The Great Battery Conjob Exposed

Bara could probably correct us here Harrow, but is that the great trade-off in network design nationally? Balancing the cost of under-utilised and maybe duplicated (across different locations) generation capacity to maintain supply in peaks; against the cost of network infrastructure that goes with a more centralised and fully utilised generation capacity? ie if you saved money by making your generation capacity only meet regular demand; and you need to import electricity during peak times; then you need to spend money on the network infrastructure to do so. Be gentle, I'm only a normal electrical engineering type, not a network engineer, who is now trying to understand money instead

Nah paddles I'm not gonna correct harrow- he's the network engineer I'm from the commercial ie money side of it. Basically im pro market and hes more centralized and regulated in outlook i would say. Both have their merits and costs.

Yes the cost of a market based price signal is some excess generation and transmission lieing idle to ensure effective competition but you get excess capacity in a centralised system too possibly a little less but often more. The efficiency that comes from market signals vs central planning far outweighs that cost however and while we could debate the theory on that the practical real world results we have are the initial reductions in costs to consumers when we first deregulated.

Of course a market signal is only as good as the design of the market and the endless tinkering particularly in the emmissions space has ended up being the facilitator to our current mess. Constant uncertainty on the next step from whoever is in power has exacerbated that like you wouldn't believe.

Where to from here?

Like I said we need to stop pretending there's a magic pudding giving us free emission reductions, have a frank discussion of the costs and the best benefit from that outlay. Our current path would not stack up to that kind of analysis and so a change of direction might happen if the politics could be taken out if it. Do I think that will happen though?

Of course not. Too much mileage and dollars to be made by exploiting the green cult. It's all about power of the political kind not the electrical kind rather than saving the planet imho.

Which is why I laugh cos if not you have to cry.

I install solar and a lot of off grid battery systems for people too far from the grid. Also install 80-100kw solar for bore pumps on farms. For these farming guys, the next cheapest thing for electricity beside solar is diesel generators. Some of the farms are on cheap tariffs that are soon to be fazed out. When this happens the cost of electricity from the grid is going to be above what it cost to generate their own. Something is really wrong. Maybe the government needs to put the price of diesel up so electricity prices look cheap.

Large commercial chiller systems have used this concept for years, you make ice when the power is available or cheap and then melt it when you don't want to use electricity.

"so do you design for that or just shed loads?" .................. think of it from the power company's point of view FN, they will simply balance customer complaints against spending money.

Crusoe, why can't these farmers simply use a diesel driven pump? Every time you make your energy change (ie fuel to rotation to electricity to rotation) you get losses.

Righto, the pump is a submersible and the diesel is to backup the solar, my plan won't work

The solar a/c is a cool concept, the solar provides dc to a storage system (batteries) and the compressor is driven by an inverter.

I'm thinking of all the batteries that would need to be built, and the chemicals, mining, and ultimate disposal after their limited life. I wonder if there is really enough lithium in the world to provide enough batteries for a 100% renewable energy future, taking into account the fact that they will need to be continually replaced over the longer term?

And what's the big deal about a dam? Why are naturally occurring lakes a wonderful thing, but man made ones so bad?

Perhaps another nail for N Powerreneweconomy.com.au/taxpayers-should-not-fund-bill-gates-nuclear-albatross-20636/

Just why should the government susidise domestic batteries? There is negligible public benefit from them. They still need to be backed up by just as much grid capacity because they all go flat together during cloudy weeks in winter.
Unless the price drops by a huge amount, they will never make sense economically. In my case, I get paid $0.15 kwh and pay $0.26. My supplier is effectively renting me battery capacity for $0.11 kwh. Say I use 9 kwh every evening (I only generate 8kwh on a sunny June day) then my virtual battery costs me $365/yr. What does a 10kwh battery cost to supply and install? $10K? And what is its life?10 years? Straight line depreciation is $1000/yr. I'd be better off buying $10K worth of power company shares and collecting the $500/yr dividend for a net gain of $135/yr instead.

Wind turbines
A good sized fossil generator needs about 12,000 wind turbines to replace it's output in all conditions.

They also don't produce electricity if the wind is blowing too slowly. If the wind speed decreases by half, power production decreases by a factor of eight. If winds too strong they shut down, if too little wind they produce nothing.

They are not cheaper to than normal generation, plus the cost of disposing of worn out turbines is still being calculated.