The future of energy generation and storage

SirRumpole said:

Good article.

It's all pie in the sky from the government now, no plan whatsoever.

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Which is kind of what we have been talking about for quite a while.

The next issue that will be, how do we scale up generation, to make a new 1GW manufacturing facility viable financially.

But that question wont happen untill the next term of this Government, at least it should play out in three terms of Government, which is much better than having stop start every election.

SirRumpole said:

Good article.

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Just my view but I'm perceiving a definite shift in sentiment.

I'm seeing quite a few people who've had strongly held views on the subject, and I'm referring to people from politics and related fields, suddenly shifting toward a much more centrist position on the issue.

I think reality's starting to set in that we've got a problem.

sptrawler said:

The next issue that will be, how do we scale up generation, to make a new 1GW manufacturing facility viable financially.

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It's not quite that large but there is a proposal being investigated in SA that, if it were to proceed, needs ~450MW give or take.

That's for a hydrometallurgical plant and associated refinery or in layman's terms a metal smelter plus to treat a somewhat complex ore stream containing multiple useful products. Plus there's the associated mine and supporting infrastructure.

That's not to say it'll go ahead, there's a lot more issues that'll determine its viability than just the electricity supply alone, but it's a seriously large load if it does.

For context average load in SA at present is about 1725MW with peak just over double that. So adding another 450 is substantial.