The future of energy generation and storage

[SirRumpole]

The article stated that no private company was interested in building a gas fired replacement for Kurri Kurri, which is why the Government decided to do it.
Where they got the cost estimates from is any ones guess.
maybe from a bloke down the pub.
mick

Maybe Price, Waterhouse, Coopers?

 

[sptrawler]

The article stated that no private company was interested in building a gas fired replacement for Kurri Kurri, which is why the Government decided to do it.
Where they got the cost estimates from is any ones guess.
maybe from a bloke down the pub.
mick

Napkins are usefull apparently

 

[SirRumpole]

Napkins are usefull apparently

As are the backs of envelopes.

 

[qldfrog]

As are the backs of envelopes.

especially if the envelopes are full of cash and future employment offers

 

[sptrawler]

As are the backs of envelopes.

especially if the envelopes are full of cash and future employment offers

The problem is every project be it private or Govt, the cost blow outs are ridiculous, either the contracts are poorly written, poorly supervised, or inflation is a lot more than being stated and input costs are out of control.

 

[Antirnator]

The Science

It's so absurd I'm laughing hysterically

 

[qldfrog]

The Science

It's so absurd I'm laughing hysterically
View attachment 208821

i do not laugh, i cry
for the country, the mass brainwash, the absence of even basic numeric and sciencific knowledge, let alone economic or geopolitics.
another sad day for Australia

 

[Antirnator]

i do not laugh, i cry
for the country, the mass brainwash, the absence of even basic numeric and sciencific knowledge, let alone economic or geopolitics.
another sad day for Australia

It's like watching a Monty Python skit, Yes Prime Minister or something from Utopia. He doesn't even know what he is saying.

 

[rederob]

A lot comes down to data and practical reality.

You simply show NOW, and not the future.
The future is electric, and the trend is accelerating for many reasons.
At its core, energy from renewables for example, does not lose the majority of its potential in the way it does from fossil fuels.

The above is further enhanced by continuous cost reductions associated with ongoing electrification as the effects of scaling kick in:

(https://reneweconomy.com.au/extraor...in-as-wind-and-solar-curtailment-levels-soar/)
Add to the above the fact that technical innovation in the fields of electrification are continuing to advance at aremarkable pace, while FF-based electricity can't eke out much more than it already gets.

 

[SirRumpole]

I would just like to see a national plan for a transformed grid.

How much wind, solar, battery , hydro, coal, gas, where will it go , how much will it cost ?

No one in politics has got a clue and that's why we can trust anyone.

Put the engineers in charge, not the climate zealots.

How many times do we have to say it?

 

[sptrawler]

It would appear the hydrogen superpower, has gone on the back burner and there has been a move to plan B, to just replace fossil fuel.
Interesting plan, many will be happy that they can keep their ICE cars running.

Albanese government's bold plan to ditch petrol in Australia

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has unveiled a bold plan which could see petrol and diesel phased out.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[sptrawler]

It will be interesting to see if more coal announcements follow, it certainly is a product that is on the nose.

BHP alliance to sack 750 workers blaming Qld mining royalties

One of Queensland's biggest coal miners says it does not want to see jobs lost but blamed "the Queensland government's unsustainable coal royalties and market conditions".

www.abc.net.au

Well that didn't take long to be answered.

Second Qld coal miner cuts jobs as royalties spark concerns

Mining giant Anglo American confirms job cuts in Brisbane and the Bowen Basin in the wake of BHP Mitsubishi Alliance axing 750 workers.

www.abc.net.au

 

[SirRumpole]

It would appear the hydrogen superpower, has gone on the back burner and there has been a move to plan B, to just replace fossil fuel.
Interesting plan, many will be happy that they can keep their ICE cars running.

Albanese government's bold plan to ditch petrol in Australia

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has unveiled a bold plan which could see petrol and diesel phased out.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Another NBN?

 

[sptrawler]

Another NBN?

Well for bio fuels to be viable, a lot of land that currently isn't used, will have to be irrigated to prlduce enough feed stock for the refinery, I would think.

So it will take a lot of planning and time, it doesn't sound viable in the time frame, everything just sounds add hock.

As the articles said half the cars will need to be electric by 2035, now they are talking about becoming a bio fuel super power.

Hopefully all the ideas comes to fruition and we get a good result.

 

[Smurf1976]

You simply show NOW, and not the future.
The future is electric, and the trend is accelerating for many reasons.

Correct I have shown what is the case now.

Agreed the future is electric and always has been.

Practical reality however I'm all too aware of:

Some end uses have no realistic pathway to electrification, at least not in the medium term. Eg aviation is technically problematic whilst industrial electrification is precluded by the twin obstacles of "free trade" and that Australian electricity is simply too expensive. Technically it's possible, in practice it's mostly not happening.

There's plenty of industrial energy users that have seriously looked at electrification and walked away, price being the reason. There's one in NSW that ended up building their own gas-fired power plant, there's one in Tasmania that doubled down on gas, there's one in SA that's about to do the same, etc.

Then there's residential and for this I'll simply refer to a house built just across the road from mine. Noting this is an established middle socio-economic suburb in Adelaide albeit one that still has the odd random bit of unused land.

Long story short, this house commenced construction before it was sold so it's to the builder's design not the purchaser's. In terms of energy it's as generic as it gets for newbuilds in Adelaide - black roof, great big ~13kW solar system facing north, reverse cycle ducted A/C, gas hot water, gas cooking.

So there's the problem. Middle of the day on a typical weekday that house is effectively a small power station pumping out ~10kW with stuff all consumption given it's empty. 10kW of generation that, over the past 7 days, has substantially just displaced wind and solar at a different location, it mostly isn't displacing coal or gas.

Chart showing curtailment (only) of wind and solar in SA over the past 7 days:

Now the problem is really quite simple. Gas hot water. Gas cooking. No amount of solar on the roof runs that directly and it's increasingly ineffective at offsetting CO2 emissions from it. The only thing that works, that actually fixes that, is to not have gas.

Now if that same house instead was fitted with electric storage water heating then that brings two benefits. One is it soaks up some of that surplus energy during the middle of the day and puts it to use. The other is it doesn't need gas.

Now you might be thinking well just change the water heater then. Nice idea but not so fast.....

Around Adelaide and also other major capitals there's a lot of new houses that are are rectangular in shape, narrow end facing the street, with a very narrow rectangular block. Not my address or anyone I know but generic example in Sydney of what I'm referring to:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

Now the basic arrangement of the plumbing in these houses is it's all down one side with an instant gas water heater mounted on the wall. This presents quite some problems with electrification, mostly in that there's no physical space to install a storage water heater, a tank, without blocking what is already a narrow path between the house and the boundary fence.

That's the first problem, physical space. Can't put it on the ground because it blocks the path. Can't go on the roof because, yep you guessed it, not built to take the weight. And these are brand new houses that won't be going anywhere in the next few decades at least.

Second problem is entire suburbs being built with minimal spec electricity networks on the assumption that every house uses gas. In Victoria there's a lot of those simply because as late as 2023 the Victorian state government was effectively forcing connection to gas where it's available - hence gas networks were installed with a 100% take up rate locked in by law and the electricity network sized on that basis.

Now I'll ask everyone to take a look at this (link to Google street view for a location in SA):

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

www.google.com

Read what it says on the fence and note what's behind it. Because there's no natural gas supply to the area, so they improvised with some big tanks scattered around and delivering gas by (diesel powered) trucks.

Now zoom out and tell me what you see in the background? It'd be funny if all this wasn't so serious - there's a better solution just staring everyone in the face right there, no gas, tanks or trucks required.

"Cleaner, greener energy" it says. Cleaner than what? It sure isn't cleaner than using the wind and solar from already built wind and solar farms, I expect everyone would agree on that point. Even those who don't like them being built in the first place wouldn't rationally argue against putting them to full use.

It's a great business model though - households are compelled to use it, they've no option to say no to this because it's an indefinite covenant over the property, thou shalt heat water with gas and rather expensive gas at that.

Now without trying to say "Smurf is good", because that's not my intention , but for my own house well I haven't gone along with this gas caper. Instead I'm heating water electrically and storing it, meaning I'm adding electrical load to the system during that middle of the day curtailment period but not at other times. The benefit being that financially facilitates building more VRE than would otherwise be the case, since it's a sale of some otherwise wasted output, and of course that VRE then generates at other times of the day as well where it does displace fossil fuels.

So at a personal level I'm pretty keen on electrification but I'm consciously aware that as a society we're dragging our feet. New homes are still installing gas, commonly in a manner that will be difficult to undo as per the above comments, then there's the huge legacy of millions of existing gas installations as well as devices using liquid fuels. Put all that together and a move away from oil and gas is going to take decades to play out.

 

[Smurf1976]

To put some figures on biofuels, either outright or hydrogen enhanced:

The Bell Bay Powerfuels project (Tasmania) requires an input of 500,000 tonnes of wood + 240MW of electricity + water to produce 300,000 tonnes of methanol per annum.

Not proposed to actually be done but technically proven is to then convert methanol to petrol via what's commonly known as the Mobil Process (Mobil as in the oil company). If that were done then the result would be about 113,000 tonnes of petrol per annum or about 149 million litres.

Sounds impressive?

Well it's not too bad until you realise how much petrol we actually use. Data from Australian Government statistics for 2024-25:

Automotive gasoline (petrol) all grades = 15,993.2 megalitres.

Diesel = 33,300.5 megalitres.

Aviation turbine fuel (including departing international flights) = 9,615.6 megalitres.

LPG = 1,524.5 megalitres.

Aviation gasoline (small planes) = 72.8 megalitres.

Fuel oil (ships, industrial) = 716.2 megalitres.

Lubricants and greases = 319.5 megalitres.

Other petroleum products = 596.9 megalitres.

Total = 62,139.1 megalitres

So this plant in Tasmania will produce liquid fuel sufficient to replace 0.2414% of Australia's petroleum consumption.

Now the plant could be duplicated of course and the good news is water isn't really a problem as long as it's in a suitable location. Australia's nowhere near as short on water as many seem to think - it's just that we mostly chose to live in places that don't have much of it, that's all.

Electricity well it's an awful lot of electricity but not impossible.

Now the wood, ah yes the wood. Anyone who's followed Tasmanian politics, or even just spent any time at all in the state, will be well aware that cutting trees down is just a wee bit controversial. 500,000 tonnes a year they'll get away with but there are very real limits such that, realistically, this isn't going to produce more than somewhere circa 1% of Australia's present liquid fuel requirements using Tasmanian trees as the feedstock.

OK so similar facilities could be built in other states but there's still a limit. When you need about 2 million tonnes of trees each year to get 1% of our liquid fuel, I think it's pretty obvious there's a scale limit to it that's well below present consumption rates.

That's not to say it's a bad idea per se, just that it's no panacea, it's scale limited.

Same with all biofuels. Take the 28 million tonnes of wheat Australia produced in 2023-24, turn the whole lot into ethanol, and we'd have about 10.5 billion litres of ethanol which, due to its considerably lower energy density, replaces about 10% of our total liquid fuel usage. That's before the energy to turn wheat into ethanol is considered, that presently being supplied by natural gas.

Should we use biofuels?

In my view yes. But they're no silver bullet, anyone thinking otherwise is playing politics.

On the subject of which, suppose just hypothetically I was a politician and was in a spot of bother with farmers unhappy with some of my policies. Proposing the use of biofuels would be one way to fix that, since it ensures more demand for agricultural output which helps get the price up.

 

[Smurf1976]

No one in politics has got a clue and that's why we can trust anyone.

The trouble with politics is there's no consequence for failure.

Promise something they know won't be achieved then just move onto the next thing and hope the last promise is forgotten.

In any normal profession or trade that approach won't cut it. Someone needs to deliver what they promised, deliver an acceptable alternative, or have a very good explanation as to what changed.

 

[SirRumpole]

As the articles said half the cars will need to be electric by 2035, now they are talking about becoming a bio fuel super power.

In that case it would make more sense to burn the biofuel to generate electricity to charge the EVs.

 

[sptrawler]

The trouble with politics is there's no consequence for failure.

Promise something they know won't be achieved then just move onto the next thing and hope the last promise is forgotten.

In any normal profession or trade that approach won't cut it. Someone needs to deliver what they promised, deliver an acceptable alternative, or have a very good explanation as to what changed.

Absolutely nailed it, with the last three posts @Smurf1976 .

As has been said over and over, the enormity of the issues aren't being understood and if there is a failure or an incorrect pathway chosen, it is extremely difficult to reverse poor decissions, but the social and economic fallout will be huge.

Thankfully there seems to be a glimmer of common sense flickering through, by the dialing down of the 2035 targets.
It will may be due to the 'experts' realising we are fast approaching the point where costs are about to escalate, due to loss of industry and loss of investment appetite as return on investment will fall away yet investment required will be massive.
Also the Labor Party will be in office for quite some time, as the opposition are a shambles, therefore the Government is going to own the issues big time, which is great IMO.
Interesting times, thats for sure.