Printable View
All good mate - I don't believe mine or Phillips post is confrontational - I think you're reading too much into our posts too. [wink11] BS and Dream on are pretty tame terms IMO.
Robust discussion is good on this subject - not enough of the nuts and bolts are discussed so terminology gets misused when people are only going of Government fluff and equally uniformed media opinion pieces.
i'll have to up my game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Homestar
Is that true?Quote:
Originally Posted by PhilipA
UK renewable energy capacity surpasses fossil fuels for first time | Environment | The Guardian
The UK ffs!
The technology to produce gigawats from renewables is ready, it's proven, it works and it's getting cheaper to build and maintain large scale. There's no debate, renewables are ready to deploy.
Norway as an example of Ev's taking over new car sales still stands tall. Cheaper models are about to hit the market, prices will be coming down for the rest of us with or without subsidies. EVs will outsell ICE globally.
Some countries take steps to speed up the transition from fossil fuels, others take steps to slow it down. So far Australia has been disappointing. There is so much potential here, and it's not some new found revelation, it's been ignored for years.
Of course we can't just shutdown all the coal stations right now, but lets not listen to any more political bull****. We do not need to invest in coal power going forward.
If you own your house, take it offgrid, and expect large scale renewable projects to replace our coal stations.
i think bolivia also had good renewable % due to lots n lots of hydro. mind you they also have blackouts daily.
...and we haven't even started talking about methane! [bigwhistle]
...it definitely sucks being a meat-eating rev-head and/or an environmental futurist in the current climate (pun intended).
Capacity and actual output are 2 very different things. Generally output is around 10 to 20% of capacity or name plate data. It is these things that can be misleading if not accounted for correctly. Renewable energy is on and off as wind/sun/etc come and go so name plate ratings will never mean actual output even on the best days.Quote:
Originally Posted by manic
And yes, the tech is here and ready and I agree 100% we should be going nuts with it. Just need someone to invest to pay for it all which is a very different debate that certain parts of can't be discussed here. We just need to stop talking about it and get on with it.
Yep, off grid is very doable now and prices dropping all the time. May go this way myself once I have paid the Jag off... [bigwhistle]
We're certainly not going to relinquish our love affair with electronic tech, effective heating, hot water, cooking, so a reliable mix of many and varied fuel and power generation sources will be essential for years to come.
I don't think anyone is suggesting non-renewable power sources should be shut down before enough renewable is online.
i think the non renewables will expire due to old age before enough renewables are ready.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeros
Nah this country has enough gas to last for many decades.
It’s happened already. Hazelwood was basically forced to shut down and we’ve seen that there isn’t enough renewable yet to cover this - I do however think closing Hazelwood was a good idea and the shortfalls are only on extreme days. Power consumption has dropped a fair bit in the last 5 years which is another reason we’ve survived ok without it. Consumption levels have plateaued recently so certainly in the short term we need to cover what we’re using now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeros
The bigger issues will come when the aging coal fired stations can no longer economically be run and the owners shut them down. This will happen in the next 10 to 15 years (Yallourn W for example is past end of life now and not expected to last another 10 years and there are many other stations up the East coast in the same condition) and we’ll still be a long way from being ready for this. Even at the most generous current projections with how much and how quickly renewables come on line, we’re still 25 years away from this - what’s going to fill the gap?
Not an easy question to answer based on the fact no one has come up with one yet. IMO the most likely way would be to really push home storage more now so prices continue to drop, but it’s still way too expensive for Families just breaking into the housing market and struggling to make ends meet. It would have to be less than half the current cost to make it feasible to mandate them in every new home, but that’s again a decade away, and then only covers new properties and those willing and able to retrofit their existing premises.
I’ll do what I can - I hope to go as much off grid as possible within a couple of years. Those that do will be a lot less worried about the whole situation.