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Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

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Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#271

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

thehappypm wrote: post #264
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great example of bullshit megaprojects that governments announce with no real intention of ever implementing. I searched and tried to find something recent about this project. Pretty much everything I found was around the announcement in Nov 2021 - the latest article I found was this one from Jan 2022, https://dialogue.earth/en/energy/50155-chile-underwater-cabl... , which states the project "does not yet have feas…

People have been stringing cables across the ocean for centuries now. What makes this so much harder?

Power cables are a wee different than communications cables.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#272

Post by eru »

lazide wrote: post #232
onethought wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a link between Solar production and Cancer? I mean there is a super obvious one with Nuclear.

Silicon Valley is full of cancer causing superfund sites due to improper disposal of chemicals used to produce semiconductors back in the 70’s and 80’s. Solar panels are semiconductor based (the actual power generating parts are diodes, specifically). If the chemicals are disposed of properly and workers wear the correct PPE, there are no measurable increases in cancer. It’s a whole grab bag of chemicals, from TCE, C…

Thanks for bringing up the concrete example of Silicon Valley's chemicals.

Btw, just to be clear: overall both solar power and nuclear are very good technologies in terms of overall harm done per Joule produced. Much, much better than coal or oil. But we shouldn't pretend that the harm per Joule is literally zero; and we should also be honest about what harm there actually is, and not just what sounds plausible or good.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#274

Post by [deleted] »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #237
Gibbon1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I visited this it felt to me that Australia's metro's are small and spread far apart so that a typical sized nuke plant is overkill.

50% of Australia lives in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Having a nuclear power plant for each would make sense. Melbourne would make the most sense first as it gets a lot less sun than the others.

[deleted]

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#275

Post by grecy »

Affric wrote: post #270
Aachen wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that why grid power is so expensive then: the couple kWh that someone still draws from the grid needs to pay for the big infrastructure and plants?

Power is expensive for a few reasons. 1. Aging base load generation 2. Housing stock from cheap fuel times facing globalised energy prices. 3. Network assets being corporatised and partially privatised and there having been incentives for these monopolies to invest in unproductive assets for which they are permitted to recover their costs. 4. Costs of competition in the retail sector. 5. Government policy creating un…

That is a very complicated way to say "The government is in bed with the guys that own all the energy companies, and they have guaranteed them profits for a long time to come."

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#276

Post by Retric »

jfoster wrote: post #181
fidotron wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is nothing. Try Chile to China: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/15/chile-wants-to-export...

How could that even work? In some areas, surely the Pacific Ocean is deeper than any humans or deep ocean vehicles have ever been to? So would the cable be hanging across undersea chasms, or do they need to find a depth where it can be placed? Also, is it just so heavy that it doesn't need to be secured?

Deep sea cables don’t need to be secured to anything in the middle they are really heavy and the water isn’t moving quickly.

People setup undersea telegraph cables the 1800’s. This is similar technology just with a thicker cable to carry more current etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#277

Post by tim333 »

londons_explore wrote: post #194
tim333 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently they use thyristors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyristor#HVDC_electricity_tra... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter#Thyristor_valve...

Thyristors require you have at least one transformer operate at AC line frequency (50/60Hz). That costs a lot , since you need enough steel to store 20 milliseconds of your total power as a magnetic field. Thyristors are on-off devices (like most semiconductors when used for power conversion), but cannot turn off without zero current, which precludes a bunch of high frequency designs which are better for harmonics an…

Ah - right you are. Seems IGBTs are the thing now.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#278

Post by onethought »

eru wrote: post #269
onethought wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radiation destroys DNA and directly causes cancer. That's the super obvious link. Your deliberate avoidance doesn't change that fact. Because of this are a bunch of safety protocols in the extraction, transportation, storage and use of radio active materials and their waste products. 100% sure that all of the chemicals involved in Solar manufacture are less toxic to the human body than handling Plutonium. So, we can…

> 100% sure that all of the chemicals involved in Solar manufacture are less toxic to the human body than handling Plutonium. So, we can probably design enough protocols to make it safe to manufacture given we did it for far more toxic materials. So? You have to look at the amount of chemicals required to produce 1 Joule (or perhaps to install one 1 Watt of capacity). For example, 1 kg of coal is much less dangerous…

Right so pick a metric that highly favours nuclear because its been around longer.

And ignore common sense that leaving inert rocks in the sun is fundamentally less dangerous than super heating water with highly toxic and unstable materials.

If you can't see your bias here, I don't think I am going to change your mind.

Even by your joule measure, give it time, Solar will beat that too. And even if the largest solar farm in existence started to fail or "not operate normally" we would not have to replace the top soil or bury it in sand for 20,000 years.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#279

Post by onethought »

lazide wrote: post #261
onethought wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radiation destroys DNA and directly causes cancer. That's the super obvious link. Your deliberate avoidance doesn't change that fact. Because of this are a bunch of safety protocols in the extraction, transportation, storage and use of radio active materials and their waste products. 100% sure that all of the chemicals involved in Solar manufacture are less toxic to the human body than handling Plutonium. So, we can…

Don’t bet on that plutonium toxicity thing. For one, most reactors aren’t going to have any plutonium (or any other radioisotope) where anyone can touch it or interact with it in any way. Concentrated Hydroflouric acid, and even pure fluorine gas however? That can be an easy turn of a tap away at most semiconductor plants. And much worse. And if you know anything about Florine, ‘much worse’ should be pretty chilling.…

But choosing nuclear power doesn't remove our need for semiconductors, so it's a bit weird to attribute that to solar.

The fabrication of of panels is more analogous to fission material mining. As in you are procuring the materials that will produce energy in the future.

If we get rid of nuclear power, we don't need to mine those things anymore. If we get rid of solar panels, we still need semiconductors. So I don't think you can use it for an argument against solar manufacture.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#280

Post by onethought »

roenxi wrote: post #243
onethought wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there was only evidence of a reduction in temperature in your link. Which would actually increase the effectiveness of Solar. The idea of a global darkness for a significant period of time, would be extinction level.

It was 1812; they'd barely discovered how to generate electricity. But note that they describe effects like a persistent dry fog dimming sunlight over NA. That would have an effect on solar production and that was half a world away from the eruption. > The idea of a global darkness for a significant period of time, would be extinction level. Your scenario not mine; and I don't know why it needs to be global. I'm talk…

Because we have power lines and batteries now, so solar can be where the sun is, and consumption can be where it isn't.

I guess I'm envisioning a future where there is a lot more solar panels than there is consumption, meaning we can store for later or transmit to places that cannot generate themselves.

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