Thread: Future of the Australian Electricity Market

Originally Posted by Beardy

Bit of a curveball but given current world events and the impact of relying on other countries to supply critical services ( like Germany with Russia)
How do you feel about reliance on lithium batteries given China’s control of the worlds resources to manufacture them?

That's bold statement especially give the following Li Ore reserves graph. OK ore is one components but its one of the most important.
Screen Shot 2022-04-03 at 5.20.36 pm.png
I'm more concerned about REE tech (for magnets) which is way more complicated than Li for batteries. BTW Aus does pretty well on REE ores as well.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

A background piece on the proposed Eraring shut down.

Switching off: Inside Eraring power station as staff come to terms with its closure - ABC News

“I remember walking in and goin’ oh, there’s a fair few weirdos here. A bit of a hangover from the Electricity Commission,”

pretty accurate description of the electricity commission workers


will be interesting times for the other coal plants, with liddels unit turning off (and the rest no doubt moth balled as well) and then a year or so later Eraring doing the same thing thats 4000Mw of possible power out of the grid in 3 years.

This was the article that got me thinking

Risky business: the hidden costs of EV battery raw materials | Automotive World

In 1982 I read a Time Magazine article that said the world was going to run out of copper by 1994, and Oil by 2000. Calculations were based on "known" reserves.

Recently I came across this (also based on "known" reserves").
Now copper is not running out till 2040?
It seems theres a lot more to find than we think about.
Screen Shot 2022-04-04 at 12.13.24 am.jpg

Bob

That chart seems to emphasise the need to step up recycling, certainly for some commodities.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Bob

That chart seems to emphasise the need to step up recycling, certainly for some commodities.

Regards
Paul

Correct, our general attempts at recycling are improving but still pretty much rubbish.
I am also reminded of the following story.

SWMBO's grandfather arrived in WA in the early 1920's and retired on a small farm just out of Perth. Unfortunately he lost his retirement savings in the late 1920s and he took up a gold mining lease at Bamboo Creek , ~70 km out of Marble Bar, from 1929 to 1939.
He and his wife and 2 kids lived in a corrugated iron shack and they had to cart water daily using a yoke and 2 kero tins from a creek 300m away.
Despite that they did OK as he managed to send his two kids to boarding schools in Perth and buy a house in the city.
The mine was a one-man operation, hole in the ground with tunnels following quartz veins with a bucket and hand windlass to raise the ore to the surface - in other words very hard work at the hottest place on earth,
By 1939 he was in mid 60's with deteriorating health issues and to follow quartz veins he'd had to go deeper and needed more people. He had the money to finance a modest mine expansion but the problem was the war had soaked up any spare people so he walked off the lease. He died about a decade later.

The lease lay dormant for 10 years before it was taken up again by a well known mining company and sinking the mine further produced several million pounds and the dollars a year net profit from 1950 to 2009. Then someone decided t0 look at how much gold was in the tailings, For a $250 million dollar investment in a large tailings processing plant there was $27 BILLION dollars worth of gold to be recovered.

As for any gold, as a kid SWMBO wore a gold bangle made from gold from the mine, which had to be cut off her arm when she had her wisdom teeth out as a teenager. Her mum (my MIL) had the cut bracelet melted down to make a few bibs and bibs for her granddaughters - SWMBO did not get any. When MIL passed away a few years back MIL left all her jewellery to SWMBO and amongst that lot there was a pearl ring that belonged to her grandmother which apparently was made with gold from the mine. She wears it every day.

Bob

That is such a lovely, emotional story full of pathos.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Bob

That is such a lovely, emotional story full of pathos.

Regards
Paul

Yeah or just sour grapes
OTOH, if SWMBO's grandpa has made a fortune from the mine the chances of me meeting SWMBO as a teacher at a country high school would have been close to zero.

Originally Posted by BobL

In 1982 I read a Time Magazine article that said the world was going to run out of copper by 1994, and Oil by 2000. Calculations were based on "known" reserves. ...

Those articles per-date 1982 and usually involved a "noted scientist" who took the then known ore reserves and divided it by the then current world usage and produced a finite date when that commodity would be exhausted. Commodity traders assisted with the publicity - it stirred interest and sales.

Interestingly, economists generally got a lot less excited by these doomsday prophets. They had a simple little formular:
S = f(P)
Supply is a function of price. Increase the price and previously uneconomic mines become profitable, abandoned mines can be re-opened, existing mines can be extended, tailings can be reworked, recycling becomes more attractive, substitutes get invented, etc.

Back in the late 1970's Saudi oil minister, Sheik Zaki Yamani, as head of OPEC, unilaterally raised the price of oil and caused the first oil shock. Governments were outraged; French President de Gaulle was particularly affronted and vocal - "... holding the world to ransom when you just pump the stuff out of the ground." Yamani's response was: "You are absolutely correct, Monsieur President, and we have a special deal for France. We will sell you unlimited quantities of oil at exactly the same price that you sell us mineral water."

The price of oil has changed a little since then.

I remember a lecturer i once had.(1985).
He said, ask me when oil will run out. So, we asked. He said 20 years.
He said, ask how i know. So, we asked...
He said, in Warsaw uni, in 1930, they told me that oil would run out in 20 years. In 1950, in the us, they told me oil would run out in 20 years. In (somewhere), in 1970, they said oil would run out in 20 years.
So it is clear, everyone agrees that oil will run out in 20 years...

Originally Posted by russ57

I remember a lecturer i once had.(1985).
He said, ask me when oil will run out. So, we asked. He said 20 years.
He said, ask how i know. So, we asked...
He said, in Warsaw uni, in 1930, they told me that oil would run out in 20 years. In 1950, in the us, they told me oil would run out in 20 years. In (somewhere), in 1970, they said oil would run out in 20 years.
So it is clear, everyone agrees that oil will run out in 20 years...

Fusion is the same.

Many metals can extracted from seawater (just need cheap energy - Fusion right??) , and apart from oil and gas theres 70% of worlds crust the has not really been looked at for minerals.

A few years ago I had dinner with a Texan oil engineer and his wife. We discussed oil, naturally. There is a near infinite quantity - its only the matter of price to extract it.

At $2 a litre, no so much left, at $20 a litre, plenty.

Curiously I was interested in ethanol/methanol production. Turns out Manildra here is one of the very biggest. A casual chat with them revealed they are more than able and capable of producing as much ethanol as needed at an energy price point BELOW fossil fuels right now.

It would be curious to know what the future holds.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

A few years ago I had dinner with a Texan oil engineer and his wife. We discussed oil, naturally. There is a near infinite quantity - its only the matter of price to extract it.

At $2 a litre, no so much left, at $20 a litre, plenty.

Curiously I was interested in ethanol/methanol production. Turns out Manildra here is one of the very biggest. A casual chat with them revealed they are more than able and capable of producing as much ethanol as needed at an energy price point BELOW fossil fuels right now.

It would be curious to know what the future holds.

It would be interesting to know how much wheat would be needed to replace Austraiia's petrol using ethanol.
My understanding is that on world wide scale to replace liquid fossil fuels fossil fuels the limit is the amount of water and space required to grow the crops and leave enough left over the grow crops for food.
Crops like corn use huge amounts of water.

I was also amused by Mandrila's clim "GMO-free wheat as feedstock", does it really matter?

It is generally agreed that the fuel from crops idea often proposed is not feasible at all. The only reason NSW mandated 10% was because Manildra lobbied the government and convinced them that Manildra would make a ton of money and therefore it was a good idea. The tin pot refinery they have at Nowra couldn't even be considered to produce more than a trickle of Ethanol that would be required if a major move to synthetic fuels was made.