6 December 2024

Turn off your A/C and dishwashers? Is this what a 'renewable energy superpower' looks like?

| David Murtagh
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When the wind don’t blow, the power don’t flow (and that’s all you need to know). Photo: Supplied

How many more warnings do we need that we need baseload power sources beyond renewables?

The most dire warning came from NSW Premier Chris Minns. If you looked hard enough.

Last Wednesday (27 November), as temperatures in Sydney neared 40 degrees that day – hardly a unicorn sighting in Australia – Minns made his plea: “We are asking you not to run your dishwasher, not to run your washing machine this afternoon, between 3 and 8, and you’ll be helping the grid.

“We’re hoping that these measures reduce the amount of demand on the energy system over that crucial 3 pm to 8 pm period, and as a result, won’t lead to load shedding or blackouts.”

That was how Minns was reported in The Guardian.

But the news outlet that has a section titled ‘Climate crisis’, in case you mistakenly thought for a second they might report objectively on such issues, left out ‘why’ NSW residents were being asked to switch off their appliances.

For that, you had to look elsewhere.

The Australian – you’re free to speculate on their motive (evil Murdoch blah, blah, blah) – did report the reason NSW residents shouldn’t run appliances during that time.

As Minns continued and The Australian quoted: “The reason for that is that solar production in the energy market starts to come off from 3 pm, at exactly the same time as people return from work.”

That’s kind of important. Unless you’re telling a story, instead of the story.

The reality is renewables don’t work as reliable baseload power. Wishing doesn’t change that.

energy supply graph

NSW 28-day power supply average (2 Nov to 30 Nov). Source: Open Electricity.

From about 3 pm, electricity demand rises as people get home from school and work, turn on fans and air conditioners (after all, it was nearing 40), they watch TVs and start cooking on electric stoves (because gas cooking is slowly being banned placing more demand on electricity supplies), and cars are plugged into chargers because we’re being compelled to go electric (see electric stoves), and there’s not enough juice in the system so things go ping.

But that’s why we need batteries, right? Not exactly, because batteries are designed to stabilise the grid, not power it.

Four days before the Minns media conference, Region reported that the $300-400 million Williamsdale Battery Energy Storage System will plug into the ACT electricity grid from early 2026, storing enough renewable energy to power one-third of Canberra for two hours during peak demand. Do some quick maths and you’ll notice that’s not a lot.

And then what happens to the battery after it’s powered one-third of Canberra for two hours during peak demand? It’s spent. It needs to recharge. And when would it do that before it might be needed?

Again, the purpose is not to power Canberra, the purpose is to stop the pinging.

And that’s the problem with the entire climate industrial complex: we’re never told the story because the story is scary. Not about what a changing climate means (which is very unpleasant), but the path we have chosen, especially when it comes to supplying energy.

READ MORE The Brits are snapping up this Aussie solar innovation, and now you can get it in Canberra

In the next 15 years, about 8200 MW of coal-fired baseload power in NSW is going to leave the network. Now, look at the pretty chart again and take away all the black bits. That’s what we need to replace. Granted, it’s by no means an ultra-scientific analysis, but you get the gist.

Maybe we can power our cities between 6 am and 3 pm with renewables, and if you have rooftop solar and a battery, you’re certainly ahead of the game. It turns out, in fact, Australia is really good at rooftop solar, but to have a manufacturing sector and a modern city, you need a lot of power and you need it 24/7.

Wishing won’t make it happen, especially when the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing.

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Incidental Tourist9:11 am 07 Jan 25

Why don’t we leave coal power in and plant extra several million trees to offset emissions?

Bilbo Baggins7:31 pm 06 Jan 25

I checked the source used by the author (Open Electricity) for the last 28 days and it shows that, nationwide, renewables made up 45.5% of our electricity supply. Each year this proportion has been rising. Moreover, the cost of producing the renewables is much less. Coal costs over $80 per MwH while solar is less than $20. This sounds like good news to me.

Capital Retro9:00 am 07 Jan 25

Not according to Greenchoice who charge extra for renewably sourced electricity:
https://www.actewagl.com.au/sustainability/greenchoice

Capital Retro1:11 pm 19 Dec 24

Some residents in Red Hill were advised by mailbox letter drop on Monday that their electricity would be cut on Tuesday for non-specified reasons.
Anyone know anything else about this?

Going to 100% renewables requires firming. If firming costs 400$ per kWh then all power for that period costs $400. If you don’t know what firming is you have no business commenting

This may or not be 100% correct.
Doesn’t matter.
The “flat earthers” will all agree with these views and the “chicken littles” (the sky is falling) will all disagree.

The current Labour and Liberal governments have and are destroying us. Sure we can use green energy – We have bucketloads of solar….. BUT in our own time. We also have enough fossil fuels to put us back in the position where we won’t have energy supply issues, no power price issues and be able to increase manufacturing. We need to vote in Govts that will not align with WEF, IMF, UN and other international agenda’s that are against our (Australian) best interests & Sovereignty. The largest energy polluters in the world aren’t playing by the rules. Reality check – A massive volcanic eruption can overturn all the current data, a huge solar flare can potentially put us back into the ice age. Let’s use what we have NOW to be the best we can be.

Leaving aside the fact that reducing emissions is a necessity not a choice, it’s also not true that the problem is a lack of generation. We have more that enough electricity, even more so on hot sunny days, but we don’t have the lines to meet peak demand. That doesn’t change with the means of generation. Also, coal is the least reliable generation in hot weather – they overheat and shut down regularly at extreme temperatures. So we need better infrastructure, but old technology is not the answer.

No mention of the 3 broken power stations & one down for servicing at the time.. Mmmmm, interesting!

They’re cutting back on maintenance and replacing old generators because it is not economically viable with the change over to renewables. That’s why they’re broken!

Bowen would have us all belive we can run the country on unicorn tears.
More needs to be done, but it needs to be done sensibly, and sustainabiy.
Labor have no idea what they are doing, the country can not susrvice a second term under Labor.

HiddenDragon9:42 pm 05 Dec 24

This issue has become hopelessly politicised.

Labor and the Greens are in denial about the limitations of technology (“game changing” tech is always just about to happen – and has been for many years) and the Coalition has been (and probably still is) in denial about the extent to which not being seen to take “real action” on climate change – albeit by the standards of self-interested rules cooked up by larger nations and trading blocs – could be used as a trade weapon against us.

By comparison, the hard-headed rationalists in China, untroubled by elections, are getting busy installing renewables backed up coal and nuclear – as President Xi put it not so long ago, they won’t be dispensing with the established power generation technologies until the newer options are proven.

The equally hard-headed US tech titans, who are signing up nuclear generated power for their mega data centres, obviously have similar views – but down here in the land of “punching above our weight” exceptionalism, we’re going to become an IT and high tech manufacturing powerhouse, and do it all with batteries, pumped hydro and so many solar panels and wind farms that it will always be sunny and/or windy somewhere – sure.

Great article. Sooner or later, reality bites. Chris Bowan’s spin and misinformation soon get found out by reality. Power bills across Australia increasing dramatically the more reliant we become on renewables and the more coal and gas production is reduced.

John Pedestrian3:57 pm 05 Dec 24

If we had simply put a price on carbon, no other government interventions full stop, we would not be in the mess we are now in.
Suspect that we would have turned to smallish gas plants built close to major consumers as the stabiliser for the transition, such plants come with little transmission loss and the waste heat can be used to power aircon and heating . But that would be too sensible .

Inertia is the problem with renewable energy though this can be fixed with big batteries or inverters on the farms that can be tuned it’s funny that this author only Mentions solar when there is wind nsw doesn’t have many wind farms compared to other states South Australia is already 70 percent renewable energy and runs on very little gas what the author didn’t mention is the coal plants broke down wiping 3Gw from the system

We already have enough wind and solar to power the grid at times reason it’s being shedded is because it is not being firmed by batt

Niven Stines says it well – most of us do not have sufficient understanding of how the whole power system works and so most of the commentary is rubbish.

It is easy to pick holes in the nuclear option though: it takes decades to build (what do we do in the meantime?); it costs A LOT (I have read quotes of Peter Dutton’s suggested nuclear options as costing between $100 and $600 billion, and that would be for 15% of our power needs – where do we get the other 85%? – it clearly isn’t the total answer); countries like the USA and UK have had major cost blow-outs on nuclear projects and at least one in the USA has been abandoned after the costs went up so much and the capacity went down); nuclear power stations use a hell of a lot of water – we are the driest continent in the world – how is this being factored in?; Australia has no experience in building nuclear; nuclear meltdowns are rare but absolutely catastrophic when they occur – do we want accept this risk?; at least one of the proposed sites for the nuclear power stations is in an earthquake zone (the Hunter Valley) – why would we risk putting one there?; what happens to the nuclear waste created?

I’m not seeing why people think nuclear is a realistic option.

Do some research on ‘Pebble Reactors’ no risk of meltdown. Waste is still an issue but can and is stored safely, and is significantly less of an immediate threat to the planet than C02 emissions. Having said all that, I have my doubts that large scale nuclear is a viable option for Australia – too geographically dispersed, cost per person per GWh way to high.

Strange that you mention wind only in the last sentence. Solar is not the only form of renewable energy and the trick will be to balance their availability using very large batteries like Snowy 2.0. It’s a long term strategy, not a quick fix. Don’t let your ideology get in the way of your argument.

I think your idealogy is the problem. Your ideology is blinding you to the reality. Just look at the escalating energy costs across Australia as more renewables are plugged into the system and coal and gas production is reduced. Snowy 2.0 is laughable. It won’t be completed until 2050 and is billions and billions of dollars over budget.

Solar farms as far as the eye can see, battery farms as far as the eye can see, wind farms as far as the eye can see. The pixies rest and smile at their achievement, but wait – solar panels need replacing, as do batteries and wind turbines. Hang on this wasn’t in the budget!

Hmmm,
well except for the fact that you only need a fraction of the land available if you wanted to supply our electricity from wind and solar, which you won’t anyway.

And yes, they need replacing. which is exactly what is included in the economic assessments showing they are cheaper.

Funny that you think economists and investment agencies would somehow “forget” that assets only have a certain lifespan. Weird take.

So nuclear or coal or gas fired power plants are magical pixie dust facilities that never break down, never need upgrading, or dare I say it need replacing.

Stupid comments like this just make you look idiotic – pretending that somehow, people with a whole lot of actual working brain power have somehow forgotten a basic fact.

Strange, strange take.

Coal and oil also needs replacing if you think about it. Don’t worry, we can wait for it to click over in your head for a few minutes.

Capital Retro5:53 pm 08 Dec 24

The wind and solar farms that need replacing without the subsidies won’t be viable so they will be abandoned and left to decay.
Great outcome.

Stephen Saunders9:20 am 05 Dec 24

The sole source of the “renewable energy superpower” myth is Ross Garnaut, on the flimsy premise that we have a huge “competitive advantage” in wind, solar, and soil.

In five years, no one has seriously challenged this nonsense. In Australian journalism, overarm deliveries are frowned upon. You might hurt someone’s feeling.

Is Andrew Bolt retiring?
Seems Mr. Murtagh is auditioning for a spot on SkyNews…

The above is why 61% of Australians either somewhat or strongly support nuclear power. (2024 Lowy Institute Poll)

That is one way to look at it. Alternatively you could look at it like AEMO did: 1/4 of coal powered generators (which we currently rely upon for base load) were offline and as a consequence the ability within NSW/ACT to meet predicted demand was threatened.

The current generation/distribution model relies upon coal for base load and is augmented by renewables. The solution to renewable base load is beyond my lay knowledge but I can tell that renewables were not responsible for last Wednesday.

https://wattclarity.com.au/articles/2024/11/nsw-government-enact-protocols-to-reduce-electricity-demand-from-government-agencies-on-27th-nov-2024/

Not a chance, the Woke wanted this they can turn all appliances of and not charge their electric cars.

Ah, so let’s just negate decades of detailed scientific and industry research showing how the grid can and will be powered by renewables firmed with a number of different types of dispatchable power (not just “batteries”), because someone looks at a graph.

“Baseload” power is a myth that would actually be far more expensive to maintain permanent large generators that are very inflexible to changing demand profiles or market prices.

It’s also ironic to see the recent examples where failures of coal plants is being seen as evidence that we actually need more coal plants, rather than recognising the increasingly unreliable coal plants are the problem.

The government (over the last 20 years) has actually driven a large part of the transition problem (and it is only temporary), because of a lack of certainty in energy policy. Where they should have been prioritising mechanisms to ensure reliability as the inevitable transition to cheaper renewables occurs, you have one side captured by fossil fuel interests trying to prevent the transition and deride renewables, and on the other side, people who think it can happen overnight.

There is a sensible middle ground that allows us both cheaper and more reliable power as renewables take over.

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