… battery hens. Apparently there’s thousands upon thousands out there just waiting for a hook up
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The problem is that many in the Unreliables corner are insisting on totally unrealistic targets. There are movements to close Loy Yang , Liddel etc by 2035, however Labor( for instance) plan to have 100 % renewables by 2050. What are we to use in the interim. I’m not saying "no one has done it yet " , I’m saying that no one has come up with a realistic plan to do it. Sth. Australia could not operate without Q’Land and Vic coal fired energy. Germany has reopened its Brown coal mines and is building new coal power stations and currently draws enormous amounts of coal energy from Poland and Russia.
Australia does not have a power policy. We make motherhood statements about it and set dates that are never met and no politicians/bureaucrats will be alive to answer for the consequences . We are just wishin’ and a hopin’ that an answer will suddenly arrive , just as many on here talk about “advances in battery technology, Geo thermal power, underwater kites or whale blubber”. For COL lets have some realism.
The sensible answer is Gas.
It’s cleaner and by building new plants they are also safer and can be built to have more variability. I.E. gas turbines can be turned on and off much more easily than coal. So you build a 4 turbine plant which has 2 running continuously and 2 that switch on for summer peaks.
No new coal plants are being built but plenty of gas plants have been.
The problem is more that we multiple policies for energy and the environment at State and Federal level, each shifting over time, discouraging any decision to invest to a multi-decade project.
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So why has Danny boy banned all new gas supply in Victoria. As it is we allow Overseas operators to sell our gas at lower prices than they charge OZ customers. As I said earlier , no policy that makes any sense.
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Maybe, just a thought that popped into my head, neither side of politics has a public energy policy because they know they’ll be torn to shreds on it (by different parties, obviously).
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I thought it was gas fracking, not all types of gas mining.
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Far as I know it’s only coal seam gas that’s banned which is a fairly popular policy.
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Yep. We don’t want arable land to be destroyed by fracking potentially making the water supply unusable.
Corangamite Shire unanimously knocked back plans for a 550-hectare solar farm last night. But it sounded as if they knocked it back for informed reasons, eg nowhere near enough detail on aspects like noise and water, but primarily because it’s 550 hectares of prime agricultural land.
We still need to eat. We have millions of square kilometres of non-arable land.
There is a ban on all new sources of onshore gas both conventional and fracking.
Liddell is due to shut in 2022. Not because there’s government policy on it. Because that’s the useful age limit determined by the owner. Loy Yang has till 2045. South Australia is now a net exporter of power and is very close to not needing imports at all. That’s roughly 12 months away.
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How much conventional onshore gas opportunities are there in Vocitoria?
Corangamite Shire Council has unanimously rejected a proposal for a massive 550 hectare solar farm at Bookaar near Camperdown.
All six councillors present voted against the proposal for the $150 million project put forward by a joint venture involving the McArthur family of Bookaar including Corangamite Cr Bev McArthur and the UK-based Infinergy renewable energy company.
Cr McArthur was not at Tuesday night’s meeting. (what this article doesn’t mention is that the proposed solar farm was to be build on her land, that may or may not have been relevant to the decision, who knows?).
A spokesman for Infinergy declined to say whether it would appeal the council’s decision, only saying it would take time to review it.
The project proposed the installation of 700,000 photovoltaic panels that would produce about 200 megawatts, enough to power 80,000 homes.
The vote to reject the proposal came after impassioned pleas to Tuesday’s night council meeting by about 10 Bookaar and Camperdown community members.
Many of the opponents said they were not against renewable energy but the project was proposed for good agricultural land and was not in the right place.
Corangamite mayor Jo Beard said the council did not know enough about solar farms and the state government needed to provide more guidelines to help the council consider such projects.
She said she expected the council would receive more applications for such projects.
Cr Beard also said the agricultural industry was very important to the shire and she could not see how the project would protect it for the future.
Council planning officers had recommended the project be approved but Cr Ruth Gstrein successfully moved an alternative motion to refuse the planning application.
Cr Gstrein said she did not believe the environmental impacts of the project could be adequately managed and its net result would not be of community benefit.
Cr Lesley Grant backed Cr Gstrein’s motion, saying Corangamite Shire was being surrounded by wind farms that were turning western Victoria into an industrial landscape.
She said the area needed to be kept for food production and not become an industrial landscape.
Cr Helen Durant said there were too many conditions attached to the council officers’ recommendation for which the council had still to receive information.
She said the suggestion the project would only have a 30-year life was debatable, saying it could be upgraded to extend its life.
Cr Simon Illingworth said the renewable energy market relied on government subsidies and could “be gone like that” if the subsidies were removed.
I’d say thats evidence that local shires shouldn’t be the determining vote. Part time councillors with no relevant experience making such critical decisions.
I don’t know all the details but from those quotes it looks like neither did they.
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Who knows if you don’t look, and why look if you can’t develop.
That’s my take also, they just didnt have the necessary government guidelines on how to deal with applications of this nature.
More info may have lead to a different decision.
So you would be quite happy if S.A. disconnected from the national grid and became totally self sufficient. Liddell useful age is a moot point.
If it is useless why would’nt they be prepared to sell it ?
SA certainly COULD do that, but it’d be a bad thing if it happened. A modern grid designed to deal with renewable generation needs to be as interconnected as possible. Surplus power from SA should be available when Qld has a low-generation day, and vice versa.
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Leaving aside your claims regarding closing stations and the reasons why, which have been ably refuted, we’re talking about technologies that are coming along in leaps and bounds - you can’t say that we’ll be nowhere near it in 20-30 years, that’s defeatism writ large. What could be achieved with stable policy, investment by all and sundry and a CSIRO that isn’t being gutted and turned into a privateering buffet by conservative government?
Boils down to “nah, too hard, don’t like change, don’t like greeny poofters”, or “nah, making too much money off the old poison”. Boils down like a toad.
And pay tax???