New Catallaxy

Wind watch 10 Sept 2022

While the transition from coal and gas in the western world, including Australia, has hit the wall, all the talk in progressive circles is about accelerating the transition with massive expenditure on intermittent generation, transmission lines and storage. Parallel worlds in collision!

Trillions of dollars spent over 20 years have shifted the needle on the share of fossil fuels in gross power output from 86% to 84%!

Mark Mills explains in two 5-minute videos why the green energy transition is not happening

Mark Mills on the limit of wind and solar power

South Australia is the wind-leading state in Australia, they even blew up their last coal stations to prove the point. Now they demonstrate the failure of the green transition because whenever the wind is low, like this morning, they import power and burn a lot of gas, sometimes diesel as well!

Across the NEM at 7am the wind was good, 40% of installed capacity compared with the average of 29% and it was delivering 20% of the demand for power. Coal provided two thirds of demand, hydro 6% and solar 4%.

In SA the wind was 20% of installed capacity, 40% of demand was imported and 35% of local generation was gas.

Rafe Champion

18 responses to “Wind watch 10 Sept 2022”

  1. wal1957 Avatar
    wal1957

    PragerU produce very informative truths around the renewable energy myths.
    It’s a pity that they will never be seen by 99% of the population

    3
  2. flyingduk Avatar
    flyingduk

    Its all deliberate – the real agenda here is destruction of the west. Those driving this KNOW it wont work – thats the point. Our politicians are merely the middlemen – pandering to their ‘fat dumb and lazy’ constituents – useful idiots all.

    20
  3. Rafe Champion Avatar
    Rafe Champion

    wal1957 the thing is for the 1% to be more effective in communication, without wasting time on people who will never change their minds. Enger the National(Energy) Information Network!
    When people start to feel the pain of power bills they will be more receptive to our message, especially if we don’t get sucked into public debates about climate change.
    We can win the climate debate after we establish credibility by talking about things that people understand and care about, like their power bills and wind droughts.
    Even Monty will understand eventually.

    9
  4. Johnny Rotten Avatar
    Johnny Rotten

    Even Monty will understand eventually.

    Don’t bet on it and as always, gamble responsibly…………………………….

    7
  5. mem Avatar
    mem

    Rafe thanks for your work. Go hard and attack at the weak points which you have done today. South Australia was meant to be the RE shining example but at every point it fails.
    1. There is no viable storage system yet invented that can store sufficient wind and solar power to stabilize the total grid when the sun doesn’t shine (every night) and the wind doesn’t blow (frequently and unpredictably).
    2.To implement a grid of renewables to could take over from coal and gas even when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, will require vast tracts of land and a wire networks that will create far more damage to the environment than coal or gas mining and it still won’t work because of the instability.
    3 The more solar and wind installed the more gas and diesel needed to stabilize the system. At times in Australia this will be up to 90% of supplied power and in in some states 100% of power. So what you would be doing is duplicating the system and the costs.

    8
  6. Old bloke Avatar
    Old bloke

    South Australia is the wind-leading state in Australia, they even blew up their last coal stations to prove the point.

    Germany mothballed their coal and nuclear power plants and switched to imported gas as imported gas is greener somehow. The imported gas flow has stopped so now they are restarting their legacy power plants to keep the lights on.

    Germany kept their power plants, South Australia and Victoria blew up their coal power plants, ergo, the Krauts are smarter than the average South Australian and Victorian.

    15
  7. Old bloke Avatar
    Old bloke

    Even Monty will understand eventually.

    Good old Rafe, ever the optimist.

    8
  8. NoFixedAddress Avatar
    NoFixedAddress

    Rafe

    what is the site where you and Peter C post at?

    1
  9. Rafe Champion Avatar
    Rafe Champion

    In response to NoFixedAddress, this is the only blog that we use and we have not been regular lately although I have decided to be regular again.
    The Energy Realists post our briefing notes on the site that was RiteOn which is now changing its function to be disconnected from political lobbying and instead providing a place for where various groups can display their wares. https://www.riteon.org.au/netzero-casualties/

    The Energy Realists have a site of our own but it is still under construction, we have most of the notes there but the rest is mostly filler to provide a template for more material when we can find the time and energy to work on it. https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/briefing-notes

    1
  10. NoFixedAddress Avatar
    NoFixedAddress

    thanks Rafe.

    1
  11. Hubris Avatar
    Hubris

    Since it’s obvious that pv and wind aren’t the same as coal or gas plant it’s relevant only to compare total energy produced rather than incidental generation. Current debates are either totally renewable bias or total fossil bias.
    Fair to say we’ve set up a fairly rapid retirement of large base load while planning not much in replacement. Hence aemos recent remarks.

  12. mem Avatar
    mem

    The current temperature trend could be heading downwards, and if it continues the scientific arguments for Net Zero simply disappear. https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/10/eight-year-trend-in-global-cooling-shown-by-satellite-record/

    2
  13. Rafe Champion Avatar
    Rafe Champion

    Recent comments from AEMO warning of troubles ahead signal that the adults in the room have found their voice, but far too late since the game has been lost since PM Turnbull turned to Audre Zibelman, a politically connected software vendor and wrecker of the New York power system, to head up AEMO and do the same thing here.

    1
  14. NoFixedAddress Avatar
    NoFixedAddress

    also see,

    U.K Energy Reaches Crisis Point, Britain Announces New Oil and Gas Leases and Lifts Moratorium on Fracking
    September 10, 2022 | Sundance

  15. JohnL Avatar
    JohnL

    This machine has to move 500 tons of refined soil/mineral to create a lithium car battery. It consumes 450 litres of fuel in 12 hours of work.
    Lithium is refined from the mineral using sulphuric acid. A lithium mine is estimated at 75 loads of sulphuric acid per day.
    An open mine will consume billions of litres of groundwater, pollute aquifers and produce mountains of toxic waste. According to Lithium Americas citing The New York Times estimates, a mine will use 12,200 liters of water per second to produce 66,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year.
    When the source of lithium is an alkaline brine lake, the standard lithium extraction technique is to evaporate the brine water. Lithium chloride turns into hydroxide salt or carbonate and is or is passed through an evaporation stage.
    An electric car battery, say a Tesla, is made of 11 pounds of lithium, 27 pounds of nickel, 19 pounds of manganese, 13 pounds of cobalt, 90 pounds of copper, and 181 pounds of aluminum, steel and plastic, with an average of 385 pounds of mine Raux, what. and they were to be mined and treated on a battery that simply stores the electricity.. Electricity produced by oil, gas, coal, nuclear power or water and a tiny fraction of wind and solar..
    Europe’s largest lithium mine will be in Spain: the Las Navas settlement, and will be able to extract 1.2 million tonnes of material annually, which will result in 30,000 tonnes of lithium sulfate usable for road batteries Electric Towers.
    After analyzing the data, we can assure that manufacturing an electric car is 70% more polluted than a petrol car.
    So we wonder why the climate change alarm only concerns combustion vehicles?

    4
  16. Mantaray Avatar
    Mantaray

    I’m wondering if new cats are really as naive as they constantly appear to be….

    Since we know the elitists are 100% all-in on culling as many of the little people as they can without them being culled themselves by the little people in return…I cannot fathom why new Cats make future energy-need-projections as if the elites give a shyte about providing enough electricity to allow US a comfortable existence. They do not.

    It’s as if a train-load of Jews arriving at Auschwitz was puzzled at the lack of facilities “When there are six million of us in camps how will they clothe and feed us all? I’ve calculated they can’t.” Duh!

    Geez New Cats. Wake Up. Haven’t the gene-jab mandates with their ever-increasing excess-deaths tallies taught you anything at all? The e3ntire renewables scam is 100% nothing-to-do with providing sufficient power to the masses. NOTHING AT ALL!

    3
  17. Figures Avatar
    Figures

    Mantaray is spot on.

    The only meaningful response any right winger can give is to say “Yep. Leftists are right about climate change and, as a reward, leftists will lead the way by only using renewables.”

    1
  18. Boambee John Avatar
    Boambee John

    Figuressays:
    September 12, 2022 at 2:03 pm
    Mantaray is spot on.

    The only meaningful response any right winger can give is to say “Yep. Leftists are right about climate change and, as a reward, leftists will lead the way by only using renewables.”

    I’ve already proposed that to some leftists. Only one responded to the challenge, with a bleat that household batteries are “not economic”.

    The thought that grid scale batteries might be even less economic apparently did not enter his thick head.

    3

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