Western governments are driving their economies and populations over a cliff into the social abyss of energy poverty with rocketing prices. It seems sanity will not return until the headlong rush to net zero is seen for the chimera it most certainly is.
What is this project? From your extracts it looks about as rigorous and professional as some of the design projects I did as a first year engineering student (in Australia).
Microsoft has announced they are financing 18 new data centres in Australia. Amazon and Google are also rapidly expanding along with many other data centre users. The Australian population is increasing at just under 2% per year, which means doubling by 2060. We want to replace gas with electricity and petrol vehicles with EVs. It is ridiculous to assume demand will be anything like 2020, it will expand dramatically. To get rid of gas we need a major nuclear investment.
I struggle to see how *any* power grid can 'decarbonise' without either massive dependable CO2-free generation from nuclear, or cheap long duration energy storage (LDES) which does not yet exist - ref: my California Reality post [link2]:
Perhaps a data-centre integrated with a liquid air energy storage (LAES) system would be a good fit. V large ~constant power Demand: lots of low-grade waste heat from its air-con system to re-gasify the stored liquid air to drive the generators when the sun goes down.
Yes I read your California piece. Very illuminating. Australia is like California except we cannot import and export electricity and our hydro potential is not as good. We have a lower population than California and more empty space which helps, but not having import/export in particular makes it harder. It is easy in the Australian context to produce enough solar electricity to power the grid for 8 or so hours per day. I am sure we will get to that. The problem is that this makes it uneconomic for anything else, including more solar. There is only a potential return for alternate sources for 16 hours per day. So nobody will now invest in renewables without a government guaranteed price which is now paid via CFDs. Unlike in UK they keep the strike prices secret here, but the upshot is the provider will be making a return every time a wind turbine spins and excessive profits if they spin at a time of shortage. This is whether the power is needed or not. It is virtually then a no risk investment for the generator, so as you would expect billionaire entrepreneurs who are close to the government are building wind farms. No one will also invest in fossil fuel plants which because we have not solved storage are still needed. So the government is paying those operators to keep their plants open, whatever the return the operator gets for this energy. So everything in the system is subsidised.
Then we have this thing called the NEM (national Electricity Market) which is supposedly a market, but is hardly a market because everyone selling power into it is either government subsidised or is a government enterprise. In many cases it is the generators interest to provide electricity whatever the NEM price.
If there was cheap mass LDES it would be simple, just build massive solar and store the excess. But this doesn’t exist. We are investing in 3 large pumped hydro projects, but on two of them the water level was below 10% in the last drought in 2008. It is obvious what we should do, contract South Korea or China to build nuclear power stations here.
Nice article. Shows how expensive the “Green” method of reducing carbon emissions is. And, yes, there is a cheaper way. Start with the following:
1) Drill for shale gas. Australia has plenty of it.
2) Replace coal-burning power plants with very energy-efficient Combined Cycle Gas Turbines. They reduce carbon emissions by 67% compared to existing coal.
Western governments are driving their economies and populations over a cliff into the social abyss of energy poverty with rocketing prices. It seems sanity will not return until the headlong rush to net zero is seen for the chimera it most certainly is.
What is this project? From your extracts it looks about as rigorous and professional as some of the design projects I did as a first year engineering student (in Australia).
Microsoft has announced they are financing 18 new data centres in Australia. Amazon and Google are also rapidly expanding along with many other data centre users. The Australian population is increasing at just under 2% per year, which means doubling by 2060. We want to replace gas with electricity and petrol vehicles with EVs. It is ridiculous to assume demand will be anything like 2020, it will expand dramatically. To get rid of gas we need a major nuclear investment.
Thank you for your comments, Goronwy.
I saw this piece [link] today saying that Aus should at least *discuss* Nuclear.
https://www.innovationaus.com/nuclear-power-realistic-policy-option-or-distraction/
I struggle to see how *any* power grid can 'decarbonise' without either massive dependable CO2-free generation from nuclear, or cheap long duration energy storage (LDES) which does not yet exist - ref: my California Reality post [link2]:
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisbond/p/california-reality?r=om40y&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Perhaps a data-centre integrated with a liquid air energy storage (LAES) system would be a good fit. V large ~constant power Demand: lots of low-grade waste heat from its air-con system to re-gasify the stored liquid air to drive the generators when the sun goes down.
Yes I read your California piece. Very illuminating. Australia is like California except we cannot import and export electricity and our hydro potential is not as good. We have a lower population than California and more empty space which helps, but not having import/export in particular makes it harder. It is easy in the Australian context to produce enough solar electricity to power the grid for 8 or so hours per day. I am sure we will get to that. The problem is that this makes it uneconomic for anything else, including more solar. There is only a potential return for alternate sources for 16 hours per day. So nobody will now invest in renewables without a government guaranteed price which is now paid via CFDs. Unlike in UK they keep the strike prices secret here, but the upshot is the provider will be making a return every time a wind turbine spins and excessive profits if they spin at a time of shortage. This is whether the power is needed or not. It is virtually then a no risk investment for the generator, so as you would expect billionaire entrepreneurs who are close to the government are building wind farms. No one will also invest in fossil fuel plants which because we have not solved storage are still needed. So the government is paying those operators to keep their plants open, whatever the return the operator gets for this energy. So everything in the system is subsidised.
Then we have this thing called the NEM (national Electricity Market) which is supposedly a market, but is hardly a market because everyone selling power into it is either government subsidised or is a government enterprise. In many cases it is the generators interest to provide electricity whatever the NEM price.
If there was cheap mass LDES it would be simple, just build massive solar and store the excess. But this doesn’t exist. We are investing in 3 large pumped hydro projects, but on two of them the water level was below 10% in the last drought in 2008. It is obvious what we should do, contract South Korea or China to build nuclear power stations here.
Nice article. Shows how expensive the “Green” method of reducing carbon emissions is. And, yes, there is a cheaper way. Start with the following:
1) Drill for shale gas. Australia has plenty of it.
2) Replace coal-burning power plants with very energy-efficient Combined Cycle Gas Turbines. They reduce carbon emissions by 67% compared to existing coal.