The ACCC looked at direct costs of renewables such as feed-in tariffs and the LGC and STC subsidies. Harder to quantify are indirect costs such as frequency correction and new transmission requirements. The 2014 RET Review found the cost of CO2 avoided was $54 per tCO2 when the carbon tax was $24.15. Now subsidies are double what they were then.

In Germany some are saying forget subsidies and just rely on CO2 pricing. Many of our political leaders like to throw money at their favourites to 'prove' they are a winner compared to say nuclear. Federal minister Angus Taylor has said the gravy train stops in 2020 but I'd bet otherwise. AEMO has changed its mind about the reliability of Victoria's new wind and solar build. For weeks Tasmania has been sending 400-500 MW via cable but that must stop with a big dry. Back to gas at any price.

It's all been made too complicated. Most people rely on the lying main stream media for their information. The cause of the problem is, as always, government. Politicians have meddled in the market.

What more than anything else is diving up energy prices are government agencies, who think? Price gouged profits are their personal ATM!

So also the operating capital of any number of cash cow essential services, that then need to respond to stay in business with higher and higher margins?

Renewable lobbyists are their own worst enemy as they campaign against affordable, reliable, SAFE, clean nuclear energy. on nothing more than fact-free fearmongering. And in so doing, ensure we are chained to coal!

What's missing in this space is genuine competition between carbon-free alternatives two of which would be homebrewed biogas connected to very local ceramic fuel cells.
The other is MSR thorium.

The missing competition is created by a complete rejection of cooperative capitalism. When we absolutely must preference and foster it with all means possible ASAP!

BECAUSE, co-ops almost alone, where the only private enterprise, free-market model to survive the Great Depression mostly intact. even as giant corporations were going to the wall.

Genuine cooperative capitalism, rejected by the extreme right on idiotic ideological grounds?

Affordable carbon-free nuclear energy alone would allow us to not just drought-proof Australia, but allow us to survive when we cross the climate change tipping point and subsequent worldwide catastrophe on a hitherto unheralded scale?

By going under polycarbonate, underground and transporting our exported trade commodities by submersible shipping. Because if we the world, cross that tipping point? We will have few other choices!

Each drought is sure to be worse than all those we've lived through and survived. Moreover, those we face in an uncertain future can only be worse. given a tiny window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

As our Leaders do their best impressions of Nero fiddling as Rome burns? Or seek to feather theirs or conies nests, or leap to obey, when ordered by a tiny minority of, if powerful, vested interest?
Alan B.

There seems to be a major deficiency in Graham Young's comprehension here. He criticises the 48% "wanting coal-fired power stations closed as soon as possible" on the grounds that it wouldn't be possible! It doesn't seem to occur to him that the 48% know immediate closure is not possible, and therefore have a more realistic understanding of what "as soon as possible" means.

He also fails to understand that although the measures to encourage more renewables increase electricity prices, having more generation from renewables puts downward pressure on wholesale prices. And that privatisation led to rampant profiteering even before there were any wind turbines on the grid.

The way to cheaper electricity is indeed littered with false conceptions... most of which are being pushed by him, the fossil fuel lobby and the government.

________________________________________________________________________________

Taswegian,
Sad to hear you're affected by the big dry too. But why resort to gas rather than wind?

As for frequency correction, my state as solved the problem - see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-02/tesla-battery-proves-a-leading-source-of-dispatchable-power/10326420

Aidan
when the big dry hits Tas it's likely that high pressure systems will slow the wind even if we build 10X as many windmills. Hence gas and diesel will be required.

Unwittingly you are confirming Graham Young's point about irrational belief in renewables and storage. The Hornsdale battery does microsecond frequency correction which is a problem caused by so many windmills. It will not power SA through a hot day. For example on one hot day last year SA appeared to use about 2h X 3000 MW = 6000 Mwh between 6 pm and 8 pm.
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/articles/2017/02/initial-analysis-sa-load-shedding-wed-8-feb-2017/
Hornsdale's 129 Mwh is a drop in the bucket. Problem not solved.

I find difficulty in comprehending the gap between what PM Scott Morrison and his MPs say about electricity going down in price and how the government plans to make or help this to happen.

Before becoming PM he said he 'pledged to lower electricity prices' and told The Sydney Morning Herald (28 Aug) that the government would 'put electricity prices down'. Sounds like good news for the common folks!

After his new cabinet met, he said that govt. would lower prices by setting a 'safety net on price'. What is that? The govt. would use 'the big stick' to get the big energy companies to do the right thing by customers.

There was talk of whether or not Morrison and company would continue with the National Energy Guarantee and the Paris climate agreement.

As we know from the South Australian black-outs in 2017, renewables can't maintain reliable electricity supply across the nation.

I'm waiting to hear something from the govt. about what it plans to do with establishing new clean coal-fired and/or nuclear powered electricity generators. Will that help to lower prices? If not, what will?

Using the 'big stick' threat may work with 7-year-olds but I don't expect the profit-oriented energy companies to accept readily the need to give ordinary Aussies a good deal on electricity.

Aidan,

<<why resort to gas rather than wind?>>

The answer is simple. Gas is readily available, 24/7. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow, so 24/7 supply is not possible.

There's a cohort regularly commenting here and in every form as a small if extremely vociferous minority who claim to be green and antinuclear?

The best friends of coal ever, given in their advocacy, we are left with coal as our only affordable option!

Disregarded is the fact that wind turbines need to turn for thirty years, to offset the carbon created during their manufacture.

And the mountains of toxic waste, piled near the solar voltaic factories in China, as we are lumbered with the coal-fired production even as China invests billions on MSR thorium?

Clearly, some of these "greens" are earning incomes as installers or shareholders of their preferred renewables/their manufacture?

Otherwise, would follow their contemporaries to embrace and advocate for the nuclear option as the only means currently available to draw down carbon without also creating an economic catastrophe.

Ignored is the amount of mercury now polluting our oceans and comes from heavy industries/dumped toxic waste, coal-fired smokestack emissions etc.

Still, these "friends of the earth", keep waffling on about nuclear dangers and waste that is less dangerous than coal-fired power and the toxic waste that finds its way down streams, valleys and major river systems to eventually end up in the ocean.

Much of it from the unregulated disposable of the highly toxic waste created by solar voltaic manufacture and little or no environmental controls, in hidden from our view? Vast Chinese manufacture?

If they were serious about actually addressing climate change and GW!? Would be first among equals advocating for the nuclear option!

Thorium is the most energy dense material on the planet and four times more abundant than lead. And MSR technology doesn't require the massive 150 atmospheres plus, that almost alone make the nuclear option less than ideal. But instead operates at near normal atmospheric pressure.

MSR thorium delivers everything fusion promised by couldn't deliver!

It's time to get real on climate change, GW and drought proofing Australia. And putting people before profit!

Can't die in a cornfield over a century ago!
Alan B.

Taswegian,
So you're expecting sustained high pressure conditions? It sounds like you could do with some more solar power!

Unwittingly you are providing yet another example of the false conceptions the anti renewables crowd have. We do not need a single power source to power the state through the hot day - we just need to make up the shortfall. And if you read the document you linked to, you'll see AEMO ordered the load shedding because they wanted Murraylink to run below capacity because of system constraints. The battery could have removed the need for contingency there, allowing them to run Murraylink up to full capacity, so the load shedding would not have been needed.

Of course all though the battery is already proving its worth in alleviating SA's power supply problems (including power companies manipulating the price) it won't solve everything. Hence solar thermal is being constructed at Port Augusta (something that really should have been done a decade or two ago) and there's pumped storage and more batteries on the way, as well as a direct connection to NSW.

OzSpen,
That's not applicable in Tasmania, which sources most of its power from hydro even at times of low demand.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Alan B.,
Thorium's not the most energy dense material on the planet: hydrogen is. But what you don't seem to understand is that it's expensive to develop. Some day it may produce power at 2c/kWh, but it won't be the early adopters who get it at that price.

"...as well as a direct connection to NSW."

Really, that's all that matters. The batteries, solar thermal etc are a sideshow offering the the possibility of a little expensive time-shifting of supply and demand.

The LCOE of non-hydro renewables should include the cost of the FF backup.

Hydrogen is not the most energy dense fuel, not by many orders of magnitude: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials

Tiresome bollocks. Ho hum.

Luciferase,
The connection to NSW certainly matters, it will help ensure the state's north is never isolated from the national grid again. Plus it will enable SA to get a better price when trading electricity with other states. But that doesn't justify dismissing everything else as a sideshow. The battery as already proven itself to be a good investment. Pumped storage and solar thermal will ensure there's more power available when it's needed.

The NSW connection will reduce the generation companies' opportunities for profiteering, but so will the batteries, pumped storage and solar thermal.
The NSW connection will help keep the power on in the unlikely event of SA ever being unable to generate enough, but the batteries, pumped storage and solar thermal will make that event unlikely.

It is impossible to use a single measure to get an honest comparison of the cost of electricity. There are some situations where FF backup is needed, and others where it isn't. "Tiresome bollocks" is an apt description of what you post when you fail to recognise that.

But I concede the point on energy density. Obviously I was thinking of specific energy. And I notice the table you linked to shows thorium to be inferior to uranium in both.

The LCOE of renewables should include the cost of all that it takes to make their output as reliably dispatchable as thermal baseload. Presently, that is almost entirely FF backup, with all its associated infrastructure. Storage will only raise LCOE further, without some astonishing breakthrough.

Renewables provide publicly funded fun for enthusiasts, not real economy solutions in a competitive world.

100% renewables in USA, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2KNqluP8M0&app=desktop

The whole situation with electricity seems to be just drifting along.
No actual action of any sort has occurred.
The population continues to rise and electricy demand also appears to
still be increasing.
As nothing has changed that increases available supply, then it just
seems that there will be systemic failure sometime sooner or later.

The public seemed to be convinced that solar and wind are cheap and can
be installed overnight. I was with a group of people, middle class well
educated people from various backgrounds who thought the government
could wave a magic wand and it could all be fixed in a couple of months.
When I explained that anything the government could do would take
some years to let contracts and get whatever built it did not seem to
them to be real. This is where the biggest danger lies, the average
Mr & Mrs voter do not realise how serious is the situation.
They seem to put it in the same class as any other political controversy.

When/If the crunch happens what many have believed that the government
would/could not just seize the closed down stations and reopen them.
Actually, what has not been considered is if a state emergency has
been declared an emergency controller could just take over those
stations and order them to be restarted, or equipment to be reinstalled.
In such situations emergency managers have the powers of God.
You do as instructed or be arrested.
It probably would not get to that point but the power being there is
real enough to remove opposition.

Ahh yes Luciferase, I watched that link the other day.
A real eye opener.
Considering the policies of the Greens and Labour it was frightening.
Considering the US about the size of Australia and adjusting for the
population differences it just makes the all renewables impossible.
How did you like the bit on guarenteed failure rates of solar panels
needing millions to be replaced every day forever ?

Luciferase, just watched it through again.
Relevant to us because the US is about the same size as Australia was
that 50,000 wind and solar farms would be needed.
Ours could be a lot smaller of course but the number is needed to get
the advantage of the weather differential. The roaring forties might
help to reduce that number.
Note the comment at the end;
Go nuclear or extinct.

Alan will be interested in the video that follows.

Luciferase,
The main use of LCOE figures seems to be to make deceptive claims about the cost of electricity (as a single figure is NEVER sufficient for an honest comparison). And when you're doing that, factoring the cost of backup into the LCOE figure, whether or not the backup is already there, will make your case seem stronger.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Bazz,
A great deal of action has occurred. More rooftop solar is continually being added, and there's plenty of large scale solar and wind farms opening as well. And now (at last) we're adding more storage too.

And no, that video is not relevant to Australia. Not only do we not have the demand that the USA does, but we don't have the enormous seasonal variation that California gets. AIUI all our states have a pretty strong anticorelation between solar and wind output.

One need not be bright to see that FF backup infrastructure must be of the same scale and cost as if renewables did not exist. The only saving from pairing renewables with the FF backup is a little fuel, and not as much as one might expect given load following involves inefficient fuel usage. There's not much joy on the emissions front from pairing either, especially if the FF is gas with consequent methane leakage. I get a giggle out of SA building massive backup diesel generation with little fanfare while hollering its piffling capacity, expensive battery from the rooftops. Not sure the new Lib gov't there is any better, now to subsidize home batteries. What an utter waste of public money.

Of course, we await great storage solutions, like waiting for Godot. Adding these based on known technology blows renewables' LCOE completely out of the water. We are sleepwalking into economic catastrophe.

Scaling from the US to Australia will have significant errors.
To get the wx differentials, however great they might be, it
would just be common sense to take as much advantage as possible of
geographical dispersal.
Sure if our electrical demand is say one twelfth of the US's we just
need roughly the same number of wind and solar farms as the US but
just one twelfth the KW rating.
The problem is if that study is anywhere near correct to get the wx
differential we will need something like the same number as the US needs.
That is 50,000 wind & solar farms !

I note that the Greens now have a proposal to have thirty Wind and
solar farm zones all around Australia.

We keep hearing the wind and solar is cheaper than coal.
I think it is true that a wind turbine's output is cheaper, but
that is at nameplate rating. Over a year they get about 35% of the
nameplate rating. That is why 12 are used to get the nameplate output of one.
If they go ahead the way they seem to expect with 50% target I suspect
they are laying up one hell of a political row when it falls over.

Yeah Bazz, http://reneweconomy.com.au/greens-propose-30-renewable-energy-zones-backed-by-grid-fund-30594/

No mention of storage (presumably unimportant under this grandiose dispersal scheme), but there is this,"Renewable energy is the cheapest form of electricity........".

How can zealots within government and its organizations keep making this ridiculous claim without full accountability? The cost calculation for renewables must include everything required for their 24/7/365 delivery, be it thermal backup or storage. Joe Public is conned by the mantra to believe more renewables means cheaper electricity, without any reference to reliability other than reveries like the Greens 30-zone plan and general splashing about of the term "storage" as some given.

http://energylive.aemo.com.au/News/-/media/FA01D34E19E0484BB3697016B7A58159.ashx has nearly 350 references to "storage" without coherent elaboration.

Luciferase, well it looks like the Greens are starting to realise what
they are taking on with 100% renewables.
Still, if those Americans thought they would need 50,000 wind and solar
sites spread across the US, then there is a big gap between them and
the Greens 30 sites over the same area.

As that article said, Go Nuclear or Go Extinct !

Bazz,

Go nuclear, go clean coal-fired stations, go renewables to obtain reliable power across Australia.

I'm waiting for the Coalition to tell us exactly how it is going to reduce the cost of electricity to businesses and houses in the land.

Slogans of 'We will lower electricity prices' are not good enough without specifics of how this will happen.

I don't plan on holding my breath until it comes.

Or, will that be revealed as an election promise with planned actions before the 2019 elections?

Would one of you be able to give me some technical assistance for this forum?

When I post a URL, like that for my homepage at: http://spencer.gear.dyndns.org/, I'm not able to provide this as a direct link.

I notice a number of you have made posts with direct links to a website. How may I do it?

My, oh my, it happened but I have no idea what caused it to happen this time and not for the other times when I post a www address and it fails to give a link.

Was the Internet fairy working to help me tonight?

I learned here that if you remove the "s" from links with https, they work.

Re what ScoMo's gov't will do is still a mystery. The "G" in the NEG could be retained by requiring energy providers to guarantee reliability. So, if there is a renewables component in a provider's mix it is backed up by its own or contracted FF generation, or storage. This, together with removal of all forms of federal subsidy, is what I hope to be hearing. Green states will continue with their subsidies, no doubt, as stupid is what stupid does.

"Go nuclear or go extinct" is about the sum of it.

Ozpen, another way is to use Tinyurl.
You ask the 64 $T question.
How did we get to the present situation ?
Well we installed a lot of renewables, but nowhere near enough.
We closed 5 or 6 power stations.
Perhaps if we reopenned/built 5 or 6 coal fire power stations we just
might get back to where we were.
So lets pretend that we did that.
I think it is reasonable to say that no one would say lets repeat what we did.
We now know for certain, and other countries have confirmed it, that
wind and solar are not going to do it on their own, we just cannot
afford it due to the massive duplication needed, and the enormous high
powered grid over all the country. Everywhere able to feed everywhere.

So what are the alternatives,
nuclear a proven technique,
pumped hydro
natural gas, a limited rescource,
geothermal, has significant problems due to depth.
Batteries & other storage. Very expensive unless there is a breakthrough in technique.

That's enough to work on. Pumped hydro ala Snowy2. Could use off peak
nuclear output, but would it be cheaper to just use the nuclear
considering the cost of Snowy2 ?
Natural gas, what is the current ERoEI.
Geothermal, well the granite is very deep and the trial ran into
problems with corrosion, cheap energy if you can get it.

Once you have a nuclear station running I presume they can be adjusted
to match the load easily and the operating cost does not change much,
my assumption. I suspect that once you have nuclear running there is
not much point in fiddling with anything else.

Plenty of other countries asking themselves the same questions.

Here's the kind of dreaming that the gullible are swallowing on 100% renewables.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/11/09/new-study-shows-urgently-needed-100-renewable-transition-more-feasible-ever

All we need is batteries. So obvious, really, but those nasty big FF companies are stopping us!

Luciferase,
"One need not be bright to see that FF backup infrastructure must be of the same scale and cost as if renewables did not exist."

Any dimwit can fall for anti renewables propaganda, but it should be easy for the bright to see through it.

Same scale? Almost, IF YOU IGNORE STORAGE (which of course there's no reason to do). Same cost? No, there are cost tradeoffs - it would be silly to invest as much in equipment that's run once in a blue moon as that which is run almost every day.

"The only saving from pairing renewables with the FF backup is a little fuel, and not as much as one might expect given load following involves inefficient fuel usage."

Ah, another of the anti-renewables myths! In reality load following is needed whether or not any of the energy comes from renewables!

"There's not much joy on the emissions front from pairing either, especially if the FF is gas with consequent methane leakage."

Firstly, methane leakage isn't exclusive to the gas industry - a lot of it comes from coal mines. Secondly, although there's a temporary increase in gas use every time a coal fired power station closes, in the long run renewables are replacing gas usage as well. Thirdly, gas leaks are often avoidable consequences of mismanagement of fracking. Other leaks are caused by damage to pipes, and are not proportional to use.

"I get a giggle out of SA building massive backup diesel generation with little fanfare"

I don't think "building" is the right word, as they're bought (or I think in SA's case leased) off the shelf and are fairly easy to transport.

"while hollering its piffling capacity, expensive battery from the rooftops."

'Tis the biggest battery in the world, it's very successful at stabilising the network, it's brought down our peak power prices and it's expected to pay for itself within three years. Surely that's worth hollering from the rooftops?

Luciferase (continued)
"Not sure the new Lib gov't there is any better, now to subsidize home batteries. What an utter waste of public money."

Not necessarily. I don't know what criteria they'll be approved by, but home batteries could avoid the need for costly network upgrades.

"Of course, we await great storage solutions, like waiting for Godot."

Not really. There's plenty of storage infrastructure due to be constructed soon, not reliant on any technological advances. But if battery technology does keep advancing at the current rate (no pun intended) it can be expected to greatly reduce or reliance on gas in future.

"Adding these based on known technology blows renewables' LCOE completely out of the water."

Dubious, and anyway LCOE is NOT the real cost of electricity.

"We are sleepwalking into economic catastrophe."

Certainly not in the way you think. Or economy has been badly damaged by politicians trying to balance the budget for its own sake. It's also been damaged by unnecessarily high interest rates. High electricity prices rank a distant third in terms of damage, though still significant. But what you fail to understand is that generation from renewables is no longer more expensive than from fossil fuels. The high prices are the result mainly of factors unrelated to renewables, and of the portion that is attributable to renewables, it relates more to how the renewables are encouraged than to the renewables themselves. As more renewables are added to the network, we can expect to see costs fall.

"..YOU IGNORE STORAGE.."

While I am well aware of storage, such as it is bandied about with gay abandon by anti-nuke greenies like you, Aidan, I do not ignore the preposterous cost of it.

To build enough storage to provide the availability and reliability of thermal baseload, which modern man has every reason to expect now and into the future, is the insane proposition of the renewablista zealots pushing us toward third world status.

Your bluster about emissions has a single word answer, Germany. For all its billions upon billions spent on renewables, and its extension cords to French nuclear and Nordic hydro, it can't meet its targets and is building coal plants!

Your battery may pay for itself, if we ever know its true cost, only through the circumstances the RET throws up. The energy market is so corrupted by this and the the boondoggle of direct and indirect subsidies, state and federal, any twist is possible. However, on behalf of our grandchildren I oppose any notion that Oz should run on sunshine, wind and batteries while the rest of the world whizzes by us economically.

Luciferase,
Another disingenuous answer from you! Storage has been part of our energy mix for many decades, and the cost is far from preposterous.

Matching thermal baselad is a truly IDIOTIC objective, because with thermal baseload you still need storage (or augmentation with other FF generation) to meet demand. We should aim to meet our needs, not to emulate something that doesn't.

Once you understand that baseload doesn't directly correspond to our needs, you may start to comprehend that nuclear power is not the cheap option that many of its proponents make it out to be. Meanwhile the cost of renewables is falling, and has become competitive with nuclear and FF.

To say Germany is unwise to phase out nuclear power is a great understatement. But that doesn't mean that in Australia (where our demand is low relative to available land and we still have a huge supply of great sites for renewables) nuclear power makes economic sense.

And if you think the Australian energy market is corrupted because of the RET, you really don't understand the issue at all. The market was corrupted from the start (long before the RET existed) by the participants having too much market power. It was frequently more lucrative to hold out for a better price than to profitably generate electricity. Now the big battery is reducing the opportunities to manipulate the market.

The entire edifice of 100% renewables is there being enough affordable storage to make electricity dispatchable 24/7/365, i.e. as reliably as our current baseload system delivers.

Arguing in the eddies about this bit of storage or that bit of peaking supporting thermal baseload is the last refuge of an anti-nuke, renewablista scoundrel, such as you are Aidan. Same as the use of hydro stats wherever it suits to add ballast to bald renewablista claims.

Have a good look at why Energiewende is going guts up. It's because the dream of cheap storage has not manifested, not the lack of any political will, as renewablistas would have it, but because it's not here yet. Germany waits for Godot while its emissions and power prices (and taxes on electricity consumers) have risen.

http://thebulletin.org/2016/05/germanys-energiewende-the-intermittency-problem-remains/

http://alethonews.com/2015/05/11/shambles-energy-professor-declares-germany-energiewende-a-failure/

German renewablistas now pressure other Euro nations to go lock-step with them down the road to oblivion, so as to maintain competitive parity.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/26/with-pollution-on-the-rise-will-europe-finally-resist-germanys-dirty-war-on-nuclear-power/