Australian Farmers Switch To Diesel Power As Electricity Prices Soar (abc.net.au) 270
"As power prices rise, some farmers have been forced to turn off the pumps," reports the Australian Broadcast Corporation. Long-time Slashdot reader connect4 shared their report from the coast of Queensland, where the price of pumping water to sugarcane fields has doubled.
Local irrigators council representative, Dale Hollis, says right now, irrigators have two options. "They have to switch off the pumps and go back to dryland [cropping], and that impacts upon the productivity of the region and impacts on jobs" he said. "The second option is to go off the grid and look at alternatives." Another option is solar and there are plenty of farmers installing panels, but many growers irrigate at night and can't afford the millions of dollars it could take to buy battery storage. That's pushing many of them back to a dirtier option. "Right now, diesel stacks up," Mr Hollis said.
The head of farm operations for a sugar producer says it's now 30% cheaper to pump water with diesel than electricity, even before you count the subsidy from the federal government, and they expect to save even more money as energy prices go up.
The head of farm operations for a sugar producer says it's now 30% cheaper to pump water with diesel than electricity, even before you count the subsidy from the federal government, and they expect to save even more money as energy prices go up.
Some Solar, with a gravity battery? (Score:5, Insightful)
Going off the grid always sounds so complete and final, but couldn't they set up _some_ amount of solar panels that pump into raised storage tanks during the day, then irrigate with that water during the night? Seems like any power saved is good for the wallet (and, vs. diesel, good for the planet).
Re:Some Solar, with a gravity battery? (Score:5, Insightful)
Going off the grid always sounds so complete and final, but couldn't they set up _some_ amount of solar panels that pump into raised storage tanks during the day, then irrigate with that water during the night? Seems like any power saved is good for the wallet (and, vs. diesel, good for the planet).
Because "raised storage tanks" are far more expensive than diesel generators?
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Of course - if you're only looking at up-front costs. But how much is your monthly diesel cost going to compare to the monthly cost of a loan for farm's little water tower...
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A plastic 10,000 gallon tank costs about USD 6,000. Not sure what a concrete tank would cost these days. The biggest cost aside from labor is the concrete, then the forms. I know of a 100,000 gallon pool built for irrigation and solar plus wind and the cost was under USD 50,000. Solar for the electricity to run control systems (valves and senors), wind to do the actual pumping. As for when the actual irrigation is done (day or night), this system is pretty much impervious to instant power demand. The water
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The government doing the price regulation owns the generators and benefits as the price goes up.
The results of "running a government like a business" are obvious - citizens get financially screwed over.
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but couldn't they set up _some_ amount of solar panels that pump into raised storage tanks during the day, then irrigate with that water during the night?
There is no reason to do that. Irrigation does not need to be a continuous process. Just pump the water onto the fields when the power is available, and when there is no power, you stop pumping. There is no rational reason to pump into a (costly) storage tank rather than directly onto the crops.
Re:Some Solar, with a gravity battery? (Score:5, Informative)
Night time irrigation reduces water loss from evaporation. Irrigate at night and there is 12 hours or more to soak into the ground and be absorbed by the crops before it gets to the hottest part of the day.
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Australia is incredibly dry (driest continent on earth)
No, Antarctica takes that honour. And not just because snow is dry. Antarctica has far lower total precipitation. It is one big desert.
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Sure there is. Farmers, especially ones in areas where water is the limiting factor in how much they can grow, are worried about losses to evaporation. Those losses can be minimized by irrigating at night, when it's cooler and water evaporates more slowly. Depending on the economics and the water supply, it may make sense to adopt a more expensive irrigation strategy if it conserves water.
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There has been serious price gouging where somehow some of the cheapest to produce electricity on the planet is sold to the customer at close to the highest prices on the planet.
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Just pump the water onto the fields when the power is available, and when there is no power, you stop pumping.
That's called wasting water. Kind of an important think to watch in Australia of all places. Actually you'll find the water management authorities dictate when you can irrigate and when you can't.
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Good for the wallet depends on the cost of raised storage tanks.
Australia is (mostly..) flat.. (Score:2)
You need to go and look at a topo map of the area.
Due to pipe flow losses, you actually need quite a significant height advantage for gravity fed water to work, and australia is pretty much flat, impressively flat in general.
Plus the infrastructure costs would be LARGE, farmers run on small margins and are cash poor. There is no venture capital swill-trough or 'investment angels' in outback farming.
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Nighttime watering? (Score:2)
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Bath County Pumped Storage Station [wikipedia.org]
Re: Nighttime watering? (Score:2)
Why aren't the generators using Diesel? (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't about "Diesel", this is about the abuses of a privatized utility.
Re:Why aren't the generators using Diesel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why aren't the generators using Diesel? (Score:4, Insightful)
Cost of building grid scale diesel power stations, environmental protections that don't apply to small businesses etc.
In any case, if you are going to invest in new generating capacity it would make more sense to go for renewables. Cheaper to build, cheaper to run, faster to bring online.
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That's what Australia did. Apparently, it is _not_ cheaper in actual real world cases.
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Because they did it wrong. They need to properly integrate the renewables and build some storage. Drop Elon Musk an email about it.
Look at the mess with renewable heating in Ireland. Renewables are not immune from screw-ups.
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I don't want to put words in your mouth. Are you saying the costs will come down if they just spend more?
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In reality, centralized generation, including Diesel, is cheaper than distributed generation. Distributed generation is only cheaper when land is the expensive part (solar PV, and to a lesser extent, wind).
Re:Why aren't the generators using Diesel? (Score:4, Interesting)
GP was being sarcastic: burning diesel is rather expensive, about any other form of producing power is cheaper. And Australia uses mostly the cheapest of all, coal. The fact that it for these farmers it is cheaper to burn diesel than to buy electricity from a power plant shows how thoroughly fucked up the market there is.
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This is not some 1930's US plan to help rural locations with power e.g. Rural Electrification Administration (REA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Think of buying a power grid and generators from the French perspective or as a company in China.
You enter the market and expect a growing return for the power generated every year. No new competition. No new power plants to offer lower prices. Th
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It's nearly all coal with gas to cover peaks and a small amount of hydro.
"Green" power sources are not there in amounts that can be noticed apart from private rooftop solar which only has very local effects.
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why isn't the grid using Diesel and doing it cheaper?
Because generating electricity at scale via diesel is by far the most expensive choice. The rising cost in electricity has for a large part been to do with massive changes to distribution management. i.e. they started maintaining shit and gold plating the grid and are pushing the costs to the consumers.
Diesel generators are cheap as chips. At the 200kW+ range small gas turbines are a better option if you have a continuous nat gas supply. But wind doesn't make financial sense until you scale it up to grid le
Because you need to think? (Score:2)
Because you cannot think critically?
Because the cost of electricity contains a lot more than just the cost of generation?
Because the farmers are using diesel is not generating electricity (which is lower efficiency) but running the pumps directly.
Not difficult there, was it.
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And there's no transport cost to get Diesel to a remote farm? The cost of moving liquid is higher than moving electrons.
The initial cost is high, the incremental cost is quite a bit lower. The area we're talking about is not as remote as you think and the farmers already have massive supplies of locally stored diesel.
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Grids get the short end of the stick no matter what generation technology is politically popular. Getting the public to care about the grid (and cut them some NIMBY slack) is one of the big challenges of the coming decades. Some progress can be made by pointing out things like we shouldn't be losing power to tens of thousands of customers just because it is windy/rains/snows.
That said, I thin it's been pretty well established that a lot of the electricity "crisis" down under is being fabricated by financi
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Had you read TFA, you would know that the problem is that the charge for use of the transmission lines is the part that's skyrocketing, not the cost of the electricity that is being transmitted. That's why prices continue rising even as actual use falls.
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Your link is from 2012 and it's predictions have already failed miserably. How right could it be?
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Absolute bollocks.
We have very little renewable energy production in Australia and was has been built had to beg for scraps of subsidies. Coal fired plants get more public money.
The ridiculous rise in costs is due to privatization, and infrastructure overbuilds. In many states electric utilities were allowed to build infrastructure and charge the consumers for it, so they turned that into a revenue stream by overbuilding and charging excessively. In some cases whole substations sat idle.
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why isn't the grid using Diesel and doing it cheaper?
Because Australian politicians deemed the most crucial thing for the power companies to do, was to use green sources of energy.
Even if it can't meet demand.
The government privatized the electrical system for the most money it could get to fix its budget woes, and in return gave the private power companies an almost unlimited rape, loot and pillage license to raise power prices.
Moved the headstones not graves (Score:2)
In Queensland it's close to total government ownership of the entire generation, transmission and distribution systems. The only major exception is the Gladstone power station.
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Because Australian politicians deemed the most crucial thing for the power companies to do, was to use green sources of energy.
Even if it can't meet demand.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/business... [smh.com.au]
So your unsupported supposition is untrue - it's not a problem with producing the power, it's the high cost of a centralized for profit utility that's the problem.
I knew there would be one! It's coal not wind! (Score:2)
Epic fail - Queensland runs on coal and Australian politicians are pushing hard for more coal use. They even passed a lump of it around in Federal Parliment a couple of months ago as some sort of political stunt.
Is there nothing that you don't blame on windmills?
Not could - are.
Why would you use batteries? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Now, anyone for a bet on how many years these guys have before 'finding groundwater that still exists' becomes a markedly more exciting challenge than 'pumping it' is?)
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Why? What's the half-life of ground water?
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Well, how long does it take to pump out half of the water ?
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Elevated storage tanks aren't free. Perhaps you underestimate the amount of water involved.
Re:Why would you use batteries? (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean it's not enough to say "elevated storage tanks" (and then feel smugly self-superior)? They don't just appear, along with the solar cells to fill them, and start operating magically?
Because I'm guessing a farmer can just make a call and rent a diesel generator, and have it delivered to his farm within 2-3 days. And make another call to setup periodic refueling.
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I don't think you've ever met a farmer. You're just repeating some durp somebody else told you.
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Perhaps you underestimate the amount of water involved
Tell that to the idiot farmers growing fucking SUGAR CANE in South Australia, the driest state in a famously dry country
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Nobody grows sugarcane here in SA, this story is about Queensland, its our Texas, where we keep,the dumbest rrdnecks.
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Tell that to the idiot farmers growing fucking SUGAR CANE in South Australia, the driest state in a famously dry country
1. Queensland is in NORTHERN Australia.
2. It is the WETTEST state.
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I know nothing about Australian weather, but it seems that if there is a large demand for irrigation in the wettest state for sugar cane, perhaps it's still not an ideal crop to grow in the region.
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Being that wrong has to sting.
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Being that wrong has to sting.
I'm embracing all that the Trump era has brought so it's just an alternative fact.
I get that sugar exports bring in revenue but as someone whose has sugar cane farmers among relatives going back 150 years and lived for a decade in a town that sprung up from what was once a large sugar cane field, I'll state that if your sugar cane can't survive without irrigation, you're doing it in the wrong place or you've been doing it wrong for a long time.
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Looking at the cost of a water tower, it seems that you are right.
Seen in an article : a 2000 m3 water tower, 60m high, costs around $4 million. It stores around 333 kWh of potential energy. That's about $12000 per kWh.
A Tesla powerwall is $3500 for 10 kWh, or $350 per kWh, or 35 times cheaper.
It looks like unless you have a mountain nearby, from an energy storage perspective, elevated water tanks are not the solution.
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I don't live in Queensland, but I've been there.
IIRC most of the cane fields are right near the coast (they were burning them when I was there). There is a range of hills near the coast. But that land is relatively expensive as it doesn't flood in cyclones. Near any cities or towns the hills are full of homes of retired people/pot growers/junkies (Thai genetic buds the size of small children). Further out not so much, but still not likely to be owned by the farmers.
The point isn't pumped storage for en
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It might be practical were you able to build on a naturally occuring hill. It's just a matter then of digging a big hole, putting down a liner, and adding a pipe for getting the water out again. Unfortunately, this is Queensland. In the ranking of famously flat places, it's not quite Kansas but it tries.
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why would you use batteries; rather than 'gravity'?
Using either is a problem to people who are specifically avoiding the capital outlay for new equipment. The diesel makes sense because the infrastructure and gear is already in place. Solar makes sense if the power is used when being generated because it's quite cheap. Add in some convoluted gravity fed system, or large battery storage and it's a non-starter again.
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(Now, anyone for a bet on how many years these guys have before 'finding groundwater that still exists' becomes a markedly more exciting challenge than 'pumping it' is?)
Oh and hate to double post but:
a) Ground water is Australia is very carefully managed, and
b) Bunderburg sugar producers do not use groundwater, they are talking about horizontal pumping.
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Unfounded assumption they are using rotary irrigation and sprinkler heads. Ditches and flood.
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Fuel taxes in Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Under these changes, all off-road business use of fuel became eligible for subsidies."
Re 'mature than battery tech"
A diesel pump is easy to service and import into Australia.
Getting batteries needs a lot more currency due to exchange rates. Solar needs workers to drive out and build a system or install batteries.
A large diesel generator has to be foun
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If you're pumping water, why not use wind, rather than solar in the first place?
Because Queensland is not very windy. It is located in the horse latitudes [wikipedia.org], known for becalming ships. However, it has plenty of sunshine.
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However, it has plenty of sunshine.
For part of each 24 hour period only. Also if solar was cheaper why are there subsidies by the government charged to electricity companies and eventually paid for those who can't get solar (e.g. live in an apartment, renting can't afford the initial installation etc) basically screwing the those at the bottom of the economic pile.
Using Diesel might increase electric rates more (Score:3)
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Which may be a good thing in the long term as investing in Solar will become more of an economic necessity rather than a ecological statement.
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How does this happen? (Score:3, Insightful)
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How can this happen? At different scales the cost of power generated changes differently for each source of electricity.
Diesel is incredibly expensive to use as a fuel on a distribution scale, just like you won't see a nuclear power plant in your back yard powering just your home.
Solar is viable if the time is right, but is expensive if you require 100% storage.
Wind is not viable at small yields and is incredibly expensive.
Gas is viable between for medium scales if you have access to a gas pipelines but mic
A resource that never runs out (Score:2)
Why don't they just water their crops with utopian idealism? Or they could power their pumps with apocalyptic predictions of the distant future. Since these are the things that matter most, surely they must make crops grow.
Market manipulation driving up electricity costs. (Score:4, Interesting)
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A quick bit of Googling on Bill leads to this:
Wikipedia: 'Bill Mitchell (economist)
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You can get economists to say _anything_. It's called the dismal science for a reason.
I'm proud to say I'm not an economist. Which means I know you can't print money forever. Like I say: if you meet that moron, kick him square in the nuts.
Tesla Batteries (Score:2)
Reminds me of this recent story. Tesla wants to install batteries at the Australian utility companies to store power for night.
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
Some quick calculations here- (Score:5, Informative)
Electricity is about $0.50 USD/KWh in Australia (compared to about $0.20 in SF and NYC). For $1 USD you get 2 KWh of energy. A motor turning a pump is about 75% efficient - so you get 1.5 KWh of energy at the water pump.
Diesel in Australia is about $1 USD per liter to farmers who don't pay road taxes. A liter of diesel has about 10 KWh of energy, and a diesel engine is about 45% efficient. So for $1 USD you get 4.5 KWh of energy at the pump - 3x cheaper than electricity.
But if the diesel engine has to turn a generator, which then powers an electric motor for the pump, you probably loose about 40%. So for $1 USD you get about 2.5 KWh of energy at the water pump - still better than buying electricity.
And as someone else here said - it seems the Australia electricity market is under heavy market/political forces - like electric supplies holding back supply when they know that prices will soar and brown/black outs will occur.
Diesel? (Score:2)
They are farmers, why not use Canola oil, like Rudolph Diesel did when he invented that engine?
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Because you can't just burn a vegetable oil in an engine. Few are flammable enough, they burn at the wrong speed, and they produce some pretty nasty deposits that will gunk up precision parts. They need to be processed first, a process involving catalised reactions with alcohols. It's a rather slow process, which translates to a rather expensive process - plus the cost of growing the vegetable feed, and the cost of not growing something more profitable on that land. If growing fuel were cost-effective, we w
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So basically (Score:3)
Re:How those solar panels working out for you? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder why sugar cane is being grown in what I assume is a pretty dry climate using irrigation. The Aussies might want to look at the history of irrigation farming in places like West Texas where wells kept getting deeper and deeper until it was economically unsustainable to pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer thousands of feed down. The destruction of this water supply has had major economic consequences. Of course in Texas, there's something else that can be pumped from the ground: black gold.
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The irrigators in Bunderberg are using less than 8% groundwater. Most of their supply comes through an irrigation system built between the 70s and 2005 made up of dams, channels, and a shitload of pipelines. The cost they are complaining about is pumping of water horizontally.
Why is it grown using irrigation? Why do we use fertiliser? Yields.
Or why is sugar cane grown in general? Well it has been since the 1800s
But asking Aussies to look to Texas for water management is a bit silly. They are a country hugel
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Droughts happen.
Re:How those solar panels working out for you? (Score:4, Informative)
Eastern Queensland is tropical. Think Florida with hills. They grow the sugar cane in the river valleys near the coast (or at least they used to). LOTS of water in the Summer rainy season, not so much in their Winter.
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Don't worry, Elon Musk will save us [arstechnica.com].
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The solution our factories have come up with is to close up shop, lay off their workforces and move to Mexico.
It does reduce electricity use though, so the government is happy.
Re: Of course it's high (Score:2)
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What do you have against Beyond Thunderdome? :-D
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The problem here is that the country DID go solar/wind etc. (green) and forcibly shut down all coal/oil and now these 'green' plants can't supply the demand plus they have to amortize all the costs of building and maintaining an underperforming, green setup, hence the pricing.
They went coal and still have coal (Score:3)
No.
It's Queensland, Australia.
Coal with a bit of gas to cover peaks and one hydro plant of note.
Why spread misinformation about something you do not know about? Are you being a Good Party Komrade or is there something else behind it? My paycheck depends on the coal industry, so maybe you think you are helping me out, but I'd rather not have people pushing stupid lies for the sake of The Party doing it. Why don't you go and "help" someone else on
Re:They should go solar (Score:4, Interesting)
if wind and solar were economical, they would be used.
You mean like in the Republican-led state of Kansas which generates roughly 30% of its electric needs from wind [kmuw.org]? Those Republicans must really love spending taxpayer money on all those subsidies.
At the rate wind generated electricity is growing, Kansas may have export electricity in the next decade. How horrible wind is so uneconomical.
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It might have something to do with "Kansas adopted the Renewable Energy Standards Act in 2009, which required the state’s utility companies to generate or purchase 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources – like wind and solar – by 2020." That is, they forced themselves to do it -- regardless of the price. Not saying it wasn't cheaper, but that they would have switched regardless of whether it were cheaper or not in the end.
The thing is that different energy sources are going to h
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Watts are the same thing as horsepower you halfwit.