Facist ■■■■■.
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One station in France had 800ml in 48 hrs and many more > 500ml. Sicily is getting battered for the third time in as many months.
Europe has bounced from a record drought to a record rainfall in a couple of years.
This is what the climate deniers seem to downplay. This isn’t about the world being slightly warmer, it’s about the world being more unstable and extreme events happening regularly.
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Oscar went from a tropical depression to a hurricane in just 3 hours.
I didnt know they named hurricanes from a to z, male names, then female names.
A to W minus Q and U. Patty is up next. Names are locked in til 2029.
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Neat!
With El Nino in the rear view mirror we should be in a cooling phase now but instead we just had the hottest Oct 23rd day in recorded history. We have been consistently over 1.5 for about 18 months now and the Paris Agreement treaty tells us that that’s when we are in danger of crossing irreversible and cascading tipping points. Where the ■■■■ is our media? What percentage of the population know this, I wonder. Maybe 5%?
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But… but… maybe badly parked ice-cream trucks could be to blame…?
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I love a La Nina as much as anybody in Oz, for purely selfish reasons. But a long period of La Nina causes serious forest fires, crop failures and desertification in the west coast of the USA. Its just like what happens here when we get a long period of El Nino.
Hopefully they flip frequently in future. A compromise would be better.
Many countries wiil be in for somee serious trouble with low crop yields when ground water is essentially gone. Ground water recharge is too slow.
Well, La Nina needs cooler water to come to the surface via the trade winds. I wonder if we get to a point when the ocean is just too warm for a La Nina to occur. Anyway, nobody knows why the La Nina that was supposed to occur a couple of months ago hasn’t.
I went to the All Energy conference in Melbourne this week and it reinforced in my mind that the general public doesn’t realise how much momentum the renewables rollout has. Thought I’d share a bunch of things that caught my eye. This is fairly patchy and scattered info, but I hope you all find the snippets interesting.
Current renewables penetration:
NT 7%
WA 18%
QLD 27%
NSW 36%
VIC 40%
SA 74%
TAS 98%
ACT 100%
- Australia is a top 5 destination for international renewables investment.
- Concerns starting to grow about low demand periods, which has a serious risk of blacking out the entire grid due to instability. WA recently hit a low of 530MW of demand, compared to a record peak of 4170MW. Batteries are critical for setting a demand floor and keeping the grid stable.
- Australia has a $3.4B annual excess cost due to inefficient equipment in houses and businesses.
- in 2035 95% of electricity generation will be renewables, so anything electric will be automatically a green device. Retires the current attack on EVs that they are just using coal.
Victoria
- 65% renewables target by 2030, 95% by 2035
- Offshore wind 2GW by 2032, 4GW by 2035, 9GW by 2040
- Energy storage 2.6GW by 2030, 6.3GW by 2035
- 2035 electricity use will be 50% higher due to electricfication of gas and transport.
- by 2035 4.8GW of coal will have closed, 11.4GW of new grid scale renewables plus 7.8GW of rooftop solar. That equates to 27 million solar panels and 900 on shore wind turbines.
- Connections to Tasmania and NSW to improve system strength
- Yallourn is closing in 2028 and Loy Yang A in 2035
- There are Vic Gov subsidies for transitioning gas equipment to electric. Average households will save 32% on their energy bills by shifting from gas to electricity, 62% if powered by rooftop solar.
- Victoria has a massive domestic gas usage compared to any other state, 80% dual fuel use compared to 50% in NSW, so will need substantial residential equipment upgrades.
NSW
- NSW will have less than 20% coal generation in 2033
- Multiple transmission upgrades underway, including interconnectors to VIC and SA and renewable energy zones.
QLD
- Over 50% of homes have solar
- 7% renewable in 2014 now 27% in 2024
- Best state for getting new wind farms through the planning process
WA
- WA only gets coal from Collie, the quality is dropping and it needs to get retired urgently
- 1 major, 2 medium and 100+ micro grids. Unable to connect them all over such large distances. Need to install renewable microgrids at all of them.
- Mining sector has agreed to join networks together and create a renewable grid in NW Australia. Strong support from mining industry for renewable transition.
SA
- There are two places in world which have reached phase 5 renewables transition, Denmark and South Australia. This means regularly operating on 100% renewables. SA manages this on transmission interconnects that can provide 25% of demand, while Denmark can import 100% of demand.
- SA had a fortunate headstart with renewable rollout due to pre-existing transmission lines to major solar and wind resources.
- Power lines built to 1 in 400 year wind resilience couldn’t cope with local events. SA transmission line in 2016 dropped under 200km/h winds. 1 in 1000 was about 163km/h. New transmission are built to that standard.
- Substantial new industrial demand encouraged. Big industrial demand increases the average % demand over the transmission network, lowering the average price to end users.
- Minimal social license issues with transmission due to existing transmission corridors and low value land
Electric Vehicles
- 1 million EVs will require about 1% of grid supply to charge. We currently spill and waste more than that due to excess renewable generation during the day.
- EV batteries are 60x the size of home batteries. Lots of potential to soak up excess daytime generation and trickle back into the grid during shortages.
- 20% of national emissions come from transport
- 80% of charging is done from home, plugged in for 12 hours but only need 1.5 hours to charge. Can smart charge when grid demand is low during that period. Smart charging trials were able to shift 95% of charging demand to solar and night blocks, away from evening peak.
- Energy Safe Victoria doesn’t have a record of a single case of an EV catching fire.
- Charging an EV is $5 through Origin Energy.
- EV Council website has guidance on best consumer charging pricing options.
- Negative daytime power pricing means workplaces can generate money by installing EV chargers and letting employees charge from the carpark.
Hydrogen
- $50-80 GJ to make hydrogen, minus a $15GJ gov subsidy
- Gas is $15GJ on long term contracts
- Hydrogen only competitive on spot gas market
- Viable if using zero cost spilled solar, store energy as H2 and dispatch later as a gas.
- 100+ hydrogen projects are in preconstruction
- Critical for transport fuel, either as hydrogen or green ammonia or methanol.
- Positive national security benefits as the economy won’t be reliant on imported diesel and petrol.
Nuclear
- Modelling shows nuclear increases energy costs by $1000 per household
- Projects face a 1.7-3.4x project cost blowout risk based on overseas experience
- 2.3L of water per kW generated, highest water demand of any power generation type
- Serious concerns about depth of workforce skills to deliver nuclear projects.
- Government ownership model is very regressive compared to efficiency advantages attained through historical privitisation.
- Fairest option is to remove legal barriers to private investment in nuclear, then if it is viable private industry will propose projects.
General Thoughts
The exhibitions were heavily focused on solar, batteries and EV charging. Massive number of companies in this space, including many Chinese companies that were hoping to break into the market.
The speakers from transmission network operators, energy grid operators and other major industry participants were 100% invested in the renewables transition. There is zero doubt from industry that we are making the transition to fully renewable and making it fast.
Much of the current work is in getting bottlenecks eliminated and building out extra transmission to enable a new surge in renewables project construction. It is frustrating that these obvious enabling projects were blocked by the previous Liberal government, but momentum currently is really strong. Things are going to accelerate substantially over the coming years. This is a huge technical challenge and the teams involved deserve massive credit for us not experiencing grid instability and brownouts to date.
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Super effort.
Thanks for sharing.
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Chiva had 343mm in 4 hours.
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We’re number 4!
We’re number 4!
We’re number 4!
Seriously, we have more per capita than the three above us (and maybe more than everyone listed below us).
And we still have a looooooong way to go.
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Partly because it was relevant and partly because this was a pain in the butt to research.
Forecast of batteries under construction or with firm dates. Excludes proposed, being designed or tendering for government programs.
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At the Senate Inquiry headed up by Ted O’Brien ( LNP Qld), the guy from the Australia Institute was trying to explain the function of batteries when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
He noted that when it’s not raining , the water still comes out of the tap. O’Brien asked him how many dams that needed.
Sigh, that was an analogy, but as he couldn’t give a number, his evidence was discounted.
O’Brien says ‘ what are you doing here then?’. Guy says ‘Because you invited me’.
Can’t wait to read the report after O’Brien doctors it.
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Euronews reporting that 95 are dead and still many unaccounted for in Valencia. Some regions had 125% of their annual rainfall in less that 8 hours with more rain on the way.
https://www.euronews.com/2024/10/30/several-missing-in-spain-after-heavy-rain-causes-flooding
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When will these climate activists stop blocking traffic?
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