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Power Australia

Tasmania Is Now 100% Powered By Renewable Electricity (reneweconomy.com.au) 133

Tasmania consists of the 26th-largest island in the world and its surrounding 334 islands — an island state of Australia with a population around 540,000 people, according to Wikipedia.

Friday the Tasmanian government "declared that it has become the first Australian state, and one of just a handful of jurisdictions worldwide, to be powered entirely by renewable electricity," according to one news report: Tasmania joins the Australian Capital Territory as the only two Australian jurisdictions sourcing all of their electricity from renewable energy sources, and places Tasmania alongside countries like Scotland, Iceland and Costa Rica which have also made the transition to 100 per cent renewable electricity. The milestone was welcomed by environmental groups, saying that it was another example of what is being achieved by state and territory governments that are stepping in to show leadership on energy policy in a vacuum left by ongoing conflict both between and within political parties at a federal level...

Tasmanian energy minister Guy Barnett added that the Tasmanian government would continue to support an expansion of the state's renewable energy capabilities, as the state looks to grow its role as a supplier of zero emissions energy to both mainland Australia and of green hydrogen into international export markets. "But there is more to do, which is why we have set a target to double our renewable generation to a global-leading target of 200 per cent of our current needs by 2040 — which we recently passed into law following the passing of legislation through both Houses of Parliament," Barnett added.

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Tasmania Is Now 100% Powered By Renewable Electricity

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  • As a backup! Wind, solar can be hampered just as coal, oil/gas, nuclear can. Always good to have a reliable backup.
    • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday November 29, 2020 @07:13PM (#60776880)

      As a backup! Wind, solar can be hampered just as coal, oil/gas, nuclear can. Always good to have a reliable backup.

      Not to worry. The backups are a couple of Tasmanian Devils [wikipedia.org] chasing [youtube.com] bunnies on a treadmill ...

    • by Chuq ( 8564 ) on Sunday November 29, 2020 @07:56PM (#60776940) Journal

      About 75% of generation is hydro, which itself is a more than sufficient backup. No coal, oil, gas or nuclear is needed (indeed there never has been coal or nuclear in Tasmania, and there hasn't been oil for a couple of decades.)

      • About 75% of generation is hydro, which itself is a more than sufficient backup.

        What if there's a drought? Huh? What happens then?

        (Yes, I'm being silly. This is a variation of the "What happens when it's dark?" for solar power...)

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by blindseer ( 891256 )

          What if there's a drought? Huh? What happens then?

          (Yes, I'm being silly. This is a variation of the "What happens when it's dark?" for solar power...)

          I don't know why you consider this "silly". Droughts do happen, and they can have a large impact on the ability for a hydroelectric dam to produce power.

          A drought will affect all hydro capacity in a region with relative equality. Night will cause all solar power in a region to stop producing power. Calm winds in a region will make all windmills stop. Too great of a reliance on any one of these will leave the affected region with energy shortages. Some regions of the world can't rely on any of them in a

          • Most nuclear power plants (at least in the US) have multiple reactors, as well as power plants that use traditional fuel sources that are there to maintain power to the nuclear reactors since they require power to achieve criticality. Cycling fuel is typically scheduled one reactor at a time, and the traditional power plants are used to balance the generation load. A lot of plants also employ high/low reservoirs with appropriate pumps and turbines that allows them to pump water from the low reservoir to the
          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            Unlike wind, hydro, and solar this shutdown will not affect all nuclear power plants in a given region at once

            I feel it's worth pointing out that a drought severe enough to prevent hydro generation from working in a region is probably going to significantly reduce flow in the rivers in that region as well. That means that all the nuclear power plants in that region probably will be affected since they typically rely on rivers for cooling water. If the power plant has a fully closed loop cooling system, then that won't be an issue, but they generally don't

            • I feel it's worth pointing out that a drought severe enough to prevent hydro generation from working in a region is probably going to significantly reduce flow in the rivers in that region as well. That means that all the nuclear power plants in that region probably will be affected since they typically rely on rivers for cooling water. If the power plant has a fully closed loop cooling system, then that won't be an issue, but they generally don't

              Using once-through river water for cooling a nuclear power plant was an engineering decision to save on costs. This was done knowing in advance that high temperatures and/or low river flow would require short term limits on the power plant power output. There is no reactor design that requires this choice to operate and in the future this will likely be deemed no longer viable as there's new controls on the allowed heating of river water as well as lower costs in closed loop cooling now.

              The past mistakes

              • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                Using once-through river water for cooling a nuclear power plant was an engineering decision to save on costs

                Right, and it's an engineering decision to save on costs that is in place in many, many nuclear installations that actually exist currently. You point out that they may be forced to change that due to environmental regulations. So, in fifty years, maybe a severe drought might not curtail nuclear power generation across a whole region, but it certainly might today. The reality is that economics is king. If they can make use of a cheap environmental resource then they will. If there's a chance that the enviro

                • A catastrophic situation that takes out solar, wind and hydro across a wide enough area that power can't simply be brought in from a region where that's not happening is possible, but it falls under the category of happening so seldom that they're not going to abandon renewables for it. Frankly, that kind of event is probably flirting with extinction level. It's not like we're set up to grow our crops with nuclear power.

                  Imagine you are Israel, Japan, or South Korea. All your neighbors want you to disappear from the map or be their slaves. Now, your job is to create a grid that spans enough territory that there is no possibility for a calm, cold, dry, winter night that prevents you from keeping warm. How does that work?

                  Can you run power lines through these hostile regions to a friendly region on the other side? No, they will either deny the ability to run these lines or demand crushing fees for the electricity to get to

      • Wow, I guess that old ABC is lying through its teeth https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]

        They've been used since then as well.

    • It is much harder to hamper Solar and Wind than Fossil Fuels and Nuclear.

      While we should always focus on having energy diversity. It doesn't mean needing to keep the boil water technology.

      Wind and Solar are not prone to Economic and Geo/Political issues. The wind will still blow, and even during a Great Depression the Sun will always come up tomorrow. I bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there will be Sun.

      Now they probably should be storing excess energy via batteries, flywheels etc... To deal with a p

  • by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Sunday November 29, 2020 @07:12PM (#60776878)

    It has been about 100% for decades. Nothing to do with global warming.

    • Global warming has been scientifically attested to since the 70s. So the decades are well within climate science.
      • The snowy Mountains scheme in the ACT (where the ACT hydro comes from) was designed in the 40's and built between 1950 and the early 70's, so no global warming was not a thing as decades in this instance is talking about more than 50+ years. Much of Tasmania's Hydro generation similarly started pre WWII.
      • by Z80a ( 971949 )

        Hydro have a lot more advantages than just "it's ecofriendly".
        You don't need to fuel it, you probably need a less lot workers to keep it running and it just works (tm).
        Everything would be hydro if was possible, but sadly it's not.

    • Tasmania consists of the 26th-largest island in the world and its surrounding 334 islands â" an island state of Australia with a population around 540,000 people,

      ... all of whom are very closely related, if you get my drift.

  • by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Sunday November 29, 2020 @07:20PM (#60776890)
    used to live in the ACT, both the ACT and Tasmania have easy access to hydro generation combined with relatively tiny populations. It is great we use renewables but in the larger picture it isn't a particularly astounding achievement for these two regions. Tasmania may also be the 26th largest island, but the population for the most parts live in a few small hubs (total pop is only 500k-550k)
  • There are a few issues with the 100% renewable definition. What does it actually mean? Does it mean that Tasmania still buys dirty coal power from Victoria , their neightbouring state? And does it mean that they can do this in the dry years, 2020 has been very wet in Australia however Australia is drying out due to global warning with Hadley cells moving further south, this will make droughts in Tassie more common.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Tasmanian_energy_crisis
    The real issue with most renewables

    • Does it mean that Tasmania still buys dirty coal power from Victoria , their neightbouring state?

      Does your JAQing off mean you didn't bother reading the article which addresses just this very point?

      • The article glosses over the fact that tas ran out of water not long ago and ended up running big diesels for a year

    • How much do you want to bet they still have gasoline or diesel cars, trucks, heavy machinery, including electricity generators on various properties? I'm not sure what the 100% renewable means, but I'd be willing to bet they are still selling petroleum based fuels there. Or are they claiming oil is renewable?

  • See the wikipedia page about the franklin below Gordon [wikipedia.org] protests for the 80's and think about how the ecological point of view has evolved since

    D.

  • Tasmania has a high rainfall, multiple hydro dams and not many people. I'm sure there are many hydro dams with a town of 500,000 next to it in the rest of the world, that is consequently completely powered by renewable energy.
  • So what?
    South Tyrol (in Northern Italy) with a similar number of inhabitants (532.000) uses not only 100% electricity from renewable sources (mainly hydro), but is exporting it to the rest of Europe. South Tyrol produces twice as much it needs. And this since ever.

  • I'll bet that there is no heavy industry there which tends to have much higher demands for energy than your average home.

  • by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @09:49AM (#60778220)

    (sorry, had to).

  • Hey, this silver bullet killed a mouse. Surely we can use it to go after that herd of elephants.

  • No, no, it's not possible.

    And besides, it's going to make the value of my buggy whip stocks drop....

  • The more interesting case is the Canary Island of El Hierro, which doesn't have much hydro, but does have a lot of wind, leaving the "storage problem".

    But El Hierro noted that it had God's own pumped-hydroelectric storage facility, in the form of a volcano with pits in the side, nearly half a mile up.

    https://www.livingcircular.veo... [veolia.com]

    We need to start looking for concave spots up in our mountains...

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