I think you meant to post this in the Comedy Thread
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Renewables are working out well.
Great plan, if you work in an airconditioned office all day you get a bonus on your power bill paid for out the increased power bills of the pensioners and unenployed who are stuck at home
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Thanks Soulnet for taking the time to replyâŚsome stuff there I didnât know about cheers.
I preferred the EMD710 2 stroke heaven the harder you pushed the better they pulled!
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Agreed, your idea of running it during the summer peak is pretty ludicrous. We have these things called reservoirs that last a few years; given the cost of running it is basically power, itâd be nuts to let the power companies fark you over that way.
I liked the EMD 567. Brmm brmm brmm.
I agree actually. Itâs a bit silly to be paying people to cut their power use when we could instead be using that money to build more capacity. But what sort of generation capacity? Obviously you want something thatâs going to be available in times of peak demand, and which you can build incrementally, so you donât have to find megabucks to pay for One Big Power Station which wouldnât be ready in time anyway.
Jeez, if only there was a way of generating power that is relatively quick to construct, that can be built in multiple relatively small installations, and that works best on hot summer daysâŚ
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Or maybe another that thrives in those summer winds !
Or logically keep the â â â â â â â power stations working until you have an alternative. Itâs not rocket science.
They tried that in WA, with the Muja AB refurbishment. Howâd it work for them over there?
These things are FIFTY years old, and are on their last legs. Their owners are closing them down for a reason - because itâs starting to cost so much in maintenance and repair to keep them running that itâs uneconomical.
The reason is threats around carbon taxes etc. Itâs 100% up to the government to address these situations. Itâs a hell of a lot more economical to maintain something on its last legs for a while than build something new or worse still do nothing and deal with power shortages. Pretty basic common sense.
And yet every power company in Aus is doing the opposite of what you suggest. Why?
Donât you understand that these Power Stations are privately owned and it is not any Governments responsibility to keep them functioning.
And the these Corporations have screwed every dollar out of them they can and will not invest more into decayed infrastructure
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The bolded is the important bit.
These stations are stuffed, or else they wouldnât be closing down. Theyâre 50 years old! Theyâve already been maintained and patched and refurbished and upgraded etc for decades now, and theyâve simply crossed the point of diminishing returns. If you maintain something on itâs last legs for a while - itâs still only for a while, and then youâve spent a huge amount of money propping up a creaking decrepit relic and you STILL have to cough up the cash to build the new capacity in the end anyway.
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100%. That doesnât mean the government is powerless.
They are not though and itâs still going to be cheaper to keep it going than build something else. Regardless though the government has a responsibility to maintain supply and itâs pretty obvious that you need to do that by maintaining what you have until there is an alternative. Fail.
You could spend $100 mill on renewables and spend nothing in future years as it generates cash.
Or spend $100 mill to patch up a 50 yo coal plant. That requires another $100mill next year again and again and again. And $200 mill in labor to run it every year.
Sounds like the $1000 service I just had done on my $5000 car.
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Government sold its responsibility over twenty years ago, with Voter consent.
Maybe then they should just take back the assets from the Private Owners without any compensation.
Government may not be powerless,but they sold the assets just like the Voters wanted.
No, itâs not going to be cheaper to keep them going than to build something else.
Because they WILL have to build something else anyway. The old coal stations are falling apart as it is. Itâs just a matter of whether we spend the $ to build replacement capacity now, or spend the $ to build replacement capacity in a few years time after flushing a few hundred mill down the toilet trying to keep a bunch of juddering relics operational.
Seriously, read up on the Muja refurbishment. It gives you a really good example of what happens when you try to keep a zombie generator running.
Initially budgeted at $150 million and designed to be financed entirely by the private sector, the revival of Muja AB was beset by repeated blow-outs to its cost and time-frame. Its final cost was put at $310 million while it was delivered 18 months late after a corroded boiler exploded and the joint venture between Synergy and Geelong-based engineering firm Kempe went broke. Since being completed, Muja AB has also been plagued by operational and reliability problems, producing just 20 per cent of the time on average.
These half-century-old coal plants are DEAD. They just havenât stopped twitching yet. Replacement is inevitable. Why throw good money at them?
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