???
Bah humbug
I am here drinking and eating, going home tonight
33% of energy in California is renewable, 50% by 2020 and 100% planned for 2045.
In Melbourne our trams and trains are powered by coal.
You certainly missed a unique and exciting event.
And you would not certainly not have said humbug if you saw those Ms Claus out there.
SF is a really great city. (Hi Donmania!)
We arrived on Saturday and saw the “Santas” everywhere. Sat in a bar at Fishersman Wharf and the Mrs Klaus were stunning and Mrs Fox took me away.
I went to Macy’s and had our photo taken with Santa for my Grandkids; he was the real deal !
Agreed. Had one of the best weeks of my life there
Trams won’t be for much longer!
Yarra Trams
World first: solar to power Melbourne tram network
Rob Robson , Minister Lily D’Ambrosio And Jeroen Weimar - Square Crop
Melbourne’s tram network will be powered by a new large scale solar plant to be built in regional Victoria.
The Victorian Government will run a tender to help build 75MW of new large scale solar farms.
Around 35MW of the new solar farms will be linked to Melbourne’s tram network. The government will voluntarily surrender renewable energy certificates matching the amount of electricity used by all of Melbourne’s trams.
This will result in a reduction of more than 80,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year, reducing CO2 emissions by the same amount as taking 17,000 cars off the road for a year.
Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Lily D’Ambrosio said: “This is a world first to power Melbourne’s tram network on clean energy.”
Yarra Trams is committed to operating our network sustainably, and support the government with this initiative to power our network with renewable energy.
Our network already helps to save $97 million in environmental damage annually when compared to driving.
Victoria’s first large scale solar farms will be built by the end of 2018, with an open tender for the construction to run in the first half of this year.
This will help Victoria stay on track to meet its target of net-zero emissions by 2050.
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California and Washington State have decided to price CO2 emissions.
And NAB here , no more loans for new thermal coal projects
As of today my house is producing its own power, courtesy of 16 x 300w panels. Now I can finally justify the aircon so heavily sought by Ms CB.
Heading off now for some latte sipping with my GLW.
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How did allow they that? Are you off-grid or did they limit your feedin.
Oh I have to buy it back at night at much higher cost than I get for feeding in. But I’m producing more than twice what I use in total. Might get batteries but not yet.
Government snuck out their emissions review at the same time as the cabinet reshuffle. Pretty much decided they’re going to let emission increase beyond 2030. So, I guess that’s the Paris agreement we’ll and truly done on our part. Going the opposite direction to the rest of the world (aside from US).
Well maybe Turnbull might be good for something after all. The Paris agreement is ludicrous and we should stay well clear of it.
Apparently the big battery in SA had to come to the rescue when Loy Yang shat itself last Thursday night. It actually kicked in before the coal plant had finished tripping, responding in 140 milliseconds from over 1000kms away to help restore frequency to 50Hz. It’s impressing the ■■■■ out of everyone in the energy industry. Well, almost everyone.
The five minute market coming in 2021 might need to be a 5 second market.
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So, that’s what happened.? Our lights flickered briefly but nothing else went off and did not have to reset
Contingency plants kicked in as Loy Yang went down over a matter of minutes. No one was expecting HPR (battery farm) to kick in for frequency control so quickly and effectively to fill the breach though. This tech is so far beyond the conventional stuff. The future is looking good.
COAG is getting nervous. Latest report saying renewables will drive down prices over the next 5 years but will be so effective it will cause coal and gas markets to crash and wipe out the grid! What a bunch of idiots. First of all, it will drive down prices. Coal plants will close at roughly forecasted dates but will just be the expensive part of the mix. Solar and wind will continue to become cheaper and be mostly privately financed to fill the breach with quick installation times.
They’re almost facing reality now. Just having a bit of a sook about it.
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Floating Solar Power Plant For Adelaide Reservoir
Michael Bloch
4-5 minutes
A floating solar plant will be installed at a metropolitan reservoir in Adelaide – part of a much larger solar PV rollout announced today by SA Water.
SA Water has set a goal of achieving $0 net electricity costs by 2020 and will initially invest $10 million on up to six megawatts of solar panels to be installed at some of its large metropolitan sites. Among the installations will be a 100kW floating PV system at its Happy Valley Reservoir in the city’s southern suburbs.
In addition to clean electricity generation, floating solar can also reduce evaporation.
Reducing the surface area exposed to sunlight will also lower the water lost through natural evaporation processes, which is estimated to be around 1500 ML from Happy Valley each year,” said SA Water Chief Executive Roch Cheroux.
It’s expected construction of the floating solar plant will commence during the first 6 months of 2018. If this pilot plant is successful, similar arrays may be rolled out on other reservoirs.
Floating solar has already arrived in South Australia. The state (and nation’s) first plant went into operation in 2015 at a wastewater treatment facility in Jamestown1, in SA’s Mid-North.
Another related pilot project for SA Water will use flywheel storage, in the form of a 128 kW system working with the floating solar panel array at Happy Valley.
Other projects that will be undertaken as part of SA Water working towards its goal include silicon thermal storage to complement existing biogas generation. This will involve Adelaide-based 1414 Degrees, which is developing a patented system that stores energy as latent heat in molten silicon.
Earlier this month, 1414 Degrees was awarded a $1.6 million grant towards a $3.2m thermal storage project for a 0.25MW/10MWh installation at the Glenelg Waste Water Treatment Plant.
It’s important to be bold when it comes to innovation and achieving the kind of leaps we are after,” stated Mr Cheroux . “We actively work to reduce our carbon footprint and in recent research activities, our customers confirmed that using or generating renewable energy was their preferred way for us to achieve further reductions.”
Currently under way for SA Water is a 100kW solar power system and 50kWh battery storage installation at its Crystal Brook workshop.
SA Water already has other renewables in place, including hydroelectric systems at Hope Valley, Seacliff Park and the Adelaide Desalination Plant that collectively generate approximately 7,000 megawatt hours of electricity a year.
Water and the River Murray Minister Ian Hunter says while SA Water is making good use of renewables, advances in storage technologies provide an opportunity to take these efforts “to the next level”.
One of the largest electricity consumers in South Australia, SA Water used 220 gigawatt hours in 2016/17, costing approximately $55 million.
After Perth and Brisbane, Adelaide is Australia’s third sunniest state capital
A 40MW floating solar farm, constructed on what would otherwise be a “useless” area due to the impacts of coal mining, has been connected to the mains electricity grid in Huainan, China. According to the World Bank, Huainan has a coal mining history dating back to 1903. Ongoing coal mining…
Our neighbours to the north-west are getting into floating solar in a big way. A 200MW solar farm is a major project by any benchmark - put that on water and it’s quite extraordinary. It was announced yesterday that Indonesian electricity company PT Pembangkitan Jawa-Bali and the United Arab Emirates’…
November 30, 2017
In “General Solar & Storage News”
– learn more about solar power in Adelaide.
Footnotes
Not far from Jamestown is the location of Tesla’s “Big Battery”, formally known as Hornsdale Power Reserve. 
Victoria’s Black Rock Solar Project Under Way
Construction has commenced on the Black Rock Solar Project, the first of six PV projects for Victoria’s Barwon Water. The Black Rock Water Reclamation Plant treats the majority of the Geelong region’s sewage, processing approximately 50 million litres of blackwater each day. Once filtered and cleaned, the water is sent…
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Interesting situation with SA. They’re connected but also isolated. End of the line. Creates supply problems and the knock on effects from that. They’re being bold because they really have nothing to lose. At this rate they will be a regular net exporter to the other states and it will be close to entirely renewable.
They’ve nailed it here. Take away a 55 mill power bill = cheaper water for residents, saves uncountable greenhouse gases over decades, and reduces evaporation losses into the bargain.
Win Win Win.
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