Thread: Future of the Australian Electricity Market

Originally Posted by yvan

Interesting indeed, although the finer details of the chemistry involved lost me completely!
The scaling up into a practical process is the key and the sort of numbers involved are pretty staggering:

Processing 10Gt of CO2 would result in "....the production of over 20 Gt of solids annually.." and "...landfill disposal of 10 Gt of carbonate solids will require about 6.8 km3 (6.8 billion m3) of space per year..."

Which begs the question of how big would the processing plant(s) have to be and at what cost, not to mention the additional costs of the disposal of these solids!

Theoretically feasible but, on the basis of the numbers used, unachievable. Back to the drawing board methinks!

This is pretty real, isn't it.

The numbers boggle ones mind.

It solidifies to me the absolute horror we have created. It may get to a point where we have NO CHOICE but to start driving these extreme solutions to fruition.

I saved the paper so I can give it a good read. It felt extremely important.

If 10Gt of CO2 makes 6.8m3 of carbonite, then we need to multiply this by FOUR (rounding it).

That is ~27 cubic KILOMETERS of CO2 we are thumping into the atmosphere every year and have done so for many years. YIKESSSSS!!!!

I don't think, on first read, that disposing of carbonite in the ocean is a problem. Seashells and the White Cliffs of England are a good example of mass carbonite. I don't believe it causes any harm... the article states (I think) that the lowering of acidification caused by the CO2 in the water is a zillion times more important.


I'm very concerned by what humans have done to the planet. I think, as woodworkers, that we see and know that we must live in balanced harmony, otherwise we get The Lorax.

What is this carbonite that you talk about, woodPixel? Wikipedia is not helpful:
Carbonite - Wikipedia

If I remember my schoolboy chemistry properly, the white cliffs of Dover and sea shells are both composed of calcium carbonate, as is limestone and marble, as favoured by Michaelangelo. As far as I know, limestone is not a problem in the oceans but carbon dioxide certainly is. CO2 disolved in water forms carbonic acid which attacks calcium carbonate. It is already harming shellfish and crustaceons:
Covering Ocean Acidification: Chemistry and Considerations >> Yale Climate Connections

Carbonite! Haha! silly me, thats Star Wars and what Han Solo was encased in

Carbonate!

Yes carbonate

Originally Posted by woodPixel

This is pretty real, isn't it.

The numbers boggle ones mind.

It solidifies to me the absolute horror we have created. It may get to a point where we have NO CHOICE but to start driving these extreme solutions to fruition.

I saved the paper so I can give it a good read. It felt extremely important.

If 10Gt of CO2 makes 6.8m3 of carbonite, then we need to multiply this by FOUR (rounding it)..

What is the "m"

If it's metres then . . . . . .

10Gt/6.8m^3 has a density of about 1 Gt/m^3 OR 1 Tkg/m^3, which is a about a million time more than the supposed density of the back hole in the centre of our galaxy.

Originally Posted by BobL

What is the "m"

If it's metres then . . . . . .

10Gt/6.8m^3 has a density of about 1 Gt/m^3 OR 1 Tkg/m^3, which is a about a million time more than the supposed density of the back hole in the centre of our galaxy.

Bob

looking back at Yvan's original post (#601) it looks as though we have not found a substance heavier than Gidgee and can attribute it to a typo: It should read 6.8Km³. Does that make it a bit less dense?

Regards
Paul

m is the international standard symbol for Mystery.

Its an arbitrary volume, describing mindboggling volumes outside the ken of peons, very similar in usage to the more commonly known Australian measurement of "Fuk Ton".



Yes, Km

Andrew "twiggy" Forrest has come out and said,

" Mr Forrest said the fossil fuel industry has highly effective campaigns to promote hydrogen made by burning coal and gas as clean, when “it is in fact highly polluting and therefore dangerous to humanity”.“The fossil fuel industry must stop greenwashing,” he said.
He was concerned research released this week shows four out of five Australians do not realise “clean hydrogen” spruiked by the industry, and as defined by the federal government, can be made from fossil fuels and contentious carbon capture and storage technology. "

It pretty well sums up the state of the nation in their understanding of H2's place in the energy mix (subscribers to this thread excepted) and is part of an address he made in Barcelona (I don't know why he had to go there to speak) and you can see more here.

Forrest flays fossil fuel ‘greenwashing’ (msn.com)

Regards
Paul

Mr. Forrest finally said what is widely known, rarely discussed though used for political purposes by a floundering industry and politicians. The UK is attempting to make Hydrogen a main stream source of energy as I pointed out above but how I have not looked at the production methods.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Andrew "twiggy" Forrest has come out and said,

" Mr Forrest said the fossil fuel industry has highly effective campaigns to promote hydrogen made by burning coal and gas as clean, when “it is in fact highly polluting and therefore dangerous to humanity”.“The fossil fuel industry must stop greenwashing,” he said.
He was concerned research released this week shows four out of five Australians do not realise “clean hydrogen” spruiked by the industry, and as defined by the federal government, can be made from fossil fuels and contentious carbon capture and storage technology. "

It pretty well sums up the state of the nation in their understanding of H2's place in the energy mix (subscribers to this thread excepted)

To quote a Monty Python.... "Say no more, say no more!"

Off to vote... say no more, say no more...

Over the course of the last few months several regular posters to this thread have noted how the spot price has been steadily increasing. Only a percentage of the available power is sold on the spot market as much of it is under contract. The purpose of contracts are to safeguard against spikes in price and to provide stability for pricing. However, at some point the contracts come up for renewal and the spot market will provide indication of where prices are going. I turned up this article today, which seems to indicate the outgoing government held off on the bad news ofelectricity prices about to rise because of the election. Previous spruiking of lower market prices would have floundered.

Coalition delayed news that electricity prices are set to rise until after federal election (msn.com)

Regular readers of this thread will not be as surprised by the forecast as many others. It really needs the incoming government to knuckledown on this issue as a matter of extreme priority.

Regards
Paul

I noticed the headline increase in the Victorian default offer is '5%'. However the fine print suggests ausnet customers can look forward to a 10% rise, and another distributor only 1%.
Hard to understand how that is driven by the wholesale prices.
(and yes, i am an ausnet customer, struggling to understand why my prices should be so much higher than a customer only a few ks away...)

Originally Posted by russ57

I noticed the headline increase in the Victorian default offer is '5%'. However the fine print suggests ausnet customers can look forward to a 10% rise, and another distributor only 1%.
Hard to understand how that is driven by the wholesale prices.
(and yes, i am an ausnet customer, struggling to understand why my prices should be so much higher than a customer only a few ks away...)

Russ

I am not familiar with this side of the market and where I live in country Queensland there is a choice of one retailler only. What I would suggest is that in your case the retaillers in question have contracts spanning widely different time spans. If your supplier (ausnet) had only just re-negotiated it may well be quite elevated compared to somebody else as that contract will be at a price a good deal higher than it was twelve months ago for example. However, this is just conjecture by me. I don't know how easily you can chop and changesuppliers down there in VIC.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by russ57

I noticed the headline increase in the Victorian default offer is '5%'. However the fine print suggests ausnet customers can look forward to a 10% rise, and another distributor only 1%.
Hard to understand how that is driven by the wholesale prices.
(and yes, i am an ausnet customer, struggling to understand why my prices should be so much higher than a customer only a few ks away...)

Consumers tend to think of pricing in terms of cost plus.

Marketers think in terms of what the market will bear.

Ausnet is the distributor.. As i understand it, any retailer can offer to any customer, regardless of the distributor, and they pay the distribution network charges.
The default offers seem to take account of the differing distribution costs.
Gold plated network was a phrase thrown around for a while. Unfortunately we don't get gold plated service. Received $90 rebate so far this calendar year for unplanned outages. (and i live in the suburbs of Melbourne not sone remote community...)