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Australia has the most expensive energy bills

macrobusiness.com.au

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Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#141

Post by daemin »

bash-j wrote: post #137
daemin wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is completely false. There is no way the state could have all of its baseline power needs met by just solar and wind. As far as I know the power plant up in the port is still running and burning coal as it always did. The buying of peak electricity from interstate is more likely a factor of higher gas prices as mentioned in the article. This is because the coal fired plant in the port has gas turbines that get u…

The Port Augusta coal power station was demolished. There are two gas power stations in Adelaide. One was mothballed, but the state government forced the owners to start it up again after a statewide power last year. The government plans to invest in a new gas power station, plus they have a 100 mil fund set up to invest in multiple energy storage solutions to help capture excess wind power.

I was thinking of the Torrens Island power station. Last I knew it was a coal fired power station along with gas turbines for peak load.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#142

Post by nl »

manoj_venkat92 wrote: post #86

And instead of turning to solar power, they are letting Adani power build a coal plant? What is wrong with the government of Australia. And solar power's prices are on decline and are now getting lower than coal and it's clean energy, check any major business news sites like Bloomberg, NYTimes etc., If I am not wrong, Australia is a sunny place, so going solar was an obvious option and Elon Musk was even talking for…

Fortunately, we are doing the battery+solar thing too. Actually there are multiple projects.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-30/new-solar-project-anno...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-power-batteries-...

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#143

Post by aembleton »

30c/KWH = ~18p/KWH [1] before tax.

It varies by where you live and what tariff you're on but I pay ~10p/KWH, and this website suggests similar before the 5% VAT charge is put on [2].

1. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=30aud+to+gbp&t=lm&atb=v55-6&ia=cur...

2. https://www.ukpower.co.uk/home_energy/tariffs-per-unit-kwh

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#144

Post by nl »

lazyjones wrote: post #127
ldp01 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem quite bizarre. The Finkel Report[1] sums up pretty well why coal isn't competitive. It can't keep up with the rapid changes in demand caused by existing intermittent generation. > "Rapid changes in power output from VRE generation need to be balanced with generation technology that has the ability to increase (ramp up) or decrease (ramp down) power output at the same time. Gas-fired generators have the a…

> The Finkel Report[1] sums up pretty well why coal isn't competitive. Apparently it does cool the atmosphere though, so it's good against global warming. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/26/the-role-of-sulfur-di... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

Err..

Whatsupwiththat.com is a notorious climate change denial site, and the second sentence in the Wikipedia page you linked says:

This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of the scientific climate literature, which showed a larger and faster-growing body of literature projecting future warming due to greenhouse gas emissions.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#145

Post by gravelld »

c3833174 wrote: post #140
gravelld wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double paned windows are hardly some kind of best practice. The Mediterranean countries are still poor. Of Western Europe, only Germany and to some extent Ireland appear serious. You also have smaller jurisdictions, e.g. Brussels where some good work is going on.

Mediterranean countries also get less harsh winters, especially in the last years people have preferred installing cheap stoves rather than doing all the work required to properly insulate buildings from the 60s (roof, external insulating coating, window frames, condensing boilers, etc).

They also have more harsh summers. To an extent, in some cases, the vernacular protects them from that with high thermal capacity and decrement delay to buffer energy transfer. But if you then have a fashion for large windows... not so much.

And all that doesn't help with ventilation and maintaining healthy levels of fresh air.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#146

Post by pjc50 »

bobabooey02 wrote: post #134
pjc50 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"toxic masculinity" is a subset of masculinity in the same way that "toxic water" is a subset of water. People are not asking for an end to masculinity any more than the Flint water protestors are asking for an end to water.

Masculinity is a spectrum, with extreme womanizers on one side and gender-fluid effeminate men on the other side. Where is toxic masculinity defined? Do you feel there should be checks on extreme feminism? If no, why not? Also, if your goal is diversity, that requires me to consider one's cultural background before discriminating against them. Why wouldn't you do the same for masculine guys?

I appreciate that this hill is one that HN is unwilling to climb, but: it's not an extremity, it's those behaviours which cause harm to others and in many cases men themselves (such as the set of behaviours whose consequences can lead to higher suicide rates among men).

Specifically in the context of coal mining, while I appreciate that communities get built around it that doesn't mean it should be extended beyond wider economic and environmental sense. Coal mining is both dangerous and literally toxic for those involved, but somehow people not involved in it invoke its macho status.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#147

Post by andy_ppp »

dagw wrote: post #131
andy_ppp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it strange that a huge number of governments aren't falling over themselves to get Tesla to build one of the roughly 100 needed giga factories in their country. Pay for it to be built, give crazy good loan deals etc. whatever it costs really to have energy independance has got to be worth it.

How does building a giga factory in your country lead to energy independence?

By having a means of producing batteries you'll be able to rely on renewables won't you? I thought that was the whole idea?

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#148

Post by nl »

chrisper wrote: post #49
nimchimpsky wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food is better, people are friendlier, sunnier, better quality of life, better stuff for kids. Less tax.

Is it really sunnier than Southern California?

It's a pretty big country ;)

LA gets 284 sunny days a year (which is a lot!). By comparison, Sydney gets 236,but Perth gets 265.

Here is a site listing Australian cities: https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Australia/Cities/suns...

Plenty of places hotter than LA if it is the heat you are interested in. Adelaide had a heatwave a few years ago where it didn't drop below 35C for 10 nights straight, and had days over 46C.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#149

Post by bobabooey02 »

pjc50 wrote: post #146
bobabooey02 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masculinity is a spectrum, with extreme womanizers on one side and gender-fluid effeminate men on the other side. Where is toxic masculinity defined? Do you feel there should be checks on extreme feminism? If no, why not? Also, if your goal is diversity, that requires me to consider one's cultural background before discriminating against them. Why wouldn't you do the same for masculine guys?

I appreciate that this hill is one that HN is unwilling to climb, but: it's not an extremity , it's those behaviours which cause harm to others and in many cases men themselves (such as the set of behaviours whose consequences can lead to higher suicide rates among men). Specifically in the context of coal mining, while I appreciate that communities get built around it that doesn't mean it should be extended beyond w…

Macho status has nothing to do with it. It sounds like you've never lived in one of these small towns that revolve around a single industry. When that industry does poorly or goes away, entire families are damaged. Often times there aren't any other jobs in the area, and many cannot afford the changes required to move to a big city. Because of globalization and the loss of antitrust laws, this loss of economic stability is occurring not just in coal country, but in rural and semi-rural areas across the country. Then people who live in areas of the country that are doing well down play their struggle simply because they don't understand the devastating impact these economic trends are having on families across the nation.

Re: Australia has the most expensive energy bills

#150

Post by falsedan »

daemin wrote: post #93
dwhitworth1 wrote: post #2

I moved to Newcastle, Australia from the US (Los Angeles) about two years ago. I was shocked when I received my energy bill. Australians in general are hesitant to use their AC or electric heaters, opting to just layer up when it's cold or try to use fans in the summer. Many (most?) households don't have clothes dryers, using clotheslines instead. I would like to see how much energy the average Australian household c…

> Many (most?) households don't have clothes dryers, using clotheslines instead. Why bother having a clothes dryer when for most of the year you can hang them up in the shade and they will be dry within the hour. There are only a couple of states/regions where it makes sense to use a clothes dryer. The blue mountains and I imagine Tasmania where it gets too cold to hang your clothes up in the winter. > I would like t…

> The blue mountains and I imagine Tasmania where it gets too cold to hang your clothes up in the winter.

Clothes get dry regardless of the temperature: if it's cold enough, the water will freeze and then the ice sublimates into the lower-humidity atmosphere.

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