JC Political Thread - For All Things Political Part 2

[J_D 2.0]

And what politician is going to go out on a limb to promote nuclear power when the Japanese are currently releasing contaminated water from the Fukushima melt down into the Pacific which is still in peoples minds and convince those people who will have those new nuclear plants in their back yards.

The contaminated water from Fukushima is a media beat up. The only radioactive element that can’t be removed/filtered from the water is tritium (as it’s too similar to water to filter out) and the amount being released is SFA in the scheme of things.

It also has a half life of about 7 years so it’s not going to contaminate the sea to infinity and beyond.

 

[J_D 2.0]

So now you're saying you did bring it up?

I never said we would build all our storage as batteries yet you wanted me to work out what the cost would be to support the whole grid with batteries.

Like I said, if your arguing that supporting a renewable grid using only grid scale batteries would be hideously expensive (it probably would be) then you do the legwork and show that it is, don’t just spew unsubstantiated bullshit and then expect me to do the math to prove your point for you.

You always bang on at everyone else to provide proof of their arguments yet you always seem to be light on when it comes to proof for your own arguments.

 

[Sabbath']

I never said we would build all our storage as batteries yet you wanted me to work out what the cost would be to support the whole grid with batteries.

Batteries was one of the ideas you put forward. On a grid scale. I asked how much for battery capacity to cover half. Leaving half for other ideas.

Like I said, if your arguing that supporting a renewable grid using only grid scale batteries would be hideously expensive (it probably would be) then you do the legwork and show that it is, don’t just spew unsubstantiated bullshit and then expect me to do the math to prove your point for you.

What unsubstantiated bullshit did I put forward other than ask a question of your idea?

You always bang on at everyone else to provide proof of their arguments yet you always seem to be light on when it comes to proof for your own arguments.

Firstly, asking somebody a question to substantiate what they said is how a conversation works. Secondly, grid scale battery was your flipping idea.





But again. You're simply deflecting from actually answering.



So, since we've now both agreed that grid scale batteries were in fact your idea to bring up. And we would use them to capture the wind and solar energy from the renewable sector (unless Albo can invent those moonlight solar panels)....how much would it cost to build these grid scale batteries you mentioned that could store enough capacity for a week for half of Australia?


Just to help you out...again..South Australia,one of the smallest markets in Australia is currently having about 8% of its energy needs met between Solar, Wind and Battery.

So, get that envelope out and get back to us.

 

[J_D 2.0]

Batteries was one of the ideas you put forward. On a grid scale. I asked how much for battery capacity to cover half. Leaving half for other ideas.

What unsubstantiated bullshit did I put forward other than ask a question of your idea?

Firstly, asking somebody a question to substantiate what they said is how a conversation works. Secondly, grid scale battery was your flipping idea.





But again. You're simply deflecting from actually answering.



So, since we've now both agreed that grid scale batteries were in fact your idea to bring up. And we would use them to capture the wind and solar energy from the renewable sector (unless Albo can invent those moonlight solar panels)....how much would it cost to build these grid scale batteries you mentioned that could store enough capacity for a week for half of Australia?


Just to help you out...again..South Australia,one of the smallest markets in Australia is currently having about 8% of its energy needs met between Solar, Wind and Battery.

So, get that envelope out and get back to us.

You didn’t ask a question for the sake of chasing a response. Your proposition was a rhetorical against my argument that nuclear is expensive. The implication being that building batteries to support half of the grid would be more expensive than nuclear.

It may well be more expensive than nuclear to support half the grid with batteries but if thats your argument then it really should be up to you to put something forward supporting that rather than just implying that it would be more expensive than nuclear.

The supposition is also incomplete as supporting half the grid is fine but how long would you want that supported for? 12 hours? 24 hours?

Assuming you wanted to provide roughly the same capacity in batteries as the nuclear power proposal from Plutonium Pete and support the grid for 12 hours you would want about 7000MW of capacity supplied for 12 hours, or about 84,000MWh.

The Hornsdale battery cost $172 million for 194MWh of storage capacity (so about $886k per megawatt hour). $886k multiplied by 84,000MWh equals about $74.5 billion dollars.

So actually a lot less than the proposed nuclear plants would cost based on my assessment using Hinkley Point C as the reference price.

The CSIRO proposes at least $8.6 billion for a 1000MW power plant and that’s after the industry gets into the swing of things to get the costs down.

I think that is overly optimistic considering that Hinkley Point C is probably going to come in at around £46 billion for a 3200MWh plant and that’s in a country with a long history of nuclear power and weapons production (basically since the end of WW2) and being built by EDF of France, another country with a long track record of nuclear power and weapons production.

The more likely estimate based on Hinkley Point C is around $27 billion Australian dollars per 1000MWh of nuclear generation capacity.

 

[Sabbath']

You didn’t ask a question for the sake of chasing a response. Your proposition was a rhetorical against my argument that nuclear is expensive. The implication being that building batteries to support half of the grid would be more expensive than nuclear.

Maybe if you spent less time trying to guess as to why people are asking questions you wouldn't forget what you'd said in the first place. Would have saved all the back and forth over what you apparently did and did not say.

It may well be more expensive than nuclear to support half the grid with batteries

The supposition is also incomplete as supporting half the grid is fine but how long would you want that supported for? 12 hours? 24 hours?

I thought it would be reasonable to assume that a power grid in a country like Australia is a 24/7 affair.

 

[J_D 2.0]

I thought it would be reasonable to assume that a power grid in a country like Australia is a 24/7 affair.

Well yes it is but how much storage is needed to support a renewable grid is probably still a somewhat open question. Some people would expect it to require a day or two of storage but it might not as the geographic spread of renewable sources means the risk of the grid being undersupplied on any given day might be minimal to nonexistent.

Night time on the other hand will definitely need storage to cover as solar obviously isn‘t an option so wind could be the only renewables running at night.

Another renewable option that should really be taken advantage of is tidal power as the tides are predictable and guaranteed, although I expect there are probably a lot of challenges with that not least being the corrosive effects of saltwater.

 

[Sabbath']

Assuming you wanted to provide roughly the same capacity in batteries as the nuclear power proposal from Plutonium Pete and support the grid for 12 hours you would want about 7000MW of capacity supplied for 12 hours, or about 84,000MWh.

Ok, so I'm sure I've done my maths wrong but my envelope is getting very full.





Australia uses 237000000MWh/year



If we half that number and divide the results by 52 I get



2278846MWh per week for roughly half the grid capacity.



If I take that number and then multiply it by the cost /mwH you found for battery storage

2278846 X 886000





I get a figure of:

=$2.19trillion to provide battery storage for half of the Australian power grid for a week.

This is $2.9t on top of what it would cost in the means to create the power to fill those batteries. Currently about 20% of our needs are covered by renewables so we would not only need a massive spend on a way to use the power generated when the sun doesn't shine and wind doesnt blow but the things to harness that energy too.

Whereas Nuclear, Coal, Gas don't and the infrastructure to get the power from wherever solar or wind farms are also needs to be taken into account.

The Hornsdale battery cost $172 million for 194MWh of storage capacity (so about $886k per megawatt hour). $886k multiplied by 84,000MWh equals about $74.5 billion dollars.

If we go on one of the largest current wind farms in Australia, which has reported cost of roughly $900m to build the 157 turbines...which will give a yearly output of 1900GWh or, roughly 1.6% of the weekly production requirements....For $900m

 

[the_boozer]

How long until Loy Yang breaks ? . How does a company that cant maintian a nursing home get the maintenance contract on an open cut mine they have no tools to join a conveyor belt if they do why are they trying to buy all the tools from the current contractor who wont sell them anything? That is the quaility of the cocksuckers running Victorias electic inforstuctor. Programed Maintance is why we will lose electricity probably before the end of the year, Lots of pathetics giving the country to china. Sabotage

 

[J_D 2.0]

Ok, so I'm sure I've done my maths wrong but my envelope is getting very full.





Australia uses 237000000MWh/year



If we half that number and divide the results by 52 I get



2278846MWh per week for roughly half the grid capacity.



If I take that number and then multiply it by the cost /mwH you found for battery storage

2278846 X 886000





I get a figure of:

=$2.19trillion to provide battery storage for half of the Australian power grid for a week.

This is $2.9t on top of what it would cost in the means to create the power to fill those batteries. Currently about 20% of our needs are covered by renewables so we would not only need a massive spend on a way to use the power generated when the sun doesn't shine and wind doesnt blow but the things to harness that energy too.

Whereas Nuclear, Coal, Gas don't and the infrastructure to get the power from wherever solar or wind farms are also needs to be taken into account.



If we go on one of the largest current wind farms in Australia, which has reported cost of roughly $900m to build the 157 turbines...which will give a yearly output of 1900GWh or, roughly 1.6% of the weekly production requirements....For $900m

That may be true but it’s extremely unlikely that you would need to support half grid for a whole week and if you did there would be a lot better options out there than lithium ion batteries.

Pumped hydro should really be the first port of call for this as the storage capacity and duration of supply can’t be matched by batteries and hydro is proven to work well.

Take the NZ power grid which is mostly run by hydropower, you’re basically doing the exact same thing except your pumping the water back upstream rather than relying on Mother Nature to do it for you.

Snowy 2.0 is going to provide 350,000MWh of storage once it’s completed. Taking your figure of 2,278,846MWh it would require a smidge over 6.5 Snowy 2.0’s to provide that amount of storage.

If Snowy 2.0 ends up costing the $12 billion it is projected to cost then that’s about $78 billion for that amount of storage. Eminently doable and not that big an expense in the great scheme of things and there are enough potential locations for pumped hydro to make that happen.


https://arena.gov.au/assets/2018/10...d-Hydro-Energy-Storage-The-Complete-Atlas.pdf

 

[chrisp]

I’m still waiting for that week where there is no significant wind and no significant sun for 7 days straight across the whole east coast of Australia (including off-shore). I suppose it might happen, but I suppose we all might win a million dollar lottery in the same week too?