Pragmatism, a much needed thing these days
Coal will not be used forever, I question that it is the cheapest fuel, and believe it will, within decades not be so if it is
Now for the double somersault and twist
This rise of the right is real, and like it or not, here at some level to stay
Fact is most want renewable energy, truth is they will get it, but not over night
Coal will continue to be used until it is over priced or its use is seen as wrong
No dump coal now policy will find support right now or in the short term future
Chase achievable change, not change that entrenches the very right

JBowyer

you sum up why the West is doomed unless people like Trump expose and deal with the swamp quickly.

Despite the title of this thread, a lot of people in it are still living in fantasy land.
What will it take to convince them that the costs today are very different from a decade ago? And that Lomborg's prediction has come true; it is now cheaper to generate electricity with renewables than with fossil fuels (even when the cost of battery storage is included)?
How many more breakdowns of our coal fired power stations will it take to convince them that reliability isn't synonymous with dispatchability?
What will it take to convince them that they're overestimating the area of solar panels needed to power Australia by a factor of ten thousand?

Coal probably has a good future as a chemical feedstock for the manufacture of graphene etc. But the sooner it becomes a thing of the past for electricity generation, the better.

Hasbeen, the wind generators can be fitted with synthesised equipment
that enables them to generate 50cycles, presumably using xtal oscillators.
This then enables them to get synchronised with the grid.
This equipment was not fitted in Sth Aus turbines and that was why
they had all that trouble. But that is all by the bye.
The ERoEI of coal will fall someday in Australia as it has in the US & China.
So the more coal we sell the sooner we will have to shut the mines down.
Who is "them" Aiden ?
The power stations comprise thousands of parts, each of which can get
the three "Rs". Major items like boilers can be replaced for the same
cost as putting new ones into new power stations.
The turbines can be run for a hundred or two years with maintenance.
If they burn the stator out, it can be rewound while a spare is used.
True the maintenance has been run down because they have taken away
their output so they cannot make money.
The only reason to scrap a coal fired power station is if the coal
runs out and there is none in an economic distance. But then we ship
it around the world !
Ding a lings are running around saying they are "clapped out".
How ridiculous, as if they are like an old car !
So they are fifty years old, so what ?

It is starting to sink in that the dream of all wind & solar even
in a country as large as Australia is unaffordable because of the
duplication needed to get 100% supply and 99.9% reliability.
Read between the lines and you can sense it.
It is politically incorrect to say so. The emperor has no clothes.

Hey Bazz,

Guess what! I found the article

Cook, J., et al. 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature', Environmental Research Letters 8 (2), 2013.

Bazz,
What trouble is it you're referring to? If it's the statewide blackout, that was nothing to do with the frequency control settings, but in the settings for how they should react when the powerlines short circuit.

The EROEI of coal is irrelevant, as costs are dominated by non energy inputs. Which is just as well, as the world can't afford to keep burning coal until the EROEI crashes.

"Them" referred to other posters on this thread (and anyone with good comprehension should be able to identify that my remarks were specifically directed at JBowyer and Hasbeen). But it could easily also be directed at some politicians (including our PM) who are under the same illusions.

>The power stations comprise thousands of parts,
That doesn't make them any more reliable. It doesn't necessarily make them unreliable either - real world reliability is what counts, and this is where our coal fired power stations are proving to be unreliable.

>each of which can get the three "Rs".
What does that mean in this context?

>True the maintenance has been run down because they have taken away
>their output so they cannot make money.
Dubious - the maintenance changes happened shortly after privatisation and made them very profitable.

>The only reason to scrap a coal fired power station is if the coal
>runs out and there is none in an economic distance.
Who do you think should pay when they run at a loss?

>It is starting to sink in that the dream of all wind & solar even
>in a country as large as Australia is unaffordable because of the
>duplication needed to get 100% supply and 99.9% reliability.
Firstly that dream's a strawman, as nobody's proposing phasing out hydro.
Secondly, now big batteries are here, most of the perceived impracticality of 100% renewables has gone.
Thirdly, as the market share of renewables continues to increase, more of the arguments against it will be shown to be groundless.