In World First, 100% of South Australia's Power Supplied By Solar Panels (abc.net.au) 281
1.76 million people live in the 983,482 square kilometer (379,725 square mile) state of South Australia. This weekend Australia's national broadcaster made a big announcement:
South Australia's renewable energy boom has achieved a global milestone. The state once known for not having enough power has become the first major jurisdiction in the world to be powered entirely by solar energy.
For just over an hour on Sunday, October 11, 100 percent of energy demand was met by solar panels alone.
"This is truly a phenomenon in the global energy landscape," Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) chief executive Audrey Zibelman said. "Never before has a jurisdiction the size of South Australia been completely run by solar power, with consumers' rooftop solar systems contributing 77 per cent." Large-scale solar farms, like the ones operating at Tailem Bend and Port Augusta, provided the other 23 per cent.
Any excess power generated by gas and wind farms on that day was stored in batteries or exported to Victoria via the interconnector.
South Australia is where Elon Musk installed Tesla's giant Powerpack battery as part of a massive solar and wind farm.
For just over an hour on Sunday, October 11, 100 percent of energy demand was met by solar panels alone.
"This is truly a phenomenon in the global energy landscape," Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) chief executive Audrey Zibelman said. "Never before has a jurisdiction the size of South Australia been completely run by solar power, with consumers' rooftop solar systems contributing 77 per cent." Large-scale solar farms, like the ones operating at Tailem Bend and Port Augusta, provided the other 23 per cent.
Any excess power generated by gas and wind farms on that day was stored in batteries or exported to Victoria via the interconnector.
South Australia is where Elon Musk installed Tesla's giant Powerpack battery as part of a massive solar and wind farm.
Dependable is a harder goal, (Score:2)
True! but before I'll plug my servers in we have a ways to go
How many 9's work for you
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Huh? You never heard of batteries? This can be solved with adding more panels, batteries, expanding the number of panel locations, and increasing the grid size.
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Huh? You never heard of batteries?
If batteries fall in price by a factor of 5, they will be a viable grid-scale solution. But they aren't there yet.
The Tesla battery installation in South Australia is used primarily as a peaker reserve for wind farms, with multiple intraday charge/discharge cycles, not to store solar power for nighttime use.
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from the Hornsdale website:-
"A portion of the battery is dedicated to trading on the electricity market. This capacity is being used to store power from the grid when demand is low and dispatch it when demand is high, redu
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if they then all get home batteries connected in a virtual grid
This won't work unless Australians are really bad at math.
If they can do arithmetic, it will be obvious that a battery system doesn't even come close to paying for itself.
Re: Dependable is a harder goal, (Score:3)
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Battery+solar is already cheaper than nuclear. Nuclear involves more CO2 production over its lifetime than wind or solar.
Of the generation technologies in common use today which are not solar or nuclear, only wind and hydro are also zero carbon to operate.
If we actually want to solve the carbon problem, our only real choices are wind and solar.
The options get fairly simple fairly quickly if you look at the problem from a problem-solving perspective.
Re: Dependable is a harder goal, (Score:4, Interesting)
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Flywheel.
Flywheels are even more expensive than lithium batteries per unit of energy stored.
Flywheels make sense to store intermittent power that is going to be used again in seconds to minutes. A passenger train braking for a station stop and then accelerating again a minute later is a good application for flywheels.
But storing daytime solar for nighttime use? No. Flywheels are way too expensive for that.
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https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
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Beacon Power [beaconpower.com] has been around for way too long to be a fluke now. It's obviously feasible to store power in flywheels, if you use evacuated chambers and maglev bearings, which they do and they do. I'm sad that their UPS-scale product didn't turn out to be profitable, though. It would have been awesome to have home flywheel storage.
Re:Dependable is a harder goal, (Score:4, Insightful)
PVs lose power at about 1% per year so the figures you pulled from your arse are shit. They are already recycled. Hydroelectric are great but can only be used is areas where you can build them. Cryo-batteries look a lot better bet than hydrogen storage.
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PVs lose power at about 1% per year so the figures you pulled from your arse are shit.
Some of the better ones seem to lose more like 0.5% per year on average. That's fuck-all given that they repay their energy investment in about three years now. But even in the seventies it took only about seven years, on a panel that would last 20-30. There is no good argument against PV, only certain flawed implementations. It really makes no sense to put them on most residential roofs, where installers are placed at risk. Until we cover all the parking lots, and flat roofs such as on commercial buildings
Re: Dependable is a harder goal, (Score:3)
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And the new generation cells installed in that time will give a increase in efficiency.
Sunday (Score:2, Funny)
Businesses are largely closed. It's a nice sunny, warm spring day and everyone is outside firing up the barbecue. The charcoal briquettes consumed more than made up for the avoided power plant carbon emissions.
Re: Sunday (Score:2)
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You're wrong.
Charcoal is three times worse than LPG: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Re:Sunday (Score:5, Informative)
Coal is made from plants, so it's also carbon neutral fuel then.
well, yes, but it's carbon neutral over a period of 300,000,000 years.
We don't really want to wait two or three hundred million years.
Re:Sunday (Score:5, Informative)
Coal formed in a period before fungi evolved the ability to break down wood. As a result, there will be little new coal formed going forward regardless of the time involved.
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Not At All Neutral (Score:2)
well, yes, but it's carbon neutral over a period of 300,000,000 years.
It's only carbon neutral if we are locking away carbon into the start of the coal forming process at the same rate that we are releasing it by burning coal. If we were then the only issue a multi-million-year delay would create is having enough space to keep all the material to allow the coal forming process to happen.
As it is we are releasing the carbon from coal at a vastly greater rate than it is being locked away into new coal. So no, this is not "carbon neutral" at all: we are releasing the carbon
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Only in the People's republic of Victoria. Most other states only have COVID detected in people undergoing mandatory quarantine in a hotel - something which Victoria managed to royally fuck up. Here in Western Australia we have been able to visit pubs, restaurants, beaches without a face mask or intense social distancing for months thanks to hard quarantine and a state government which unusually has it's shit absolutely together for a Labor government.
Re: Sunday (Score:2)
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Here in South Australia life is *completely* normal.
We had 3 cases today (Oct 26) - all overseas travelers in hotel quarantine - zero community transmission for ages
That of course can change in a metaphorical "blink of an eye"... but right now all is fine. Bloody pandemics!
Re: Sunday (Score:2)
This is great and it just keeps getting better (Score:4, Interesting)
This is great and solar power just keeps getting better. Solar panels have become steadily cheaper and more efficient over the last forty years, and the trends are continuing https://sites.lafayette.edu/egrs352-sp14-pv/technology/history-of-pv-technology/ [lafayette.edu]. We're also getting better in terms of wind power. Wind and solar have the same problem of intermittency but in most locations, one often has at least one of them producing.
And storage and transmission is getting better. Large scale HVDC lines are now becoming common to connect grid sections. And we even have sections which now superconducting lines. The first superconducting line in the US was the Holbrook line in Long Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holbrook_Superconductor_Project [wikipedia.org], but other places have built them also. The US has a current plan to build a large-scale superstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation [wikipedia.org] using them to connect the three big US grids (East, West and Texas), which will allow excess solar to move easily to Texas when Texas has little wind, and allowing excess wind to move to California when the reverse is helpful. When the system is fully operational, it will also work well with high wind areas in the Mid-West like Iowa.
In the short term one can help increase the amount of solar around the world in two easy ways. The Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ [self.org] helps get solar panels for parts of the developing world which have little to no electricity. This both helps them and helps the environment in the long term, since climate change issues will be potentially much worse if they go through a Western-style fossil fuel burn period before switching over to low carbon or carbon neutral power sources. Another good one is Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ [everybodysolar.org] which helps get solar panels for non-profits in the US like science museums and homeless shelters.
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It keeps getting better for countries like Australia. For countries even further from the equator, the situation is vastly different. I live in the Netherlands and we have a lot of gas available to us, but in order to curb our CO2 exhaust and to stop gas well induced earthquakes, we aim to stop using gas during the next few decades.
Now, if we'd exploit all our geothermal and hydro energy, we'd still need so incredibly much additional energy on a record-cold day that over half our country would need to be fi
Re:This is great and it just keeps getting better (Score:4, Informative)
Here in Australia, typically the highest demand on the power grid is on hot Summer days during the week. Everyone is running their A/C on top of everything else that regularly consumes power. How fortunate that these sunny days are also very good for solar power generation.
Re:This is great and it just keeps getting better (Score:4, Interesting)
How fortunate that you also have a massive amount of solar energy available for domestic use and export.
Australia could develop big new industries around solar. As well as simply exporting electricity you could be producing hydrogen fuel for aircraft and ships, or cranking out low carbon steel.
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Any CO2 saved today is a win for the future.
100% of their ELECTRICAL power (Score:2)
There seems to be a major omission in the title and post that the EDITOR of a News for NERDS site would fix as part of their EDITTING job.
If they gave a shit about that job, that is.
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https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/e... [sa.gov.au]
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EDITTING?
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The east half of Australia are connected by a national grid and there are large high voltage interconnectors between states.
The 100% solar does not mean there was not other power stations (including gas and wind) running.
So the total demand of all users in south Australia was provided by rooftop solar and solar power plants that was over 100% of what was needed.
There was most likely also gas and wind putting the power produced well over what we need and this is exported over to Victoria.
A typical day there
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The headline and article mentions electricity and not making any claims about natural gas and other eneregy sources.
Take a look at the graph in the article (from https://opennem.org.au/ [opennem.org.au]).
There is a light Yellow representing roof top solar at around 70% during the middle of the day on the 11th.
There is a darker yellow, at around 30-35% of the power output.
There is not much wind so this represents 5% of the output.
There is also gas that represents 15% of the output.
As you can see the percentages do not stack
Solar panels? From where? (Score:2)
When did solar panels get cheap enough to make this viable, and where did they get them from?
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When did solar panels get cheap enough to make this viable, and where did they get them from?
They paid a shitload for them, and they were made in China. Obviously.
Re:Solar panels? From where? (Score:5, Informative)
Australia has some domestic solar panel and electronic manufacturers, but the panels installed over the last decade and a bit would be from a mix of manufacturers including from China and Europe.
During the early push to get domestic solar electricity happening in Australia there were a number of rebate and feed-in tarrif schemes to make the initial cost more affordable until economy of scale benefits led to initial costs being more affordable.
Rebate and tarrif schemes have been wound back considerably in recent years and typically you'll be paid the wholesale price for any power you supply to the grid, but charged at the retail price for any electricity you source from the grid, however with the cost of grid electricity in Australia it's possible to have a PV system pay for itself in as little as 2.5 years.
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Panels are about AU$0.44 per Watt now for European or North American made panels from Australia distributors and before any subsidies.
A roof frame for 10 panels costs about as much as two panels. The inverters can be had for AU$400. The rest of the wiring is about the same as the roof frame. The expensive part for a grid connection system is the labor.
Real solutions (Score:2)
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Population density of 3.2 per sq kilometer (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the reason for it... (Score:2)
"with consumers' rooftop solar systems contributing 77 per cent."...
The people in S.A got sick of losing power so often, and been charged though the nose for it - that a quite a number of them got roof top solar. 77% of the 100% renewable for that hour was provided by the people themselves not the government or private power providers.
This really is a result of how badly the state have managed their power grid over the last few decades. While it's going in the right direction - clean energy wasn't the goal
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77% of the 100% renewable for that hour was provided by the people themselves not the government or private power providers.
Who paid MOST of that? Oh yeah, the government, or tax payers.
However, I totally agree about the grid/infrastructure issue. That is a problem all around. Look at how fucked up California is.
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Aus has sunshine ... oh, and this is a bad idea (Score:2)
... and batteries.
Let's try that in Toronto or New York shall we?
And in ~25 years all those panels go to the landfill.
So let's review the life cycle:
a) environmental impact to produce the panels,
b) large surface area required since it's an inefficient energy producer
c) requires a resource not available everywhere (dependable sunshine)
d) _requires_ an environmentally impactful other technology (or did you think making batteries is 'green')
e) major environmental impact on disposal of both batteries and panels
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And in ~25 years all those panels go to the landfill.
Panels are often recycled today. In 25 years, it's reasonable to assume that almost all panels will be recycled.
So let's review the life cycle:
It's been done, and solar panels are already far lower-impact than anything else except for wind.
major environmental impact on disposal of both batteries and panels
Batteries are already recycled.
Your post contains nothing but FUD, and as such, is a prime candidate for recycling... into compost.
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There are good reasons to NOT have 100% solar/wind, but arguing on environmental impact is one of the silliest lies that the far right continues to claim. Kind of like claiming that Volcanoes produce more CO2 than mankind.
Now, add a forest fire or volcano. (Score:2)
As it is, we lost 10% of our 10KW solar generation this summer when southern colorado fires were raging. 10% is not much, BUT, considering that the fire was over 100 miles to the west, means that as it gets closer, we would lose solar (AND WIND) just when we need it for EVs and even the house.
Re:to be clear. (Score:5, Informative)
To be clear this was just solar, we in SA also have plenty of wind generation too, in fact enough to power the entire state and export power interstate at times.
Power was never a complete disaster here, one blackout caused by storms taking down a major inter connector is not a complete disaster, it’s a minor problem, now solved.
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Around 2004 I remember seeing a friend's power bill in New South Wales and they were being charged 12c per kilowatt hour while it was closer to 24c kWh in South Australia.
I paid a power bill in SA recently and the cost was about 38c kWh. There's some variation between the various retailers.
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It was much more expensive than other states but this has gone back to being similar to other states.
The amount of the power bill that goes to the companies that manages the poles and wires has been a bigger chunk of the power bill so this was keeping the power price up.
The other thing that has helped was the tesla battery and it's help in Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS).
The battery is able to kick in quickly to stabilize the grid to keep the frequency consistent and is far cheaper than having
Data not bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
13:45 December 30th 2019. SA wholesale electricity price 25.01 c/kWh. Queensland (coal powered) 5.599 c/kWh
Re: Data not bullshit (Score:2)
Looking at electricitymap.org Australia seems to pretty much run on coal. Your price comparison is probably the explanation why. You're going to have to do some hard choices.
Re: to be clear. (Score:5, Insightful)
Their $100 million dollar battery system delivers by musk on a ridiculous timeline. Paid for itself inside of 9 months. The system was so fast at catching imbalances in power and frequency that they estimate it could have paid itself back even faster.
Distributed battery banks would stablize California power as well instead of relying on unstable power lines in high wind environments.
Won't happen in California though. That requires planning and forward thinking.
WRONG. Batteries are not for energy storage (Score:4, Informative)
Those batteries are for grid stabilization, on a second by second basis. They are used more like a capacitor than a battery.
This is a niche application for which a small number of batteries is useful.
Nothing to do with storage over intervals of hours. The excess power would have been shipped off to Victoria on the interconnect.
And Sunday midday with industry stopped, not hot enough for air con, and sunny is a really sad data point.
Further, Musk did not make them. He installed them. They are Samsung batteries, by memory.
Still, at least SA is heading in the right direction. But Australia is almost as bad as the USA for carbon pollution. Worse if you consider that we need very little heating here in winter.
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Those batteries are for grid stabilization, on a second by second basis. They are used more like a capacitor than a battery.
Average power consumption of the South Australia grid is about 1.4 GW. This battery bank can supply 150 MW - about a tenth of that - and with 189 MWHr capacity it can keep it up for about 1 1/2 hours.
To do time-shifting of pure solar, figure you'd have about 5 solar hours per day. So you'd need to be able to supply the full load for about 19 hours and to charge at four times the full
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Indeed. I think that traditional pumped hydro will probably be needed. There was a proposal in South Australia to pump seawater up a hill, not sure what is happening with it.
There is a pumped hydro system in Queensland that has been operating for decades. Pumps water up the hill at night, but that could change to pumping during the daylight.
But storage is only a problem when you are generating a decent amount of solar and wind to start with. We are a long way from 100% even during the peak times. Stor
WRONG. Batteries are for energy storage (Score:2)
The batteries have one job, energy storage.
The whole facility's job is to store power until it's profitable to release it. That's literally what it does.
The storage period may be short, but so what? It's still literally using batteries to store power.
A single facility can't store enough power to run Australia for long. But that was the expected result when it was built.
If you built more facilities, each one would be less profitable than the ones before, and also make each one already built less profitable.
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You have this huge natural resource that could be put to good use, making you piles of cash... And your response is "sorry I don't do Sundays."
A little bit of thought is all that's needed to adjust industrial usage, and even consumer usage. In the UK we have a scheme were you get cheap electricity overnight. The power company turns it on when demand is low. Some people connect their cars up to it, as well as more traditional stuff like washing machines and immersion heaters.
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Distributed battery banks would stablize California power as well instead of relying on unstable power lines in high wind environments.
Won't happen in California though. That requires planning and forward thinking.
So you are just ignoring the 250 MWh battery [powermag.com] that just came online near San Diego? Or the 730 MWh battery [pv-magazine-usa.com] that Tesla is building near Monterey? I guess those commie-fornia politicians are a little more forward thinking that you realized.
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so what do they do for the other 23 hours a day? live in the dark!
It's probably not dark for 23 hours a day.
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Numbers are wrong, more like AU 28c/kwh Peak, which is US21c.
The major cost is transmission and distribution. Particularly after privatizing the grid. Not alternative energy.
It don't snow in Australia, so PV works OK. Nuclear is politically impossible here, nobody would tolerate it in their back yard, not rational but true. That said, today, PV is cheaper than Nuclear so the argument is moot.
Australia is as bad as the USA in carbon pollution.
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Numbers are wrong, more like AU 28c/kwh Peak, which is US21c.
I doubt they are wrong, outdated perhaps but not wrong. It's still close enough to prove the point, Australia's energy policy is driving up costs for consumers.
The major cost is transmission and distribution. Particularly after privatizing the grid. Not alternative energy.
Rooftop solar is literally on top of the people that consume it, just how much cost can there be in transmission and distribution?
Oh, that's right, the costs are in the power lines to the coal and natural gas power plants that keep things running when the sun doesn't shine.
It don't snow in Australia, so PV works OK.
Sure, no snow but they do experience night, no?
Nuclear is politically impossible here, nobody would tolerate it in their back yard, not rational but true. That said, today, PV is cheaper than Nuclear so the argument is moot.
Nuclear power is politically i
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You make a persuasive argument for nuclear.
In Australia, the political will isn't here and, never say never, won't be. Our one reactor produces isotopes for medical equipment.
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Australian electricity has always been much more expensive than the US. There are numerous reasons for this. Blaming it on solar PV is disingenuous at best.
There are many reasons we don't have nuclear power here in Australia. A big one is cost. Both solar PV and onshore wind (which we have in abundance) are still much cheaper [eia.gov] than nuclear. Cheaper before any subsidies, cheaper to construct, cheaper to operate, cheaper to decommission - cheaper lifetime costs per MWh. Until that changes, nuclear will not be
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Australian electricity has always been much more expensive than the US. There are numerous reasons for this. Blaming it on solar PV is disingenuous at best.
I blame it on the energy policy of the Australian government. Their policies on solar power is merely one example on where they failed to lower CO2 emissions, lower energy costs, improve reliability and availability of electricity, and generally serve the people that elected them.
There are many reasons we don't have nuclear power here in Australia. A big one is cost. Both solar PV and onshore wind (which we have in abundance) are still much cheaper than nuclear. Cheaper before any subsidies, cheaper to construct, cheaper to operate, cheaper to decommission - cheaper lifetime costs per MWh. Until that changes, nuclear will not be seriously considered, not here.
If you read that document then you will see that the costs of solar PV and nuclear varies by location. Nuclear power is not always more expensive than solar PV. Because solar power is always more expensive than a reasonable mix
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I blame it on the energy policy of the Australian government.
Which government? We've had several in the last decade, with opposing policies, even without considering the wildly different policies from state governments. We introduced a carbon tax then repealed it a year or two later, for example. Various bodies were created to fund and advance renewable energy, then their mandates were changed to prop up aging coal mines instead. We saw billions promised for giant pumped hydro expansions, and threats to build and operate a government-owned coal-fired plant - even t
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From a national security POV, America absolutely NEEDS Nuclear power. Sadly, many idiots fight against geothermal and ignore history and facts. Australias recent fires would have blocked more than 1/2 of the sun and would have drop their electricity a great deal if they were 100% wind/solar. Likewise, here in the states, I witnessed a 10-15% drop in our 10 KW solar system here in Denver CO. That is just from forest fires. WHEN, not if, Yellowstone or even Long's valley erupts, the solar/wind
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Interestingly if you look through the subject over the last 20 years there has been a steady but subtle push from the Federal and some State Governments to quietly repeal or reconsider some of the statutes around nuclear power - the conclusion is that it's a quiet long term push to at least prepare the legal ground for it should smaller and safer reactor plant designs evolve. [Modern miniature high power reactors do exist they've been installed in nuclear submarines for decades with an incredible safety rec
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though BOTH have been dropping emission for a number of years, which is the right way to go.
And PV is only cheaper than nuclear when it is heavily subsidized, nor held accountable for CO2 produced by back-up nat gas plants, which is what the far lefities push. Currently built nuclear is MUCH cheaper than wind/solar. And ideally, if these were combined, it would be perfect for killing fossil fuel based electricity.
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I have solar panels on my roof. My bills are about 35% of what they used to be. Panels will pay for themselves in 5 years, meanwhile I have lowered my monthly cost of living. I seriously and honestly assessed the cost and figured out that it was a no-brainer investment. We're still waiting for batteries to justify their cost but it's only a matter of time before the prices get low enough.
Look up Agrivoltaics, it's pretty interesting. Dumb placement of solar panels is absolutely a waste of land, but it does
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Look up Agrivoltaics, it's pretty interesting.
I did look it up and it's not all that interesting.
I grew up on a farm where we grew corn, soybeans, and alfalfa, as well as raised cattle for meat and milk. If there's going to be posts for solar panels in the middle of a cornfield then that makes getting the planters and harvesters through more difficult, and therefore more expensive. I've seen the damage cattle can do to property if it's not properly fenced off. How much will it cost to keep any livestock from tearing apart these posts that hold up th
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You really don't care to look, do you:
- 90% increased biomass under solar panels [pv-magazin...tralia.com]
- 75% cost savings over traditional mowing [utilitydive.com]
- ".. water-use efficiency was 65% greater and total fruit production doubled..." [nrel.gov]
It's difficult to find an agrivoltaic project that isn't almost universally positive.
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Why do you insist that in every subject that is discussed, the solution being talked about must be a silver bullet and do 100% of everything? Get real, all solutions are part of a bigger solution.
Re:At what cost? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone that says solar power is cheap is ignorant or lying.
That would be the IEA [iea.org]:
With sharp cost reductions over the past decade, solar PV is consistently cheaper than new coal- or gasfired power plants in most countries, and solar projects now offer some of the lowest cost electricity ever seen.
For projects with low cost financing that tap high quality resources, solar PV is now the cheapest source of electricity in history.
Solar is the new king of electricity...
Someone is ignorant or lying, but I don't think it's the IEA.
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Apparently the IEA is a reputable organization, but I had to look it up on Wikipedia, because that web page reads like the ramblings of an obscure think tank and their About page doesn't bother telling what the letters IEA stand for.
Anyway, the cost of energy is a complicated topic and it isn't helpful to a discussion to make absolute statements like "solar energy is cheaper" without a breakdown of what costs you do and don't count in the comparison.
I suspect that they mean that the kWh cost is competitive
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But I doubt that solar is cheaper if you account for the fact that you need to have capacity for the night and for the occasional cloudy week in winter.
Doubts removed [forbes.com]
TL;DR: Solar+battery is now cheaper than natural gas, let alone nuclear.
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What's more, we've neglected to develop a facility to dispose of them. Again, I feel this an absolute case of societal head-in-ass. However, as it stands, the true costs of decommissioning a nuclear plant in the US
nuclear is dead. (Score:2)
Nuclear is dead.
Same problems unsolved since 50 Years.
Now more expensive than anything else, and cleanup is not even factored in those costs yet.
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Sadly, the push by idiots is for 'utility' solar, which means putting solar over ground, typically, what was productive ground. Grass/trees conv
It works. For 1 hour in a Sunday (Score:3, Funny)
It works fine. For one hour on a Sunday when you happen to get very lucky, as in this case.
For the other 8,759 hours per year, we need something else.
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Hey mate - the future is coming, get used to it!
You sound like one of those dumb fuck liberal politicians we have over here.
Here's an example of Scotty from Marketing:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/on... [reneweconomy.com.au]
Any yeah, I live in SA.
Re:It works. For 1 hour in a Sunday (Score:4, Informative)
You sound a little upset. Disappointed because you expected solar would carry the load for more than one hour?
> The future is coming
Idiots like you have been saying that and burning coal for FIFTY FUCKING YEARS now. Coal that spews radioactive smoke into the air. For fifty years.
How about this, you can keep dreaming about solar-electric for another fixty years, and in the meantime we stop poisoning ourselves with coal smoke, by switching clean power that's available in the PRESENT. And has been available for the last 50 years, the half-century that you morons have made us keep using coal instead of switching to carbon-free nuclear power.
"The future is coming, the future is solar-electric, just keep dreaming about solar electric" is why we have climate change today. We wouldn't have this problem if we had switched to the available carbon-free power 50 years ago.
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50 years ago solar wasn't a reasonable choice. Neither was wind power. Both needed significant technological improvement to become cheap and reliable. Now everything seems ready except, perhaps, energy storage. And I'm not on top of energy storage, so perhaps that's ready too.
But also, perhaps, gas turbines are needed for times when there isn't enough sunlight or the winds haven't been blowing. Coal, however, doesn't work in that scenario, because it takes too long for a coal power plant to get up to c
Re: It works. For 1 hour in a Sunday (Score:2)
Re: It works. For 1 hour in a Sunday (Score:2)
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A fraction of the most sparsely populated continent, much of which is desert, all of which is close to the equator, was solar powered one day. I'm sure that will scale to a place like California. And totally won't drive up costs or reduce reliability.
Ah American exceptionalism. Too big to do anything well, except solar where apparently it's too small. What is it with you exceptionalists? Whatever American does worse than someone you blame on the size. You're usually wrong.
A few hundred square miles of solar
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But don't worry, eventually the cost of CO2 will come our way.
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Even when renewables supply 'only' 1% of total power consumption they also save around 1% of CO2 output, something the oil, gas and coal industry still not need to pay for.