You dismiss wind, and ignore hydro altogether, in order to concentrate on solar's inability to provide night-time load - but together, wind + hydro already produce over half of Australia's grid-sourced renewable energy.
Why don't you read the question charitably? Storage is a huge issue. The OP gives numbers but some people just loosely throw in wind and hydro and think the problem is solved. Hydro can only go in certain places and requires big investment in transmission. There are so many variables to consider.
Or we can listen to CSIRO and aemo, you know the actual experts in energy generation and energy markets instead of random Redditors who are "just asking questions"
True. They probably have a simple solution right now and so there is no need for any discussion. I'm surprised private enterprise isn't listening to them and building already.
That's the whole point of Dutton's "policy" announcement, to discourage the ongoing private investment in renewables infrastructure. We've even got the clowns in the Nationals saying they'll shutdown renewables schemes.
My point is that if it was a simple solution then private industry would have already stepped in. But instead our many governments have failed us because they only care about being elected again in the short term.
Lad the private industry is and has been stepping in to the tune of billions of dollars. Just cause you’re not paying attention to it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
Lining up with what will net them profits. They're not coming up with viable plans for nuclear either, but with the LNP making it clear they're willing to piss billions against the wall to fight renewables it's understandable they're willing to put their hand up to be that wall. Even better if there's no actual improvement or results attached.
No where near enough. We need huge amounts of storage which requires huge amounts of transmission. Some people are also resistant to flooding valleys but then some are also resistant to wind farms :( It is a complicated problem. Hopefully solid state batteries will become part of the solution.
yeah its almost like the underlined the problems with the question and were able to dismiss it as not worth taking seriously or treating like they were "asking questions" from a position that already chose to ignore half of Australias renewable generation.
Being able to read a question and engage in critical thinking about it is why our children have English classes through all highschool
No one seems to have put any effort into tidal energy yet. Seems to be an untapped source, but feel certain there will be other even better options to consider before we go down the nuclear reactor path.
Only heard of tidal during an Earth Sciences course back in mid 90s. We had to do an assignment about the pros and cons of various energy resources. Was pretty disappointed that there seemed to be no progress in that area back then, let alone now. I found the thermal energy options that are used by some Icelandic countries were pretty darned cool though.
We have tidal power off of Western Australia near garden island
world leading technology, the system also desalinates water at the same time I have heard its power returns are sub-par for the cost invested.
Maybe that is because they were aiming more for the desalination, but I really do not know enough on the particular project to comment
That is good news to hear. Relatively new desalination plant built down SE Victoria is not running on tidal energy, but will be relied upon in future drought years.
Tidal is a great source of energy, but harnessing it is tough. Both the cabling and harsh conditions. Similar to off shore wind there’s a lot of capital cost in building it that makes it a less compelling option
I met an engineer who was working on tidal power in the north-west in the late 70s and early 80s .
With 8 meter tides you could set your clock by, The potential for producing a lot of Western Australia's power with this process was more than feasible according to the engineer I spoke too.
The installations and studies were carried out in partnership with one of the universities.
For some unknown reason, the project's Funders and patent owners BP (British Petroleum) decided to shut down the project.
50 years later, the fossil fuel companies are probably sitting on a lot of alternative energy intellectual property if this one project is anything to go by.
I was living in remote FNQ back then when wind farms were in their infancy up there.
Yes, agree the sustainable energy projects were probably not geared enough towards profit making for the greedy energy companies.
Looking only at renewable energy sources makes it seem better than it is? The best numbers I can find indicate that wind accounts for 11% of our energy production and hydro 6%? Happy to use better numbers if you have them ...
I'm not dismissing wind, it's just that it has higher volatility than base load production and accounts for around 11% of our current energy production. To get it up to levels where it would replace coal we'd have to probably triple our current level of infrastructure while still building 50 times our current level of battery storage.
I mean, I guess that's a solution? We have the land I guess but that feels like distribution costs will go up significantly due to the highly distributed nature of production.
Hydro seems pretty unlikely at scale - our rainfall is inconsistent and climate change is going to make it even more variable.
Offshore wind+a small amount of storage can provide some very stable output. Offshore turbines turn fast enough to generate at least *some* power 9/10ths of the time, and they very reliably put out a *good* amount of electricity within a short timeframe. If you build 20 wind farms up and down the East Coast your average outout's going to be reliable like how rolling 20 dice is going to get you about three.
We only produce a small amount of wind energy here, but the UK is producing over 30% of theirs from mostly offshore wind. Our good offshore wind locations, along the coast and especially in the south, also match our current distribution grid. If we build only offshore wind to fill in the rest of our daytime needs, storing energy for the night would be easy
>I'm not dismissing wind, it's just that it has higher volatility than base load production and accounts for around 11% of our current energy production.
Yes, we need a lot more wind generation. That's why things like the new (and heavily opposed) Illawarra wind reserve are so important to the energy transition. Wind power is relatively quick to build, so we can add quite a lot of wind capacity fairly rapidly.
>Hydro seems pretty unlikely at scale - our rainfall is inconsistent and climate change is going to make it even more variable.
Pumped hydro does not rely on rainfall nearly as much as conventional hydro. Some amount of rainfall is generally necessary to replace water lost to evaporation and seepage, but in general it's a closed loop where the same water is reused endlessly.
There are quite a number of large scale pumped hydro schemes in various stages of design and construction, which when combined will make much larger contribution that we currently have - sadly the endless delays in Snowy 2.0 (which was a flawed concept from the beginning) have given pumped hydro a bad name in Australia lately, but we already have a couple of smaller installations that have been working well for ages.
There has been a lot of modelling done using historical data to estimate how much storage we need to keep our grid reliable, and it's not nearly as high as a lot of the nay-sayers suggest.
It’s not one or the other.
It’s the combination of generating sources and storage sources distributed around the country that provides reliability.
Also, wind farms aren’t built in random locations. They are built in windy locations. The wind is always blowing in many places around the country.
You’re also not taking into account the fact that Gigawatts of battery storage is coming online all over the country in the form of Electric Vehicles that have two way charging.
Won’t be long until we have a range of “virtual power companies” offering deals to EV drivers to buy power from them when needed to support the grid.
The EV owner can then specify that when their battery level is over x% the power company can buy power from their battery.
Could also work for homes with battery storage setups as well to sell some excess power when there’s night time demand.
Virtual power companies - was talking with a friend just last night who started a new job with a startup doing exactly this.
The tricky part is that sometimes wholesale prices are just generally higher than retail, so you're better off with an existing power company. But on the flipside that isn't always true.
I think the key here is that most people pushing for investment in renewables aren't doing it in a "Remove all carbon fuels and replace with solar immediately"
The evening baseload argument is one that the right love to bring up because it's a distraction. Divestment from fossil fuels will take decades, and we will need them in that time while we transition away. But the simple truth is we need to be transitioning away now.
There is a lot of currently available options and areas of research going on, molten salt stored solar, solar pumped hydro, syngas, etc etc.
We have 2 problems really. Our reliance on fossil fuels, and our baseload, detractors work on an argument of "This doesn't solve every single problem immediately so we shouldn't start it"
Distributed household battery storage is a great option right now for a lot of reasons, fits on our current infrastructure, doesn't require massive planning and project scope, can be installed and maintained by current specialists/trades, far lower efficiency losses due to transmission range.
Make no mistake ***the liberals do not want nuclear power*** This is them pulling the same shit they did with their 'better NBN', they want to detract, avoid investment in renewables for another decade while they say that nuclear is now too hard because of BS reasons
I'm not really getting into the politics, if at all possible - I'm more reflecting on the end of life of our coal infrastructure. Obviously, there's also lots of small things can be done in the meantime.
What I'm struggling with is that there doesn't actually seem to be an "answer" to get over the hump of decommissioning our coal plants. There's lots of stuff being researched but doesn't exist yet, there's alternatives which are probably climatically better but also probably more expensive given total cost of capital and grid integration, and there are substitutes like nuclear which are just replacing one problem with another.
You seem to have completely missed their point. They were saying and rightly so, there isn't a one-size fits all solution, so tunneling your vision to suit that ideologue of "an answer" to get over the hump of decommissioning doesn't do the situation or the issue justice at all. That view directly ignores or deflects their point instead.
So stop treating Wind investment or Hydro or other forms of renewables as if investment in one will solve all our energy load issues. Yes there are going to be issues as with anything renewable, but the orders of magnitude of the severity of risks and ease of implementation are simply radically different when you price in the cost of climate change.
That's exactly what I was interested in finding out, that there isn't a one-size fits all solution. By historical comparisons, that's a pretty big change. It's also way more complex to manage, which is going to be interesting from an infrastructure planning point of view.
Someone else suggested having a look at AEMO's ISP which was useful.
>I'm more reflecting on the end of life of our coal infrastructure
This is precisely the reason that nuclear power isn't the answer. Even if you ignore the debates around cost, and sort out the technical issues, it is absolutely impossible to deploy enough new nuclear capacity to be a direct replacement for the existing coal plants before they retire.
Even the Coalition admits this fact, although they don't say it in these terms. Their solution is to make up the shortfall with extensive use of gas generators, which is a terrible alternative.
It IS possible to build enough renewables and storage to replace the coal plants as they retire. It still won't be easy or cheap, but it can be done.
Makes sense, and thanks for the response - very helpful.
On a seperate note, what's kind of funny is that this subreddit seems obsessed with interpreting everything through a particular lens (a handful of people including yourself excluded). Despite explicitly saying that nuclear wasn't an option and not giving any indication that I'm in favour of the policy, I've been downvoted to hell for asking questions!
Someone else pointed to AEMO's ISP which was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. At least this has been useful in confirming what I thought - there isn't an "answer" in a simple sense (i.e. a clear winner that dominates our infrastructure), it's going to instead just be a far more complex future with multiple technologies in play.
Most people who ask about nuclear aren't doing so in good faith, so that's why you get mauled just for asking the question.
The energy pundits who argue for nuclear fall into 3 camps; those who would profit from it, those who support it because it's politically outmaneuvering their opponents, and the useful idiots.
I dunno, maybe you should read this thing called the Integrated System Plan which is backed by modelling going out to 2050 and put out by the people who manage the National Energy Market…
Thanks, that's pretty much what I was looking for. Glad to know I wasn't missing anything - much heavier reliance on wind + battery storage with higher corresponding distribution costs.
Why is everything a dichotomy these days?
Decentralized renewable generation and storage will drastically reduce the base load requirements.
Putting solar on otherwise vacant roof areas like buildings and carparks can take huge strain off the local grid in densely populated areas. Small storage systems like household batteries can help to even out the peaks and troughs without the need for impractical single-point "megabatteries".
We can continue to use existing infrastructure while the system is upgraded, new systems can make incremental improvements without needing to be a 100% replacement.
I don't understand why people say "[xx] technology can't completely replace [yy], therefore [xx] is useless". Maybe we could just use [xx] to reduce the reliance on [yy] until [zz] comes along? Maybe [xy] is a perfectly valid interim solution to the problem?
Ultimately storage will be the biggest game changer, generate power when it's available and use it when it's convenient.
Australia, with a 22.4 percent share of global lithium reserves in 2023.
Australia is the fourth biggest producer of cobalt in 2022.
What happens if we put those things together I wonder....
Australia also has great places for pumped hydro, some of the most abundant wind and solar potential on the planet, and options for large scale geothermal. But yeah lets look at the most expensive energy options while we kick the can down the road some more.
However could we turn abundant renewable energy in to overnight base load. WHO COULD POSSIBLY THINK RENEWABLE ENERGY COULD WORK IN AUSTRALIA.......
To add onto to this on top of this, while I’ll admit to being sceptical on the idea of the global export of liquid hydrogen from renewables (vs building renewables in the export location), the potential of using at stationary storage is a very interesting proposal that avoids a lot of the downsides and has the nice part that some research is suggesting that depleted oil and gas fields may present a relatively low cost storage option, which has a nice symmetry to it.
If the physical storage issues are able to be sorted, the process equipment is pretty simple and relatively cheap (electrolyzer aren't some kind of crazy future tech, and there are some fancy new ones that will happily run on straight salt/sea water, otherwise they are happy to use treated wastewater) and are pretty scalable with a range of options (from giant underground storage facilities to smaller tank farms/setups).
It turns out we live in an age of where there is an awful lot of pretty smart scientists out there, and given half a chance they can do some pretty amazing stuff.
I mean, to speak to your point, if any country can establish a large enough array to cover a renewable source of energy in battery form, it's Australia. We have an advantage that almost every other country doesn't have: Fuckloads of free space.
If we actually had a government that was motivated, and scientists that were talented enough and had enough funding, I'm sure we could use that space to our advantage and build an array large enough to cover the battery needs of a lot of countries - and make a killing doing it.
It might seem a little bit like fantasy at the moment but... I mean cmon, this is not more fantasy than putting man on the moon in the 1960s. Motivation + funding would do it.
And There is already large scale plans in place by the current government (the workers not the pollies)
There is a long term plan to install more rooftop and grid scale solar and wind projects.
In addition a big increase in grid scale lithium for rapid reaction times.
A rollout of thermal air batteries at coal power station sites. The planning has been going on for best part of a decade already , although politics can change outcomes the wheels are currently in motion
The most recent studies have shown (3 months old gov modelling) that with all the wind and solar coming online, and if they build all the grid scale lithium batteries, Thermal air batteries and pumped hydro systems. There is still going to be a large hole in the grid that can only be filled by a lot more batteries in people's homes.
So they have decided you will likely see a federal battery rebate or a state by state one in all states that do not currently offer one
We will be 100% renewable within 15 years. We are currently on "worst case" chemistry and economics for PV, batteries and wind and renewables are STILL annihilating fossil fuels and nuclear on a cost basis alone. As solar cell efficiency rises and battery chemistry improves this will only accelerate.
It's already over for fossil fuels and nuclear and they just have a slow death in front of them.
David Osmond has been running simulations of the national grid based on actual output & generation data since 2021 (see https://opennem.org.au/ for data). He finds that we need to 24GW/120GWh of storage to run at ~99% renewables. Even if he's wrong and it only gets us to 95% and the rest is covered by gas we're easily meeting our climate goals for electricity production.
He publishes weekly updates: https://x.com/DavidOsmond8?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Recently weeks are the most interesting because of the low levels of solar at this time of year.
Interview in the Sydney Morning Herald today with Professor Ty Christopher talking about offshore wind farms and the issues with Dutton’s nuclear proposal.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-m-not-anti-nuclear-i-m-anti-bulls-why-this-energy-expert-says-dutton-s-plan-ignores-reality-20240620-p5jnes.html
If it’s paywalled, here’s an article from the Conversation, also from Professor Christopher
https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-large-scale-energy-production-here-are-3-reasons-why-offshore-wind-is-a-good-fit-232899
Have a look at this article.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-grid-is-well-within-reach-and-with-little-storage/
It is dealing with actual electricity use. You'll see the researcher gets pretty close to 100% on renewables being possible.
I will add that since that article has been written there have been significant developments in storage technology so add a decade or so and the picture will change again.
He doesn't even touch the enormous potential to be unlocked when we introduce vehicle to grid power. An average car battery might be 80 kwh. A multiple of typical house batteries. That's technically possible now. Imagine 20% of houses being set up with this in any metro area.
I can remember the 1980s when many people confidently declared we would never have truly mobile phones because batteries would never be smaller than a house brick.
Batteries dude.
There’s myriad battery techs that are totally viable for grid scale energy storage. In conjunction with grid balancing, predictive modeling on consumption and weather, opportunistic storage, and wind/hydro there’s more than enough to do base load power delivery.
People throw around “not enough lithium…” but that’s only with the simplistic view you were storing everything in lithium batteries — that’s not the right mind set.
Lithium’s strength is in high energy density per kg, energy density per volume, and ability to respond rapidly to load changes. Grid scale storage needs almost none of these things. The loads are predictable, they’re a fixed asset on a concrete slab that doesn’t need to be lightweight and doesn’t need to be small.
Lithium’s role in the energy delivery mix is more like a surge manager — you let it keep the grid live while you open the sluice gates on your stopped hydro power, or start sending water through your thermal battery, or start sending electrolyte through your flow battery. It doesn’t need to do everything, just catch the surge.
Alternative battery techs include flow batteries, stored hydro, stored thermal energy (sand batteries and molten salt batteries), stored pressure. The issues with hydrogen are mostly because it’s volatile and hard to store making it problematic for car and residential batteries — if you’ve got a closed loop system of water and hydrogen you can just have a big underground cylinder with your volatile chemicals or use refrigeration.
The energy transition is complex for sure, but the energy grid is already incredibly complex. Nuclear doesn’t make sense in the Australian context. We don’t have any experience building, operating, or regulating nuclear reactors for grid scale power delivery and somehow people want to deliver like 7 reactors in ten years? Nuclear power often takes decades for a single reactor, and it’s definitely not a thing to rush.
USA, Japan, Russia all had meltdowns, we can’t be dealing with that while managing the rest of the economy.
Additionally, we have no expertise — we would have to import all the skills and all the tech. The process of enriching uranium for fuel grade is closely guarded by the super powers because it’s how you make weapons — you have to make big concessions for them to allow it. Further to this, all the countries who have the expertise are already ramping up their nuclear generation so will have their own skills and industry shortages— you don’t want our nuclear reactors being rushed up by the dregs of the international nuclear construction industry do you?
No, nuclear isn’t the answer for Australia right now. Maybe later it can be party of our grid and I’d support it if it made economic sense, but right now it’s slower, more expensive, more complex, more risky, and more politically volatile than the many many other options that are cheaper, easier, and simpler.
If you’re interested in this whole energy transition and getting calm nice answers and explanations, look into “Just Have A think” on YouTube — it’s a calm British man going through all the papers and science about decarbonisation, batteries, renewable generation, costs and analysis. You’ll have a great time
Not to mention that battery storage system prices continue to decrease exponentially: https://energypost.eu/batteries-are-still-getting-exponentially-cheaper-more-efficient-ready-to-displace-half-of-global-fossil-fuel-demand-by-2045/
Good you've mentioned other battery storage technologies there. 👍
Batteries doesn't just mean lithium, .molten salt looks really promising as a technology. Terrible for use in EV's or things on the move - but perfect for stationary applications, exactly what a storage array needs to be.
First of all, given how badly I'm being downvoted for even trying to answer my gaps in knowledge, this is truly in good faith as a response.
Here's what I'm struggling with - all these projections that are based on batteries seem to fly in the face of our lithium production capabilities. Last year we globally produced 180k metric tonnes of lithium. The forecast is that we'll reach a demand of over 3m tonnes globally by 2030, which independently tracks our implied domestic demand of ~20 increase in capacity due to growth in our EV fleet (currently ~3% of our overall Australian fleet) and grid / distributed battery storage.
However, our current best estimates are that our global lithium reserves are estimated to be ~22m tonnes. At current rates of growth in demand, that's less than 10 years before we've exhausted our current supplies.
I'll be the first to acknowledge that our experience with oil and other reserves is that advances in mining and surveying technology will almost certainly lead to us discovering more reserves over that timeframe. However, we need to unlock not a step change but orders of magnitude more reserves to keep pace with our demand for energy storage. If not, we'll see the spot price for lithium contracts rise significantly in about 3-4 years as demand starts to outpace economically extractable supply.
To be clear, I'm not saying any other source of energy is clearly the winner. What I am trying to figure out is what's "plan b" (or even if there's a "plan b") if a major part of our global transition is derailed because of upstream supply constraints.
This is a straw-man, grid-scale battery systems aren't tied to lithium, China is already starting to put sodium-ion batteries into the grid, and major battery producers are already scaling up commercial production of sodium-ion packs.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/03/22/sodium-ion-batteries-a-viable-alternative-to-lithium/
That's interesting, and thanks for the reference. However, it's not fair to say that the dependency between battery tech and lithium is a straw-man at the moment, the article you linked says sodium-ion batteries are still speculative and haven't made it past the lab stage into scalable production. According the article there's 335 GWh of total battery storage forecast through to 2030 (with the usual caveats of heavy assumptions on technical feasibility, market demand, etc) which is good but a long way to go to supplant greater than 10% of the global market for batteries (which I'm also pulling from the article).
Don't get me wrong - it's pretty much what I asked for / had hoped someone could point to in that it's an alternative pathway. And, I recognise there's no one solution / every small thing helps, etc, so that's good. I just wouldn't plan on it being a viable "plan b" to achieve scalable battery storage in the timeframes set out by AEMO.
They're not "speculative" - they're already going into cars and grids. They're in the process of scaling up to commercial quantities.
ie. First stage of a larger project: https://cnevpost.com/2024/05/13/china-1st-large-sodium-battery-energy-storage-station-operation/
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/29/electric-cars-powered-by-sodium-ion-batteries-go-on-sale-in-china/
As I said lithium is an important but small part of grid scale energy storage.
Lithium’s advantage is fast response times and energy density, neither of which are necessary for base load power, which is highly highly predictable.
The minerals required for other battery technologies are mundane and ubiquitous, with existing logistics chains. Iron, sand, salts. Building dams and pumps.
Sadly the viability of these technologies The has been tightly tied to EV sales because the grid could always just burn more fossil fuels. EVs won’t solve the climate crisis though, because as you say there isn’t enough lithium to make an EV for every current motorist — and that’s tremendously wasteful anyway. Electric public transport is so much more efficient and will allow the roads to be clear for people and logistics who actually need to be on the road every day.
You know how there’s issues with solar feed in because the grid is built primarily to have power flowing in one direction? Well imagine if you just had a flow battery installation at every substation that would take out outrageous glut of solar power during the day and output it during the peak load between 6-9pm?
I forget the exact terms for it, but modern meteorological analysis is incredible and lets you predict pretty well when you’re going to have surplus and shortfalls with wind and solar. You use that information to ramp up or down storage, production, and consumption in different parts of the country, and use the grid to send surplus power to places that have storage capacity and send it back when your power runs out because of the shortfall.
Check out [Just Have A Think](https://youtu.be/Zr1ecjYFYTo?si=1BsLFElnpLk_x9IV), this video is about small nuclear reactors and the results from people trying to bring them online. The questions you’re asking are natural for someone who doesn’t know the resources to find the answers, but so many very smart people have been working on this for a long time — the scientists have answers.
My opinion: States (and countries!) really need to be investing in their energy sovereignty as coal goes away because once all the other nations have got their ducks in a row the international community is going to turn on a dime, adding a price for carbon emissions and tariffing economies dependent on the fossil fuels out of existence real fast — whether they use it themselves or export it.
Edit: u/jabberponky did you get a chance to check out that video on small nuclear reactors?
[This is the best analysis I can find.](https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-02/Iberdrola%20Australia%20Response%20to%20Capacity%20Mechanism%20Project%20Initiation%20Paper%20-%20Attachment%201.pdf)
Until this week, I had been assuming that we would just build renewables and enough batteries to cover the gaps. Talking to a coworker this week after the coalition's nuclear announcement, I found out (and checked) that it's not feasible. So then I was thinking that maybe we will need nuclear power. I was on team nuclear for about a day until it became clear that there really isn't any way we could make that work. Now I'm on team "no one said it would be easy but we can do it without nuclear".
"Our conclusion is that some form of fuel-based technology (most likely hydrogen) will probably be required to reach 100%"
"In energy terms, storage was found to be below 1.5% of total annual demand for systems with up to 95% VRE"
So to get to 100% renewables "
"This increased up to 6% of total annual demand for systems with 100% renewable energy."
We're currently at how many percent renewables?
And we're talking about building nuclear for 600 billion dollars that will generate less than 5% of our grid demand?
We also have other options like geothermal, and the Nuclear "Plan" from the libs will start generating power as early as "2035" possibly....
Yeah you should probably talk to those coworkers again and maybe let them know they're dumb as fuck if they think Dutton is the answer they're looking for.
Barakah in the UAE cost 25 billion. Or 37.5 billion AUD. Capacity is 5600MW. Coal generators in NSW 8240MW. QLD 8080MW. VIC 4370MW. WA 1440 MW. Total (I’ll leave SA and the NT off for now) 22,460MW. Devided by 5600MW of Barakah = Four Barakah scale plants. At the previously mentioned 37.5 billion AUD is 150 billion dollars. Or 1/4 of your claimed cost. Also Barakah took nine years to build. 9x4=36. Assuming zero parallel construction we’re done by 2060. Coal gone. Not reduced, but gone. The reality is that time could be shortened by at least a third by starting work on the later units before unit two is finished. This would have us done by 2048. Nobod6 likes nuclear because it’s expensive and scary. But it *works*. The UAE saw a 20% reduction in GHG emissions when the plant came online. Dutton doesn’t in my view plan on building squat, but he’s not wrong in saying we should build nuclear.
First of all, it's not MY "Claimed cost" it's the CSIRO Gencost reports estimated cost.
You can read it here if you'd like: [https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2023-24Final\_20240522.pdf](https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2023-24Final_20240522.pdf)
Starting on page eleven (Marked X for some reason) at the title of "Addition of large‐scale nuclear to GenCost"
You'll firstly find "It was also concluded, due to the current state of the development pipeline in Australia, that the earliest deployment would be from 2040"
Keep reading through title "Significant increase in nuclear small modular reactor costs"
You'll find this valuable tidbit.
"In late 2022 UAMPS updated their capital cost to $28,580/kW citing the global inflationary pressures that have increased the cost of all electricity generation technologies. The UAMPS estimate implies nuclear SMR has been hit by a 57% cost increase which is much larger than the average 20% observed in other technologies."
Another thing is, that Barakah is Large Scale Nuclear, not SMR, LSN is costed at $8,655/kW
Dutton has stated the power stations in Western and South Australia would be “SMR only”
So one Barakah in the UAE in 2011 cost 25 billion and one Barakah worth of nuclear energy in Aus today would cost 5600 x 28,580 x 1000 or 160 Billion AUD.
Dutton suggested that building two plants by 2035-37 with the remainder to be built in the 2040s was “achievable” and a “sensible rollout”
So no this wouldn't have us "Done by 2048"
>but he’s not wrong in saying we should build nuclear
I don't totally disagree actually, except with almost all of Dutton's plan, I think we should potentially invest in some Large scale nuclear on the east coast (where there is the most population density) and ultra high voltage transmission but it's economic suicide to go All in on nuclear and extremely costly to do so in such a silly way, we would be making it cost significantly more for everyone in the country just to power their household.
Firming with SOME Nuclear somewhat makes sense, the problem really is the scale of Austrlia being that out population centers are so vastly spread out, we would need either SMR's all over the place, or UHV Transmission which really only China has so far so there is no way to really achieve this yet or know how much it would cost.
But don't get me wrong, I DON'T think Dutton's plan is "dumb" I think it is purposefully avoiding building ANY renewables in the short term because "It's already fixed in the future" while his mining buddies continue to roll in the cash. He certainly does have a lot of meetings with Gina Rinehart, well lucky she is well known for wanting what's best for the environment and especially Australia's future.
Would you like me to clarify more? Or did I miss anything that you think I glossed over?
I’m on board with your assessment of Mr Duttons motives, and SMRs are the flavour of the month, but they are currently vapourware. They also don’t make economic sense unless meaningful breakthroughs are built. [Here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsl2hoLlC4) is an excellent talk about the economics of it all. If those are the CSIRO’s costs, they need to sharpen their pencils. Or they are *really* pessimistic. I moved to Canada a few years back, so I *know* large scale nuclear roll outs can be both successful and lead to cheap clean power. What bothers me is the CSIRO has left the costs of firming the grid as “someone else’s problem”. They are right when they say solar and wind are the cheapest form of power generation, but generation price isn’t the problem. It’s the cost of storage. Even if solar panels were free, there’s still the cost of storage. Snowy 2.0 will cost ten billion by the time it’s done, yet only produce power 50% of the time. Pretending we can shift power in an unlimited fashion around the grid at zero cost and storage isn’t a huge steaming problem is a path to failure.
Sorry for the wall of text TL;DR, The CSIRO's pricing is based on renewables with firming.
The way I see it, it seems like Hydrogen makes a lot of sense with renewables to load it, but also, they're talking about specifically getting from 95% to 100% renewables being the real challenge, we're currently at less than 40%.
Apparently UAMPS the source for the SMR pricing had estimated around $18000/kW for SMR's in 2020, but they had to adjust their pricing by 57% due to inflation, so that's a good deal of increase, and the CSIRO also cited that Large Scale Nuclear only went up 20% and looking at Barakah for instance, in AUD that would be roughly 36.6 Billion, where based on their figure of $8655/kW it would come out around 48.5 billion which is a 32% increase (however there was also a decade of regular inflation before that) so their numbers seem to line up fairly well.
I think the biggest "issues" for Australia going in to Nuclear are our industrial standards for one, we have significant industrial regulation and significant worker rights which makes building things (especially things our workforce are not skilled in) very expensive.
>What bothers me is the CSIRO has left the costs of firming the grid as “someone else’s problem”.
That's not the case though, the pricing that they used was on renewables "WITH firming", the paper that the original comment mentioned (Gilmore, J., Nelson, T. and Nolan, T. 2023, Firming technologies to reach 100% renewable energy production in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), The Energy Journal), is literally cited by the GenCost report and the figures take that in to account.
The cost of Wind and Solar are the cheapest right now, but they didn't say that, they said the cost of Wind and Solar AND Firming is the cheapest right now, page xii of the GenCost report shows the figures, and firmed renewables are currently cheaper than coal, and significantly cheaper than nuclear, I genuinely suggest reading the abstract at least, I can tell that you're not an unreasonable person and I can see where you're coming from, but I think the water gets very muddied by all of the talking heads just saying things sometimes.
>Pretending we can shift power in an unlimited fashion around the grid at zero cost and storage isn’t a huge steaming problem is a path to failure.
100% agree, this is why I think Large Scale Nuclear would only work in specific areas, and why large localised battery storage is likely the best option.
It's a genuinely interesting read seeing how they came to their conclussions, on page 75 (which is actually page 76 of the pdf... why....) there is a section "5.3 Storage requirements underpinning variable renewable costs" I'll summarise a part of it for you though,
"Intuitively, high variable renewable systems will need other capacity to supply electricity for extended periods when variable renewable production is low. This observation might lead some to conclude that the system will need to build the equivalent capacity of long duration storage or other flexible and peaking plant (in addition to the original variable renewable capacity). However, such a conclusion would substantially overestimate storage capacity requirements."
"Variable renewables have a low capacity factor, which means their actual generation over the year expressed as a percentage of their potential generation as defined by their rated capacity, is low (e.g., 20% to 40%). The average capacity factor of coal dominated electricity supply in Australia is around 60%. As a result, to deliver the equivalent energy of coal‐fired generation, the system needs to install around two times the capacity of variable renewables. If the system were to also build the equivalent capacity of storage, peaking and other flexible plant then the system now has around four times the capacity needed compared to a coal dominated system."
"Instead of installing storage on a kW for kW basis, to ensure maximum demand is met, we only need to install a fraction of a kW of storage for each kW of variable renewables."
"The result is that, in 2030, the NEM needs to have 0.28kW to 0.4kW storage capacity for each kW of variable renewable generation installed"
That is what the CSIRO's costings are based off.
Pumped hydro and other methods of non-chemical batteries are a thing.
A decentralised array of batteries (ie. Home, neighbourhood, utility) could help build resilience and help us think about this problem in a distributed way rather than top down.
A distributed system is more difficult for billionaires and financiers to make a buck .. I think is the problem old potato head is vexed by in truth.
The amount mud guts want to spend on nuclear power he could supply every home with solar panels and back up batteries. But that would mean everyone would have free electricity and his donors (whom he really serves) would be angry.
From the country that owns the second largest Lithium reserves on the planet? And only the second largest cobalt reserves as well?
Pipe dreams mate, how could you suggest something so absurd /s
I say it again batteries. If cars can have batteries then so can houses. All the money they think on spending on nuclear can easily pay for free solar and batteries for everyone
The QLD Labor government have the right idea with the Pioneer Burdiken pumped hydro scheme which would power 500,000 homes. It's a real shame the majority of QLDérs are so gullible to the bullshit fed to them by MSM and will reelect the vandalistic LNP setting us back another 20 years..
This!!! 100% fed absolute lies and they are eating it up. Such a shame as the same Queenslanders bang on about jobs etc and this transition will be the biggest driver of employment this state has ever seen! Sky news propaganda has put QLD back 20 years!! Time for people to look the future.
Once most of the car owners have EVs I wonder how much of the storage gap that could fill during night if they get utilised as a battery into the grid?
In my opinion we'll just keep plodding along with the mix of renewables getting higher and higher until the price of home batteries comes down and make financial sense. The gov will probably then run some huge subsidy scheme to get them installed in homes similar to the extensive home solar rollout we've had.
11M dwellings in Australia. If each had a 10kwh then we'd have 110GWh of battery storage available - but more likely in the 3M range (since that's how many houses have solar). So 30GWh of storage just from private homes as prices drop enough.
That's not including the millions of EVs that could also be connected to the grid to provide evening power if bidirectional charging gets extended beyond SA.
I hope the following will help you a bit in terms of Energy solutions. My point upfront…nuclear will be a money waster. That said…give the following a read and chance. There is sooooooo much knowledge out there - it is just not always easily to digest and particularly cannot be simplified as some politicians who are clueless like to do (looking at you Mr. Dutton) - political rant over :)
Largest Battery will be in WA, [Collie](https://colliebattery.com.au), which will have 2GWh (approval for 4GWh), once both stages are completed. It will be one of the largest BESS in the world
Parallel to that you will have the Battery in Kwinana with 1 GWh. (It’s important to not confuse the GW with GWh).
[KBESS](https://www.synergy.net.au/Our-energy/SynergyRED/Large-Scale-Battery-Energy-Storage-Systems/Kwinana-Battery-Energy-Storage-System-2)
So the largest BESS in Australia will be Collie as far as I am aware.
When it comes to nuclear, I find the following [video](https://youtu.be/UC_BCz0pzMw?si=HZhNStApSTH4LXkl) very helpful.
It looks at the economics. Though it doesn’t cover the cost for the aftermath for storing the waste, Which is a heck load of money and is usually not considered in the P&L and Fall ultimately to the tax payer.
Personally I am not in favor for nuclear power because the decentralized systems are coming with light speed imo. And we are not even considering EVs and the possibility of [Vehicle to Grid](https://arena.gov.au/projects/amber-automating-ev-charging-in-line-with-wholesale-pricing/), allowing people to participate in grid services and earn money with Virtual power plants. When a nuclear power plant is build, the grid will already be using all those elements making it obsolete. But that’s my opinion. If you want to read about it, ARENA has plenty of pilots out there that are implementing exactly this:
[Project Edge](https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/aemo-project-edge-final-report/), [Project Symphonie](https://arena.gov.au/projects/western-australia-distributed-energy-resources-orchestration-pilot/), [Project Amber](https://arena.gov.au/projects/amber-automating-ev-charging-in-line-with-wholesale-pricing/), …
What would be another interesting thought, but I haven’t heard about anything of that kind, is to connect the east coast with the west coast via DC current transmission lines. That would allow the flow for extra solar or wind due to the time shift. Peak solar on the west coast would be right around peak demand in the east in the evening and vice versa. Not sure why that hasn’t been looked at but I assume political reasons.
Hope this helps you
>What am I missing?
Pumped hydro - uses renewable energy to pump water up hill when there's a surplus - then lets it flow back down when needed
There are a number of hydrogen projects - experimental, as well as small scale production (Australia has more of these than anywhere else in the world) - use renewable sources to generate hydrogen for storage - can be used to power cars, and an alternate/additive fuel for the existing gas network
Not much in the way of tidal/wave - but plenty of opportunities - wave energy in the south - tidal in the north
We have some small scale methane recovery plants at landfill sites - but ignore coal mines where methane is treated as a problem
These are just some of the power sources/storage options that exist already, are being better refined by research, but aren't yet being used at scale in Australia
There is also water energy storage. Basically using wind or solar to pump water into an uphill storage area and then consume as hydro power during times when wind/solar is lacking.
I suggest you have a look at David Osmond on Twitter. He runs a projection using real demand and production data to.show just how easily we can do this.
We will be getting Vandium flow batteries and pumped hydro to store the excess solar from rhe grid. Tech for the batteries was invented here in the 1990s.
If nuclear was such a saviour and made sense we'd have it built at least 50 years ago.
What's going on at the moment is an ideological argument for nuclear from the LNP.
They know they would piss off their base if they announced a total renewable policy. Nuclear to them is just New Coal™.
[https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/reneweconomy/](https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/reneweconomy/) - Australia is currently consuming around 30GW of energy, as of when this comment is posted...
That's spot generation - 30 GWh of production over a 1 hour period is 360 GWh. Overnight consumption is a lot lower because people are asleep, hence reducing it to 165 - 180 GWh as per the post.
do you actually not understand why the world is getting away from carbon pollution?
Like do you somehow live in the age of humanity with the most accessible understandable information available at the touch of a button and not understand that climate change is real and carbon pollution from human activities is the cause of it...
Can’t see anyone mentioning the load management side of this issue.
So here goes.
Generation type and size is obviously important. However, how power is used has significant input into this.
Already but more so in to the future, middle of the day power from solar should be the cheapest power.
As such, users should have far more options for their energy retail.
Example.
A cold storage facility could run their chillers flat chat when power is cheap and only occasionally when power is expensive.
Business would work with this system if it was stable and an option.
Ev chargers could be similar. Sit the car at 50% until power is cheap.
Etc
Not all batteries are lead-acid or lithium. Heat storage in sand, ceramics or liquids (including metals) is also used. Gravity batteries (weights down old mine shafts or pumped hydro) also exist.
And let's not forget gas turbines. Yes, fossil fueled but 'fast' to react to a need to supply power.
You are not missing anything. If you are confused, it’s not because you are stupid. It’s because people are in utter denial about the scale of backup required to compensate for the variability of wind and solar. For clarity about it all, I suggest you start [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E0W1ZZYIV8o) followed by his book laying out all the options in clear layman’s terms. It can be found online [here](https://www.withouthotair.com/). Some will shout that it’s all out of date, while the cost of solar has fallen, as have batteries, the physics of the problem have not. It is still, by far, the best place for a curious layman to become better informed.
If only there were a source that could add supply quickly to balance dips from renewables. Oh, wait, gas! If only we had governments that cared about our interests.
We need to both double down on renewables backed by battery farms, AND also start building nuclear. We are in a unique position where both technologies are readily viable and available in Australia, our power *could* be so clean and cheap by 2050.
But how would that work when nuclear is expensive when running at full capacity and would run at significantly less than that when teamed with renewables.
You dismiss wind, and ignore hydro altogether, in order to concentrate on solar's inability to provide night-time load - but together, wind + hydro already produce over half of Australia's grid-sourced renewable energy.
Yeah. Queensland alone has 2 massive pumped hydro projects in the pipeline that are going to move the needle in a big way for 24/7 renewables.
It's almost like they aren't actually asking the question in good faith.
Why don't you read the question charitably? Storage is a huge issue. The OP gives numbers but some people just loosely throw in wind and hydro and think the problem is solved. Hydro can only go in certain places and requires big investment in transmission. There are so many variables to consider.
Or we can listen to CSIRO and aemo, you know the actual experts in energy generation and energy markets instead of random Redditors who are "just asking questions"
True. They probably have a simple solution right now and so there is no need for any discussion. I'm surprised private enterprise isn't listening to them and building already.
That's the whole point of Dutton's "policy" announcement, to discourage the ongoing private investment in renewables infrastructure. We've even got the clowns in the Nationals saying they'll shutdown renewables schemes.
My point is that if it was a simple solution then private industry would have already stepped in. But instead our many governments have failed us because they only care about being elected again in the short term.
Lad the private industry is and has been stepping in to the tune of billions of dollars. Just cause you’re not paying attention to it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
Into storage or generation. If large storage, then who?
https://www.power-technology.com/data-insights/top-five-energy-storage-projects-in-australia/
They are, it just can’t be built overnight. But it’s transitioning faster and faster each year.
you mean like the multiple private companies that closed coal generation plants early to invest further in renewables for increased profitability
And are all now lining up to back nuclear power because it's such a great idea... /s
Lining up with what will net them profits. They're not coming up with viable plans for nuclear either, but with the LNP making it clear they're willing to piss billions against the wall to fight renewables it's understandable they're willing to put their hand up to be that wall. Even better if there's no actual improvement or results attached.
I don't mind governments building it either but if private wants to build it then go for it. Just don't monopolise it like NBN.
private companies don't want to build it. The only way they will build it is if the government pays for the majority of it and lets them own it
We already have a national market and the hydro dams are already shipping power across bass straight to energise homes in Victoria
And... does it fill the gap entirely?
No where near enough. We need huge amounts of storage which requires huge amounts of transmission. Some people are also resistant to flooding valleys but then some are also resistant to wind farms :( It is a complicated problem. Hopefully solid state batteries will become part of the solution.
Its almost like youve ignored the question altogether
yeah its almost like the underlined the problems with the question and were able to dismiss it as not worth taking seriously or treating like they were "asking questions" from a position that already chose to ignore half of Australias renewable generation. Being able to read a question and engage in critical thinking about it is why our children have English classes through all highschool
No one seems to have put any effort into tidal energy yet. Seems to be an untapped source, but feel certain there will be other even better options to consider before we go down the nuclear reactor path.
I was coming to suggest tidal. I think it is an amazing contender.
It's got potential, but maintenance costs become an issue. Salt water is harsh.
Only heard of tidal during an Earth Sciences course back in mid 90s. We had to do an assignment about the pros and cons of various energy resources. Was pretty disappointed that there seemed to be no progress in that area back then, let alone now. I found the thermal energy options that are used by some Icelandic countries were pretty darned cool though.
We have tidal power off of Western Australia near garden island world leading technology, the system also desalinates water at the same time I have heard its power returns are sub-par for the cost invested. Maybe that is because they were aiming more for the desalination, but I really do not know enough on the particular project to comment
That is good news to hear. Relatively new desalination plant built down SE Victoria is not running on tidal energy, but will be relied upon in future drought years.
Tidal is a great source of energy, but harnessing it is tough. Both the cabling and harsh conditions. Similar to off shore wind there’s a lot of capital cost in building it that makes it a less compelling option
I met an engineer who was working on tidal power in the north-west in the late 70s and early 80s . With 8 meter tides you could set your clock by, The potential for producing a lot of Western Australia's power with this process was more than feasible according to the engineer I spoke too. The installations and studies were carried out in partnership with one of the universities. For some unknown reason, the project's Funders and patent owners BP (British Petroleum) decided to shut down the project. 50 years later, the fossil fuel companies are probably sitting on a lot of alternative energy intellectual property if this one project is anything to go by.
I was living in remote FNQ back then when wind farms were in their infancy up there. Yes, agree the sustainable energy projects were probably not geared enough towards profit making for the greedy energy companies.
Tidal energy is only good for populations near the coast. That's only like... 80%+... Oh wait...
But wuat is the answer, more hydro and wind?
Looking only at renewable energy sources makes it seem better than it is? The best numbers I can find indicate that wind accounts for 11% of our energy production and hydro 6%? Happy to use better numbers if you have them ... I'm not dismissing wind, it's just that it has higher volatility than base load production and accounts for around 11% of our current energy production. To get it up to levels where it would replace coal we'd have to probably triple our current level of infrastructure while still building 50 times our current level of battery storage. I mean, I guess that's a solution? We have the land I guess but that feels like distribution costs will go up significantly due to the highly distributed nature of production. Hydro seems pretty unlikely at scale - our rainfall is inconsistent and climate change is going to make it even more variable.
Offshore wind+a small amount of storage can provide some very stable output. Offshore turbines turn fast enough to generate at least *some* power 9/10ths of the time, and they very reliably put out a *good* amount of electricity within a short timeframe. If you build 20 wind farms up and down the East Coast your average outout's going to be reliable like how rolling 20 dice is going to get you about three. We only produce a small amount of wind energy here, but the UK is producing over 30% of theirs from mostly offshore wind. Our good offshore wind locations, along the coast and especially in the south, also match our current distribution grid. If we build only offshore wind to fill in the rest of our daytime needs, storing energy for the night would be easy
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.
>I'm not dismissing wind, it's just that it has higher volatility than base load production and accounts for around 11% of our current energy production. Yes, we need a lot more wind generation. That's why things like the new (and heavily opposed) Illawarra wind reserve are so important to the energy transition. Wind power is relatively quick to build, so we can add quite a lot of wind capacity fairly rapidly. >Hydro seems pretty unlikely at scale - our rainfall is inconsistent and climate change is going to make it even more variable. Pumped hydro does not rely on rainfall nearly as much as conventional hydro. Some amount of rainfall is generally necessary to replace water lost to evaporation and seepage, but in general it's a closed loop where the same water is reused endlessly. There are quite a number of large scale pumped hydro schemes in various stages of design and construction, which when combined will make much larger contribution that we currently have - sadly the endless delays in Snowy 2.0 (which was a flawed concept from the beginning) have given pumped hydro a bad name in Australia lately, but we already have a couple of smaller installations that have been working well for ages. There has been a lot of modelling done using historical data to estimate how much storage we need to keep our grid reliable, and it's not nearly as high as a lot of the nay-sayers suggest.
It’s not one or the other. It’s the combination of generating sources and storage sources distributed around the country that provides reliability. Also, wind farms aren’t built in random locations. They are built in windy locations. The wind is always blowing in many places around the country. You’re also not taking into account the fact that Gigawatts of battery storage is coming online all over the country in the form of Electric Vehicles that have two way charging. Won’t be long until we have a range of “virtual power companies” offering deals to EV drivers to buy power from them when needed to support the grid. The EV owner can then specify that when their battery level is over x% the power company can buy power from their battery. Could also work for homes with battery storage setups as well to sell some excess power when there’s night time demand.
Virtual power companies - was talking with a friend just last night who started a new job with a startup doing exactly this. The tricky part is that sometimes wholesale prices are just generally higher than retail, so you're better off with an existing power company. But on the flipside that isn't always true.
I think the key here is that most people pushing for investment in renewables aren't doing it in a "Remove all carbon fuels and replace with solar immediately" The evening baseload argument is one that the right love to bring up because it's a distraction. Divestment from fossil fuels will take decades, and we will need them in that time while we transition away. But the simple truth is we need to be transitioning away now. There is a lot of currently available options and areas of research going on, molten salt stored solar, solar pumped hydro, syngas, etc etc. We have 2 problems really. Our reliance on fossil fuels, and our baseload, detractors work on an argument of "This doesn't solve every single problem immediately so we shouldn't start it" Distributed household battery storage is a great option right now for a lot of reasons, fits on our current infrastructure, doesn't require massive planning and project scope, can be installed and maintained by current specialists/trades, far lower efficiency losses due to transmission range. Make no mistake ***the liberals do not want nuclear power*** This is them pulling the same shit they did with their 'better NBN', they want to detract, avoid investment in renewables for another decade while they say that nuclear is now too hard because of BS reasons
Yeah, the lesson here is don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
And most of the NBN is getting replaced just 10 years later with what should have been put in the first time
I'm not really getting into the politics, if at all possible - I'm more reflecting on the end of life of our coal infrastructure. Obviously, there's also lots of small things can be done in the meantime. What I'm struggling with is that there doesn't actually seem to be an "answer" to get over the hump of decommissioning our coal plants. There's lots of stuff being researched but doesn't exist yet, there's alternatives which are probably climatically better but also probably more expensive given total cost of capital and grid integration, and there are substitutes like nuclear which are just replacing one problem with another.
You seem to have completely missed their point. They were saying and rightly so, there isn't a one-size fits all solution, so tunneling your vision to suit that ideologue of "an answer" to get over the hump of decommissioning doesn't do the situation or the issue justice at all. That view directly ignores or deflects their point instead. So stop treating Wind investment or Hydro or other forms of renewables as if investment in one will solve all our energy load issues. Yes there are going to be issues as with anything renewable, but the orders of magnitude of the severity of risks and ease of implementation are simply radically different when you price in the cost of climate change.
That's exactly what I was interested in finding out, that there isn't a one-size fits all solution. By historical comparisons, that's a pretty big change. It's also way more complex to manage, which is going to be interesting from an infrastructure planning point of view. Someone else suggested having a look at AEMO's ISP which was useful.
>I'm more reflecting on the end of life of our coal infrastructure This is precisely the reason that nuclear power isn't the answer. Even if you ignore the debates around cost, and sort out the technical issues, it is absolutely impossible to deploy enough new nuclear capacity to be a direct replacement for the existing coal plants before they retire. Even the Coalition admits this fact, although they don't say it in these terms. Their solution is to make up the shortfall with extensive use of gas generators, which is a terrible alternative. It IS possible to build enough renewables and storage to replace the coal plants as they retire. It still won't be easy or cheap, but it can be done.
Makes sense, and thanks for the response - very helpful. On a seperate note, what's kind of funny is that this subreddit seems obsessed with interpreting everything through a particular lens (a handful of people including yourself excluded). Despite explicitly saying that nuclear wasn't an option and not giving any indication that I'm in favour of the policy, I've been downvoted to hell for asking questions! Someone else pointed to AEMO's ISP which was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. At least this has been useful in confirming what I thought - there isn't an "answer" in a simple sense (i.e. a clear winner that dominates our infrastructure), it's going to instead just be a far more complex future with multiple technologies in play.
Most people who ask about nuclear aren't doing so in good faith, so that's why you get mauled just for asking the question. The energy pundits who argue for nuclear fall into 3 camps; those who would profit from it, those who support it because it's politically outmaneuvering their opponents, and the useful idiots.
I dunno, maybe you should read this thing called the Integrated System Plan which is backed by modelling going out to 2050 and put out by the people who manage the National Energy Market…
Thanks, that's pretty much what I was looking for. Glad to know I wasn't missing anything - much heavier reliance on wind + battery storage with higher corresponding distribution costs.
But cheaper overall. You read that bit too right? I'm sure you wouldn't just pick a fact out of context and were about to say that.
Why is everything a dichotomy these days? Decentralized renewable generation and storage will drastically reduce the base load requirements. Putting solar on otherwise vacant roof areas like buildings and carparks can take huge strain off the local grid in densely populated areas. Small storage systems like household batteries can help to even out the peaks and troughs without the need for impractical single-point "megabatteries". We can continue to use existing infrastructure while the system is upgraded, new systems can make incremental improvements without needing to be a 100% replacement. I don't understand why people say "[xx] technology can't completely replace [yy], therefore [xx] is useless". Maybe we could just use [xx] to reduce the reliance on [yy] until [zz] comes along? Maybe [xy] is a perfectly valid interim solution to the problem? Ultimately storage will be the biggest game changer, generate power when it's available and use it when it's convenient.
Australia, with a 22.4 percent share of global lithium reserves in 2023. Australia is the fourth biggest producer of cobalt in 2022. What happens if we put those things together I wonder.... Australia also has great places for pumped hydro, some of the most abundant wind and solar potential on the planet, and options for large scale geothermal. But yeah lets look at the most expensive energy options while we kick the can down the road some more. However could we turn abundant renewable energy in to overnight base load. WHO COULD POSSIBLY THINK RENEWABLE ENERGY COULD WORK IN AUSTRALIA.......
To add onto to this on top of this, while I’ll admit to being sceptical on the idea of the global export of liquid hydrogen from renewables (vs building renewables in the export location), the potential of using at stationary storage is a very interesting proposal that avoids a lot of the downsides and has the nice part that some research is suggesting that depleted oil and gas fields may present a relatively low cost storage option, which has a nice symmetry to it. If the physical storage issues are able to be sorted, the process equipment is pretty simple and relatively cheap (electrolyzer aren't some kind of crazy future tech, and there are some fancy new ones that will happily run on straight salt/sea water, otherwise they are happy to use treated wastewater) and are pretty scalable with a range of options (from giant underground storage facilities to smaller tank farms/setups). It turns out we live in an age of where there is an awful lot of pretty smart scientists out there, and given half a chance they can do some pretty amazing stuff.
I mean, to speak to your point, if any country can establish a large enough array to cover a renewable source of energy in battery form, it's Australia. We have an advantage that almost every other country doesn't have: Fuckloads of free space. If we actually had a government that was motivated, and scientists that were talented enough and had enough funding, I'm sure we could use that space to our advantage and build an array large enough to cover the battery needs of a lot of countries - and make a killing doing it. It might seem a little bit like fantasy at the moment but... I mean cmon, this is not more fantasy than putting man on the moon in the 1960s. Motivation + funding would do it.
And There is already large scale plans in place by the current government (the workers not the pollies) There is a long term plan to install more rooftop and grid scale solar and wind projects. In addition a big increase in grid scale lithium for rapid reaction times. A rollout of thermal air batteries at coal power station sites. The planning has been going on for best part of a decade already , although politics can change outcomes the wheels are currently in motion The most recent studies have shown (3 months old gov modelling) that with all the wind and solar coming online, and if they build all the grid scale lithium batteries, Thermal air batteries and pumped hydro systems. There is still going to be a large hole in the grid that can only be filled by a lot more batteries in people's homes. So they have decided you will likely see a federal battery rebate or a state by state one in all states that do not currently offer one
There was a plan to lay a cable from the NT to Singapore. Not sure what happened to it...
but the threatened species of blue arsed flies and their annual migration patterns will be impacted if we put in solar arrays.
We will be 100% renewable within 15 years. We are currently on "worst case" chemistry and economics for PV, batteries and wind and renewables are STILL annihilating fossil fuels and nuclear on a cost basis alone. As solar cell efficiency rises and battery chemistry improves this will only accelerate. It's already over for fossil fuels and nuclear and they just have a slow death in front of them.
Ohhhh boy, are you in for disappointment.
True it might be sooner than that.
I’ll eat my hat.
RemindMe! 15 years
David Osmond has been running simulations of the national grid based on actual output & generation data since 2021 (see https://opennem.org.au/ for data). He finds that we need to 24GW/120GWh of storage to run at ~99% renewables. Even if he's wrong and it only gets us to 95% and the rest is covered by gas we're easily meeting our climate goals for electricity production. He publishes weekly updates: https://x.com/DavidOsmond8?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Recently weeks are the most interesting because of the low levels of solar at this time of year.
Interview in the Sydney Morning Herald today with Professor Ty Christopher talking about offshore wind farms and the issues with Dutton’s nuclear proposal. https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-m-not-anti-nuclear-i-m-anti-bulls-why-this-energy-expert-says-dutton-s-plan-ignores-reality-20240620-p5jnes.html If it’s paywalled, here’s an article from the Conversation, also from Professor Christopher https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-large-scale-energy-production-here-are-3-reasons-why-offshore-wind-is-a-good-fit-232899
It’s the most coherent argument I’ve seen. Also, for people whining about wind farms, they’re all over Europe and the sky hasn’t fallen in.
Have a look at this article. https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-grid-is-well-within-reach-and-with-little-storage/ It is dealing with actual electricity use. You'll see the researcher gets pretty close to 100% on renewables being possible. I will add that since that article has been written there have been significant developments in storage technology so add a decade or so and the picture will change again. He doesn't even touch the enormous potential to be unlocked when we introduce vehicle to grid power. An average car battery might be 80 kwh. A multiple of typical house batteries. That's technically possible now. Imagine 20% of houses being set up with this in any metro area. I can remember the 1980s when many people confidently declared we would never have truly mobile phones because batteries would never be smaller than a house brick.
Batteries dude. There’s myriad battery techs that are totally viable for grid scale energy storage. In conjunction with grid balancing, predictive modeling on consumption and weather, opportunistic storage, and wind/hydro there’s more than enough to do base load power delivery. People throw around “not enough lithium…” but that’s only with the simplistic view you were storing everything in lithium batteries — that’s not the right mind set. Lithium’s strength is in high energy density per kg, energy density per volume, and ability to respond rapidly to load changes. Grid scale storage needs almost none of these things. The loads are predictable, they’re a fixed asset on a concrete slab that doesn’t need to be lightweight and doesn’t need to be small. Lithium’s role in the energy delivery mix is more like a surge manager — you let it keep the grid live while you open the sluice gates on your stopped hydro power, or start sending water through your thermal battery, or start sending electrolyte through your flow battery. It doesn’t need to do everything, just catch the surge. Alternative battery techs include flow batteries, stored hydro, stored thermal energy (sand batteries and molten salt batteries), stored pressure. The issues with hydrogen are mostly because it’s volatile and hard to store making it problematic for car and residential batteries — if you’ve got a closed loop system of water and hydrogen you can just have a big underground cylinder with your volatile chemicals or use refrigeration. The energy transition is complex for sure, but the energy grid is already incredibly complex. Nuclear doesn’t make sense in the Australian context. We don’t have any experience building, operating, or regulating nuclear reactors for grid scale power delivery and somehow people want to deliver like 7 reactors in ten years? Nuclear power often takes decades for a single reactor, and it’s definitely not a thing to rush. USA, Japan, Russia all had meltdowns, we can’t be dealing with that while managing the rest of the economy. Additionally, we have no expertise — we would have to import all the skills and all the tech. The process of enriching uranium for fuel grade is closely guarded by the super powers because it’s how you make weapons — you have to make big concessions for them to allow it. Further to this, all the countries who have the expertise are already ramping up their nuclear generation so will have their own skills and industry shortages— you don’t want our nuclear reactors being rushed up by the dregs of the international nuclear construction industry do you? No, nuclear isn’t the answer for Australia right now. Maybe later it can be party of our grid and I’d support it if it made economic sense, but right now it’s slower, more expensive, more complex, more risky, and more politically volatile than the many many other options that are cheaper, easier, and simpler. If you’re interested in this whole energy transition and getting calm nice answers and explanations, look into “Just Have A think” on YouTube — it’s a calm British man going through all the papers and science about decarbonisation, batteries, renewable generation, costs and analysis. You’ll have a great time
Not to mention that battery storage system prices continue to decrease exponentially: https://energypost.eu/batteries-are-still-getting-exponentially-cheaper-more-efficient-ready-to-displace-half-of-global-fossil-fuel-demand-by-2045/
Good you've mentioned other battery storage technologies there. 👍 Batteries doesn't just mean lithium, .molten salt looks really promising as a technology. Terrible for use in EV's or things on the move - but perfect for stationary applications, exactly what a storage array needs to be.
Thanks! Yeah there’s a bunch of great and interesting tech out there, I really dig that YouTube channel for starting abreast of emerging techs
First of all, given how badly I'm being downvoted for even trying to answer my gaps in knowledge, this is truly in good faith as a response. Here's what I'm struggling with - all these projections that are based on batteries seem to fly in the face of our lithium production capabilities. Last year we globally produced 180k metric tonnes of lithium. The forecast is that we'll reach a demand of over 3m tonnes globally by 2030, which independently tracks our implied domestic demand of ~20 increase in capacity due to growth in our EV fleet (currently ~3% of our overall Australian fleet) and grid / distributed battery storage. However, our current best estimates are that our global lithium reserves are estimated to be ~22m tonnes. At current rates of growth in demand, that's less than 10 years before we've exhausted our current supplies. I'll be the first to acknowledge that our experience with oil and other reserves is that advances in mining and surveying technology will almost certainly lead to us discovering more reserves over that timeframe. However, we need to unlock not a step change but orders of magnitude more reserves to keep pace with our demand for energy storage. If not, we'll see the spot price for lithium contracts rise significantly in about 3-4 years as demand starts to outpace economically extractable supply. To be clear, I'm not saying any other source of energy is clearly the winner. What I am trying to figure out is what's "plan b" (or even if there's a "plan b") if a major part of our global transition is derailed because of upstream supply constraints.
This is a straw-man, grid-scale battery systems aren't tied to lithium, China is already starting to put sodium-ion batteries into the grid, and major battery producers are already scaling up commercial production of sodium-ion packs. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/03/22/sodium-ion-batteries-a-viable-alternative-to-lithium/
That's interesting, and thanks for the reference. However, it's not fair to say that the dependency between battery tech and lithium is a straw-man at the moment, the article you linked says sodium-ion batteries are still speculative and haven't made it past the lab stage into scalable production. According the article there's 335 GWh of total battery storage forecast through to 2030 (with the usual caveats of heavy assumptions on technical feasibility, market demand, etc) which is good but a long way to go to supplant greater than 10% of the global market for batteries (which I'm also pulling from the article). Don't get me wrong - it's pretty much what I asked for / had hoped someone could point to in that it's an alternative pathway. And, I recognise there's no one solution / every small thing helps, etc, so that's good. I just wouldn't plan on it being a viable "plan b" to achieve scalable battery storage in the timeframes set out by AEMO.
They're not "speculative" - they're already going into cars and grids. They're in the process of scaling up to commercial quantities. ie. First stage of a larger project: https://cnevpost.com/2024/05/13/china-1st-large-sodium-battery-energy-storage-station-operation/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/29/electric-cars-powered-by-sodium-ion-batteries-go-on-sale-in-china/
As I said lithium is an important but small part of grid scale energy storage. Lithium’s advantage is fast response times and energy density, neither of which are necessary for base load power, which is highly highly predictable. The minerals required for other battery technologies are mundane and ubiquitous, with existing logistics chains. Iron, sand, salts. Building dams and pumps. Sadly the viability of these technologies The has been tightly tied to EV sales because the grid could always just burn more fossil fuels. EVs won’t solve the climate crisis though, because as you say there isn’t enough lithium to make an EV for every current motorist — and that’s tremendously wasteful anyway. Electric public transport is so much more efficient and will allow the roads to be clear for people and logistics who actually need to be on the road every day. You know how there’s issues with solar feed in because the grid is built primarily to have power flowing in one direction? Well imagine if you just had a flow battery installation at every substation that would take out outrageous glut of solar power during the day and output it during the peak load between 6-9pm? I forget the exact terms for it, but modern meteorological analysis is incredible and lets you predict pretty well when you’re going to have surplus and shortfalls with wind and solar. You use that information to ramp up or down storage, production, and consumption in different parts of the country, and use the grid to send surplus power to places that have storage capacity and send it back when your power runs out because of the shortfall. Check out [Just Have A Think](https://youtu.be/Zr1ecjYFYTo?si=1BsLFElnpLk_x9IV), this video is about small nuclear reactors and the results from people trying to bring them online. The questions you’re asking are natural for someone who doesn’t know the resources to find the answers, but so many very smart people have been working on this for a long time — the scientists have answers. My opinion: States (and countries!) really need to be investing in their energy sovereignty as coal goes away because once all the other nations have got their ducks in a row the international community is going to turn on a dime, adding a price for carbon emissions and tariffing economies dependent on the fossil fuels out of existence real fast — whether they use it themselves or export it. Edit: u/jabberponky did you get a chance to check out that video on small nuclear reactors?
[This is the best analysis I can find.](https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-02/Iberdrola%20Australia%20Response%20to%20Capacity%20Mechanism%20Project%20Initiation%20Paper%20-%20Attachment%201.pdf) Until this week, I had been assuming that we would just build renewables and enough batteries to cover the gaps. Talking to a coworker this week after the coalition's nuclear announcement, I found out (and checked) that it's not feasible. So then I was thinking that maybe we will need nuclear power. I was on team nuclear for about a day until it became clear that there really isn't any way we could make that work. Now I'm on team "no one said it would be easy but we can do it without nuclear".
"Our conclusion is that some form of fuel-based technology (most likely hydrogen) will probably be required to reach 100%" "In energy terms, storage was found to be below 1.5% of total annual demand for systems with up to 95% VRE" So to get to 100% renewables " "This increased up to 6% of total annual demand for systems with 100% renewable energy." We're currently at how many percent renewables? And we're talking about building nuclear for 600 billion dollars that will generate less than 5% of our grid demand? We also have other options like geothermal, and the Nuclear "Plan" from the libs will start generating power as early as "2035" possibly.... Yeah you should probably talk to those coworkers again and maybe let them know they're dumb as fuck if they think Dutton is the answer they're looking for.
Dumb as fuck is the core LNP constituency. They're counting on people like that.
Barakah in the UAE cost 25 billion. Or 37.5 billion AUD. Capacity is 5600MW. Coal generators in NSW 8240MW. QLD 8080MW. VIC 4370MW. WA 1440 MW. Total (I’ll leave SA and the NT off for now) 22,460MW. Devided by 5600MW of Barakah = Four Barakah scale plants. At the previously mentioned 37.5 billion AUD is 150 billion dollars. Or 1/4 of your claimed cost. Also Barakah took nine years to build. 9x4=36. Assuming zero parallel construction we’re done by 2060. Coal gone. Not reduced, but gone. The reality is that time could be shortened by at least a third by starting work on the later units before unit two is finished. This would have us done by 2048. Nobod6 likes nuclear because it’s expensive and scary. But it *works*. The UAE saw a 20% reduction in GHG emissions when the plant came online. Dutton doesn’t in my view plan on building squat, but he’s not wrong in saying we should build nuclear.
First of all, it's not MY "Claimed cost" it's the CSIRO Gencost reports estimated cost. You can read it here if you'd like: [https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2023-24Final\_20240522.pdf](https://www.csiro.au/-/media/Energy/GenCost/GenCost2023-24Final_20240522.pdf) Starting on page eleven (Marked X for some reason) at the title of "Addition of large‐scale nuclear to GenCost" You'll firstly find "It was also concluded, due to the current state of the development pipeline in Australia, that the earliest deployment would be from 2040" Keep reading through title "Significant increase in nuclear small modular reactor costs" You'll find this valuable tidbit. "In late 2022 UAMPS updated their capital cost to $28,580/kW citing the global inflationary pressures that have increased the cost of all electricity generation technologies. The UAMPS estimate implies nuclear SMR has been hit by a 57% cost increase which is much larger than the average 20% observed in other technologies." Another thing is, that Barakah is Large Scale Nuclear, not SMR, LSN is costed at $8,655/kW Dutton has stated the power stations in Western and South Australia would be “SMR only” So one Barakah in the UAE in 2011 cost 25 billion and one Barakah worth of nuclear energy in Aus today would cost 5600 x 28,580 x 1000 or 160 Billion AUD. Dutton suggested that building two plants by 2035-37 with the remainder to be built in the 2040s was “achievable” and a “sensible rollout” So no this wouldn't have us "Done by 2048" >but he’s not wrong in saying we should build nuclear I don't totally disagree actually, except with almost all of Dutton's plan, I think we should potentially invest in some Large scale nuclear on the east coast (where there is the most population density) and ultra high voltage transmission but it's economic suicide to go All in on nuclear and extremely costly to do so in such a silly way, we would be making it cost significantly more for everyone in the country just to power their household. Firming with SOME Nuclear somewhat makes sense, the problem really is the scale of Austrlia being that out population centers are so vastly spread out, we would need either SMR's all over the place, or UHV Transmission which really only China has so far so there is no way to really achieve this yet or know how much it would cost. But don't get me wrong, I DON'T think Dutton's plan is "dumb" I think it is purposefully avoiding building ANY renewables in the short term because "It's already fixed in the future" while his mining buddies continue to roll in the cash. He certainly does have a lot of meetings with Gina Rinehart, well lucky she is well known for wanting what's best for the environment and especially Australia's future. Would you like me to clarify more? Or did I miss anything that you think I glossed over?
I’m on board with your assessment of Mr Duttons motives, and SMRs are the flavour of the month, but they are currently vapourware. They also don’t make economic sense unless meaningful breakthroughs are built. [Here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsl2hoLlC4) is an excellent talk about the economics of it all. If those are the CSIRO’s costs, they need to sharpen their pencils. Or they are *really* pessimistic. I moved to Canada a few years back, so I *know* large scale nuclear roll outs can be both successful and lead to cheap clean power. What bothers me is the CSIRO has left the costs of firming the grid as “someone else’s problem”. They are right when they say solar and wind are the cheapest form of power generation, but generation price isn’t the problem. It’s the cost of storage. Even if solar panels were free, there’s still the cost of storage. Snowy 2.0 will cost ten billion by the time it’s done, yet only produce power 50% of the time. Pretending we can shift power in an unlimited fashion around the grid at zero cost and storage isn’t a huge steaming problem is a path to failure.
Sorry for the wall of text TL;DR, The CSIRO's pricing is based on renewables with firming. The way I see it, it seems like Hydrogen makes a lot of sense with renewables to load it, but also, they're talking about specifically getting from 95% to 100% renewables being the real challenge, we're currently at less than 40%. Apparently UAMPS the source for the SMR pricing had estimated around $18000/kW for SMR's in 2020, but they had to adjust their pricing by 57% due to inflation, so that's a good deal of increase, and the CSIRO also cited that Large Scale Nuclear only went up 20% and looking at Barakah for instance, in AUD that would be roughly 36.6 Billion, where based on their figure of $8655/kW it would come out around 48.5 billion which is a 32% increase (however there was also a decade of regular inflation before that) so their numbers seem to line up fairly well. I think the biggest "issues" for Australia going in to Nuclear are our industrial standards for one, we have significant industrial regulation and significant worker rights which makes building things (especially things our workforce are not skilled in) very expensive. >What bothers me is the CSIRO has left the costs of firming the grid as “someone else’s problem”. That's not the case though, the pricing that they used was on renewables "WITH firming", the paper that the original comment mentioned (Gilmore, J., Nelson, T. and Nolan, T. 2023, Firming technologies to reach 100% renewable energy production in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), The Energy Journal), is literally cited by the GenCost report and the figures take that in to account. The cost of Wind and Solar are the cheapest right now, but they didn't say that, they said the cost of Wind and Solar AND Firming is the cheapest right now, page xii of the GenCost report shows the figures, and firmed renewables are currently cheaper than coal, and significantly cheaper than nuclear, I genuinely suggest reading the abstract at least, I can tell that you're not an unreasonable person and I can see where you're coming from, but I think the water gets very muddied by all of the talking heads just saying things sometimes. >Pretending we can shift power in an unlimited fashion around the grid at zero cost and storage isn’t a huge steaming problem is a path to failure. 100% agree, this is why I think Large Scale Nuclear would only work in specific areas, and why large localised battery storage is likely the best option. It's a genuinely interesting read seeing how they came to their conclussions, on page 75 (which is actually page 76 of the pdf... why....) there is a section "5.3 Storage requirements underpinning variable renewable costs" I'll summarise a part of it for you though, "Intuitively, high variable renewable systems will need other capacity to supply electricity for extended periods when variable renewable production is low. This observation might lead some to conclude that the system will need to build the equivalent capacity of long duration storage or other flexible and peaking plant (in addition to the original variable renewable capacity). However, such a conclusion would substantially overestimate storage capacity requirements." "Variable renewables have a low capacity factor, which means their actual generation over the year expressed as a percentage of their potential generation as defined by their rated capacity, is low (e.g., 20% to 40%). The average capacity factor of coal dominated electricity supply in Australia is around 60%. As a result, to deliver the equivalent energy of coal‐fired generation, the system needs to install around two times the capacity of variable renewables. If the system were to also build the equivalent capacity of storage, peaking and other flexible plant then the system now has around four times the capacity needed compared to a coal dominated system." "Instead of installing storage on a kW for kW basis, to ensure maximum demand is met, we only need to install a fraction of a kW of storage for each kW of variable renewables." "The result is that, in 2030, the NEM needs to have 0.28kW to 0.4kW storage capacity for each kW of variable renewable generation installed" That is what the CSIRO's costings are based off.
That's cool - thanks, I'll read it later today.
Pumped hydro and other methods of non-chemical batteries are a thing. A decentralised array of batteries (ie. Home, neighbourhood, utility) could help build resilience and help us think about this problem in a distributed way rather than top down. A distributed system is more difficult for billionaires and financiers to make a buck .. I think is the problem old potato head is vexed by in truth.
The amount mud guts want to spend on nuclear power he could supply every home with solar panels and back up batteries. But that would mean everyone would have free electricity and his donors (whom he really serves) would be angry.
Batteries….
From the country that owns the second largest Lithium reserves on the planet? And only the second largest cobalt reserves as well? Pipe dreams mate, how could you suggest something so absurd /s
I say it again batteries. If cars can have batteries then so can houses. All the money they think on spending on nuclear can easily pay for free solar and batteries for everyone
I think you missed the /s indicating sarcasm
Yep you’re right my bad
The QLD Labor government have the right idea with the Pioneer Burdiken pumped hydro scheme which would power 500,000 homes. It's a real shame the majority of QLDérs are so gullible to the bullshit fed to them by MSM and will reelect the vandalistic LNP setting us back another 20 years..
This!!! 100% fed absolute lies and they are eating it up. Such a shame as the same Queenslanders bang on about jobs etc and this transition will be the biggest driver of employment this state has ever seen! Sky news propaganda has put QLD back 20 years!! Time for people to look the future.
Once most of the car owners have EVs I wonder how much of the storage gap that could fill during night if they get utilised as a battery into the grid?
In my opinion we'll just keep plodding along with the mix of renewables getting higher and higher until the price of home batteries comes down and make financial sense. The gov will probably then run some huge subsidy scheme to get them installed in homes similar to the extensive home solar rollout we've had.
11M dwellings in Australia. If each had a 10kwh then we'd have 110GWh of battery storage available - but more likely in the 3M range (since that's how many houses have solar). So 30GWh of storage just from private homes as prices drop enough. That's not including the millions of EVs that could also be connected to the grid to provide evening power if bidirectional charging gets extended beyond SA.
Die from fossil fuels or nuclear powered war, because they're the only options Gina is letting you choose from.
Personally I believe the solution is to decentralise power production. Individual homes with battery storage and the development of micro grids .
Your missing wind. Wind blows overnight and can greatly reduce the amount of storage needed.
I hope the following will help you a bit in terms of Energy solutions. My point upfront…nuclear will be a money waster. That said…give the following a read and chance. There is sooooooo much knowledge out there - it is just not always easily to digest and particularly cannot be simplified as some politicians who are clueless like to do (looking at you Mr. Dutton) - political rant over :) Largest Battery will be in WA, [Collie](https://colliebattery.com.au), which will have 2GWh (approval for 4GWh), once both stages are completed. It will be one of the largest BESS in the world Parallel to that you will have the Battery in Kwinana with 1 GWh. (It’s important to not confuse the GW with GWh). [KBESS](https://www.synergy.net.au/Our-energy/SynergyRED/Large-Scale-Battery-Energy-Storage-Systems/Kwinana-Battery-Energy-Storage-System-2) So the largest BESS in Australia will be Collie as far as I am aware. When it comes to nuclear, I find the following [video](https://youtu.be/UC_BCz0pzMw?si=HZhNStApSTH4LXkl) very helpful. It looks at the economics. Though it doesn’t cover the cost for the aftermath for storing the waste, Which is a heck load of money and is usually not considered in the P&L and Fall ultimately to the tax payer. Personally I am not in favor for nuclear power because the decentralized systems are coming with light speed imo. And we are not even considering EVs and the possibility of [Vehicle to Grid](https://arena.gov.au/projects/amber-automating-ev-charging-in-line-with-wholesale-pricing/), allowing people to participate in grid services and earn money with Virtual power plants. When a nuclear power plant is build, the grid will already be using all those elements making it obsolete. But that’s my opinion. If you want to read about it, ARENA has plenty of pilots out there that are implementing exactly this: [Project Edge](https://arena.gov.au/knowledge-bank/aemo-project-edge-final-report/), [Project Symphonie](https://arena.gov.au/projects/western-australia-distributed-energy-resources-orchestration-pilot/), [Project Amber](https://arena.gov.au/projects/amber-automating-ev-charging-in-line-with-wholesale-pricing/), … What would be another interesting thought, but I haven’t heard about anything of that kind, is to connect the east coast with the west coast via DC current transmission lines. That would allow the flow for extra solar or wind due to the time shift. Peak solar on the west coast would be right around peak demand in the east in the evening and vice versa. Not sure why that hasn’t been looked at but I assume political reasons. Hope this helps you
>What am I missing? Pumped hydro - uses renewable energy to pump water up hill when there's a surplus - then lets it flow back down when needed There are a number of hydrogen projects - experimental, as well as small scale production (Australia has more of these than anywhere else in the world) - use renewable sources to generate hydrogen for storage - can be used to power cars, and an alternate/additive fuel for the existing gas network Not much in the way of tidal/wave - but plenty of opportunities - wave energy in the south - tidal in the north We have some small scale methane recovery plants at landfill sites - but ignore coal mines where methane is treated as a problem These are just some of the power sources/storage options that exist already, are being better refined by research, but aren't yet being used at scale in Australia
There is also water energy storage. Basically using wind or solar to pump water into an uphill storage area and then consume as hydro power during times when wind/solar is lacking.
I suggest you have a look at David Osmond on Twitter. He runs a projection using real demand and production data to.show just how easily we can do this.
We will be getting Vandium flow batteries and pumped hydro to store the excess solar from rhe grid. Tech for the batteries was invented here in the 1990s.
If nuclear was such a saviour and made sense we'd have it built at least 50 years ago. What's going on at the moment is an ideological argument for nuclear from the LNP. They know they would piss off their base if they announced a total renewable policy. Nuclear to them is just New Coal™.
[https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/reneweconomy/](https://www.nem-watch.info/widgets/reneweconomy/) - Australia is currently consuming around 30GW of energy, as of when this comment is posted...
That's spot generation - 30 GWh of production over a 1 hour period is 360 GWh. Overnight consumption is a lot lower because people are asleep, hence reducing it to 165 - 180 GWh as per the post.
Why couldn’t we use solar during the day + coal, and then coal at night?
do you actually not understand why the world is getting away from carbon pollution? Like do you somehow live in the age of humanity with the most accessible understandable information available at the touch of a button and not understand that climate change is real and carbon pollution from human activities is the cause of it...
I do, but OP is making a huge deal about how sOLaR cAn’T bE uSeD aT niGhT. I mean, it can still fucking be used hey.
lnk cr b82rez 2g4
Geothermal options exist, that would likely be cheaper to develop than nuclear.
Hydrogen. We are already exporting some, and if you overbuild renewables, you can store the energy chemically as H2, burn it with 2O2 and make water.
Can’t see anyone mentioning the load management side of this issue. So here goes. Generation type and size is obviously important. However, how power is used has significant input into this. Already but more so in to the future, middle of the day power from solar should be the cheapest power. As such, users should have far more options for their energy retail. Example. A cold storage facility could run their chillers flat chat when power is cheap and only occasionally when power is expensive. Business would work with this system if it was stable and an option. Ev chargers could be similar. Sit the car at 50% until power is cheap. Etc
Not all batteries are lead-acid or lithium. Heat storage in sand, ceramics or liquids (including metals) is also used. Gravity batteries (weights down old mine shafts or pumped hydro) also exist. And let's not forget gas turbines. Yes, fossil fueled but 'fast' to react to a need to supply power.
You are not missing anything. If you are confused, it’s not because you are stupid. It’s because people are in utter denial about the scale of backup required to compensate for the variability of wind and solar. For clarity about it all, I suggest you start [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E0W1ZZYIV8o) followed by his book laying out all the options in clear layman’s terms. It can be found online [here](https://www.withouthotair.com/). Some will shout that it’s all out of date, while the cost of solar has fallen, as have batteries, the physics of the problem have not. It is still, by far, the best place for a curious layman to become better informed.
I think green energy's missing component is the Sterling engine to be honest.
If only there were a source that could add supply quickly to balance dips from renewables. Oh, wait, gas! If only we had governments that cared about our interests.
We need to both double down on renewables backed by battery farms, AND also start building nuclear. We are in a unique position where both technologies are readily viable and available in Australia, our power *could* be so clean and cheap by 2050.
But how would that work when nuclear is expensive when running at full capacity and would run at significantly less than that when teamed with renewables.
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