$60-90 billion for storage and wind farms? The GDP of South Australia is $97 billion. Electricity accounts for around 40% of primary energy usage. So one could guess that getting to 100% renewables would need around $250 billion on batteries and wind farms - that's if all industrial, commercial and domestic activities could be electrified, which has yet to be shown. All such estimates turn out to be low, so let's call it a cool $trillion, ten times GDP. Never been piloted, never been demonstrated, hence unbankable. There's a long road ahead.

$90 billion for batteries and more wind farms? And when the batteries and photovoltaic cells need replacement in seven years or so, another $X billion? And when those batteries need replacement another $X billion, and when those batteries need replacement...

Let's ignore the environmental cost of the manufacture of wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, though it will be significant. How many billions will South Australia spend over, say, 30 years, compared to what would have been the cost of electricity generation and supply by coal?

South Australia is run by Labor incompetents, with subsidies provided by Turnbull's incompetents, entirely dependent on other people's money.

The Liberal Party, which used to be distinguished by its commitment to free markets, has helped to create a completely phoney system, where taxpayers' dollars are used to give wind and solar totally unjustified advantages over coal. South Australia's "market" is not a market at all, just a system of unjustified subsidies which cost taxpayers dearly. And for all that, what they'll get is blackouts and the loss of industry and jobs. The rest of Australia will then be subsidising SA's subsidies while heading down the same disastrous path.

I don't think it would take even the bozos who wrote this crap very long to comprehend that a lazy $90 billion (repeated every seven years or so) could be spent on many other essential services rather than environmental posturing.

South Australia may well be the canary in the coal mine. When it dies, it will be a warning to the rest of Australia to get the hell out of such arrangements. And the gormless politicians who have caused this mess will be deservedly vilified for the rest of history.

The PM's solutions trotted out although rejected by previous more precautious prejudiciary administrations. Moreover, trotted out to simply avoid enabling a nuclear powered future!

Strenuously avoided nuclear power can be implemented with no weapons spin off! Another reason to reject it out off hand!

Molten salt thorium reactors, demonstrably cheaper, cleaner, safer than coal, and the most compelling reason in coal producing coal exporting country to reject out of hand, absolutely untried!

Pumping water uphill, for an intended outlay of billions! Uses copious energy, and that cheap off-peak energy has to be available or supplied by, you guessed it, ultra reliable renewables!? LOL!

Those billions would build a humongous solar thermal project in our sundrenched outback! And given scales of economy, at comparable cost to similar sized coal fired projects!

And experience demonstrates, as privately funded power projects able to compete with coal on roll out costs, or as base load energy providers. The fuel component forever free!

Even so, unable to compete with thorium's roll out costs or the price of power, given comparable thorium power generation just doesn't have to rely on a grid or the doubled or trebled energy prices it alone delivers!

Given the cooling or heat transfer medium of molten salt thorium, is also salt, and turbines able to be turned by abundant gas, not needing to be located near a convenient body of permenant water, just where the power is needed/used!

The PM has had his (read the riot act) talk with our gas producers and trotted out previously rejected plans. I believe, for one reason and one reason only, to avoid doing anything that may harm the coal industry or its profitability?

A real leader would just put people before the profits of price gouging privateers!? [In days of yore, privateers, legalized pirates! How much has changed eh?]

Our PM is a former merchant banker, with a former merchant banker's mindset, (how to get rich using other folk's money) isn't he?

And forever personally quarantined, from any or all negative consequences of his decisions, isn't he?
Alan B.

Oh dear, Apart from the fact that the two authors are well known anti-wind generators.

The numbers just don't add up.
I could go through it but I'm sure I'd be wasting my time, as they have deliberately left things off to boost their argument.hint they have left large items out of their calculations and tried to make their scary numbers look really big. So I'll just make these observations.

No one is suggesting SA only have wind power.
Solar power, wind power, and gas with a power storage with batteries and water to smooth out peak demand is what is on the table.

Having a look at the author website shows that they are on the fringe even of the right wing, clinging on with the anti-vaxers and flat earthers.

From their website.....
"We’re not here to debate the wind industry – we’re here to destroy it."

So a balance view will not be coming from these guys.
for those of you commenting on the $90 billion figure. its a number pluck out of the air from these guys not based on any actual project that is planned or even dreamed of.

Once upon a Time....

'With $90 billion spent on batteries and 4,000 MW of more wind farms'.

They all lived happily ever after.(with nuclear )

Are we talking about SA or the rest of the world. 90 billion. Seven year life span. What a pile of steaming hot horse manure.
No one knows the lifespan of solar panels. The first ever solar array was constructed in the sixties and still operating.
Stretch it any which way you like. SA will look after its own. To much reliance on the NEM headed by a dinosaur. Why should SA be reliant on Victoria's generosity for SA power. SA is saying get stuffed we will look after our self.

Batteries will be old technology very soon. You should talk to Dr Kevin Moriarty at 1414Degrees for a much cheaper solution.
David

This article expresses simply and clearly the scale of the task ahead. Emotional rants won't alter anything.

I'm sure that the authors would agree that there are ways to reduce the cost to achieve the same goals and that they have demonstrated what the "business as usual" case looks like if batteries are used to smooth the surplus wind peaks to fill the demand troughs.

It is now the responsibility of those who disagree to state precisely what changes they recommend from business as usual, rather than just to cry foul from the sidelines.

As for Cobber's complaint that one author's web site does not support wind power: considering the operational risks and costs, there may be very good reasons for doing so. An appropriate starting point might be for the wind turbine owners to band together to pay for the initial 100MW/200MWh, or whatever, of batteries which are solely and only necessary because of the technical deficiencies inherent in the equipment that they have connected to the NEM.

Alan B no one has made a thorium reactor, when they make one that works, BINGO we get one. The same with these stupid solar arrays. Go to Bridgewater in Victoria and see that piece of fraud. Started up with tax payer dollars and when it was time to perform bring in the liquidators. Lets see one of these actually work.
My challenge Alan is tell me where there is a working solar array and I will trot out there and give it the once over. Last time I offered to buy your house off you for ten dollars as we are all going to hell. That offer still stands lol!

That array as you say was not an array it was a mismatch of all kinds of alt power.. That was set up as a privately funded demonstration of verious ways to generate power or hot water. That was years ago. That project seen the advent of evacuated tube solar hot water systems.
Frost unaffected and overheating unaffected, and half the cost of the original copper tube heaters.

That's a great fact, because I live there and we need some changes. I hope after renoval it will be great!

There are 1.7 million people living in South Australia. With $90 billion they could each be given $50,000 -- surely a sufficient incentive for most of them to pull up their roots and settle in some other, more viable, location?

This sort of article has become increasingly common: 'With [sufficiently large sum of] money we could change life for [relatively small number of] people!' Well, yes, you could. That's more or less what money is for. But the question is whether it could be better spent doing something else -- building and running serviced accommodation for 1.67 million people in central Queensland, perhaps.

And I'm sure most readers can come up with even more productive ways to spend this enormous sum.

Doog and Helen 1978, sorry what are you saying? Perhaps another post with a bit more detail.
Doog "Years ago" is not good enough. The money start up was Government money and that means we put it all up!

Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner JonJ.
The dumbest post on OLO for the month.

JonJ that would give Runner and run for his money.

I am afraid most posters here are not taking ERoEI into account.
The ERoEI of wind and solar are not really good enough to build
and maintain our civilisation in its present state.

As Ugo Bardi says in his article past civilisations had good ERoEI
and they were thus able to build Cathedrals.

http://tinyurl.com/kx42dzm

The upshot of it is that Sth Australia was always going to come to grief.
They could never have succeeded. They were doomed from the start.
Bardi suggests that it might be possible if we give up aviation,
driving cars etc. With the ERoEI of wind & solar and putting
batteries into the mix will only make it worse.

The politicians and commentators, in all the hours of waffle that we
have heard over the last few months, have never mentioned ERoEI.

It is the one fundamental factor that never gets mentioned.
It means that all their plans are meaningless if ERoEI is not in them.
If we do not take it into account then Joseph Trainter's
Collapse of Complex Systems is upon us all.

Bazz,

I suggest you follow your own link and reread Ugo Bardi's article, for it explains why most to the claims about EROEI are wrong. At most EROEI only limits the rate of growth of energy use (which Ugo seems to have conflated with economic growth).

I'd go further and say that the use of nuclear power makes even that irrelevant. Even if we don't use it ourselves but just trade with countries that do, the amount of energy available to invest is no longer a limiting factor.

For scientists designing new power sources, and engineers commercialising them, EROEI is important. For everyone else, it's irrelevant. It is not what limits our progress.

Time grow up Aidan, & learn to apply a bit of math.

When you chose something with insufficient ERoEI, the costs skyrocket. People like car manufacturers can not survive & compete when faced with these costs.

Without these manufacturers & with little agriculture, you have nothing to trade with. Hence the current situation where South Australia has no real reason to exist, & has to bludge mightily on the other states for it's daily bread.

If it is not ripping others off for money, it is using all types of contrived con tricks to rip them off for the water to grow the bit of wine it does have.

Rather than the renewable state, it is the rust bucket state, in need of a new broom in the form of sand blasting to get rid of the rust, the cr@p & the lefty garbage, that has destroyed its enterprise along with it's industry & power generation.

There really is no reason to continue supporting the place. The premier claims this is the most anti SA government ever, just after that fool Turnbull promises them 50 Billion, yes Billion in a sub contract.

South Australia has nothing of value to offer as trade to the rest of Australia, or the world but continued waste. Their only trade goods sympathy, but that is growing pretty thin.

Just musing, assuming SA doesn't want to do anything sensible and conventional over the longer term, then:

Rather than batteries, they could add massively more wind and solar generation to produce hydrogen by electrolysis and convert this to ammonia (using nitrogen from the air, i.e. the Haber process) which is easily liquified with a little pressure, giving it good energy density.

The ammonia can be used in internal combustion engines or fuel cells, producing only nitrogen and water. So it could cleanly fuel electrical generation when there is too little light and wind AND transport AND be used in fertilising crops for ethanol production on poor land AND as a refrigerant for itself where required.

http://www.agmrc.org/renewable-energy/renewable-energy/ammonia-as-a-transportation-fuel/

At least ammonia generated electricity is fully dispatchable until the ammonia completely runs out, unlike batteries, which should not be fully discharged (which ruins their life expectancy). Furthermore, battery storage reduces the EROEI of renewables to pointlessness, as well as requiring expensive, regular replacement.

Not for a minute am I saying I've done my sums on this, but if SA is to continue to dream of saving the planet, it should try it without massive, EROEI sapping, battery storage infrastructure.

Luciferase, in what you suggest there are a lot of energy transitions.
Starting at an ERoEI of 10 for the wind generator and then all the
losses in the transitions won't leave much energy at the wheels.

I guess this what I have meant when I said pollies & govt never take
eroei into account.

To defend my brain-fart a little, Bazz, https://phys.org/news/2017-02-flipping-ammonia-production-electricity-consuming.html

Dreaming is fun.

Hasbeen,
Time to grow up yourself - ditch the EROEI meme and start thinking about the real implications!

I'm well aware costs are important. But energy invested only accounts for a small proportion of the total cost. Try actually reading the article you linked to.

SA's skyrocketting electricity costs had very little to do with EROEI and far more to do with the bungled deregulation and privatisation process (which failed to ensure there was an efficient market) and the underinvestment of the 1980s and 90s (AFAIK no power stations were built in SA in those two decades).

SA actually has quite a lot of agriculture. Most of it isn't reliant on the Murray, as our ability to exploit it has been severely limited by upstream irrigators not leaving us much water.

What SA needs is investment. But the RBA sets interest rates at levels appropriate for the eastern states, which are far too high for SA. The amount of Federal funding we get is insufficient to compensate for that.

Worse still, because a lot of Federal funding is in the form of tied grants, infrastructure decisions tend not to be based on what would be the most efficient solution, but instead on how the state can secure the most Federal funding. This problem is NOT unique to SA, but SA is more reliant on Federal funding and therefore the problem is greater here.

As for the sub contract, it was promised before the 2013 election. Since then shipbuilding orders have dried up, meaning ASC's lost a lot of its skilled workforce. Yet another example of the government's focus on short term budgetary figures at the expense of efficiency.

Luciferase,

There's quite a lot of science being done to replace the Haber process with something much more efficient - see http://www.nature.com/articles/srep01145

The sooner we can stop using the Haber process, the better. But meanwhile using hydrogen directly is better than using methane. Ammonia manufacturing does have some potential as a load balancing activity (to take advantage of the excess cheap electricity that a large amount of wind and solar power equipment would sometimes produce).

In the meantime, there is methane already in the ground while hydrogen has to be generated and stored.

As a transport fuel hydrogen isn't a goer unless its volume is greatly reduced, possibly through metal hydrides, e.g. http://www.ergenics.com/hs.html

There are so many approaches we can dream up, but affordable, dispatchable renewable energy 24/7/365 is dream too far.

SA's Plan B, when it went into renewables, is closing in a few days. Unless Hazelwood is paid to stay open, batteries are the only short term solution. It's just a matter of how many and what cost/inconvenience point of compromise SA consumers will bear.

"....batteries are the only short term solution...." forgot to mention the extra windmills and solar panels needed to charge them that also must be quickly erected. It's a real boondoggle!

...or they'll be charged with Victorian electricity, I suppose, no need for more wind/solar.

Victoria is reluctant to supply SA with more power as the interconnect or will not handle it . That is the problem since day one.

doog, the interconnector was upgraded last year. But once Hazelwood closes, the main direction of flow's likely to be reversed.

Luciferase, where did you get the idea that "batteries are the only short term solution"? What about gas turbines?

"In the meantime, there is methane already in the ground while hydrogen has to be generated and stored."
True, but apart from the environmental disadvantage of using methane, methane is readily useful for more other things, and more expensive because of that.

"There are so many approaches we can dream up, but affordable, dispatchable renewable energy 24/7/365 is dream too far."
Just dismissing it like that shows lack of thought.
Too far for what purpose in what location in what timeframe?

SA needs a fix before next summer. If they can get a gas plant and gas supply up before that I dips my lid. Batteries can be done quickly.

Affordable, 100% renewable dispatchable energy 24/7/365 is a dream too far because the storage issue will never go away. How much of it is ever enough to meet all contingencies, while noting the word "affordable"? If you want gas, not storage, the emissions reduction is insignificant in the fight against CAGW, which the aim of it all. You may just as well use "clean" coal baseload for the same effect.

Dreaming is not rational thought. You continue to dismiss EROEI. It is this determining how massive the generation and storage infrastructure must be (hence cost) to meet power and transport needs, while reducing emissions to an extent sufficient to solve CAGW in the time-frame we have.

We are all capable of dreaming (as we have demonstrated in our posts above), but the problem at hand needs a pragmatic solution, not far away dreams.

You plead that you are not anti-nuke but that it's unsuitable for Australia's sparse population while have sunshine and wind to plunder. Please explain. Wouldn't a reactor or two in the south-east supplant a lot of coal-fired power and maintain SA needs as well? Just what is your objection to it now SA is up SC? (BTW, are you suggesting the interconnector is more for Victorian needs than SA's?)

Your lot got SA into its mess. Why should anybody expect you to get SA out of it? Weatherill's desperate blame shifting prank will not deter enough astute SA electors from sacking his mob at the next election.