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The Forum > Article Comments > Way to cheaper electricity littered with false conceptions > Comments

Way to cheaper electricity littered with false conceptions : Comments

By Graham Young, published 2/10/2018

Power prices are not an issue that should ever have become hostage to politics, and they are not one that will be ignored in an election campaign.

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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.
Posted by Luciferase, Thursday, 4 October 2018 8:38:36 AM
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100% renewables in USA, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2KNqluP8M0&app=desktop
Posted by Luciferase, Thursday, 4 October 2018 9:03:50 AM
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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.
Posted by Bazz, Sunday, 7 October 2018 3:46:17 PM
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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 ?
Posted by Bazz, Sunday, 7 October 2018 3:54:24 PM
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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.
Posted by Bazz, Sunday, 7 October 2018 4:33:22 PM
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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.

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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.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 8 October 2018 1:20:18 AM
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