Siso

You are correct, the transmission system is always being upgraded, but not the huge amount new transmission that is having to be built. As far as it not mattering if a solar farm is underutilised, the generation is a very small part. We have the transmission line that was built into a remote place at the place of the farm. The backup for the plant when its not running. The GT running at min gen for inertia , the tranmission size voltage regulators hanging of some of the poles/wires. Intermittents are the cheapest form of new electricity generation, it is just all the extras that makes it expensive.

Yep, Australia isn't Pakistan. The point I am making is the mount of spillage that is happening already in SA during high intermittent times and the amount of gas and coal(from Vic) that we are using when there is not much intermittent gen. The spillage is going to get worse as the amount of intermittent farms increase. Someone is going to have to pay for this. Have a look at how much the Max spot price for electricity has risen in the last 10 years. The price has gone from being variable with the demand to being volatile. This raises uncertainty with the retailers, so to cover themselves they bang the price up. https://wattclarity.com.au/other-resources/glossary/market-price-cap/

Yep and all the pacific islands were supposed to be under water by now. It is a serious situation, but Australia shutting itself down is going to make no difference. Maybe all these stop oil protesters need to head to China or India and blocking the roads over there to make some impact. China and India are pushing farwrd with NP as well as renewables. India is loading fuel into its first fast reactor. Fast reactors have the potential to use the long lived part of the spent fuel from light water reactors.https://theprint.in/science/india-is-building-a-500-mwe-reactor-thatll-breed-more-nuclear-fuel-that-itll-consume-how-it-works/2770409/ https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/fuel-loading-begins-at-indian-fast-breeder-reactor Bit of reading about importing woodchips to make electricty in UK https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/drax-subsidies/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/the-uks-largest-single-source-of-co2-emissions-is-a-wood-burning-power-station/

As you can see in the screenshot, we could double the intermittent generation and it still wouldn't be enough. This would more than double the spillage shown in the article. Once storage is full, there is nowhere to put it. The cost of climate change, while I believe it is happening I think the rate of change is grossly exaggerated. remember old mate saying The dams will never fill up again- Tim Flannery. And as said before, Australia cuts it carbon emissions tomorrow it will make no difference. I just want it fixed in a sustainable way, not sending the country broke. Indonesia have heaps of coal, they are looking at NP. They have been looking into it for some years. Sensible I reckon for our close neighbor. https://jakartaglobe.id/business/indonesia-plans-first-nuclear-power-plant-by-2034-eyes-partnerships-with-russia-and-canada

I do my own maintenance and servicing. Parts are a small part. One thing I have noticed with my son being a mechanic is the change it out mindset. Air filters being an example. No one checks the condition of consumables, they are just changed every service.

No, I think it will be less though in the long run. Maybe not for me but definitely my kids. It will also be better for industry. Paying large industry to cut back production as a part of energy security seems a bit backwards. I feel we don't look into the future enough. That is one thing China has going for it. They have a multi decade plan and pretty well stick to it. Our governments are only looking at now. Easy just to blame previous governments. Just I trade off. Still rather what we have, otherwise we wouldn't be able to have these discussions as easily if at all. I do definitely think there is a place for intermittent generation, just not at the expense of the generators that can run every day, 24 hour a day. If you have a look at open NEM there is always a black and brown line at the bottom with the intermittent swinging wildly above. It would be good if we could wipe that out with some synchronous generation. I have provided a link to a page that shows the " spillage" that SA already has and will get worse as the penetration of renewables increase. He calls it dumping. Someone will be paying for this spillage. While the graph looks pretty good in the article as far as renewable coverage, We are going to have to remember we are going to have times like the screenshot from June this year.(SA grid) https://substack.com/inbox/post/178755915 Open nem.pdf

I think you will find the fuel economy is pretty good for a larger car, especially around town. Still take some time to pay back the monetary difference of the fuel but over the buy price.

Notice with price dropping they only talk about the wholesale price of electricty, not the actual price to consumers which includes all the extra infrastructure, transmission, syncons etc

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

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

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

We drove around with some friends in Europe (Toyota Corolla over there, Rav here) and I was really impressed with the performance for a car that size. 130KM/h highways and it did it easily and had the power to get past other cars no worries. Probably not the best for long range but around the local area they are good. A good compromise.

Who cares about wholesale except for lying politicians, I know I certainly don't. What matters is what is delivered to the consumer! Iberian black out - Event 4 and 5 on the pdf. While there was some unusual things happening on the grid, looks like the non synchronous generation started falling over first. Like the 2016 SA blackout when we lost a couple of transmission lines. Breakers tripped and reclosed as is supposed to happen. 450MW of wind saw too many grid drops in a certain amount of time and shut down. Vic interconnector couldn't keep up and tripped and that was it. see the AEMO report, pge 6 for the summary I think chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://d1n1o4zeyfu21r.cloudfront.net/WEB_Incident_%2028A_SpanishPeninsularElectricalSystem_18june25.pdf

I am considering a hybrid. Its not that I can't make up my mind. Its that the distance we live from our capital city, a full electric car would be marginal on range. I don't like sitting around a city waiting or looking for a place to but an extra 100km worth of power in my car. Different people have different needs.

Please don't speak for me. Would have been better if you said "I" or maybe "some of us".

Exactly my point. These scientist mislead the government into believing power would be $275 cheaper. We could also say NP is unsafe because the OLD CHERNOBYL,FUKASHIMA and THREE MILE ISLAND "years ago". Accidents that would not happen today! Also not science based. Unless of course old Albo just flat out lied to the Australian people, your choice. Remember the gas and oil prices spiked and than came down again when the Ukraine war started. What else have they got wrong? Bit like the NPP only last 30 years. May help the system but takes people out of paying for infrastructure making the bills more expensive for those that can't afford them or are paying most of there income on rent already. And they say that fossil fuels are subsidised.

Batterys paid for by subsidies, all well and good if you can afford it. Catastrophic if you can't! And there is a lot more people around that can't even buy a house let alone worry about solar and batterys!

If the whole grid is running on several synchronous generation it gets the capacity factor up and they aren't underutilised. If it needs to ramp quickly every plant just needs to change a little bit and the system load follows quickly. It also has a large amount of inertia. Obviously they can ramp back at night as has been done for many years with controled loads like hot water.. Intermittent generation can't ramp up if there is no extra wind or sun. This is where the batterys come into it as long as they have charge and the people that trade the electricity haven't made a wrong call and emptied them previously. Remember the companys that generate our powers number 1 priority is to make money, not to keep power on to our homes and workplaces. There is definitely a place for batterys in a modern grid for sure as there is for some intermittent generators. We also need to remember these people that are selling this type of grid also convinced the government that the power was going to $275 cheaper. Definitely not dearer. 37% this year I heard. Luckily I have solar and don't feel it yet. I still standby "No-one anywhere in the world has run a large grid on intermittent weather dependent generation." Australia is running an experiment. It may work but at what cost and what help will it do to the environment.(make absolutely no difference.) We saw what happened in Spain when a solar inverter started to fail and put stupid frequencys on the grid. Are we willing to risk it.

The new stuff is huge, 330KV, possibly 500kV- Very expensive to build to only be used at low capacity factors. Remember, underutilised equipment is expensive. You don't see Qantas just having aircraft sitting around. An intermittent grid is going to have a lot of plant "laying" around for that once or twice a year when needed.

I disagree- I disagree:-https://www.re-alliance.org.au/where_are_the_lines_to_be_built plus the transmission lines needed from each farm to the closest major line. all these projects will be over budget as well. This is all extra because of the intermittency of our new generation. But at least we are being told the actual electricity is the cheapest form of electricity generation. Just the extras that make it expensive. We can see the price of coal fired generation rise as the capacity factor decreases. Do you reckon the same thing will happen with the intermittent generation as the overbuild eats into their capacity factors. During the months of high generation we can expect these generators to bid higher prices as their CF decreases due to oversupply. There is only so much extra energy that can be stored. This will also change during the year, pushing up the price of stored energy. Basic economics.

The transmission is not already there. Easily information found.SA has completed energy connect to the NSW border. Still waiting for NSW to do its half. Hume link is still being built and every time its mentioned its about another cost blowout. Plus all the large transmission needed to connect the renewable energy zones to the major centres. A fair bit of local resistance is happening for this projects. Would fix a lot of it if they actually put some WTG's in and around the citys. These are just the ones I know of off the top of my head. I heard a figure of 10,000km. Not just the transmission. see Snowy 2 is up to 12 billion, started at 2 and they are talking it may reach 20 billion. Traditional hydro is not the same as run of the river hydro. I love pumped hydro but it is only storage and when its empty that it. I think someone is playing the system with sun cable to Asia. Is Twiggy Forrest involved?

Pumped hydro does not make electricty, Iceland → virtually 100% renewables, advanced grid- Geo thermal. While Australia has some it is not accessible easily Norway → >95% renewables- Huge amount of traditional hydro Uruguay → ~95% renewables, stable and wealthy by South American standards-Huge amount of traditional hydro for size of grid approx 1.5GW Portugal → frequently >80% monthly renewable generation- interconnected, small demand/grid- looks like Max demand of 6MW Scotland → >100% wind generation equivalent to demand- interconnected with the UK, Australia has only about 7% traditional Hydro. A country of 26 million people is going to have to pay and build the Transmission infrastructure. I stand by: No One has ever done what Australia is trying to do with weather dependent intermittent generation on a grid the size of Australia. Gen cost has very rubbery figures. Give NP a life of 30 years. not true and easily founnd not to be true. A lot of NPP are having life extensions to 60 years, no reason not to believe new builds won't last 80- 100 years. France exports a lot more than it imports. UK imports more than it exports. Saying a region makes enough energy to support itself is also misleading. have a look at open nem shot from June this year, We weren't doing any where near 70% intermittents in SA but the publicity says we are for the year. See energymaps

That's OK then, we should "usually" have electricity then. Check out the wind drought around April to June 2024. https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2024/06/13june-lowwind/ How much transmission are we going to have to build to Power Victoria from Queensland.

Denmark is not relevant for Australia. Australia has no France or Sweden. All these other countrys have small grids and are third world countrys. Would you like to live in Ethiopia or the Congo. I think not. Or there grids are majority conventional hydro. Australia has only 7% traditional hydro and not likely to get more. No One has ever done what Australia is trying to do with weather dependent intermittent generation on a grid the size of Australia. You are correct, we don't want coal, so the obvious answer is nuclear. We should start looking at it very seriously. We may have to work with coal again. Look how Germany is doing. France currently exporting approx. 12.5GW. Windy in UK, it is exporting 885MW to france and is exporting slightly more than it is importing exporting 3 importing 2

So where SA loses in having the cheapest form of energy, we will lose the savings in uderutilised infrastructure. We still dont know if it will work before the country goes broke. No one has ever built a grid on intermittent weather dependant renewables. It is criminal to even try when we have other proven options. Pity there wasnt a way to hold politicians to account for bad uninformed decisions they make while in power,