Clarifying:

AEMO should have declined to do this study unless the constraints were removed.

AEMO knew at the outset that the results would be misleading, so why did they do it? To say that the DCCEE commissioned the study is insufficient justification. Some studies/clients are bad for business and should be turned away, even if doing so strains relationships in the short term. It's called professionalism.

Perhaps the truth is that AEMO has been used as a tool, a gun for hire. In which case, why not restructure AEMO without any research capacity, because their current research team has been fatally compromised through its client relationship with DCCEE?

That is the same DCCEE which is in turn dancing to the tune of a political master, its minister, who is also constrained by the political realities of operating in a minority government.

The end result is misleading, unethical, academically dishonest and unprofessional. It reflects very poorly on the integrity of AEMO and the research team.

As I said before... return the homework to the student and request completion of the assignment.

Cohenite: "The Reliability Point is the crucial indice. What the Reliability Point shows is the probability at any one moment of that Capacity Factor occuring; for Cullerin it is 3%; so what I take from that is that at any moment the odds of the Cullerin installation producing power is 34/100 X 3/100 = 0.0102 or negligible. Would you agree with that?"

Perhaps it is better to think of Reliability as meaning availability, so the probability that 90% of Cullerin Range capacity will be available at any given time is 3%. Lower availabilities will imply higher probabilities.

Paraphrasing your sentence, at any moment the odds of the Cullerin installation producing 90% OF ITS MAXIMUM RATED POWER is 3/100, or 3%.

This is small, but not negligible. On average, Cullerin will produce 34%, which is what is meant by the term capacity factor.

Yes, I see I took the reliability point [rp] as being based on the capacity factor not the installed capacity.

I wonder what the rp is for 100% installed capacity of renewable?

And I wonder, since the capacity factor is about 30% for wind and solar, how this would work; say I wanted a guarantee of constant power for 3 hours next Tuesday week; what is the probability I would have that power from wind and solar?

According to Miskelly and Quirk I would have a 3% chance of having the power I need for 90% of the 3 hours; I would have no chance of having power for 100% of the time; but here is the problem: the probability of having power at any one minute would not rise from 3% but decrease.

It would decrease because wind and solar are inherently variable; unlike nuc and fossils which power from a constant, wind and solar power from that intermittancy; that is their base and I think that fact is being masked by averaging. So, if there is a vanishing probability of power 100% of the time then each period of time will also have the same low probability as the period of time becomes smaller.

Regardless of probability it bugs me that people still espouse wind and solar and renewables generally.

People are dying now in England and elsewhere because they cannot afford power or because there is no power; more people then have died from nuc.

The advocates of wind and solar have a lot to answer for.

Hi Ludwig, Pebble rectors and research have come a long way since 1940.
This is exactly what I find so annoying mate. The reliance on already antiquated or superseded science, to support equally invalid objections, or quite blatant misinformation?
Suggest you type the links provided into your search engine.
I went to considerable, Mr nice guy, time and trouble, to get them for you.
Thorium reaction is 1950's technology, that was rejected because there were no weapons spin off, and for no other reason.
Neither one is my preferred model.
My preferred model is endlessly available bladder stored Biogas, (methane) scrubbed and fed into ceramic fuel cells!
Ceramic cells convert methane directly into electrical energy, producing mostly water vapour in the process!
Every home should have one.
The average family home or inner city high rise produces enough biological waste, to completely power the premises 24/7. Endless available free hot water, a useful spin-off!
And there are working examples that entirely validate the process and the significant savings, the most recent I can find, being in a London suburb.
However, the methane powered onsite conventional engine, (energy coefficient around 40% max), is not nearly as efficient as the ceramic fuel cell, (72%).
Moreover, the super silent ceramic fuel cell has no moving parts to wear out.
The addition of food scraps or wastage, creates a saleable energy surplus.
My other preference is Algae production.
Some algae are up to 60% oil.
Algae absorb up to 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2.
Under optimised conditions, literally double that same bodyweight and absorption capacity every 24 hours.
Some types produce virtually ready to use bio-diesel, others make virtually ready to use jet fuel.
Extracting the oil is as simple as sun-drying the material, and then crushing it, to produce ready to use fuel.
The ex-crush material is suitable as fodder or for ethanol production!
Rhrosty.

I was with Rhosty until he reverted to gas. Gas is still a fossil fuel so the resource will deplete reasonably quickly although the carbon dioxide production is lower per MW compared to coal.

Thorium reactors are as he claimed, safe, produce very little waste and the fuel reserves are enormous at about 50,000 years. The Chinese are contemplating producing one per day much the way Boeing produces passenger jets but they are size constrained to about 100 MW. There is a new youtube video available on the subject.

The other point about Fukuyama is that the failure was due to faulty civic engineering design. The plant was built too close to sea level behind an inadequate bund (protection ) wall. I believe a catalyst, designed to minimise the risk of a reactor gas explosion, was left out of the design accepted.

As far as I am aware there have been no deaths due to the reactor problems.

<< This is exactly what I find so annoying mate. The reliance on already antiquated or superseded science, to support equally invalid objections, or quite blatant misinformation? >>

Rhrosty, this is the very nature of discussions on OLO and the like. You will always be discussing things with people who are not very knowledgeable in the particular field.

This is a very good thing. You are making contact with people who are interested but not knowledgeable and getting the chance to educate them, and many others who are reading but not participating in the discussion.

Don’t be annoyed by it. Be happy about it!

Now as I have said, if pebble technology was as amazing as you have said it was in your first post, then one would have expected it to be right out there and be common knowledge in the public domain. The very fact that it is not, automatically incurs considerable doubt in your great promotion of it.

<< Suggest you type the links provided into your search engine. I went to considerable, Mr nice guy, time and trouble, to get them for you. >>

I tried your links. I can’t work out exactly where they are supposed to take me. That’s why I asked for the live links. I’m at a loss to understand how you could have gone to the trouble to seek these out, which I certainly appreciate, and then not have posted live links…. and then not post live links the second time upon request. That is most baffling.

Ceramic cells and algae sound equally amazing. Too good to be true, without considerable problems/downsides or perhaps just a whole lot more expensive than fossils currently are and hence totally unviable at the moment?