Just before the state By-election for the Upper Hunter Morrison announced a $600 million gas fired power station was to be built in the region. The cynic in me says it was pork barrelling on a grand scale. Simply an attempt to buy the by-election for the Berejiklian state government, which following a series of scandals and forced resignations was looking at minority government. If that was the intention, it worked, the Nationals candidate fell over the line.

What, if anything will the taxpayer get for their 600 million bucks? The story began with AGL announcing it will close the aging Liddell 1,680 megawatt coal fired power station in 2023. With no interest from investors to build an economic lemons in the form of fossil fuel driven power stations, the Morrison government did what any good socialist government would do, commit to build a state run 660 mwatt gas fired power station. If this gas fired station ever gets to operate it will produce electricity 2% of the time, with 10 staff.

According to Nicki Hutley from the Climate Council; "Simply put, gas doesn't make economic sense in Australia anymore. It drives up electricity prices, it increases emissions at a time when the rest of the world is reducing emissions, and it creates very few jobs." Hopefully the only gas this project sees is hot air from the Morrison government.

I had the impression that Gas was a mere stepping stone until better alternatives become viable.
As desirable as green energy is, it does not as yet have the means to satisfy the requirements. Gas will get us through this period.
Those who aren't happy about the Gas are more than welcome to provide a better system right now !

Hi Paul,

Scott Morrison believes that energy prices could rise
by 30% in NSW if energy companies can't fill the gap
left by the closure of the Liddell power station in
2023.

And Energy Minister Angus Taylor insists the plane will
secure affordable energy for NSW once Liddell shuts
down.

The new plant will create 600 jobs in the region at the
peak of its construction phase.

With an election around the corner - this gas project
makes sense.

individual,
Of course that's the impression you had. It's the impression the government are trying to give now they realise Scotty can't market coal. And five years ago it was the truth!
But conditions have changed since then. The cost of renewables has fallen, and batteries are far more cost effective than new gas turbines for the times when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

The plant should have been a coal burner. We have a lot more coal
energy available than natural gas energy.
If anyone thinks it will only be a peaking unit you should watch the
AEMO web site more often. Together with the other gas station on the
south coast it will only provide about 1 Gigawatt, = 1000Megawatt.
Not enough these days.
Despite the billions spent on solar and wind plus subsidies they are
still only producing single digit percentages a lot of the time.
They seem to get up to 15% at times. I have never seen 20%.
So to get to 100% they will need to multiply the number of wind and
solar by about 10 times the present installations.
However you cannot just plant them alongside the existing ones.
You need to spread them over the country.
You then need to build a country wide high power grid that can supply
anywhere from anywhere depending on where the wind is at any one time.
NOW do you see why we cannot afford renewables ?

Indi,

The greens are like children. Pauliar's cynicism is directed solely at the coalition.

That renewable power supplies are not reliable seems to be beyond their grasp ramping up wind and solar supplies and phasing out coal-fired power stations is not possible without standby power in the form of fast-start gas power stations or batteries etc.

That the gas generation has been planned for a while is documented, that Morrison chose the moment to announce it is what all polies do.

Why do you think the electricity suppliers are encouraging you to install batteries ?
It is because they cannot afford to do it on the scale needed.
"How about we get the muggines to install batteries ?"
They will be very thankful for the pittance we will give them for the
power we pull out of their batteries.

The scheme solves the major problem with the big battery solution.
WHEN and FROM WHERE do you recharge the big enough batteries ?
A battery to replace the output of a 1 Gigawatt station has to be
16 x 1 Gigwatt/hr capacity.
There is nothing anywhere near that in the world. (Except Hydro)
From costs I have seen it would cost ONE TRILLION Dollars. (roughly)
The 16 comes from a cold still winter night or day 4pm to 8am when
you then have a flat battery to recharge in 8 hours, provided the
next day is sunny and windy provided the country shuts down for recharging.
People talk endlessly about batteries but noone ever quizzes them
with; BUT WHEN WILL YOU RECHARGE THEM ?

The following link may be of some interest.
It was a Media Release from the PM on the
17th Sept. 2020:

http://www.pm.gov.au/media/investment-new-energy-technologies

The Govt. can only propose with what's available now ! There's no point inargueing about green technology until it is AVAILABLE.
It is not as yet nor is there any other alternative. If there was, the money mongers would have it in place already, they wouldn't sit back & let all those billions slip by them !
It's the alternative solution crowd that's pushing (Socialists) to waste other peoples' money so they can fuel their arguments which never stand up to reality anyway.
To them I say, show us a system that works & we the voters & Govt. will buy it off you !
Ubtil then, stop bludging off the rest of us & try to get a real job !

Got this from an email with a picture of hundreds of cars in a yard.

This is a boneyard near Paris, France with hundreds of electric powered cars. Mind you these are only cars used by the City of Paris and not personal vehicles. All of these have the same issue,.... the battery storage cells have given out and need replaced. Why not just replace them you ask? Well two reasons. First the battery storage cells cost almost double what the vehicle cost new, and second no landfill or disposals will allow the batteries to be disposed of there. So these green fairy tale electric cars are all sitting in vacant lots while their batteries drain toxins into the ground

Hi Foxy,

I read Morrison's "Media Release", and on face value it would appear Australia has nothing to worry about, if you can believe the government. I am not opposed to GAS-FIRED POWER per se, being an interim measure as we transition away from coal to renewables. Given the governments lack of a cohesive energy policy, gas may well be necessary. This particular project has many people baffled, both from an economic and also from an environmental viewpoint. Economically it don't stack up, private investment wont touch it, as for it power generation necessity that has also been questioned by experts in the field. It may turn out to be a very expensive white elephant.

individual,
You've been lied to. See http://www.snopes.com/fact-check/electric-cars-abandoned-france/

___________________________________________________________________________________

Bazz, I'll respond to your post later.

Paul is right in that companies won't touch power generation because
of the mess with the political parties intentions.
They could not trust the parties to have a stable policy and so the
risk would be too great for such large capital investment.
Even the banks are wary of providing such finance because of that
and the cancel culture that now preys on anything that moves.

Ultimately it will come to a disaster with widespread daily blackouts
and widespread unemployment. There will be big money for lift mechanics
to be on call 24 hours to release people from stuck lifts.
Might even get me out of retirement as I worked in that field for a
few years a long time ago.
An alternative would be to put a stackable set of chairs in every lift.
No matter what happens, there will be a few years of blackouts
because no one is listening.
Really, to come down to earth there IS only ONE solution;
NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS.

Aidan,
Thanks for the info, will be interesting if there's more talk on this.

I think I may have exaggerated the price of a 16 Gigawatt/hr battery.
Divide it by 10, so may only cost $16 Billion !
Err wait a minute, the figures I have seen are $1 per watt so then
1x1000000000x16
So easy to misplace some zeros.
Anyway, you can see why there is a campaign to get customers to
install batteries and have them available to supply the grid when needed.
So for every 1 Gwatt coal fired station closed down that is what you
need to replace it when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.
And then the next morning if your battery is flat you have to pinch
power from somewhere to recharge it in eight hours.

Pauliar,

The only people that are baffled are the ones that have no concept of power generation and network support. The real experts are the ones that recommended this backup supply.

Considering the $bns cost to the state of SA when the renewables tripped makes the backup very worth it.

This graph of electricity generation and source from Queensland after the Callide power station dropped out 2 days ago shows why you need gas-fired power stations. Nothing else will fill the gap when you lose generation capacity. And the more solar penetrates the system, the more you will see this sort of power drop-out on a regular (24 hour) cycle. Wind does the same, but less predictably.

Federal government doing all the right things here, and state governments are posturing. Without firming capacity "renewables" are not fit for purpose. At the moment the only technology that can provide firming capacity at the scale required is gas. https://twitter.com/GrahamY/status/1397773798133276675/photo/1

"more solar penetrates the system, the more you will see this sort of power drop-out on a regular (24 hour) cycle."

What Graham, more exploding coal fired generators? Interesting theory.

Just one bad cyclone, with a north to south track could take out most of Queensland wind power, or the transmission lines to get it somewhere useful. It could easily take a third of the solar with it.

Bazz,
If you've never seen 20% then you can't've been looking much; wind and solar supplied 20% of the NEM's demand on Monday this week... or 25% if you include all the rooftop solar.

Nuclear power is too expensive, and coal is too polluting. And far from seeing "why we can't afford renewables" I see yet another whinger prejudiced against renewables. They seem to be a dime a dozen on this board!

Of course replacing fossil fuels with renewables is an enormous task, but it is doable and will be done despite this government's attempts to hinder it.

You (and Graham and Shadow) seem to have failed to notice that THERE IS ALREADY A LARGE AMOUNT OF GAS GENERATION CAPACITY. Nobody disputes firming is needed, but batteries have been shown to be far more effective for that than adding yet more gas capacity. And you still seem to fail to comprehend that the objective is to meet actual demand, not replicate baseload supply!

Thanks Aidan, that's the whole story in a nutshell.

You never know Hassy, that dirty big cyclone could blow you away as well, We can only live in hope. Hassy of course you would be a nuclear man, you love them nuclear bombs.

Who said all the hard right rednecks on the Forum were racists? Look they're supporting the black fella... black Mr Coal.

Pauliar,

I have seen some willful stupidity in my time but you take the cake.

Large amounts of solar and wind make it difficult and expensive to run large low-cost baseload generation and get it to swing wildly to make up the difference between the variable demand and variable supply. However, shortfall, when solar and wind produces nothing, has to be made up or get another cock-up in South Australia.

Aidan,

Batteries are not more effective than gas as they are very expensive and can only give support to the network for a few hours before their charge runs out.

Secondly, the gas-fired peak load generators are not nearly sufficient to meet the demand in the times when the wind doesn't blow at night.

Aiden, yes I just had a look and it is 8% wind and it is 11% solar, wow !
I look at the site everyday but not always adding them together.
As it stands now, this time of year it will start dying around 4PM at
least in Sydney our time. My cells face slightly west of north and
they are down to 40% by 4PM.
I agree batteries are the ideal backup, up and running in milliseconds.
If they are big enough and you can afford them, then they are the solution.
However, no one including yourself, answers the question;
"When do you recharge them and where do you get the power to do so ?"

Another problem that I had not considered and only heard of recently
is the energy cost of building solar and wind.
We have all heard of the co2 cost of their building no one seems to
have made a study of the energy input and the energy return.
The speaker I heard seemed to be claiming that the W&S are
a next to an impossible energy proposition.
There was no indication if it included maintenance & /or replacement
energy inputs.
If the energy balance is impossible, then the whole project is impossible.
Just had a look, wind still 8%, solar now 10% = that 20%.

Bazz,
"When do you recharge them and where do you get the power to do so ?"
Whenever it is available at an acceptable price. Of course what constitutes a reasonable price is contextual and depends on demand, both real and forecast.

Wind and solar are pretty well anticorellated, and we do also have hydro power. Worst case scenario: if the prolonged dark still event occurs in the medium term, they'd keep the gas fired power stations going at night to charge up the batteries.

In the longer term, when we move to 100% renewables, there would be a large overbuild of renewables, with the excess power being used to produce hydrogen (for industry and export). If, after hydrogen production is turned off (since that would only be economic when electricity is cheap) there's still too little power to charge the batteries, the obvious solution would be to consume some of the hydrogen to make more

"Another problem that I had not considered and only heard of recently
is the energy cost of building solar and wind."

Come off it - you've been droning on about EROEI for years! Have you already forgotten that report a few years back that fudged the figures by "converting" non energy inputs into energy inputs in order to get the figure for renewables down below seven (a totally arbitrary limit which people illogically claimed was the minimum needed for an advanced society)?

Anyway, technology's moved on from them, and the figures for both soar and wind have improved so much that the energy cost is generally not regarded as a concern any more.

Aidan, did you completely miss the point Bazz was making intentionally, or you too brain washed to understand simple facts.

The energy input required to build & install a wind generator is greater than the energy it will produce in it's life time. This is proven & has been shown a number of times.

A windmill can not replace itself, let alone produce useful power for the community as well.

I know people like you avoid any sites that publish this type of information, & understanding it does require a bit too much math for the simple folk, but fact it is.

People who talk about more/stronger cyclones & bush fires suffer the same problem. They will never learn the simple truth while avoiding any publication likely to be truthful.

Anyone who actually believes a bit of CO2 can cause all the garbage they claim for it are obviously simpletons.

No, Hasbeen, I understood Bazz's point perfectly.. And I also understand that whether something is a fact doesn't depend on whether it conforms to your prejudices, and what you claim to be a "simple fact" is actually an outright lie. There may have been some experimental wind turbines that required more energy to build and install than they produced, but it's definitely not the case for today's commercial wind turbines. They reclaim the energy in a few months.

You seem to be too mentally defective to comprehend that. Likewise with the effects of CO2.

Briefly Aiden, the curve be it eroei or eroe to build becomes close
to vertical near 7 and at 9 it is for all intents and purposes vertical.

Bazz, there's no inflection and nothing special about the figure of seven. The near verticality could come at a different point - higher or lower - simply by changing the scale on the axis!

Neither Bazz nor Aiden are correct.

https://www.freeingenergy.com/math/wind-turbine-weight-pound-mwh-gwh-m148/

The major consumer of energy in building wind turbines is concrete in creating the concrete from lime in huge gas hungry kilns and in demolishing it 20 years later. (as are most turbines in about 20yrs)

The carbon debt will take 2-3 years to compensate for.

Note that Germany's net increase in wind capacity has dropped close to zero as it is removing roughly the same capacity of redundant turbines as it is building new capacity.

Shadowminister, that link is the most detailed that I have seen, but
I have only seen one other.
I had realised the concrete was a major component of the cost etc.
Some argument I have seen include the cost of the maintenance service van !
Also its travelling to and from the site.
I guess it is all part of the operating costs and has to be paid.
Aiden said;
Have you already forgotten that report a few years back that fudged
the figures by "converting" non energy inputs into energy inputs in
order to get the figure for renewables

I think that it is the concrete etc to which you are referring.
Well concrete has rather high energy content I believe.
Yes, 7 is arbitrary, but nevertheless real as the required input
energy to get a significant increase in output gets bigger and bigger.

Back to batteries;
For each Gigawatt power supply it has to backup it has to cover the
grid from 4pm to 8am and hope it can be fully recharged between 8am
and 4pm. Unless that can be done and the next night is also cold & still
then the power must fail.
That is also supposing there is enough wind and solar available above
the normal daily load to recharge the battery.
Of course that day may be overcast and still also.
Don't tell me that never happens.
All that is why the grid has to be very high power capable to move
it from anywhere to anywhere.
The whole 100% x 100% renewables depend on regular sunny days and
regular windy days and nights.
Days of overcast in a row are forbidden and still nights are also forbidden.
Aiden says the gas turbine stations will come on and save the day.
Just one or two or a dozen or so ?
That is not what the greenies demand.

Bazz,

Got it in one. Batteries are fantastic for short term (4hrs) power shortages. When wind and solar dip for several days you need real generation.

"Gas Project - Is It Hot Air". Lets hope so. You have to make the air pretty hot if you want to make steam to drive a generator.