Siso

France exporting over 15GW at the moment, must not be much sun or wind. France | App | Electricity Maps

He was put on a lot of the radio stations in SA for quite a few years as well

Talking to someone the other days who's lad is pretty up in moto x. The electric bikes smash the equivalent horse power 250 class. No gear changes and the torque is constant all through the rev range.

We had a couple put in a local town. Everyone winged about how bad it was going to be including me. Once everyone got use to it, it was great. Adelaide has the Britannia roundabout that was a nightmare. Parklands association wouldn't let them have anymore land for a set of lights, so know there are 2 round abouts and still a nightmare Probably OK once you get used to it unless you are there when someone isn't. Klaipeda, Lithuania below, 200 m across, not much fun changing lanes as you go around in peak hour when you don't really know where you are going, especially when everyone drives on the wrong side of the road.( the right side) Locals seem to handle it ok though.

I think SA is it 77% but it hangs of interconnectors from Victoria that can handle its whole demands a lot of the time. Bit like Germany hanging off France and Sweden. SA probably has the smallest demand in the country(maybe Tassie) 1/4 of the size of Vic, NSW and Qld. I think Australia is about 40%. We are just seeing market notices for NSW from AEMO directing plant to start for grid stability (https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2025/10/20oct-nsw-systemstrength/) SA has had that for a few years. Guess who pays for that. The generator doesn't do this for free. Another hidden cost for the cheapest form of electricity. Massive coal mines are normally in one place for several GW's of generation not visible in every direction as far as the eye can see. I agree, the odd windfarm here and there looks ok but it is getting out of control. Went to the Ignalina nuclear plant for a look when I was overseas. You didn't even know it was there except for the large pipes on the side of the road (probably used for district heating until you were at the front gate.(no cooling tower) This plant was designed for 4.5 GW's of electricity. (only 3 was finished) It was nestled in the trees. 3 GW is about 600 5 MW wind turbines(136m tower, 150m + rotor) x 2.5 for the capacity factor. (1400) plus whatever you need for the wind droughts etc.

There is no such thing as free power!

I have no problem with windfarms, worked on them for over 10 years. People in the district are just sick of them being on every hill in every direction you look. Like city people wing when high rises go up next door. And we are doing this as an experiment. No one has ever run a grid the size of Australia's on weather dependent generation before. (Australia only has about 7% traditional hydro and unlikely to get more. Some turbines are easily intergrated into a grid. Once you get above 40% the problem start. Good for saving fuel for GT's and coal powered stations.

Windmills aren't sitting on 150m towers with 162m rotor. They are generally only 30 feet high. Windmills are also not built in large numbers over every hill in site. (unless you live in a city). Not remotely the same thing.

I am talking MW turbines, not toys , pretty sure it is about votes. The majority of people that vote for them live in the citys so they should put up with them. Copenhagen have them everywhere you look around the city. The one in London looks pretty cool. The main word in the last sentence is one. The odd windfarm strewn around the place was OK, but it is just getting out of control. People live in the country to get away from all the industry and ugly built up city views. To do this they make sacrifices like no public transport, 100Km to the closest services SA etc. I came over a hill in the midnorth of SA last Wednesday morning and there was 500MWs of wind in front of me and not one was turning.

If the winfarms/solarfarms are so good why not lobby to put them in city parklands like they do over seas. Less transmission because they are in they major load centres. common sense really. Not much around at the moment.

They are putting them on cropping land in SA at the moment. https://community.akayshaenergy.com/brinkworth-bess Similar thing happened in Goyder wind farm. The council listened to the rate payers and said no. State government overrode the decision. All windfarms go through the state government now. Not one windfarm visible from Adelaide though. They want to build a high building off North terrace but people are trying to stop it. Hypocrites! They probably will though, more votes in the cities for city minded politicians.

I think everyone has biases here, everyone can see it but themselves.

I think we are going to need oil for a long time. We still need oils for lubrication and the big one being plastic. Someone at works has a Tesla (probably the fastest accelerating thing I have been in on the ground). It has a lot of plastic in it. I believe tyres are made from oil now as well. These things will probably get more expensive as the waste products (petrol etc)will need to be pumped back down the holes in the ground instead of being processed and distributed in the atmosphere.

There was a bumper sticker around in the 90"s. "Save the planet, become extinct"

Not sure it will get cheaper.

I agree, the accessibility of troughs at windmills would increase there grazing areas greatly

driving back from Bathurst to SA one night it started to rain., all the roos came on to the road to drink the water. Pulled over and rolled the swags out.

Gina also employs 1000's of Australians in well paying jobs with world class environmental and workplace standards. Brings export dollars into the country as well. Its not her fault she is smart enough to work a system that is governed by our week minded governments. twiggy Forrest does the same playing the government subsidies on the whole hydrogen farce. Nothing illegal.

The loss of jobs is a furphy.. to maintain a renewable system will require as many if not more jobs, and hthe benefit is it will spread it more evenly across the regions as by definition, renwble generation will have to be more distributed, and it has to be maintained. I have spent quite some time in the nuclear generation industry and the amount of people needed to run a nuclear plant isn't what it used to be. Bring in SMRs - and the maintenance is a whole lot less. No one is going in every day and touchign the reactor.. it is the usual stuff like turbines, pumps, etc that are being maintained. That is the same for a coal or nuclear plant. Control systems are far better when they were, and telemetry is deployed a lot more than it was. A lot of the extrra people requied to run a nuclear plant over a coal plant are the helath and safety personnel and much higher levels of security (there is a separate nuclear power police force or something like that in the UK, and they are virtually anti-terrorist units). I wasn't talking about jobs in the energy sector. Jobs that come from having reliable, affordable electricity. Jobs like value adding to our mining industry which would make it more environmentally friendly. exporting ore overseas and the coking coal to process it on large oil burning ships is not good for the environment, especially when part of the volume in that ore is waste. I know NP is expensive but it is plant that will last potentially 80 years with good maintenance. EPR's aren't the most economical to build but there are others that will get cheaper as more are built. Can anyone tell us what the price of a grid run on weather dependent intermittenents (Aust only has about 7% conventional hydro) plus all the extras will costs, storage etc. No-one actual knows because no-one has done it before. Do we really want to put all our eggs in one basket? Germany pushes up the price of Sweden's power so it looks like they aren't going to build another interconnector. Australia has no France, Sweden or Norway to help us out if it fails. Can the last person out turn out the lights (if they are working)- France exporting about 12GW at the moment https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/swedish-government-says-no-new-power-cable-germany-2024-06-14/ https://www.ft.com/content/f0b621a1-54f2-49fc-acc1-a660e9131740 https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR/72h/hourly

We've been over all that before.😑

I do believe in climate change and something needs to be done about. I also believe Australia's contribution is so little we should address it in a sensible way instead of sending the country broke. Being able to mine and process material as close to the mining operation is good for climate change. Sending the raw material overseas on dirty bunker oil burning ships for processing because of the unreliability and cost of the electricity here helps nobody. Australia has some of the best environmental and workplace laws anywhere. Unfortunately that increase cost so we need an abundant source of low carbon, cheap reliable electricity. Intermittent generation is cheap to produce when it is there but extremely expensive when its not. before you say it, Is NP expensive in the long term. Have a look at open Nem. If we could smash the black and brown line at the bottom, the Intermittents and conventional hydro can handle the rest with minimal extra transmission than what we have now, minimal artificial inertia, and some decent pumped hydro. Win win. Why is NP expected to be self sufficient when the current plan is getting subsidised continually. LGC's, CIS, etc etc. Open Electricity: NEM https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-needs-to-quadruple-its-number-of-wind-farms-this-year-none-have-been-funded-20250919-p5mwfc.html

We are already subsidising intermittent generation, GT's running for inetia, syn cons, transmission for the dispersed generation and loss of industry(jobs for our kids)

NP has pretty well the same water use as a coal plant. Used fuel can be managed and it will get easier as technology improves. Tidal has been tries in Australia and has not been very successful a tide power generator sunk off the coast of adelaide https://adelaideaz.com/articles/wave-energy-generator-becomes-an-artificial-reef-after-sinking-off-carrickalinga--south-of-adelaide_copy Solar is good during the day, gets really expensive at night-storage artificial inertia. We import battery, solar panels, wind turbines. One thing about NP is we pretty well know the supply chains for the fuel and you need so little you can keep years in a small storage area. Unused nuclear fuel is harmless (would not eat it) and a fuel pellet can be held in your hand. we know some of the supply chains for minerals needed in weather dependent renewables is not really ideal, both environmentally and worker safety. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-24/cobalt-mining-in-the-congo-green-energy/100802588

Reneweconomy isn't really an unbiased source when it comes to NP. Its like getting Coal Australia to comment on Renewables. Building NPP has come to a bit of a standstill because of the bad publicity of Chernobyl and Fukushima but as more information is becoming available more is starting to happen. China are developing new NP which will be a large step forward. UK have started the process of building Sizewell C which is going to comprise 2 x 1750MW EPR reactors. Surprising as it is the same type as Hinkley. Canada have started building some 300MW BWRs. France is planning to build more to replace their aging fleet. Sweden are in the process of lifting their as is Denmark. Sweden is sick of Germany affecting the price in the south of country especially since they shut down all their low carbon synchronous generation The remaining unit at Three Mile island is looking at restarting and there is talk of Indian Point in New York restarting as well. Momentum is building. Australia use to have some of the cheapest electricity in the world and know it is getting towards the most expensive. This is not including the billions of dollars the government is throwing at it. Some more last weekend for the capacity investment scheme. We may or may not be being left behind. Do we really want all our eggs in one basket with weather dependent intermittent generation when no-one in the world has done it? .

Love pumped hydro. Unfortunately the one planned for SA wasn't profitable enough https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/cultana-pumped-hydro-energy-storage-project-phase-2/