41–50 of 172 posts
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The blackout had nothing to do with insufficient base load power and everything to do with the storm damaging lines. The wind farms actually produced more then enough electricity at the time - the problem was delivery - http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-28/sa-power-outage-exp...
The ABC is the biggest propaganda unit for renewable energy out there.
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that's true. but to dig a bit deeper, who pays each cost and who benefits from the value? who directly benefits from the value of energy: - australian energy consumers - australian energy producers who pays the costs for energy prices: - australian energy consumers who pays the costs for australian emissions *: - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of…
Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale. One country taking decisive action could trigger a chain reaction of political pressure. Australia has a horrendous wildfire problem. The frequency and severity of wildfires has drastically increased…
And because this is Hacker News, have a play with the simulation hosted at Fourmilab: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest
There is a great deal going on in the energy world right now around storage of electricity, I think it's a shame opEd websites such as the Guardian feature and focus on Musk, a single entrepreneur and his companies, over the broader advances that are unfolding...
Isn't that an overstatement? Australia's installed generating capacity is 67GW and about 50% load factor. It needs at least 100 systems like that to make a significant impact on grid stability. Even in South Australia alone, at least 10x that much is needed.
Yup, it is. And you know what? Pumped storage the article calls "ridiculous" and "silly", is what is needed. It is 10x much, exactly as you said.
They just need whole lot more than this 1 battery to solve the problem.
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You mentioned location, but that advantage can't really be understated. How can you have pump storage near every major city? It's not feasible in most places. Then there is the enormous transmission cost to get the energy to (and from) that remote location. Batteries can also meet fluctuations in demand instantly. Hydro cannot.
What enormous transmission cost? Total transmission loss of Australia is 5% (2014). I already said battery switches faster. You are simply repeating what I said.
High-temperature superconductors: I want to believe.
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The ABC is the biggest propaganda unit for renewable energy out there.
Given your other statements, I cannot take this statement on face value.
The South Australian Government were patting themselves on the back about their high proportion of renewable energy but the reality was they were dependent on importing coal derived electricity form interstate. The storm exposed this dependency.
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This is true, but I'd note this quite from the article: Nyhan showed a clear tendency for people with high numeracy skills to misread graphs about gun control or climate change, even when they’d just correctly read the same graph about soap. To address you specific point though - the price is less than A$150M/$US115M[1]. By comparison, the SA government is also building a new 250MW gas fired power station which costs…
One with a big enough sink could get paid to take power off the grid. I repeat, you could make money charging your batteries.
But for this it's the whole idea.
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You mentioned location, but that advantage can't really be understated. How can you have pump storage near every major city? It's not feasible in most places. Then there is the enormous transmission cost to get the energy to (and from) that remote location. Batteries can also meet fluctuations in demand instantly. Hydro cannot.
What enormous transmission cost? Total transmission loss of Australia is 5% (2014). I already said battery switches faster. You are simply repeating what I said.
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You're forgetting about the cost on the environment that coal burning power plants create. No one ever takes the damage of our environment into consideration of how much something really costs us. Of course there is renewable power environment cost as well, batteries aren't very green to produce or dispose of. But over all, we are better off by not burning coal even if there are more upfront costs.
Let people who care about the environment pay extra for their electricity. You do not have the moral high ground if you force people to pay extra for electricity through coercion.
Poisoning people is, in general, a great deal less moral than charging them more money.
FYI: 129 MWh would be about 1300 42U-style racks for batteries alone. Source: there's a guy in socal (Jehu Garcia) building a reclaimed peaker 1 MWh pack in about 10 racks from used batteries and equipment (50 kW 480VAC inverter) on the cheap in order to store energy off-peak (plus possibly charge using solar) and use it at peak supplemented by grid power. This is how manufacturing and other heavy industry / large el…
I had this idea 10 years go to use flywheels to buy cheap power and re-sell it during peak demand. Day vs night pricing will quickly normalize.