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The electric hot water that is installed now is generally not the old-fashioned resistive hot water system, but heat pump hot water systems. These systems are very energy efficient compared to resistive electric or gas. I believe there are substantial rebates for upgrading to a heat pump, so probably worth looking into.

But that's what the Vic Gov't want. We have a gas hot water system, had it for 45 years. Within a couple of years we'll be required to replace it with electric.

A lot of counties don't have the sun and wind we have there's also tidal which works every day with the tide going IN OR OUT. When you put steam into the equation it's less efficient and when failure happens it's a sudden Loss of a Large amount and May take ages to fix . It is only efficient at near full output and can't be varied quickly. Brand NEW coal Plant is costly. Carbon Capture and storage is a Myth. Our demand pattern has changed. Most people run airconditioning and have a fair bit of refrigeration. Heating water directly by electricity (Elements) is an expensive way of doing it. Solar by concentration can Produce very HIGH temperatures. That's helpful for specialised processes, yet to be realised. No one can deprive you of solar. Yet. Nev

Like I said, inverter based systems have a lot more to go wrong. Ask Spain. There won't be much on the news about it as it is not what the world wants to hear. No one really heard what happened in SA wasn't publicised either. I had to look at the AEMO report to find out the details. We heard little about it and I was working on a windfarm (not one of the ones that tripped off) when there was a lot of the old steam engines on the grid there was enough inertia to react to load changes. Worked for many years. I am not a fan of coal. As far as underutilised plant, yep the lines may be underutilised in the early morning periods. With intermittent generation they may be underutilised for weeks at a time. The underutisation of coal has been bought in because of the weather dependent intermittent parasitic generation we have put on the grid. We still need it and they still need to make money. Intermittent generation makes power more expensive. Cheap when its running, really expensive when its not. No one said it was just a flick of the pen to extend the life of a NPP but it has been done and obviously economic to do so. Newer plants should be easier, especially if they have 80 years in mind. Is 600 million really expensive for a large plant with potentially a large capacity factor. The windfarm I was on and cost $400 million for 111MW with a capcity factor of somewhere between 29 and 33% 15 years ago. All the large tech companys are looking at using np power. Even looking at restart the remaining TMI reactor. A close on 50 year plant. No one is saying intermittent generation shouldn't be tried but making stupid targets and throwing a heap of tax payers money towards it is not the way to do it. Are you willing to back Australia s future on this. We can see what is happening in the UK and Germany. UK is importing 1000's of tonnes of woodchips from America so they can say they don't use coal anymore. How stupid and ungreen is that . They are also paying windfarms for not being able to get the power on the grid. Is this how the CIS is going to work in Australia. At least they have some NP and building more. The funny thing is Australia has no hope of getting to its targets. We are at currently 40 % after 15 years and want to get to 80% in 2035. The second 40% is going to be a lot harder because of the extra storage and grid infrastructure that is needed. France exporting approx 12 GW at the moment @ 52g CO2/kg Germany 448gCO2/kg UK 218gCO2/kW

Nothing other than Bull$#!t. let's Leavitt at that. It's her Job. Nev

Any "rock from space" is unconsolidated material from the formation of our solar system. It has to be 4.06 billion year old. Such a rock simply cannot be only 2 million years old. Did the video have the commonly heard narrator? Just another bit of AI-created clickbait it is did.

Consider yourself lucky that you do have rain. The paddocks around my place are bare because there has been no useful rain. Downpours from storm cells don't cut it. I'm lucky that I have a bore for a regular water supply, and a small rainwater storage for drinking water. A neighbour has just had to truck in water for domestic use.

Probably because somebody picked it up to have a look at it.

Not looking forward to being under the metal roof at the shed tomorrow. The thunderous rain on the roof on Monday made talking near impossible. Tomorrow will be fine and 34°.

Catering for brief system underutilisation does not equal overcapitalisation. The old capacitor banks are stoll doing their job. Old style mecanical system inertia (to maintain 50 cps system synchronisation) is now being replaced by fast electronic system synchronisation. I know which one is fastest to respond to sudden load changes. Hint:- not the old steam engines!

Trump WILL fix it. So HE claims and promises. TALK is CHEAP. Nev

Be hard to make little concrete shoes for a fish

Not sure if it’s true yet, but a YouTube vid I got yesterday was about human dna on a 2 million year old rok from space. Maybe we are all immigrants to this 3rd rock from the sun. That would make us as bad as those planet destroying visitors in alien movies we watch.👽

Apols was tapping the above on a train and had to end it quickly.. Add @nomadpete, @rgmwa @kgwilson and others to competently addressing the issues..

The country of 28m has to pay for the existing infrastructure. The older the infrastructure, the more maintenance, and eventually replacement (in segments) is required, And of course, as the population expands, the network has to expand with it. I would love to see the transmission and distribution maintenance and upgrade budget over the years to compare incremental upgrading/installing upgrades to handle renewables over a similar period Rome, after all, wasn't built in a day, The stats provided by @octave already bear out the major cost of your bill is infrastructure, so it would be interesting to compare that cost to a new build and its projected costs over time. You also speak of this under-utilisation of capacity - which is not quire accurate. I am sure there are times the grid is underutilised - for example, around 3am Easternm - this would be factored into the price you pay. All utilities are underutilised at some stage. Yet it is even more expensive with coal, as you have to keep those furnaces burning.. That is under utilisation. I think what you mean and I may have misread it - the cost of writing off the capital before the end of its useful life. Yes, that is a cost, however it is borne from continual investment in obsolete technology. And isn't the grid being upgraded for renewables, and transitioning rather than abruptly stopping legacy network infrastructure? Sounds like they are trying to make the transition (as oppose to switching) from legacy to upgraded grid as cost efficient as possible. But this sort of thing happens anyway, as even with legacy infrastructure, components time expire, become obsolete and are replaced (sometimes before their useful life if the benefits of replacement technology can provide a quicker economic return). Then there's the extensions to nuclear plants. This is not a simple visit from the NRC or NII (as it was called then), a few patch jobs and biob's your uncle. I was involved in a two life extensions (not the whole thing). They are years in the planning and delivery and are major refubrishment programs. Both cost well above USD$600m and that was (jeepers!) 25 years ago. Typically, plants have two generation facilities - and that well above $600m was for each facilitiy (which is why they do one at a time). So, yeah, you can get life extensions, but they don't come cheap and are still full of risks to budget, timelines, etc. Thee was mention of it's great if one can afford the subsidies for renewables.. I am not even sure what the issue is here. Virtually all new nuclear builds, at least in the Western word are subsidised or guaranteed one way or another. The LNP caolitiion's plan was to significantly subsidise the new builds in Australia. Great if it can be afforded. Hinkley Point and Sizewell C - Government guaranteed and guarateed price post commissioning, indexed, which are eye watering. Have a look at tax credits, government grants, loan guarantees, retail bill levies, etc that all prop up the industry in these countries.. As you say, great if you can afford it.. Obviously it can be afforded. Lastly, no other country has relied on intermittent generation? No one had done much more than jump of a tree or a cliff,yet now, through technology, people fly safely. What sort of argument is that? It hasn't been done before, let's not do it? Is that really your argument. Everything else @octave has dealt with competently. Keep investing in coal - lets see where you are in 20 years time.

Trumps social media postings. It has been reported that in a five hour period one recent evening, Trump made 160 posts on social media. There are 300 minutes in 5 hours. That means he created and posted something just aboug every two minutes. How long does it take you to create a short post and upload it here? And the grammer, spelling and syntax of his posts are free of errors in those areas. This makwes me think that either Trump has a team of writers, or is using AI to generate the content.

Trump is starting to realise HE is not going to live for ever. Nev

If your doctor requests that you have some sort of test done, say a blood test to check cholesterol, do you have the test, but not ask the doctor for the results? You still want to hear that, don't you, even if the doctor tells you that things are OK? Trump keeps saying that he doesn't know the results of his MRI. That in itself is not normal. Also, Trump's apparent ignoring of his physical condition runs counter to a normal person's consideration of one's mortality. Does Trump think that he will never die?

A very small cohort of members are not sick of it.

This bloke has some very informative videos regarding all things nuclear and energy. Illinois EnergyProf https://www.youtube.com/@illinoisenergyprof6878

Still Bigger than a Birds. Nev.

At this stage it might Just as well Be an ordinary ICE car. They ARE NOT Cheap. Nev

Sychronisation is an issue with any grid AC system. We should reduce reliance on a Grid. Distance equals Losses, cost and unreliability. Nev

The smart thing would be build some NPP and don't replace the intermittent generators that aren't needed or at least look at it without the 1970's mindset and an open mind. That is like saying if you by a car that is a lemon, lets go back to riding a horse. I wasn't a fan until I did some research. You are right it is very complex, but having a lot inverters with their high frequency switching is jut another issue the grid that has to deal with. The WTGs I use to work on had a DFIG generator (really smart bit of gear but the person who thought of it must have ben smoking good gear.) which has a converter on the rotor side of the generator. The filter capacitors use to shift there rating and would stop the turbine. In the end there was a fix but it tripled the amount of caps. Just goes to show how many parts of an inverter based system can go wrong verses a magnet spinning in a coil of wire, A few large passive capacitor banks and some switch gear. This link goes to some more inverter based issues although I believe this was caused by human error. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-23/connection-issue-causes-lights-to-flicker-across-sa/101176004 chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/market_notices_and_events/power_system_incident_reports/2022/south-australia-power-system-oscillations.pdf?la=en