656 replies to this topic

[gruntguru]

Climate change,,,, the west coast of the US is in a drought, Yellowstone Pk is in flood. India is in flood.  Yep - climate change at work.

Go back a hundred years and guess what!! I give up - what?

Cleaning up the atmosphere generally is the right thing, but volcanoes are creating more grief than man. Plus poor countries clearing land. Just volcanos - no climate change. Volcanos + CO2 + land clearing = climate change.

Elektrikity cars now cost more to recharge than buying petrol. In some cases electricity is doubling in price and genuinly becoming a luxury. Hilarious. Petrol has doubled, if electricity also doubles the petrol car still costs FOUR TO SIX TIMES AS MUCH TO FILL! 

Here in Oz we are back to blackouts and 'load shedding' because renewables again are not doing the job. And our baseload coal fired generation is being phased out and even if they wanted too renew it or upgrade green politics mean they cannot get money. So you think Australia has had green politics for the last 9 years? Renewables are not failing - our ageing coal fired generators are failing (about 20% shutdown). Coal and gas prices through the roof. If we had been greening our grid for the last nine years a lot of this pain would have been avoided.

It has been suggested recently than load shedding should happen in greenie areas first. Very logical. Congratulations.

Edited by gruntguru, 26 June 2022 - 21:44.

[Greg Locock]

In order for a coal power station to run properly it needs to run at full power, 24 hours a day. What it can't do reliably is to idle and then go to full power at the whims of the renewables. So the current coal plants are wearing out faster then they were designed to. Secondly of course their operators know that they have to close 1 GW of coal per year to 2050 to meet the net zero target, on average, so there is no incentive to modernise, build new, or even do expensive servicing on them. 

 

Since the big power generating companies also own gas peakers and renewables, when a coal power station breaks they make money from the resulting spike in power prices. Unfortunately the current process for setting the power price encourages this behavior and I am fairly sure that the power companies people are smarter than the government. Politicians call it gaming the system, the directors of the power companies call it maximising shareholder value, something which they are legally obliged to do (more or less). ". Directors must vote in the company’s interests and help the company take advantage of commercially favourable opportunities. "

Edited by Greg Locock, 27 June 2022 - 00:42.

[gruntguru]

In order for a coal power station to run properly it needs to run at full power, 24 hours a day. What it can't do reliably is to idle and then go to full power at the whims of the renewables. So the current coal plants are wearing out faster then they were designed to.

 

Is there any evidence that that is happening?

 

AFAIK they are just old and not replaced or adequately maintained during the past decade because of massive uncertainty in the policy area.

[gruntguru]

. . . Secondly of course their operators know that they have to close 1 GW of coal per year to 2050 to meet the net zero target, on average, so there is no incentive to modernise, build new, or even do expensive servicing on them. 

 

Ahem . . the "2050 net zero target" appeared less than a year ago.

[Greg Locock]

Really? I didn't know that. The anti coal vibe's been going that way for a lot longer. This report claims that they were breaking down every 3 days. Now, i don't know how many FF generators there are so that doesn't help much! https://reneweconomy...ree-days-34744/

[gruntguru]

Yes - a useless statistic. Its availability that counts - as any engineer will tell you.

[NRoshier]

The anti coal vibe's been going that way for a lot longer.

There's been a long standing anti-coal movement in Victoria, with the health concerns in the La Trobe Valley well documented. According to Hansard, Yallourn, Loy Yang A & B emitted over a tonne of Mercury during 2017/18 and the suggestions being that things used to be much worse than this. Certainly in the La Trobe Valley plume areas the health cost (heart/lung function, cognition etc) has been studied, but not well publicized.