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Rango said..
If only there was a reliable emmisions free form of energy that could be available 24hrs a day .

Geothermal 24h 365

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Macroscien said..

Rango said..
If only there was a reliable emmisions free form of energy that could be available 24hrs a day .

Geothermal 24h 365

Fusion tech is set to unlock near-limitless ultra-deep geothermal energy (newatlas.com)

newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-millimeter-wave-drill/

That'll never make enough money or taxes for our leaders.
Besides,the greens will never approve of stabbing the heart of Mother Earth.

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kk said..
So now WA is going to phase out all guvment owned coal power stations and spend a **** tonne on wind power.

They will also encourage others to build storage especially pumped Hydro.

To me the goverment should be investing in the storage, I mean they can start by storing the off peak coal power when the sun is shining.

Is it really all just about politics and keeping the tree huggers happy or am I missing something?

There is no practical or economic way of storing energy at the scale needed. Pumped hydro is not a thing in Australia except for a very few circumstances that make no difference. Batteries currently are just too expensive, like 5-10 times more expensive than nuclear if you want to try to compare storage against generation.

You say "investing in storage" and many criticise governments for lack of policy planning, but the reality is that we have very few options for energy at the level we demand it. You can't invest and policy your way out of hard reality.

Coal / Gas / Nuclear. The elephant in the room is that irrespective of how much money we burn on wind and solar we still need at least 2 of those 3 to supply at least 60% of our power generation needs. Hard facts, ignored by most.

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Paradox said..

There is no practical or economic way of storing energy at the scale needed. Pumped hydro is not a thing in Australia except for a very few circumstances that make no difference.

You better tell the people who have been studying the subject that they have it all wrong

theconversation.com/want-energy-storage-here-are-22-000-sites-for-pumped-hydro-across-australia-84275

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Paradox said..
There is no practical or economic way of storing energy at the scale needed. Pumped hydro is not a thing in Australia except for a very few circumstances that make no difference. Batteries currently are just too expensive, like 5-10 times more expensive than nuclear if you want to try to compare storage against generation.

You say "investing in storage" and many criticise governments for lack of policy planning, but the reality is that we have very few options for energy at the level we demand it. You can't invest and policy your way out of hard reality.

Coal / Gas / Nuclear. The elephant in the room is that irrespective of how much money we burn on wind and solar we still need at least 2 of those 3 to supply at least 60% of our power generation needs. Hard facts, ignored by most.

You've made no mention of hydrogen. I've no idea how the value chain works out, but Twiggy is happy enough to be placing a large bet on it.

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Mr Milk said..

You better tell the people who have been studying the subject that they have it all wrong

theconversation.com/want-energy-storage-here-are-22-000-sites-for-pumped-hydro-across-australia-84275

Plenty of people who actually work in the industry have commented on that study for what it is worth. It was done by computer GIS people on a computer, in a university. Identifyng terrain that fits a plugged in profile inputted into a model, is very different to assessing it's suitability for actually storing water, let alone suitability for actually building a dam you can generate electricity from, let alone enough electricity to make it worthwhile.

Small things like suitable geological features, environmental impacts and current land useage were all a non parameter, let alone the fact that most turned out to be either on private property or in a National Park.

The big kicker though was where was the water coming from to fill them? and more importantly were was the water coming from to replace the significant evaporation loss Australia tend to have....

There is a reason nothing has happened to any of it in the last 5 years since it was released.

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Harrow said..

You've made no mention of hydrogen. I've no idea how the value chain works out, but Twiggy is happy enough to be placing a large bet on it.

Hydrogen is a non starter. It is not new tech and there is a reason no one has touched it for the 100years it could have been used as a fuel. It is very expensive and a pain to work with.

Twiggy is interested in making money and raising his profile. When it comes to this sort of stuff he is all gung ho but is not using his own money, he is using others, including a lot of taxpayers money.

Good discussion on Hydrogen I read yesteday, good read and matches with what every other expert I listen to has said.

www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-6-13-hydrogen-is-not-a-solution-to-the-energy-storage-conundrum?fbclid=IwAR3I08RERc9YGvT8Si6VfsoXcr3TLc7ICJk0ypUEIdXThFYvRhy3vqWSkgg

e360.yale.edu/features/beyond-magical-thinking-time-to-get-real-about-climate-change

Bit of a slap in the face for net zero .

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Harrow said..

You've made no mention of hydrogen. I've no idea how the value chain works out, but Twiggy is happy enough to be placing a large bet on it.

His own money probably isn't being invested. It would be other peoples money and the taxpayers paying for it. Hydrogen storage is another scam designed to make a few people rich at the expense of everyone else.

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Rango said..
e360.yale.edu/features/beyond-magical-thinking-time-to-get-real-about-climate-change

Bit of a slap in the face for net zero .

That is one of the best written pieces on the topic I have seen for some time.

A dose of reality. That first chart talkes in spades. The west has made massive changes to CO2 emissions. Anything further we do now is peanuts in the overall global perspective. Australia is part of the little purple Ociania band near the top.... Tell me again why spending massive amounts of money that could go to healthcare and education is worth it again?

^^ Yes

and the biggest - international transport on ships etc.
We can make cars here but don't. They get shipped in
Everyone has to have a new phone every year and AV system worth $10K and god-knows what else.... all sent here in sea containers. The frothing over the latest phone that essentially does the same thing as the last one is just nuts. We could list hundreds of examples of that excess if we put out minds to it.

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Mark _australia said..
^^ Yes

and the biggest - international transport on ships etc.
We can make cars here but don't. They get shipped in
Everyone has to have a new phone every year and AV system worth $10K and god-knows what else.... all sent here in sea containers. The frothing over the latest phone that essentially does the same thing as the last one is just nuts. We could list hundreds of examples of that excess if we put out minds to it.

Yes. Keep the same car for 10 - 15 yrs. Problem solved.

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Mr Milk said..

Macroscien said..

Rango said..
If only there was a reliable emmisions free form of energy that could be available 24hrs a day .

Geothermal 24h 365

Fusion tech is set to unlock near-limitless ultra-deep geothermal energy (newatlas.com)

newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-millimeter-wave-drill/

lovely article !

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Harrow said..

Paradox said..
There is no practical or economic way of storing energy at the scale needed. Pumped hydro is not a thing in Australia except for a very few circumstances that make no difference. Batteries currently are just too expensive, like 5-10 times more expensive than nuclear if you want to try to compare storage against generation.

You say "investing in storage" and many criticise governments for lack of policy planning, but the reality is that we have very few options for energy at the level we demand it. You can't invest and policy your way out of hard reality.

Coal / Gas / Nuclear. The elephant in the room is that irrespective of how much money we burn on wind and solar we still need at least 2 of those 3 to supply at least 60% of our power generation needs. Hard facts, ignored by most.

You've made no mention of hydrogen. I've no idea how the value chain works out, but Twiggy is happy enough to be placing a large bet on it.

Hydrogen seems to be scam.
What is the point to involve hydrogen in energy cycle and loose 75% efficiency in process ?
Which means that 3/4 of your electricity is lost
battery storage - ok
water pumping - ok
but my favorite is transmit ion without the need to storage.
If we imagine limitless tramsmition spannig the world we may not need much storage at all.
Cost of transmition cable is cheaper then massive battery storage

the only problem is overland transmit ion tower,
we need technology, even cheap trenching or tunneling instead

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Macroscien said..

Mr Milk said..

Macroscien said..

Rango said..
If only there was a reliable emmisions free form of energy that could be available 24hrs a day .

Geothermal 24h 365

Fusion tech is set to unlock near-limitless ultra-deep geothermal energy (newatlas.com)

newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-millimeter-wave-drill/

lovely article !

So why would you need to bother drilling the holes if nuclear fusion was available which is needed to drill.
Lots of "could" in that article which is science terms for"probably not" or "maybe".

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Rango said..

Macroscien said..

Mr Milk said..

Macroscien said..

Rango said..
If only there was a reliable emmisions free form of energy that could be available 24hrs a day .

Geothermal 24h 365

Fusion tech is set to unlock near-limitless ultra-deep geothermal energy (newatlas.com)

newatlas.com/energy/quaise-deep-geothermal-millimeter-wave-drill/

lovely article !

So why would you need to bother drilling the holes if nuclear fusion was available which is needed to drill.
Lots of "could" in that article which is science terms for"probably not" or "maybe".

Interesting is that geothermal do increase surface temperature,
Balance of energy heating Earth surface increase.I wonder if theoretically all energy humans use is geothermal based - how that may effect global temperature? If taht is negligent ( small im comparison to all solar irradiation) or make significant change to climate ?

Yeah, but nah, but yeah, but nah, but..... not all geothermal thingys are the same.

Didn't that great modern day scientist-expert-preacher Tim Flannery get a $100m grant to turn the warm rocks of SA into "all the energy we need for centuries to come" back in 2008 or whenever it was ?

- except it turned out he was both chief government climate change dude and also employed by the company that got the $100m. And then it turned out they achieved nothing (except proving they couldn't make it work), shut everything down, took the cash and sailed off into the sunset. $100m of tax payers cash to prove it wasn't the answer. Apparently extracting energy from two things that are not very different in temperature isn't very efficient. ****-me. I could have told them that for $99m, save $1m to be wasted somewhere else.

And this came up the other day. No **** Sherlock.

www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-30/winton-council-legal-action-geothermal-plant-failure/101093796

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Rango said..

So why would you need to bother drilling the holes if nuclear fusion was available which is needed to drill.
Lots of "could" in that article which is science terms for"probably not" or "maybe".

Where do you get the idea that nuclear fusion powers the drill? It uses a mm wavelength laser to fuse the rock is how I read it.

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Paradox said..
Hydrogen is a non starter. It is not new tech and there is a reason no one has touched it for the 100years it could have been used as a fuel. It is very expensive and a pain to work with.

Twiggy is interested in making money and raising his profile. When it comes to this sort of stuff he is all gung ho but is not using his own money, he is using others, including a lot of taxpayers money.

Good discussion on Hydrogen I read yesteday, good read and matches with what every other expert I listen to has said.

www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-6-13-hydrogen-is-not-a-solution-to-the-energy-storage-conundrum?fbclid=IwAR3I08RERc9YGvT8Si6VfsoXcr3TLc7ICJk0ypUEIdXThFYvRhy3vqWSkgg

The analysis in this paper appears to be flawed. It says that they have assumed that you have enough solar and wind generation to produce all the energy you need over a year in total and then worked out how much storage you would then need to get through the solar and wind droughts. The problem with this approach is that it is incomplete and does not consider finding the optimal least-cost outcome by overbuilding the solar and wind generation to reduce the amount of storage that you would need. Perhaps the conclusion reached would be similar, or it might be quite different. You really don't know until you do it properly.

I'll run the numbers for Australia in the next couple of weeks. (As irrelevant as that might be, given the development occurring in Asia.)

Also, found this interesting...
newatlas.com/aircraft/aviation-h2-ammonia-fuel-jet-aircraft/

Maybe we should harness the energy from the electrical brain synapses of everyone in parliament house in Canberra a la Matrix style ?

Would be a better use for them than whatever they do now. Although if brain output power is a function of brain activity then it probably wouldn't be a very efficient system.

Especially from the members for the Greens.

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Mobydisc said..
His own money probably isn't being invested. It would be other peoples money and the taxpayers paying for it. Hydrogen storage is another scam designed to make a few people rich at the expense of everyone else.

One very big company wants a part of it

www.smh.com.au/national/western-australia/bp-backs-giant-44b-green-hydrogen-project-in-country-s-north-west-20220615-p5atsf.html

What surprises me is I don't hear much talk of the other "colors" of hydrogen.


www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/hydrogen-colour-spectrum#:~:text=Turquoise%20hydrogen%20is%20made%20using,being%20permanently%20stored%20or%20used.

fsr.eui.eu/between-green-and-blue-a-debate-on-turquoise-hydrogen/


I think the turquoise one using methane and solar power to split out the hydrogen and solid carbon.

Solid carbon usable and stable.

If its biomethane such as landfill or piggery waste used to supply the methane its actually carbon positive. But coal seam gas or lng could be the feedstock instead. Avoids having to supply good pure water to split as well.

Here's a fun fact. in 1974, the Daytona 500 was reduced to 450 miles in response to the oil crisis. No doubt it had a profound impact.

And if you're in need of a laugh, check out this idea... (have to laugh, or else you'll cry at realising the idea could advance this far)
solarroadways.com/

Not sure of the use of the word green attached to the word hydrogen about 30x in that article.

Anyone wanna do the math on the amount of rare earths needed to build 25mil solar panels and the mass resources to build a windfarm of that size? Whats the lifespan on the stuff? Do we spend 10yrs destroying the environment to build the generating capacity to get 10yrs of 'free' and 'green' hydrogen?

Its a nice big BP advertisement but I'd like to hear the net effect, not grandiose statements about how we make green hydrogen for free renewable renewable free green renewable free blah blah

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Mr Milk said..

Mobydisc said..
His own money probably isn't being invested. It would be other peoples money and the taxpayers paying for it. Hydrogen storage is another scam designed to make a few people rich at the expense of everyone else.

One very big company wants a part of it

www.smh.com.au/national/western-australia/bp-backs-giant-44b-green-hydrogen-project-in-country-s-north-west-20220615-p5atsf.html

What a waste of energy! ?
If we use this same amount of electricity to process aluminium or copper ore the monetary gain will be 20x greater or more!
All green hydrogen generation oncepts are based on electricity cost 1 cent oer kwh. Unrealistic long term.
Beside even the biggest customer for hydrogen , Japan come to the same conclusion. Green hydrogen is complete waste of money and electricity. Obviously unless somebody like taxpayers in other country subsidise and sell below costs as we are going to do.

^^^
Solar PV doesn't use rare earth metals. They go into magnets and touch screen displays. Refining them does create nasty waste, but, luckily,

www.newscientist.com/article/2307608-rare-earth-elements-for-smartphones-can-be-extracted-from-coal-waste/

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Mark _australia said..
Not sure of the use of the word green attached to the word hydrogen about 30x in that article.

Anyone wanna do the math on the amount of rare earths needed to build 25mil solar panels and the mass resources to build a windfarm of that size? Whats the lifespan on the stuff? Do we spend 10yrs destroying the environment to build the generating capacity to get 10yrs of 'free' and 'green' hydrogen?

Its a nice big BP advertisement but I'd like to hear the net effect, not grandiose statements about how we make green hydrogen for free renewable renewable free green renewable free blah blah

Mark is right. There is nothing green about thousands of windmills and millions of solar panels.
Let UK make this BP hydrogen scam on their tiny Island and leave us alone.