Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Griff; My question, what are we supposed to do for the rest of the day?
Renewables could meet 100% demand in Australia at certain times of day by 2025, report says
Energy market operator notes penetration of renewable generation reached record high of 57% twice in 2021
Katharine Murphy Political editor @murpharoo
Tue 31 Aug 2021 03.30 AESTRenewables will meet 100% of consumer demand for electricity at certain times of the day by 2025 if large-scale wind and solar development continues at current rates, the Australian Energy Market Operator has said.
Aemo’s annual grid reliability snapshot, to be released on Tuesday, notes the penetration of renewable generation in Australia reached a record high of 57% twice in 2021 – in April and again in August.
If Australia’s power system is engineered appropriately, based on current trends “there could be up to 100% instantaneous penetration of renewables at certain times of the day throughout the year by 2025”, it says.
…
As a consequence, Aemo predicts, all mainland states will experience minimum operational demand during the next five years, which is the lowest level of demand from the grid during daytime. Declining minimum demand can create engineering challenges in the grid.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/31/renewables-could-meet-100-demand-in-australia-at-certain-times-of-day-by-2025-report-says
Why would anyone think this is a good thing?
Electricity consumers will be paying for:
- Fuel consumed by fossil fuel generators
- Capital & maintenance costs of fossil fuel generators – enough to provide 100% backup, for windless nights.
- Subsidies to keep fossil fuel generators open, to compensate for reduced profitability and “engineering challenges”.
- Large capital & maintenance costs of renewable systems.
- Capital costs of big batteries, to try to keep the grid stable for the five minutes or so it takes to spin up fossil fuel systems.
- Inefficiencies running the fossil fuel systems on idle, then ramping them up and down unpredictably all day, as clouds cover the solar panel or the wind unexpectedly changes.
- Outages when the needlessly complex power grid malfunctions and fails.
Does anyone think there is any chance this will be cheaper than simply running the fossil fuel system all day? How can anyone believe this is any more than pathetic virtue signalling?
The renewables might not even reduce CO2 emissions. All the renewable systems carry an enormous burden of fossil fuel which was consumed during fabrication and installation. Renewables need much more extensive grids, which have to be maintained by trucks. Light aircraft are frequently hired to fly power line engineers slowly along the power lines, so they can be inspected through binoculars. And as noted above, keeping power plants idling, then spinning them up and down at random, is a very inefficient way to run a fossil fuel power system.
By the time you add up all this, its possible total emissions will actually rise, above what they would be if we simply kept the coal plants.
It could have all been so different. Australia has world class deposits of Uranium, vast empty spaces, and is geologically stable. We could have stuck with fossil fuel, or built enough nuclear power to go zero carbon without the pain of paying for less than useless renewables.
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I want to know which car would be the safest, electric vehicle with lithium ion batteries or one with a tank of hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cell?
Or diesel followed by petrol fuelled?
https://hydrogen.wsu.edu/2017/03/17/so-just-how-dangerous-is-hydrogen-fuel/
There is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Hence all efforts to decrease CO2 emissions will have no effect on global climate. Conserving on the use of fossil fuels is in general a good idea because the Earth has a finite supply but is using renewables worth the cost. Renewables can be hit or miss so it is important to maintain a reserve power generation capability that can carry all of the load when required. .
There is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero
There is not!
I notice you don’t cite any…
Renewables are intermittent, but perfectly predictable on the necessary operating timescale.
<I notice you don’t cite any…>…Griff
You don’t actually read the WUWT site very often do you. I mean really read it with understanding. There are plenty of references, some very recently that could help your understanding.
Let me fix that last statement so that it speaks the truth…
Renewables are intermittent, but perfectly predictable on the necessary operating timescale and require reliable fossil fuel backup generation to be available 100% of the time AND utilized about 70% of the time
Katherine Murphy is a card carrying member of the woke brigade with an abysmal knowledge of all things renewable energy and science generally. Her lack of knowledge is only surpassed by that of the chief of the AEMO who is so well paid that doubling or tripling of electricity prices does not bother her. They both firmly believe that the world will end if the temperature rises another degree, they both are apparently ignorant of the fact that the Medieval, Roman and Minoan warm periods both existed and were hotter than present. Neither women are influenced by facts nor do they worry that Australia is already noncompetitive and will be even less competitive if renewables intrusion is increased. In summary both women are talking rubbish but unfortunately dummies listen to them including lawyers who masquerade as parliamentarians.
But it’s nice to get a political analyst to present information on a technical topic. It helps highlight how scientifically illiterate pretty much everyone in that field are.
Those periods were regionally warmer… without the rapid rise in temperatures and not impacting a global tech based civilisation living in coastal cities and vulnerable to an increase in extreme weather events.
If you don’t recognise that N hemispere summer has seen the new normal of heatwave, fire and flood, well heaven help you…
griff,
Are you really James Dyke senior lecturer in global systems at Exeter University?
If so you are wasting your time trying to push your new book ‘Fire,Storm and Flood:the Violence of Climate Change’ on this site.
I’ve found that twiddling thumbs is a great pastime while waiting for any shutdown of any endeavor to end. I’ve heard that people used to whittle, but that’s dangerous so it’s lost popularity.
The new CEO and Managing Director of the AEMO is Dan Westerman. This is listed in his bio
God help Australia
So basically he is actively steering the country of Australia into a generation source that he is highly invested in … certainly no conflict of interest there
And of course everyone will ignore “at certain times”
The footnote for this headline, in fine print buried as deeply as possible, will read something like “For a few minutes at 3 A.M. on a Wednesday during fair weather.”
I am a lettuce grower, open fields. I am requesting my state government to compel the local supermarket to buy from me.
The deal I want is the following. I ship whatever I want whenever I want. They take as much as they can sell, the rest goes to compost, and the state pays me for that. They stand down their regular suppliers when I ship, and because this costs the regular suppliers, they raise their prices for when they do get to ship.
It seems like a very reasonable proposition to me. After all, I am saving the planet and thinking of the children.
I figured out actually that in addition to saving the planet, on one day last week or maybe it was the week before I would have shipped them 100% of their lettuce requirement.
But for some reason these denialists and climate wreckers are refusing to sign. I think they and the politicians are in the pay of the greenhouse lobby.
Disgusting, isn’t it?
…yes, and this iron lung we supply you with will only stop working a few times a day.
Bon voyage.
Sigh .. electricity is about 15% of total energy consumption. You are getting nowhere with this colossal money pit of an idea. It really bothers me that people can actually be that stupid.
So-called renewables will never replace fossil fuels.
Read the book that explains why
The moral case for fossil fuels