I am not one who burns tires on Earth Day, I promise! Sounds like a fairly terrible idea to me, cheaper is not always better, and I can also promise the savings will not be passed along to the...
I am not one who burns tires on Earth Day, I promise! Sounds like a fairly terrible idea to me, cheaper is not always better, and I can also promise the savings will not be passed along to the customers. The replacement doesn't sound well thought out:
"It says the lowest-cost replacement options for retiring coal plants “will be a portfolio of resources, including solar (28GW), wind (10.5 GW) and storage (17 GW and 90 GWh), complemented by 500 MW of flexible gas plant and transmission investment..."
In Karlsruhe, Germany they have a high-efficiency low-emissions plant that produces more power than all of their "portfolio resources" combined.
"Operated by German utility EnBW, the plant achieves 47.5% net thermal efficiency while producing 912MW of electricity, making it one of the world's most efficient hard coal-fired steam power plants."
In Japan they are even more efficient, and they are getting better all the time at squeezing every ounce of energy from the coal. What surprises me is that Australia does not have more tidal power generating systems in operation. There are some powerful currents at work and with the population more or less concentrated along the coasts it makes sense in my head.
Why build a coal power station which still produces some CO2 emissions when solar panels don't produce any emissions? That doesn't make sense. As for tidal power, we've got much more potential for...
Why build a coal power station which still produces some CO2 emissions when solar panels don't produce any emissions? That doesn't make sense.
As for tidal power, we've got much more potential for solar energy, being one of the sunniest places on Earth, but we're lagging even on that.
Energy storage is a huge problem with many renewables. Much of the time, peak usage occurs when the sun is setting or all the way down. We don't have the battery technology (or other alternatives)...
Why build a coal power station which still produces some CO2 emissions when solar panels don't produce any emissions? That doesn't make sense.
Energy storage is a huge problem with many renewables. Much of the time, peak usage occurs when the sun is setting or all the way down. We don't have the battery technology (or other alternatives) to be able to store anywhere near the amount of power we would need to store the required amount of energy. Planet Money did a segment on it. It's a huge problem that people rarely talk about. In the medium term, we need a mix of renewables (different types), nuclear, and fossil fuels.
The Australian federal government has just embarked on building a huge hydro power storage facility, called Snowy 2.0 (it's an upgrade of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, which is a hydroelectric...
The Australian federal government has just embarked on building a huge hydro power storage facility, called Snowy 2.0 (it's an upgrade of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, which is a hydroelectric generator built back in the 1950s). We have the world's biggest lithium-ion battery in South Australia, courtesy of Elon Musk. Energy storage is becoming less of a problem.
As for nuclear power, why replace one polluting waste product (carbon dioxide) for another (radioactive waste)?
Solar plants with latent heat energy storage can operate for 15 hours on a "charge"
We don't have the battery technology (or other alternatives) to be able to store anywhere near the amount of power we would need to store the required amount of energy.
We already have fossil fuel plants though and very few are actually near retirement. Why build more? Solar is great for daytime usage before you even consider thermal solar. Daytime is when a lot...
We already have fossil fuel plants though and very few are actually near retirement. Why build more?
Solar is great for daytime usage before you even consider thermal solar. Daytime is when a lot of businesses have peak energy use and things like Air Conditioning run most which is a huge power draw.
For night time (excluding thermal solar) you have wind power still running at high efficiency as well as things like pumped storage (which can be powered by solar). Throw in geothermal (where that is possible) and tidal power and the argument for nuclear and new fossil fuel power falls down.
Battery storage is also coming ahead in leaps and bounds. Especially when in a distributed capacity (at the point of use) you reduce the strain on transmission networks while being viable as those older fossil fuel plants inevitably start to go offline.
I am not one who burns tires on Earth Day, I promise! Sounds like a fairly terrible idea to me, cheaper is not always better, and I can also promise the savings will not be passed along to the customers. The replacement doesn't sound well thought out:
In Karlsruhe, Germany they have a high-efficiency low-emissions plant that produces more power than all of their "portfolio resources" combined.
In Japan they are even more efficient, and they are getting better all the time at squeezing every ounce of energy from the coal. What surprises me is that Australia does not have more tidal power generating systems in operation. There are some powerful currents at work and with the population more or less concentrated along the coasts it makes sense in my head.
Why build a coal power station which still produces some CO2 emissions when solar panels don't produce any emissions? That doesn't make sense.
As for tidal power, we've got much more potential for solar energy, being one of the sunniest places on Earth, but we're lagging even on that.
Energy storage is a huge problem with many renewables. Much of the time, peak usage occurs when the sun is setting or all the way down. We don't have the battery technology (or other alternatives) to be able to store anywhere near the amount of power we would need to store the required amount of energy. Planet Money did a segment on it. It's a huge problem that people rarely talk about. In the medium term, we need a mix of renewables (different types), nuclear, and fossil fuels.
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/pt/2018/06/npr-s-planet-money-features-the-world-s-biggest-battery.html
The Australian federal government has just embarked on building a huge hydro power storage facility, called Snowy 2.0 (it's an upgrade of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, which is a hydroelectric generator built back in the 1950s). We have the world's biggest lithium-ion battery in South Australia, courtesy of Elon Musk. Energy storage is becoming less of a problem.
As for nuclear power, why replace one polluting waste product (carbon dioxide) for another (radioactive waste)?
Solar plants with latent heat energy storage can operate for 15 hours on a "charge"
We already have fossil fuel plants though and very few are actually near retirement. Why build more?
Solar is great for daytime usage before you even consider thermal solar. Daytime is when a lot of businesses have peak energy use and things like Air Conditioning run most which is a huge power draw.
For night time (excluding thermal solar) you have wind power still running at high efficiency as well as things like pumped storage (which can be powered by solar). Throw in geothermal (where that is possible) and tidal power and the argument for nuclear and new fossil fuel power falls down.
Battery storage is also coming ahead in leaps and bounds. Especially when in a distributed capacity (at the point of use) you reduce the strain on transmission networks while being viable as those older fossil fuel plants inevitably start to go offline.
47.5% isn't great... State of the art is 60%+, for combined cycles