburb - ABC News

A micro grid which is the way I think things will go. I helped my dad build a house at Bawley Point and I regret the day he sold it. Post code 2515 is right next to us and I missed out there as well.

One of the disadvantages of Nuclear power was always the threat of damage by terrorists or other malcontents shouls a reactor be targeted. I had not really considered war as a potential problem before, but the Russia/Ukraine conflict has highlighted a new level of exposure.

This article identifies the breakdown of proceedural safety at the Zaporizhzhia Ukranian plant.

Rising threat of nuclear disaster at Europe's largest power plant (thenewdaily.com.au)

It is the largest in Europe at a nominal capacity of 5700MW (6 X 950MW units) and in more peaceful times supplies a fifth of Ukraine's power. It is occupied by Russia, operated by the Ukrainians and arguably may be used as a "shield." Nukes have extreme safety measure to virtually eliminate the risk of a core meltdown, but a stray shell knocking the cooling system or at least part of it could be catastrophic.

I believe two of the six units have already been shut down.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I believe two of the six units have already been shut down. Paul

Only two units currently operational with no explanations.