So soon after COP21 – This AFR piece is an entertaining must read for those of us following the South Australian expansion of wind farms and the Labor Government’s seeming expectation that somehow electricity would appear as if by magic to keep their grid viable. SA government in energy market crisis talks with industry, suppliers 14 Dec 2015
What could I say if I was asked to address this Adelaide “..crisis meeting of energy users and suppliers..” Lets start with; Our vital electricity grid has to be managed along principles of sound engineering based in solid science.
Our grids were designed to deliver cheap baseload electricity to consumers 24/7 regardless of wind, rain, hail and shine.
Despite what squadrons of Govt and Green experts might think; wind, rain, hail and shine will not deliver 24/7 reliable cheap electricity to the grid.
So to keep this short; if you have done something as unscientific as relying on the myth that wind can provide reliable grid power and you do not like the outcome. Then it might pay to do something else soundly based in science and engineering, for example talk with industry about keeping the Port Augusta coal fired generators working. Properly done that could assist to make grid electricity more reliable, affordable and less variable in cost.
Chairman Mal’s Innovation Nation –
It is probably a good thing he is also looking at relaxing the situation for enterprises that go broke, there is going to be a LOT of that going on.
( & cold crow for SA)
tom dundas:
to be fair to Chairman Mal (reluctantly) this isn’t his fault but entirely “home grown” incompetency by the SA Labor Government. Remember- Those who can go into Federal politics, those who fail become SA State Ministers.
Unable to grasp that the grid requires CONSTANT power supply and that the sun doesn’t shine at night seems to be a requisite for a post in the SA Cabinet.
Wind turbines good,
Steady power bad
they chant and try to drown out the sceptics.
The latest puff of unicorn magic is that lithium batteries are the answer – heap big juju lithium – without any comprehension that ordinary batteries are just as good once the question of weight is not important, nor that the average electricity customer won’t leap to install $60-70, 000 worth of them to avoid the likely chaos from Cabinet decisions.
Jay Weatherall swanned overseas with an entourage of 20, including film crew, and went nowhere near the Paris Conference (despite issuing propaganda) and making promises about carbon reductions which someone else will have to deliver after he has left office.
The plain fact is that the wind turbines often don’t deliver enough and the State relies on supplies from Victoria, – that’s OK as the emissions are in Victoria, not pure green SA. Short term relief supplied from OCGT’s (limited). The inter-connectors are limited in capacity to about 25% of maximum demand. Every time there is a hot humid night with low wind there will be a blackout.
13 years of stupidity and incompetence has come home to haunt these clots and they cannot avoid it. There is no money left to bribe their way out of disaster and electoral oblivion.
G3
Has any body done realistic maths on known reserves of Li ?
It ain’t that common.
I reckon the Planet Ark types who probably make a killing recycling used printer cartridges into printer cartridges & make a profit will one day soon be putting rainbow bins out for used Li batteries.
As for SA; if that eco warrior who set the brown coal alight a couple of years ago was successful in shutting down Hazelwood, I reckon the power outage would have been substantial & damaging enough to put anti coal activism to bed for good in Australia.
Just imagine – no power = no water , no sewerage, no lifts, no AC/ heat, sick people suffering in hospitals food shortages, no fuel pumps &
the army in the streets in Australia!
Tom:
Short answer no, but there is quite a lot available. The total amount may never be known until we need a lot more than now, and it becomes economic to search for it. e.g. there are indications of large amounts in Afghanistan but..
As of January 2010, the estimated world total lithium reserves at 9.9×109 kg (economically extractable now) and identified lithium resources at 2.55 × 1010 kg (potentially economic). Most of the identified resources are in Bolivia and Chile (9 × 109 kg and 7.5 × 109 kg, respectively). World lithium production is currently on the order of 2 × 107 kg per year.
The largest producer of lithium in the world is Chile, which extracts it from brine at the Atacama Salt Flat. Argentina also produces lithium from brine at the Hombre Muerto Salt Flat. There is also an enormous lithium deposit in Bolivia at the Uyuni Salt Flat (the world’s largest salt flat), but this resource remains untapped for now due to political and economic reasons. The largest producer of lithium from spodumene is Australia, which has a large deposit near Perth. Other major lithium producers include China, which produces it at salt lakes in Tibet and Qinghai, and the United States, which produces it from brine in Nevada. [5] Extracting lithium from brine is currently cheaper than mining it from spodumene, so there are many deposits of spodumene that are not currently being mined.
I would add that production from Chile a few years ago was only one third of recovered as the excess was pumped back underground as brine. Then there is the recycling option.
Frankly I think it is over hyped, higher energy per kilo makes it attractive for cars but household use? Anyway there are potentially better options under development.
I agree with wazsah
The two major steps of progress in the 20th century for the general populace were the advent of wide-sprad sewage systems and the development of reliable, efficient, cost-effective, affordable electrical power grids
Now we have a weakened grid with deliberate on-going damage being inflicted on it. We have politicians both State and Federal who want the glory of “saving the planet” and remain oblivious to that damage. It’s also obvious that persistent power losses reduce the efficiency of the sewage systems
The SA Govt now wants to control (cap) the price of backup power from coal and gas power stations, irrespective of the risk of driving these stations towards bankruptcy
[Also posted on Catallaxy]
ianl8888:
It is not necessarily irrespective. They may want to drive them out of business.
If a coal fired station can run profitably 90% of the time generating at $30 per MW, you might think that is good. But by introducing random surges of wind output, this can be turned into 60% at $45 (to cover costs), and by requiring the coal stations to operate inefficiently as backup on top of that then their operating costs get closer to that of wind turbines (who make up the difference with subsidies e.g. RECs).
By then capping the price charged by the coal stations below the cost you make sure they go out of business and GREEN energy wins.
The only problem will be that with frequent blackouts the general population might ask each other what other use is their for lamp posts that don’t operate? What sort of weight could be suspended on them?
Re the cost to Australia of decarbonizing our economy and replacing our grid electricity with renewable generation – this article suggests about $6Billion per year.
Greenhouse policy after Paris: marching to penury
catallaxyfiles.com/2015/12/17/greenhouse-policy-after-paris-marching-to-penury/
Despite this sites enthusiasm for renewables, they have a good real time widget which calculates
” how much renewable generation is currently contributing to electricity supplies in the main electricity grids across Australia”.
reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch
Unfortunately the irony of the point made by the amount energy generated by renewables shown by data in the graphs is lost to the general meme of the site
“the need to act on climate change, energy security and resource scarcity”
@ Graeme 3
> … what other use is their for lamp posts that don’t operate? What sort of weight could be suspended on them?
These posts certainly seem strong enough for sudden, jerky little loads
The UK is now operating with a safety factor of less than 5% … bluntly, I think deliberately manipulating that situation into existence is absolute TREASON