RE "South Australia’s last coal-fired power plant had closed, leaving the province of 1.8 million heavily reliant on wind farms and power imports from a neighboring region. " So - now they import power from places that use coal fired power stations and they have grid stability problems. NOT quitting coal at all. Id ask what is the price of their power KWh?
Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
21–30 of 257 posts
Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost however remains remarkably high. A combination of renewables and giant piles of lithium is more expensive than nuclear, by quite a bit. [1] Anyways, the future is a mix of all sorts of things and this is a strict improvement so it's hard to be anything other than supportive. [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/what-energy-storage-would-have-to-...
It doesn't matter that nuclear is cheaper if you can't build a nuclear plant . The difference is that a lithium battery facility can be installed and functional in 12-24 months. A nuclear plant takes 12-24 years . Much like World War I strategies, a solution that nobody has the political will to implement isn't a solution.
Chicken and egg thing. If you listen to the DOE Loan Program head, he says it takes so long and costs so much because each plant is a bespoke hand-crafted special construction project. They can be made much cheaper and much faster if you standardize the design and copy-paste them to where it's a good fit.
This isn't an issue inherent to nuclear power at all, but instead in how we approach it.
This isn't speculation either, China is building 150 new plants by 2035. [1]
> Much like World War I strategies, a solution that nobody has the political will to implement isn't a solution.
That's just a tautology.
[1] https://thediplomat.com/2022/09/powering-chinas-nuclear-ambi...
Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#23https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/ is the one-stop-shop for current energy situation in Australia. Anecdotal: SA was pushing towards clean energy notably before the battery came in, but in turn, had a very unstable grid, and the things like energy trading et al. were tied up in international ownership iirc (needing authorization to do a large energy trade required someone from France giving approval, timezones didn't…
Awesome link, thanks.
Can you recommend a good way to find a better electrical supplier offering decent prices? What's your go to method/service? I've just realised that I haven't shopped around for quite some time.
Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re assuming long duration lithium storage vs excess renewables with curtailment. Australia is going 100% renewables at a reasonable cost with solar, wind, hydro, transmission, and some batteries. No nuclear is required to decarbonize. https://aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/engineering-frame... https://aemo.com.au/initiatives/major-programs/engineering-f...
I'm not actually making that assumption, I linked an article with the numbers as [1] in an edit to my initial reply. Nuclear is renewable :) [2] But yes, adjusting demand is far more efficient than adjusting supply. However it seems there's limited appetite. > No nuclear is required to decarbonize. No but it's less expensive, and better from a space utilization and environmental impact perspective. It's the best ener…
I’m not against nuclear but it is a long way from being cheap and easy. Look at the recent andventures with Hinkley C. And that’s with an existing industrial base for nuclear power. 25 bn pounds is 45 billion AUD which is what previous governments paid to wire the whole country up with a patchwork of broadband (inflation unadjusted).
And don’t say they small modular will step into the breach because it is not a proven technology and until the first 10 are deployed may never be.
Australia has no nuclear knowledge base and would require a nationwide debate about getting into the nuclear power game so we would have at a minimum a 20 year lead time to build something.
We could be totally decarbonised by that point and we wouldn’t even have a reactor online.
As to your other points, have you seen how much space we have down here? Cramming a plant into a specific area is not a net benefit. We’ve got a geographically diverse population with a lot of empty space, it would be better to have more plants in more diversified locations.
We will end up passing nuclear by, the economics and time lag just don’t stack up for us
Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The difference is that a lithium battery facility can be installed and functional in 12-24 months. These things aren't comparable without putting it together as a system. > A nuclear plant takes 12-24 years. You're thinking about wild outliers there. It's around 6.5 years median [1]. [1] https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-ti...
Funny article. It talks about time to build nuclear reactors but never mentions Russia.
Why would it?
Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter that nuclear is cheaper if you can't build a nuclear plant . The difference is that a lithium battery facility can be installed and functional in 12-24 months. A nuclear plant takes 12-24 years . Much like World War I strategies, a solution that nobody has the political will to implement isn't a solution.
Chicken and egg thing. If you listen to the DOE Loan Program head, he says it takes so long and costs so much because each plant is a bespoke hand-crafted special construction project. They can be made much cheaper and much faster if you standardize the design and copy-paste them to where it's a good fit. This isn't an issue inherent to nuclear power at all, but instead in how we approach it. This isn't speculation e…
Again, you’re saying that it’s cheap, but then responding to criticism they’re bespoke by presenting an untested technology that has further lead time delays and may even be vapourwear. You still can’t spin up an industrial base in less than 5-10 years, and there sure as hell isn’t the political will to ask the Chinese to build it for us
Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#27Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#28RE "South Australia’s last coal-fired power plant had closed, leaving the province of 1.8 million heavily reliant on wind farms and power imports from a neighboring region. " So - now they import power from places that use coal fired power stations and they have grid stability problems. NOT quitting coal at all. Id ask what is the price of their power KWh?
> Id ask what is the price of their power KWh?
https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/electricity/national-e...
and historically aggregated: https://www.aer.gov.au/wholesale-markets/wholesale-statistic...
Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not actually making that assumption, I linked an article with the numbers as [1] in an edit to my initial reply. Nuclear is renewable :) [2] But yes, adjusting demand is far more efficient than adjusting supply. However it seems there's limited appetite. > No nuclear is required to decarbonize. No but it's less expensive, and better from a space utilization and environmental impact perspective. It's the best ener…
I’m not against nuclear but it is a long way from being cheap and easy. Look at the recent andventures with Hinkley C. And that’s with an existing industrial base for nuclear power. 25 bn pounds is 45 billion AUD which is what previous governments paid to wire the whole country up with a patchwork of broadband (inflation unadjusted). And don’t say they small modular will step into the breach because it is not a prove…
> We will end up passing nuclear by, the economics and time lag just don’t stack up for us
Again the economics are better than what is being done. However.
> I’m not against nuclear but it is a long way from being cheap and easy.
Ah yes just like JFK said about going to space. "We choose to decarbonize the grid with solar not because it is the best option, not because the cheapest option or even because it is hard - but because it is easy and politically expedient."
Re: Australia is quitting coal in record time thanks to Tesla
#30The graph partway down is pretty interesting. In terms of grid battery capacity that's in the works, Australia is second only to China (albeit a fairly distant second). They're even beating the US in 3rd place, which also highlights how much we're slacking in this space. If Australia is successful here, I wonder if it will spur more investment in places like the US. China is probably not a good bellwether since they…
Probably a dumb question, but would mass-batterification leave our society extremely vulnerable to EMP?
EMP weapons are a scifi myth.
It takes a lot of energy to generate an EMP that would do any damage (think, nuclear bomb levels of energy). And even then, the area of effect would be less than a mile or two radius.
If someone wanted to attack a grid, well placed C4 would be cheaper and more practical (See moore county substation attack).