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

Combining answers t above questions, my 'retirement' from the utility portion of the industry was not voluntary. I was in the equipment supply side of the power industry for many years and was then headhunter into the utilities in 2000. I was always a bit too progressive for the utility side of the business, I was, at best, an octagonal peg in a round hole. In 2009, I 'left' the utility side of the industry and returned to the equipment supply side. So that, in the last 20 years, I had spent half in a Government owned utility and half in the multi-national manufacture and supply of equipment and solutions to utilities. This eventually resulted in my advice being sought by privately owned potential bidders for Utilities that were being privatised. It was fascinating to see the rationale of potential buyers and the incredible missed opportunities by Government in the 'sale/99 year lease' of those businesses. It is an unusual burden, and frustration, to know the intimate details of both sides of such a complex transaction! It is mostly that frustration that has driven me into recreational woodwork and especially the design and manufacture of bespoke furniture .... and consequently onto this forum?
If anyone out there wants advice to buy or sell a publicly owned utility, get in touch with me.......... and I'll design, make and sell you a handmade, intricately carved, Balinese daybed!

Today's energy news story:
Base load power: The dinosaur in the energy debate - Science News - ABC News

Some interesting quotes from it:
"If you have an increase in demand, a coal power station will take hours [to meet it],
a gas turbine 20 to 30 minutes,
batteries about a second,
demand management about a second, (ed: what's demand management?)
and pumped hydro will take anywhere between 20 seconds and two minutes."

"Pumped hydro is 100-year-old technology, completely off the shelf, and importantly you can get these pumped-hydro sites built before 2022," he says.

".... there's about 22,000 [potential] pumped-hydro sites on the east coast. We only need 20 or 30 of them."

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Today's energy news story:
Base load power: The dinosaur in the energy debate - Science News - ABC News

Some interesting quotes from it:
"If you have an increase in demand, a coal power station will take hours [to meet it],

that was always the "joke" about Earth Hour. Everyone feeling smug for turning out their lights for 60 minutes and lighting a few candles, while Liddel and Bayswater and Mt Piper et al just went on burning coal and pushing out CO2 as if nothing had changed.

demand management about a second, (ed: what's demand management?)

flicking the switch to disconnect the Tomago Smelter?
though I understand that most (all?) coal fired power stations have one or more huge fly wheels that can be slowed to accommodate a short term demand pike -- I only vaguely remember the Physics / Electrical Engineering, but it was something to do with converting stored rotational energy into electricity. Wikipedia reports on commercial systems good for 20MW over 15 minutes. For comparison, the Royalla Solar Farm (rated at 20 MW) puts out an average of about 15 MW per hour for about 3 hours each day.

and pumped hydro will take anywhere between 20 seconds and two minutes."

which is something the British make full use of -- see the Dinorwig Power station in Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station

".... there's about 22,000 [potential] pumped-hydro sites on the east coast. We only need 20 or 30 of them."

as I said earlier, best wishes getting more than one or two of those through an environmental assessment

The funny thing about that article is at no point does it address the cost of any of the above alternatives. People are already complaining about the cost of running coal power stations as the "base" load which most of Australia is running off, let alone switching to any of the above alternatives.

The other thing the article also fails to mention is yes a coal power station takes hours to meet the additional demand, but doesn't actually address if this is actually a bad thing...In reality its not. Power consumption is as predictable as peak hour traffic and to have a random sudden increase in demand rarely occurs. So ramp up/down is a forecasted and an anticipated event.

Plus taking advantage of alternative power sources is fantastic when they line up with consumer demand, however this often isn't the case either for eg wind generally blows at night and conventional hydro when the tides move.

IMO the only sustainable alternative is nuclear, but obviously the whole potential exploding side of things doesn't sit well with many people

Originally Posted by ian

that was always the "joke" about Earth Hour. Everyone feeling smug for turning out their lights for 60 minutes and lighting a few candles, while Liddel and Bayswater and Mt Piper et al just went on burning coal and pushing out CO2 as if nothing had changed.

Originally Posted by tonzeyd

Power consumption is as predictable as peak hour traffic and to have a random sudden increase in demand rarely occurs. So ramp up/down is a foretasted and an anticipated event.

So Earth Hour actually has some potential to cause problems for the Generators - they don't really know how much power to account for, because they don't really know what the participation rate will be. They can use last year's figures I spose, but....

Originally Posted by tonzeyd

Plus taking advantage of alternative power sources is fantastic when they line up with consumer demand, however this often isn't the case either for eg wind generally blows at night and conventional hydro when the tides move.

Well surely batteries are the solution to that?

Originally Posted by tonzeyd

IMO the only sustainable alternative is nuclear, but obviously the whole potential exploding side of things doesn't sit well with many people

Without agreeing or disagreeing, there would be more chance of getting pumped hydro site approved than a nuclear option. I really don't think the Public has the appetite for it.

Maybe that (nuclear option) was what fletty alluded to, but didn't elaborate on.....

The issue with batteries at this stage is cost, until the cost of lithium comes down significantly the uptake will be quite small. Plus then there's the hippies out there who will claim that batteries are not environmentally friendly. Plus I'd like to see the folks with three phase try and run their equipment off a battery.

Also then there's the issue with storing the batteries, especially with the new norm (in WA) where houses are being built on smaller and smaller blocks with talks of blocks on a 70sqm footprint, doesn't leave much space to put the batteries in an unobtrusive location.

Guess the other issue with hydro is, in WA in particular we don't exactly have many potential sites for hydro power given that most of the state is effectively flat.

I'm sure somewhere along the line some research will also come out that batteries will give you cancer etc which will put a wet blanket on the whole deal.

Originally Posted by ian

as I said earlier, best wishes getting more than one or two of those through an environmental assessment

Agreed, nothing gets the environmentalist's blood boiling quicker than sticking a massive pump/eye sore in a nature reserve.

I meant batteries in the sense of what SA is doing. Maybe not on the same scale but enough to store the wind power generated during low demand periods.

In reality there is NO solution that is particularly environmentally friendly. Whatever is built has left behind its own carbon footprint during manufacture/construction, so obviously all of that has to be considered. The main thrust of this latter part of the thread is what do we do NOW to avoid dreadful consequences over the next few years.

The only short term solution I can see being viable and doable is to get on with macro and micro solar & batteries, even though a little premature. Anyone have any other ideas?

Just to throw another spanner in the works.

Toyota at the moment is working on a hydrogen car AKA The Mirai, At the moment i believe the US has these vehicles for sale but early days for Aus. Obviously at this stage for the Mirai to be a serious player much like other electric cars needs serious investment. Something the government at this stage is quite iffy about, probably because of the uncertain future every electric vehicle has. Think HD DVD/Blu-ray kind of race one will prevail but no one quite knows which will and obviously in the tough economic conditions no one wants to blow millions *cough* plebiscite *cough* on nothing.

Anyway the reason why i bring up the Mirai is because the idea behind it was to be able to allow you to use the energy stored in the hydrogen cells to power your home as well as your car, it also has another party trick of producing pure water out the back end.

Just a question to consider and I was wondering if someone could supply an answer.

Do the current domestic battery storage systems shut down if the grid goes down, just like the solar arrays have to by regulation and not for technical reasons?

Originally Posted by Bohdan

Just a question to consider and I was wondering if someone could supply an answer.

Do the current domestic battery storage systems shut down if the grid goes down, just like the solar arrays have to by regulation and not for technical reasons?

No, another excellent advantage of them. It may be the case that you have to flick a switch or something, but my understanding is that you don't really even know the grid has gone down, similar to when emergency generators kick in.

Originally Posted by tonzeyd

Toyota at the moment is working on a hydrogen car AKA The Mirai, At the moment i believe the US has these vehicles for sale but early days for Aus. Obviously at this stage for the Mirai to be a serious player much like other electric cars needs serious investment. Something the government at this stage is quite iffy about, probably because of the uncertain future every electric vehicle has. Think HD DVD/Blu-ray kind of race one will prevail but no one quite knows which will and obviously in the tough economic conditions no one wants to blow millions *cough* plebiscite *cough* on nothing.

Anyway the reason why i bring up the Mirai is because the idea behind it was to be able to allow you to use the energy stored in the hydrogen cells to power your home as well as your car, it also has another party trick of producing pure water out the back end.

Yes, there are I think 3 of them in Oz at the moment being trialled (they have their own refuelling truck available). Wouldn't it be great if the end game here is to hydrolyse the water in-car, burn the H, collect the waste, re-hydrolyse, rinse and repeat. There would have to be some loss otherwise perpetual motion would have just been invented.

Originally Posted by tonzeyd

has another party trick of producing pure water out the back end.

I know a few restaurants that have produced the same results... well maybe not pure...

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Without agreeing or disagreeing, there would be more chance of getting pumped hydro site approved than a nuclear option. I really don't think the Public has the appetite for it.

Maybe that (nuclear option) was what fletty alluded to, but didn't elaborate on.....

Originally Posted by tonzeyd

IMO the only sustainable alternative is nuclear, but obviously the whole potential exploding side of things doesn't sit well with many people

funny you should say that.

I read an article within the past few months about "safe" nuclear power.
Back in the 60s, the US Government funded research into what are known as fluidised bed thorium reactors. If I recall the article correctly, all but one of the operational and technical issues were resolved. The program was shut down in favour of other nuclear technologies -- enriched uranium, breeder/plutonium reactors, etc -- before the last issue, an economic way to clean the reaction products from the thorium fluid was resolved. The technology is considered "safe" because Thorium and its decay products are not suitable for bomb making.


But I agree, "nuclear" is usually guaranteed to raise the hackles.

Originally Posted by Bohdan

Just a question to consider and I was wondering if someone could supply an answer.

Do the current domestic battery storage systems shut down if the grid goes down, just like the solar arrays have to by regulation and not for technical reasons?

looking at this from a safety perspective, just like roof top solar, if the grid goes down, either locally or across a region, any backup battery or sizable UPS needs to be isolated from the grid with no possibility that the grid can be even partially energised while there might be someone working on a downed wire.
I would call this a "technical" rather than "regulatory" issue.