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Basslink (the HVDC connection between Victoria and Tasmania) is still operational and this year has swung to a net transfer of energy from VIC to TAS for the fi

Basslink (the HVDC connection between Victoria and Tasmania) is still operational and this year has swung to a net transfer of energy from VIC to TAS for the first time since 2008, due to drier weather causing less hydro power. Victoria is predominantly coal-powered. https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/major-publications/qed/2020/qed-q3-2020.pdf https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/major-publications/qed/202... (Section 1.5, figure 30) So it's more correct to say that local generation is 100% renewable, not total energy consumption.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
True, but it’s frowned upon to editorialize the headline, the milestone is still important imho, and Victoria’s coal heavy generation mix is temporary. https://environmentvictoria.org.au/our-campaigns/safe-climate/renewable-energy/ https://environmentvictoria.org.au/our-campaigns/safe-climat... > But Victoria is catching up. In 2016, the Victorian state government announced new renewable energy targets. By 2020, 25 percent of Victoria’s electricity will come from clean renewable energy. By 2025, that will rise to 40 percent. Their target is 50 percent by 2030, but I’m overly optimistic based on runaway rooftop solar deployments and the current utility scale projects in the pipeline. It is highly likely most of Australia is 100% renewables powered (electrical, doesn’t include transportation) by 2032, 2035 at the latest. https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-can-be-powered-100-by-renewables-by-early-2030s-says-garnaut-16846/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-can-be-powered-100-by-...
- iamtedd 6y ago
  Thanks for the reply. It's good to see concrete progress away from coal.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- cbmuser 6y ago
  It’s not really an achievement when you have a population of half a million and have lots of possibilities for hydro power. There are other small countries such as Costa Rica or Norway which are also already on “100% renewables” thanks to hydro power. Also, this is usually just for electricity. They are probably still burning lots of fossil fuels for heating and vehicle traffic.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    It's absolutely an achievement. It takes a desire to actually build hydroelectric power and the will to put it into place. Washington state could be hydro powered, but it's only 70%, with 20% non-renewable. Quebec is 97% hydro, but 3% nuclear due to a historical political horse-trade. Illinois, despite having the mighty Mississippi River, has 3 total dams and is less than 1% of its energy mix, with more than 50% being non-renewable. So Costa Rica and Tasmania do enjoy some advantages, but so do lots of other places that haven't accomplished the same.
    - joecool1029 6y ago
      >Quebec is 97% hydro, but 3% nuclear due to a historical political horse-trade. This? https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2015/market-snapshot-quebec-ontario-power-sharing-agreement-supports-nuclear-refurbishments.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... Couldn't imagine wanting to import nuclear instead of moving trains full of oil to burn during winter had anything to do with the decision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaste...
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - newyankee 6y ago
      Hydropower when in form of pumped hydro could play and important part in renewable future. Quebec and Canada can actually become a battery for New England offshore wind power.
Qwertious 6y ago
>So it's more correct to say that local generation is 100% renewable, not total energy consumption. The common term for this is "net 100% renewables" as opposed to "gross 100% renewables", and is typically defined as exporting more renewable electricity than you import fossil-electricity while simultaneously not generating any fossil-electricity locally. And in Australia, whenever a state talks about "100% renewables by 20XX" they're almost always talking about net 100% and not gross, so it's a reasonable-ish thing to leave off. Still annoying, mind you. So the headline isn't incorrect, just annoyingly ambiguous.
- LudwigNagasena 6y ago
  That’s still deceptive. Renewables don’t cancel out fossil fuels, whether you import them or not.
  - dingle_thunk 6y ago
    Um. The exports exceed the imports. They are net exporting renewable power to Victoria. The fact that Victoria exports back non-renewable power isn't in their control. Tasmania is an exceptionally small state. Population 500K. Based on the renewable power sources available, they must rely on a network for stability. Otherwise, they would have to massively over-develop their power infrastructure. This itself would be unsustainable. The issue is not that Tasmania needs to over-build. It's that Victoria needs more renewables. If TAS was a net importer, that would be a different story.
    - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
      > The fact that Victoria exports back non-renewable power isn't in their control. So it is not in their control to be powered only by non-renewable energy. The rest of what you have written doesn’t change this simple fact.
      - Retric 6y ago
        They could use energy storage just fine. However, by on net exporting electricity they reduce the amount of fossil fuels Victoria uses so it’s a net win environmentally. Nuclear has similar issues where baseload generation is inefficient when trying to cover shifting power demand. Thus small cities next to nuclear will import power even if they are a net exporter. In the end larger electricity grids are simply more efficient.
DarthGhandi 6y ago
I really never understand why reneweconomy gets constant airtime here, they are terrible narrators for what is happening in Australia and wear bias on their sleeve as I'm a rampant environmentalist and certainly side with them but many nowadays seem to take the view that the ends justify the means, propaganda is not how you win hearts and minds for the longterm.
ezzaf 6y ago
> So it's more correct to say that local generation is 100% renewable, not total energy consumption. In actual fact even local generation is not 100% renewable, they have a small quantity of gas generation too. For example Tamar valley gas power station is running right now - and effectively being exported to Victoria. "100% renewable" in the sense that generation of renewable electrical energy is more than 100% of electrical energy consumption. It seems like the most straightforward way to account for it.
pjc50 6y ago
I expected HN to diminish this achievement by saying that 100% renewable was impossible and here it is. Haven't seen anyone insisting they should build nuclear yet, that always shows up too.
- junon 6y ago
  1. Because it's important to make sure people claiming good-doing are actually doing good and not out for back patting. 2. Because nuclear is wildly misunderstood, has progressed dramatically in the last two decades, and has a bad stigma because of incidents in the past caused by poorly designed facilities and cut corners. The incidence rate of nuclear is ridiculously small, and most of the arguments against it have scientific and completely positive responses. It is a viable solution that parrots love to put down because "oh no chernobyl".
  - z3t4 6y ago
    I live 1500km (its a rather long distance) from Chernobyl and we still have to measure radiation in wildlife to check if its edible.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - olau 6y ago
    It's unclear what you mean by progress. Due to improved security nuclear plants have gotten more expensive, and as a results almost no new ones are being built in the Western world to replace those that are shutting down. The industry is slowly whittling down. Now you can start inventing excuses why this is happening (popular ones are the greens, and the governments, and scared people, and also people who don't want to pay for the transition off fossil fuels). But it IS happening. There's a fair amount of hype surrounding nuclear tech, e.g. in the form of small plants, but so far that's all vapourware. They are not competing on commercial terms, or even close to.
  - pydry 6y ago
    >most of the arguments against it have scientific and completely positive responses. It costs more than every other form of renewable energy even when variability is taken into account. I've yet to hear a scientific response to this that doesn't involve some sort of FUD around variability.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

True, but it’s frowned upon to editorialize the headline, the milestone is still important imho, and Victoria’s coal heavy generation mix is temporary. https://environmentvictoria.org.au/our-campaigns/safe-climate/renewable-energy/ https://environmentvictoria.org.au/our-campaigns/safe-climat... > But Victoria is catching up. In 2016, the Victorian state government announced new renewable energy targets. By 2020, 25 percent of Victoria’s electricity will come from clean renewable energy. By 2025, that will rise to 40 percent. Their target is 50 percent by 2030, but I’m overly optimistic based on runaway rooftop solar deployments and the current utility scale projects in the pipeline. It is highly likely most of Australia is 100% renewables powered (electrical, doesn’t include transportation) by 2032, 2035 at the latest. https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-can-be-powered-100-by-renewables-by-early-2030s-says-garnaut-16846/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-can-be-powered-100-by-...

iamtedd 6y ago
Thanks for the reply. It's good to see concrete progress away from coal.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cbmuser 6y ago
It’s not really an achievement when you have a population of half a million and have lots of possibilities for hydro power. There are other small countries such as Costa Rica or Norway which are also already on “100% renewables” thanks to hydro power. Also, this is usually just for electricity. They are probably still burning lots of fossil fuels for heating and vehicle traffic.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  It's absolutely an achievement. It takes a desire to actually build hydroelectric power and the will to put it into place. Washington state could be hydro powered, but it's only 70%, with 20% non-renewable. Quebec is 97% hydro, but 3% nuclear due to a historical political horse-trade. Illinois, despite having the mighty Mississippi River, has 3 total dams and is less than 1% of its energy mix, with more than 50% being non-renewable. So Costa Rica and Tasmania do enjoy some advantages, but so do lots of other places that haven't accomplished the same.
  - joecool1029 6y ago
    >Quebec is 97% hydro, but 3% nuclear due to a historical political horse-trade. This? https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/market-snapshots/2015/market-snapshot-quebec-ontario-power-sharing-agreement-supports-nuclear-refurbishments.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma... Couldn't imagine wanting to import nuclear instead of moving trains full of oil to burn during winter had anything to do with the decision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaste...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - newyankee 6y ago
    Hydropower when in form of pumped hydro could play and important part in renewable future. Quebec and Canada can actually become a battery for New England offshore wind power.

Qwertious 6y ago

>So it's more correct to say that local generation is 100% renewable, not total energy consumption. The common term for this is "net 100% renewables" as opposed to "gross 100% renewables", and is typically defined as exporting more renewable electricity than you import fossil-electricity while simultaneously not generating any fossil-electricity locally. And in Australia, whenever a state talks about "100% renewables by 20XX" they're almost always talking about net 100% and not gross, so it's a reasonable-ish thing to leave off. Still annoying, mind you. So the headline isn't incorrect, just annoyingly ambiguous.

LudwigNagasena 6y ago
That’s still deceptive. Renewables don’t cancel out fossil fuels, whether you import them or not.
- dingle_thunk 6y ago
  Um. The exports exceed the imports. They are net exporting renewable power to Victoria. The fact that Victoria exports back non-renewable power isn't in their control. Tasmania is an exceptionally small state. Population 500K. Based on the renewable power sources available, they must rely on a network for stability. Otherwise, they would have to massively over-develop their power infrastructure. This itself would be unsustainable. The issue is not that Tasmania needs to over-build. It's that Victoria needs more renewables. If TAS was a net importer, that would be a different story.
  - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
    > The fact that Victoria exports back non-renewable power isn't in their control. So it is not in their control to be powered only by non-renewable energy. The rest of what you have written doesn’t change this simple fact.
    - Retric 6y ago
      They could use energy storage just fine. However, by on net exporting electricity they reduce the amount of fossil fuels Victoria uses so it’s a net win environmentally. Nuclear has similar issues where baseload generation is inefficient when trying to cover shifting power demand. Thus small cities next to nuclear will import power even if they are a net exporter. In the end larger electricity grids are simply more efficient.

DarthGhandi 6y ago

I really never understand why reneweconomy gets constant airtime here, they are terrible narrators for what is happening in Australia and wear bias on their sleeve as I'm a rampant environmentalist and certainly side with them but many nowadays seem to take the view that the ends justify the means, propaganda is not how you win hearts and minds for the longterm.

ezzaf 6y ago

> So it's more correct to say that local generation is 100% renewable, not total energy consumption. In actual fact even local generation is not 100% renewable, they have a small quantity of gas generation too. For example Tamar valley gas power station is running right now - and effectively being exported to Victoria. "100% renewable" in the sense that generation of renewable electrical energy is more than 100% of electrical energy consumption. It seems like the most straightforward way to account for it.

pjc50 6y ago

I expected HN to diminish this achievement by saying that 100% renewable was impossible and here it is. Haven't seen anyone insisting they should build nuclear yet, that always shows up too.

junon 6y ago
1. Because it's important to make sure people claiming good-doing are actually doing good and not out for back patting. 2. Because nuclear is wildly misunderstood, has progressed dramatically in the last two decades, and has a bad stigma because of incidents in the past caused by poorly designed facilities and cut corners. The incidence rate of nuclear is ridiculously small, and most of the arguments against it have scientific and completely positive responses. It is a viable solution that parrots love to put down because "oh no chernobyl".
- z3t4 6y ago
  I live 1500km (its a rather long distance) from Chernobyl and we still have to measure radiation in wildlife to check if its edible.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- olau 6y ago
  It's unclear what you mean by progress. Due to improved security nuclear plants have gotten more expensive, and as a results almost no new ones are being built in the Western world to replace those that are shutting down. The industry is slowly whittling down. Now you can start inventing excuses why this is happening (popular ones are the greens, and the governments, and scared people, and also people who don't want to pay for the transition off fossil fuels). But it IS happening. There's a fair amount of hype surrounding nuclear tech, e.g. in the form of small plants, but so far that's all vapourware. They are not competing on commercial terms, or even close to.
- pydry 6y ago
  >most of the arguments against it have scientific and completely positive responses. It costs more than every other form of renewable energy even when variability is taken into account. I've yet to hear a scientific response to this that doesn't involve some sort of FUD around variability.