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Am I reading this right? "Yay, we've found a way to keep burning coal for a little while longer despite it being economically prohibitive and ecologically destr

Am I reading this right? "Yay, we've found a way to keep burning coal for a little while longer despite it being economically prohibitive and ecologically destructive" is the good news? Hopefully soon their profits will dip low enough they won't be able to buy (excuse me, "lobby") politicians, and the whole industry will just collapse. Kids can go urban exploring in the behemoth ruins in a couple of decades, it'll be great.

h0l0cube 2y ago
> Am I reading this right? No. Energy storage would need to reach a capacity of several days to completely obviate the need for existing plants to keep running. Until now there's only been two options to deal with this, building new gas peaker plants – bad outcome, right? – or to just keep baseload coal/gas/nuclear online and throttle renewables – bad outcome, right? Now we can limp coal infrastructure for a little longer before they retire in lieu of building new gas peaking plants, which are neither financially viable nor environmentally desirable.
_kulang 2y ago
Australia has a base load problem that causes energy prices to become negative during the day when solar production is at it’s peak. Part of this is that the coal plants cannot readily be switched off during the day, and end up producing energy when it isn’t needed. Because we do not yet have the ability to store the amount of energy we use in the evening, we still need the coal plants at night. Hence why this is good news to us, this can actually reduce emissions and energy prices at the same time. We can basically rely on renewables during the day if the coal plants can be turned off during peak solar generation. Otherwise we might have relied on natural gas as that can ramp up and down faster. Keep in mind that this is one operator of some plants that is doing this while shifting to a renewable focus because of exactly the economic reasons outlined in the article. The ability to run plants to zero helps them save money and incidentally reduces emissions while they shift focus to the new energy market. Australia is in the process of shutting down coal fired plants but increasing energy use has meant that the aging plants need to be run longer while we transition technologies. Many are already shut down, and we do not have a short road to nuclear power plants, so the trajectory is looking renewable heavy along with storage. It is not surprise that new plants do not find investors. These companies are ultimately accountable to us if we make it happen and the economic incentive is already there for a transition to low or no emission grids. Partial transitions and operational changes like this are a sign that those changes are being taken seriously and that operation of coal plants is already seen as a financial risk, largely due to the increasing purchase of solar and batteries by Australians looking to reduce their energy bill

h0l0cube 2y ago

> Am I reading this right? No. Energy storage would need to reach a capacity of several days to completely obviate the need for existing plants to keep running. Until now there's only been two options to deal with this, building new gas peaker plants – bad outcome, right? – or to just keep baseload coal/gas/nuclear online and throttle renewables – bad outcome, right? Now we can limp coal infrastructure for a little longer before they retire in lieu of building new gas peaking plants, which are neither financially viable nor environmentally desirable.

_kulang 2y ago

Australia has a base load problem that causes energy prices to become negative during the day when solar production is at it’s peak. Part of this is that the coal plants cannot readily be switched off during the day, and end up producing energy when it isn’t needed. Because we do not yet have the ability to store the amount of energy we use in the evening, we still need the coal plants at night. Hence why this is good news to us, this can actually reduce emissions and energy prices at the same time. We can basically rely on renewables during the day if the coal plants can be turned off during peak solar generation. Otherwise we might have relied on natural gas as that can ramp up and down faster. Keep in mind that this is one operator of some plants that is doing this while shifting to a renewable focus because of exactly the economic reasons outlined in the article. The ability to run plants to zero helps them save money and incidentally reduces emissions while they shift focus to the new energy market. Australia is in the process of shutting down coal fired plants but increasing energy use has meant that the aging plants need to be run longer while we transition technologies. Many are already shut down, and we do not have a short road to nuclear power plants, so the trajectory is looking renewable heavy along with storage. It is not surprise that new plants do not find investors. These companies are ultimately accountable to us if we make it happen and the economic incentive is already there for a transition to low or no emission grids. Partial transitions and operational changes like this are a sign that those changes are being taken seriously and that operation of coal plants is already seen as a financial risk, largely due to the increasing purchase of solar and batteries by Australians looking to reduce their energy bill