"Besides being economically non-viable, the environmental effects are not so green either."

No they are not. The damage being done to the Australian environment by foreign-owned wind and solar operators is evidence of that. It is madness to claim that climate change is affecting the environment while ruining the same environment with windmills and solar panels.

The ultra-polluting side effects of present level 'Green Energy' are well documented & exposed.
Lithium batteries & wind mills are topping the range in least benefit from the most production pollution !
My guess is that Lithium batteries will be a thing of the past before long, apparently, solid state batteries are being focussed on now. The term 'Renewable Energy' is misinterpreted by most & confused with perpetual energy. Coal & oil would be no problem energy providers if only used on a need basis. As with everything else, people are over-using for either straight-out greed or insipid frivolities ! Simply summed-up, stupidity is what causes pollution !

The author of this article, Charles Hemmings, provides us with a fairly rudimentary analysis of the some of the basic issues associated with the transition away from fossil fuel generated electricity.

Topics such as "free" energy, comparative economics, intermittency, storage and environmental effects have been talking points for decades.

Perhaps with an interest in business the author could have addressed the quantitative analysis of why so many energy companies are investing in these alternative energy sources.

The real contradiction here appears to be between the author's qualitative assessment and the energy sectors' quantitative reality.

Quite obviously someone else must pay WTF? - Not Again's electricity bill, or he could not make the statement above.

Agree with most of this.

And fossil fuels are no longer cheap but among the dearest on the planet! Thanks to the war in Ukraine.

Nobody will even contemplate setting a manufacturing industry here based on fossil fuel sourced power or battery or pumped hydro backed renewables. Totally economically unviable!

This is the economic rubbish you get when ideological imperatives replace logics rites/common sense!

Only nuclear remains affordable and we could build our own if we replaced the airheads in Canberra with folk with still functioning cerebral cortices.

China has perfected MSR thorium and should asked to provide/sell us a few that we could operate via facilitated and funded local co-ops, allowed to compete for your energy dollar!

And that my friends is how you do energy that supports local/nation building industry, particularly self defence industries, needed now as never before.

Only the worthless and seriously overpaid, gormless head buriers in Canberra refuse to open their eyes and remove the ideological blinkers! Where nuclear is a name that cannot be said or heard!

If these morons want to cut their own economic throats, they shouldn't expect the nation or industry to follow suit!

Small Modular reactors can be placed where needed and supported by far less vulnerable micro grids. That come with far less transmission and distribution losses! Totalling 75% currently and losses that we the mug consumer pays for!

What would you give for energy that retails for less than 3 cents PKWH and still returns a handsome profit! I kid you not!

The above energy provision scenario is one that will do it! No two ways about it!
Alan B.

WTF?

Hasbeen says:
"Quite obviously someone else must pay WTF? - Not Again's electricity bill ...."

After an initial investment, my solar electrical setup paid for itself after about 3 years and has, to date, given me over another 7 years worth of no electrical bills.

According to AEMO 230GW more capacity is needed by 2035. So far only 50GW has been planned and committed. This is hardly a vote of confidence in the economics of renewables.

That is quantitative enough.

WTF?

The AEMO that Chuckles quotes contains some interesting information.

This is the title of their article published on 23/10/2023.

"Renewables push NEM electricity prices down to historical levels."

AEMO’s latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report shows that wholesale electricity prices averaged $63 per megawatt hour (MWh) in the September quarter, down 41% from the June quarter ($108/MWh) and 71% ($216/MWh) from Q3 2022.

This quantitative data provided by AEMO shows the results that renewables are having on electricity prices.

If renewables are so cheap why are domestic prices still rising.

In the military if you go AWOL when most needed you can end up in the brig or in Russia shot. If I recall the UK Academy of Engineers added the cost of open cycle gas to cover gaps. I understand ACCC will try to do an analysis of why retail power prices have gone up over 20% in successive years. Yet renewables advocates can say with a straight face that the price of electricity will go down.

Gas backup 40% efficient at the capped gas price must cost at least $100 per MWh just for fuel. Battery storage $100-$150, pumped hydro who knows what? Then there's the new transmission build and compensation for ruined farmland. Coal and gas backup requires RECs like LGCs $50 per MWh and certified but actually worthless carbon credits at $30 per tCO2. Then there's the cost of frequency correction FCAS if the generator doesn't have their own. Another potential whopper is compensated demand cutbacks eg one foundry was getting $8,000 per MWh. The rest of us pay for it. Those who say renewables are cheap are blinkered religious fanatics.

A current article that doesn't allow comments in The Conversation says the LCOE of SMRs could be over A$300 per MWh as divined by CSIRO and AEMO. Some SMR makers are quoting US$80 as recently as July. If Australia lets dogma overrule pragmatism we are headed for a cliff.

WTF?

Chuckles askes: "If renewables are so cheap why are domestic prices still rising."

Maybe ask AEMO - you after all introduced that organisation into the discussion to back up your point of view and they manage the markets.

Taswegian says: "Those who say renewables are cheap are blinkered religious fanatics."

Well the AEMO says that they are getting cheaper and they should know.

So if some are not getting the reduced prices that are clearly associated with renewables then ask the organisation tasked with managing the market i.e. the AEMO.

The reality is the electricity market manager is telling us that renewables are reducing the cost of electricity.

If AEMO and CSIRO have used LCOE as methodology the results are invalid. Refer to the author's first paragraph. As my retail bills are going up, renewables are increasing the cost of electricity. There is no wriggle room in that nor any excuse.

The greens are full of it! Their hidden agenda is to make energy too dear for industry. And that's why they back renewables and not carbon free dispatchable base load nuclear! That's less polluting than solar panels! And as MSR thorium at least 8 times cheaper as the bare minimum
Alan B.

WTF?

Chuckles makes a big call claiming that CSIRO results are invalid and refers us back to the author.

The author suggests that the LCOE metric is invalid for use with renewables and Chuckles thinks that this invalidates CSIRO findings.

Yet the CSIRO in its GenCost 2021-22 Final Report states: “The LCOE is estimated on a common basis for all technologies with one exception. An additional process is undertaken to calculate the integration costs of variable renewables.”

CSIRO states: “LCOE is a simple screening tool for quickly determining the relative competitiveness of electricity generation technologies. It is not a substitute for detailed project cashflow analysis or electricity system modelling which both provide more realistic representations of electricity generation project operational costs and performance.

CSIRO identifies a number of problems with using the LCOE such as “LCOE does not take account of the additional costs associated with each technology and in particular the integration costs of variable renewable electricity generation technologies.”

The CSIRO goes into length about how it address these issues – maybe this is the transparency that the author seeks?

As well as that “Modelling studies such as AEMO’s Integrated System Plan do not require or use LCOE data.”

A simplistic and outdated use of the LCOE metric does not advance a discussion about energy much at all – best to stick with information from the CSIRO and Chuckles’ preferred reference -the AEMO,

Small Modular reactors can be placed where needed
Alan B,
I have long said that if they can power high tech floating communities of 7000 plus or, as the Russians have been doing for yonks, powering remote communities with ex nuclear aircraft carriers then we can do it here.
Small nuclear (your Thorium ?) power plants that can be controlled in emergencies rather than large plants that can not be controlled i.e. Chernobyl & Fukushima.
Are the stumbling blocks here the politicians or the un-cooperating voters who want everything for nothing ?

The only way we shall EVER become a sustainable society is when global population becomes sustainable.
And that is NEVER likely to happen. Humanity is breeding itself out of existence.

Humanity is breeding itself out of existence.
ateday,
Yes, because of so many hypocritical exploiter do-gooders who've had it too good for too long !

MSR thorium cannot meltdown because it's designed to operate in a molten state/if for any reason the power fails, it automatically shuts down! For that reason, it's walkaway safe.

One can literally fire up the reactor, allow it to peculate away for months without any oversight/just check on it very occasionally.

It's far safer than coal fired power which has many concerns.

Moreover, you'd be very surprised at the list of highly toxic wastes that emanate from coal smokestacks, particularly ROM coal fired power stations, arsenic cadmium and uranium, to mention but a few!

Even then, the very cheapest you could do coal fired power anywhere was 6 cents PKWH and looking at upward of 58 cents next year.

At least twenty times as dear as our own owned and operated MSR thorium.

The trick here is to keep it out of price gouging foreign hands charging whatever the market will bear!

We here in Australia own around 40% of the world's thorium and enough to power this nation until the universe collapses around 13 billion years from now. And that is because these reactors are so efficient, they only need to burn kilograms per annum while comparative coal needs hundreds of tons per annum!

Coal runs out here in around 700 years, whereas with thorium we have so much we can never run out it in the life of the planet or the universe! We could transition to MSR thorium now and still mine mucho plenty coal, and sell all we can possibly mine, to an energy hungry world!

A win, win for us every which way! We give the economy a huge boost, kill inflation dead in its tracks and put massive downward pressure on the cost of living!

There are no downsides here, just in Canberra and a moribund public service, which (would shite itself) or go into orbit if it conceived a new idea or considered our own MSR thorium, which China has perfected, and now operates in a number of military vessels and for domestic power, from the Gobi Desert!?
Alan B.

Indyvidual wrote:
"Yes, because of so many hypocritical exploiter do-gooders who've had it too good for too long !"
Maybe you mean those who want/have more than replacement number of progeny and/or use artificial means of conception.

WTF? quotes CSIRO: "an additional process is undertaken to calculate the integration cost of variable renewables". This is an admission that LCOE does not work for renewables as originally conceived. An embroidered LCOE is not a simple calculation and requires a significant complex set of assumptions, reducing the confidence and likely accuracy of the result when renewables are part or all of the generating system.
Two further observations:
My electricity bills are increasing as renewables are rolled out. This speaks to me more loudly than a CSIRO or AEMO calculation based on self-serving arbitrary assumptions. AEMO has advise of shortfalls in supply to come.
Also, so far as I know, no organization in the world is claiming success in building and operating a stand-alone intermittent renewables affordable and reliable electricity generating system. This won't happen at least until or unless storage becomes safe and affordable.
Attempting net zero with expensive renewables while we export as much coal as we can is not only futile (we contribute less than 1% of global emissions) but expensive and hypocritical.

Agree Chuckles, the whole idea of net zero is a pipe dream;

"This won't happen at least until or unless storage becomes safe and affordable."

Even then it will be very inefficient as each energy transition loses
energy. Big loss converting from primary energy, storage loss, then
another loss getting back to electricity then more losses getting it
to where it will be used.
They become rather large.

WTF?

Chuckles - talk about no wriggle room.

Chuckles went all-in on the notion of LOEC invalidating CSIRO and AEMO calculations.

Now it's my turn to tell you to go back reread the article.

The author talks about the problems with using the LOEC for renewables - this is the basis of his argument.

The CSIRO knows that it does not work on renewables so they adjust for this.

It is a simple tool.

The CSIRO uses other more reliable tools for comparison.

The AEMO does not use the LOEC.

So when you say "If AEMO and CSIRO have used LCOE as methodology the results are invalid" you now can say "AEMO and CSIRO results are valid."

Once again - the AEMO is able to document a decrease in the cost of electrical production due to the use of renewables - if this cost decrease is not being passed onto consumers it is not the fault of the renewables.

If dairy farmers are being paid less for their milk and the price of milk is going up at supermarkets don't blame the dairy farmer.

As I said from the start - the article is rudimentary.

Locking onto the LOEC as some type of "got ya!" moment leaves you with no wriggle room on deeper analysis

ateday,
I mean those who want to perpetuate modern slavery for consumerism without a thought for those who actually work to satisfy their greed.
Think of the Cobalt mining by children, the sweat shops, etc. Then there are those with five or more children on welfare etc.
Children existing in absolute misery with no chance of living a life of even just basic decency. The do-gooders who rather see children live in misery rather than have free & voluntary birth control for people who can't even feed themselves properly let alone a family. People who put their mostly stupid ideologies & pursuit of wealth before the quality of life of others.
Parasites who shun symbiosis yet bleat Democracy, hypocrites who donate only when the donation is Tax deductible ! Those who keep pushing renewable energy without actually doing anything themselves to curb pollution !
These people are all around & even within us.

There is no wriggle room for the position of WTF?. It is not LOEC but LCOE. The calculations of CSIRO and AEMO are invalid not only because they relegate intermittency as a simple adjustment, which is absurd, the vagaries of the weather evade most models, as we have seen with climate models but also their figures are dodgy. CSIRO and AEMO are beholden to government. In Daily Telegraph, 2 October 2023 we have an article: "The Big Lie" about the cost of renewables. Quote: "CSIRO and AEMO have been co-opted by the renewables lobby and government to prove renewables are the cheapest form of energy". This is believable when the figures quoted are at stark variance with a simple qualitative assessment. As the author said : figures are of no value unless the methodology and underlying assumptions are known.

Can WTF? answer why we can make renewables reliable and affordable when there is nowhere else in the world where this has been done?

WTF? wants to claim that the reason why we have higher energy costs now has nothing to do with renewables. Is it that renewables can do no wrong or something else? How absurd, it is in the same category as say that renewables are 'cheap'.

WTF?

Chuckles - seriously, a typo does not devalue the point I made.

I disproved both your and the author's (are Chuckles and Charles one and the same?) premise for the whole article.

The things you talk about are not new or revealing in any way just denial and unsupported deflection.

CSIRO does not use "a simple qualitative assessment" - and the author agrees that they should not. That is the whole premise of the article.

If you are critical of the CSIRO not doing the very thing you do not want them to do you have no point - talk about absurd.

If the facts do not suit your world view then too bad.

The facts do not care about your feelings so it does not matter how absurd you find it to be.

You are the one who is disagreement the CSIRO so the onus is on you to disprove their calculations. Quoting a newspaper article does not cut it. Saying it is because they do not use an unreliable comparison tool is just plain ridiculous.

Using your own power bill as a metric to try to discredit AEMO information that they commissioned a third party to analyse does not cut it.

WTF?

Chuckles the very fact that the author mistakenly assumed that the CSIRO uses the LCOE for comparison purposes in any meaningful way when it does not would seem to indicate a simplistic research technique.

Chuckles says: “As the author said : figures are of no value unless the methodology and underlying assumptions are known.”

Does the author know what the methodology and underlying assumptions are?

Did the author attempt to research CSIRO’s methodology and underlying assumptions?

Did the author attempt to evaluate the methodology or underlying assumptions himself?

I do not know but the fact that he appears to wrongly identify the LCOE as one of those fundamental methodologies and assumptions would make me suggest the research was done poorly.

Using the “because I don’t know how they did it they must be wrong” argument is a little trite.

Again I ask as it was conveniently ignored.....Can WTF? answer why we can make renewables reliable and affordable when there is nowhere else in the world where this has been done, so far as I am aware?

As to methodology and underlying assumptions, that is for CSIRO and AEMO to explain their case properly. There is no reason to accept their figures without that. One consultant, published in the Daily Telegraph on 2 Nov 2023 believes the two organizations have been "co-opted by the renewables lobby and government to prove that renewables are the cheapest form of energy". There is certainly some vested interest there.

WTF?

I think you are confused Chuckles.

I haven't answered that question because I have never made that claim.

The CSIRO report I referred to is an overview and it is 97 pages long.

I have 350 words but I repost an example about wind turbines.

Since 2018 there have been at least 5 studies undertaken around the world involving the energy return on investment for wind energy.

It typically takes about six months for turbines to achieve energy-payback time, or EPBT, the time it takes for a system to generate more energy than it took to make it.

A US Environmental Protection Agency report said the typical lifespan was 20 years for wind turbines. Other sources estimate from 18-25 years.

The lower end estimates include everything from pre-mining of materials to decommissioning and recycling.

This is the payback for using just one type of renewable.

You keep mentioning a newspaper article - who is the author, what sources materials did they use and what are their vested interests?

I'll trust the CSIRO and AEMO who use many sources of data - their own and third party data and I am sure that they are well aware of these 5 international studies.

You seem to want to distance yourself from your referencing the AEMO now that you realise that they debunk the author's premise.

WtF? You put total faith in CSIRO/AEMO and don't want to look anywhere else, quite a blinkered approach. Predicting future energy requirements is relatively straightforward, predictions of generating costs more complex. There is no vested interest in predicting future requirements but there is in generating costs. I referred to the AEMO report in relation to future requirements, nothing else, because increasing demand is obvious. I am not tied to that report which you keep banging on about. This is becoming a fruitless debate and should end.

I accept the author's claim that stand-alone renewables have reliability concerns and are not a source of cheap electricity, from basic considerations, unless new information comes to light. The CSIRO/AEMO results may be 'tainted' by political pressure as alleged in the "Big Lie' article in the Daily Telegraph 2 October 2023, which you could read.

Watching videos of so-called Green Energy fails is horrific. Horrific in the sense that even when faced by the reality of these fails some people still refuse to admit how big a failure & how costly in every which way present Green Energy is. I'm pretty sure that there will be better energy available in the future but if we keep using this 'Green energy", we most definitely won't have a future. Just watch electric cars & battery storage etc go up in flames & then imagine the thousands of unsold electric vehicles parked in fields catching fire !
The pollution from Green Energy as it is now is many times worse than using petrol or Diesel.
On top of it all think of the mining processes for Green Energy !

WTF?

Chuckles I said from the start the author had provided us with a rudimentary article.

He states: “ Any pronouncement about renewables being a cheap source of energy is invalid if based on LCOE, no matter what prestigious body pronounces it.”

We now know the CSIRO position and the AEMO position. By the author’s logic the CSIRO and AEMO positions must be valid.

What does AEMO say? They set the market not CSIRO.

"Renewables push NEM electricity prices down to historical levels."

At time of writing the current advertised spot price of electricity in QLD is $18.84 per Mwh.

If the prices overall are “down to historical levels” and the energy retailers were not getting those stated prices it would be shouted from the rooftops.

The terms “cheap” and “affordable” mean different things to different people so a term such as “….. electricity prices down to historical levels” carries much more significance.

If electricity prices are down for retailers while at the same time domestic and business prices are going up then this is an area that probably warrants more attention – this would make a good newspaper article that is in the public interest.

In some parts of Australia there is a sole energy retailer (at one time it was state run) which of course is a monopoly with all the associated problems for consumers.

CSIRO and AEMO draw their information from many sources – not blinkered at all.

A blinkered approach would be relying upon a debunked OLO article and a solitary newspaper article.

A quote from The Economist (Why is Renewable Energy so Expensive?):
"Countries with large amounts of renewable generation, such as Denmark and Germany, face the highest prices in the rich world". And even today that still applies. Real world experience demonstrates that (utility-scale) renewables are expensive, rubbishing the enthusiastic numbers from CSIRO/AEMO. There is no wriggle room here either. Deniers of renewables being expensive, either ignore real world experience, try to discredit it, think it does not apply to Australia (?) or are unaware of it. We need to get real about energy provision.

WTF? wanted to limit this to details of the CostGen report. OK.
GenCost uses a whole bunch of assumptions that are favorable to wind and solar to claim they will be the cheapest… in 2030. GenCost doesn’t even include the cost of transmission, one of the largest expenses for wind and solar. Huge transmission costs are the reason wind and solar projects are sitting stranded in the outback connected to nothing. This is the same CSIRO that seemingly knows nothing about Snowy 2.0, which has blown out from $2 billion to $12 billion for the project and associated infrastructure.
Experience has shown, as in this case, that the projections of quasi government bodies are not worth the paper they are written on.
Australia, you are being conned and by the time you realize it, the people who have caused such damage to the taxpayer will be gone.