SA Water’s Zero Cost Energy Future , which aims to achieve zero net electricity costs from 2020. This month Enerven was awarded a framework agreement contract to deploy more than half a million solar panels plus storage infrastructure at around 70 sites over the next 18 months
Ultimately the project will provide SA Water with access to around 154 megawatts (MW) of new solar photovoltaic generation and 34 megawatt hours of energy storage.
Massive project here in SA which has been an on going discussion and plan since 2017 - known as Project Zero then.
Thought I’d share a tidbit for the solar enthusiasts. Massive project, and huge upside and benefit. Not sure how long they will need this installed for payback though - insane amount of money involved.
Batteries alone went from $50m to $20m based on 4 hour backup to 2 hour backup (there abouts, from a chat during preliminary discussions I had last year) - they haven’t been specified yet for this project - I’m more than happy to share what I learn as this progresses - engineering is still being designed and certain suppliers like batteries haven’t been awarded yet.
I posted about in here a couple of years ago. At that point the panels were to be installed over the reservoir, thereby having the not insignificant added benefit of reducing evaporation by a shitload, and using what was essentially, wasted area. Is that not still the case?
I only wonder because you made no mention of it, and I thought it was ingenious at the time, but might be difficult.
I haven’t actually heard that - Just did a check on Happy Valley - and they planned a 100kW floating system there back in 2017.
That idea has now changed which is probably why I haven’t heard. They are now planning on a 9mW install - which is going to take a considerable amount of land.
Going to have trouble appeasing the resident with that idea:
Also might be worth noting that 1414 Degrees is currently trialing its thermal energy storage system with SA Water. Could potentially be in the storage mix along with batteries.
Ask a government department for anything and you will get evasion, delay and procrastination on a scale you wouldn’t think possible, then they ask you for the relevant pages, for that you need to know which document, which act it has been passed under and then pay a massive search fee.
Then comes the actual costs of providing the photocopies IF they don’t challenge you in VCAT of the court system.
If you get the information inside of 2 years you should buy a Tatts ticket.
'From your mates at the University of Queensland, who else.
The recovery of the humpback whale population in the Southern Ocean is one of the great conservation success stories but researchers are warning the whales could wind up being their own worst enemies.
Researchers from the University of Queensland have been monitoring whale populations during their annual migration up and down the east coast of Australia since 2004, and have access to data collected for decades before that.
They have found that after being hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1960s, with just a few hundred humpbacks surviving in the wild, the humpback population had almost totally recovered to more than 25,000 whales in 2015.
Humpback whales have recovered in numbers, with an estimated 30,000 travelling Australia’s east coast in 2018.
Associate Professor Michael Noad from UQ’s School of Veterinary Science said that was great news, but the problem would be if the population became too large for the ecosystem to handle.
First the are too few whales.
Then there might be too many whales.
At the moment there might be the right number of whales or maybe not.
Who is running this joke of an institution GOLDILOCKS.
If that peak is going to happen it’s not far away. We reckon anywhere between 2021 and 2026 and there could be a significant crash in the whale numbers after that.
