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A near 100pct renewable grid for Australia is feasible and affordable
- sp332 3y agoFeasible in a technical sense, but you have to unseat the coal industry representatives, which is going to be hard.
- viraptor 3y agoOr do a Norway and partially nationalise coal production for export while investing profits into renewable for domestic supply.
- hfucvyv 3y agoWhy would the coal industry vote for that?
- rebuilder 3y agoSounds like something the coal industry would fight even harder
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoDuring Australia's mining boom in the early 2000's, the government was making tax dollars hand over fist. What they did was then offer all kinds of tax cuts that Australia couldn't really afford long term. Better explained here: https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/federal-budget-hangover-peter-costellos-to-blame-20150605-ghhah3.html https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/federal-budget-hangover-peter... Basically, they purchased popularity. Australian politics has neither the willpower nor the foresight to battle either the coal or the fuel lobby. The current government has already started watering down its initial fuel efficiency standards: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-26/vehicle-efficiency-standard-climate-laws-watered-down/103634042 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-26/vehicle-efficiency-st... Although an unintended consequence tax write off (which saw a massive percentage increase of US style 'trucks' on Australian residential roads) is being cut back: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/hate-all-the-monster-utes-on-our-streets-your-tax-dollars-helped-pay-for-them-20231022-p5ee5v.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/hate-all-the-monster... Australia goes incredibly slowly in the right direction because Australians, like most Western countries' citizens, as-a-group, have their heads in the sand about the effects of the lifestyles to which they've become accustomed have on the world around them, and they're ably supported in this thinking by irresponsible media and opportunistic politics/politicians.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pydry 3y agoNorway is the only country in the world that is filthy rich in natural resources that has somehow prevented it from fucking them up politically. Theyre clearly doing something right but it's something nobody else seems to be able to replicate. Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Subsaharan Africa, Venezuela, etc. - this is what it is typically like to be very, very rich in natural resources. Even Australia's political system has been badly affected by being resource wealthy - look at the influence Gina has.
- hackerlight 3y agoThis is the resource curse.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoYou don't even have to nationalise it. Just tax it properly.
- pfdietz 3y agoAs fossil fuels decline in importance, they will have less money to bribe politicians with, and the renewables will have more.
- londons_explore 3y agopolitician bribes tend to be in the millions of dollars, while profits can be in the billions of dollars. In a life or death situation for an industry, they can exert literally 1000x the political pressure before making losses.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- londons_explore 3y agoYou can still organise fancy gala dinners for politicians and their friends and family, at a cost of merely hundreds of dollars per head.
- rob74 3y agoWell, then I guess they have to make sure they don't decline in importance, right? And currently they're quite successful at doing that: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/28/oil-and-gas-fossil-fuels-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/28/oil-and-...
- llm_trw 3y agoYou also have to build hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars worth of power transportation infrastructure.
- maxerickson 3y agoWhich is totally affordable, not that big a deal. Another way to look at it is $10,000s a person over a few decades.
- senectus1 3y agoWorking on it :-) Hydrogen/Ammonia will help significantly.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoHow does a very inefficient conversion from electricity to hydrogen to electricity help?
- adrianN 3y agoIt allows you to store large amounts of energy when energy is cheap.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoWhy not use batteries and get twice the efficiency?
- adrianN 3y agoBecause cost and efficiency are related but not the same.
- lysp 3y agoDon't need to convert it back. Hydrogen is used for example in steel making. Green steel eliminates most of the emissions from the steel making process. While a lot of these processes may not be efficient for electricity generation, using them to clean up very emission intensive industries is a process that needs to be undertaken to reduce emissions worldwide. The steel industry consumes 5.9% of global energy and emits 6-9% of global CO2 emissions.
- doctor_eval 3y agoWe can build it next door to the carbon credit scheme! https://www.sciencealert.com/shock-discovery-huge-carbon-credit-project-in-australia-turns-out-to-be-a-sham https://www.sciencealert.com/shock-discovery-huge-carbon-cre...
- martyvis 3y agoJust saw this story that the Australian government is to kick-start a billion dollar program to develop the solar panel supply chain here. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-28/anthony-albanese-announces-solar-sunshot-manufacturing-program/103639924 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-28/anthony-albanese-anno...
- bryanlarsen 3y agoInteresting that this is achieved with only a 5% overbuild. The simulations I have seen to get to 100% for Europe and North America without long term storage have used a 200% (aka 3X) overbuild. Probably partially due to Australia being a good place for sun and wind, and partially for targeting 99% rather than 100%.
- hfucvyv 3y ago[dead]
- pfdietz 3y agoIf they are using peakers for the last 1%, one can instead fuel those peakers with e-fuels. The low round trip efficiency of e-fuels doesn't matter much if they're providing just 1% of the total.
- hackerlight 3y agoThat could be the difference between "near 100%" and 100%. Or it could be because Australia has good renewable resources. This paper is a similar analysis but for the US, check Fig. 3. As you go from 97% to 100% renewables, the overbuilding requirements blow up. https://sci-hub.se/10.1039/c7ee03029k https://sci-hub.se/10.1039/c7ee03029k
- pfdietz 3y agoThat conclusion assumes no long term storage. Including hydrogen drastically reduces the overbuilding required. Put another way: if you overbuilt that much, you can make hydrogen for basically the cost of the electrolysers, since the input power is often free.
- gwright 3y agoYou are correct that you can't create a stable, resilient grid just with intermittent renewables, you need storage. But I don't think anyone has demonstrated long-term storage at grid scale, capable of storing power across seasons, which is needed in many areas. To be feasible the storage system has to be cheaper than maintaining some fossil fuel plants. I haven't seen much about promising hydrogen storage systems.
- llm_trw 3y agoI worked as a quant in energy for the Australian market. I did the same thing as OP but didn't assume electricity teleported 3,000 km from Tasmania to Northern Queensland. Using the proprietary data for what each pole could carry I build a first principles simulation of the Australian grid to find where medium sized battery installations should be placed to provide maximum grid frequency correction. The grid is already close to collapse on 40C days. Forget moving to a renewable grid, keeping the lights on during a five day heat wave over the eastern seaboard is currently impossible.
- pornel 3y agoPardon my ignorance, but isn't aircon an easy case for the grid? The same sun that causes the heat can power solar panels, so it doesn't even need storage or long-range transmission.
- llm_trw 3y agoYou are assuming that you don't need an aircon at night. Something that's very much not the case during a multiday Australian heatwave.
- exe34 3y agoDo you have any insulation? I'm in the UK, and my previous rental had walls that leaked any heat within half an hour, but my current one, it heats up to 23 in the day due to the large windows facing the sun, and barely drops to 18 at night when it's 5-10 degrees outside.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- zeristor 3y agoThis is great for homes, but one thing I keep thinking of is if one wants to run an aluminium smelter using renewable electricity you'd need a huge bank of batteries. I guess these would still need large hydro power. But that's the thing if the market becomes more reliable, than larger loads become feasible, which means usage, and economics start to move in unforeseen directions.