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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tins
Yes we do. They call them “elections “, and we have them periodically. You may have noticed a few interesting results overseas recently.
Nobody is building coal powered generators in this country because legislators have made it uneconomic to do so. Legislators can change.
Actually, it's because they're uneconomic and banks won't lend money to build them, even with the Coalition's offer of subsidies: the number-crunching reveals that they'd never earn enough to break even let alone pay back the banks. The banks aren't ideologically driven, like the insurers in relation to climate change, they look at the hard numbers and allocate their funds accordingly.
As I've said before, coal mines and coal-powered power stations have been regarded internationally as "stranded assets" for several decades now. As a result they're "unbankable".
I should note that this is an area I have some professional expertise in as I worked in Asia and Europe on a number of project financings for large oil, gas and renewables projects (e.g. in Sakhalin and the North-West Shelf) and more recently did it as a subject in my Masters.
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They would be financed if State or Federal governments guaranteed the loan. Funny thats how they used to be built in the "bad old days" of State Governments taking responsibility for providing a public service.
In addition if they were guaranteed payments to provide backup services when solar and wind do not work. This is the case in UK so don't say it is not possible.
It is ideology that prevents new coal power stations and many countries in the World are building new ones. how many in China? If you argue that nobody is building them how come coal production is going up?
Regards PhilipA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
PhilipA
They would be financed if State or Federal governments guaranteed the loan. Funny thats how they used to be built in the "bad old days" of State Governments taking responsibility for providing a public service.
In addition if they were guaranteed payments to provide backup services when solar and wind do not work. This is the case in UK so don't say it is not possible.
It is ideology that prevents new coal power stations and many countries in the World are building new ones. how many in China? If you argue that nobody is building them how come coal production is going up?
Regards PhilipA
Ying and yang Phillip.
"Japanese power company and LNG importer, Kansai Electric, scrapped plans to build a liquefied natural gas power plant in Wakayama.The company originally started looking into the construction of the LNG thermal power plant with a capacity of 3.7 GW back in 1995.
“In the 1990s, our company promoted the Wakayama power plant construction project to cope with the substantial growth in the demand for electrical power; however due to factors such as decline in demand, in 2004, the construction was suspended,” Kansai Electric (Kepco) said in a statement"
Thats a "Loss of about $858 million"
" The company instead is now focused on developing /operating greener options,like nuclear and hydrogen.[biggrin][thumbsupbig]
On the flip side German is adding dirty coal a bit "government announced the continuation of this policy, meaning 1.9GW of lignite coal-fired capacity will still be added to Germany’s 45GW of coal power plant"
IF the German coalition government survives a year, I will be surprised[bigwhistle] The difference is very clear between Japan and German to me.
MG4 update- The car is back with the dealer mostly so the issues are logged officially. It is a deal breaker for me with Auto lane keeping trying to kill me or really scare me into being hyper vigilant 100% of the time. It's not just EV's the newer smart stuff is not smart enough.
The automatic adaptive cruise control is fantastic. Any car trying to drive us off the road or into oncoming traffic with "lane keeping assistance" does not pass the pub test:bat:
Tesla is having worse issues with 2,000,000 odd cars being recalled.
It's really a software update to my car and other current high tech cars required to allow me to turn off things or make them better.
The similar issues with Mercedes "issues with Mercedes lane keep assist" and other tech functions are easy to find. Landrover complaints are not hard to find either.
"I have a new 2023 RRSport and am interested in others opinions on the Lane Keep Assist functionality. I have had many vehicles with this option and two other current vehicles currently to compare this with. I feel that, when using the cruise and having the lane keep assist option activated, that the vehicle is very aggressive in the way it helps steer towards the center of the lane. Even on straight roads, I test letting the car drift slightly to one side or the other and it is very jerky, not gradual, as it brings the vehicle back into the lane. My wife actually yelled at me the other day as she was trying to sleep as it is not a smooth movement. https://www.aulro.com/afvb/image/gif...ABAAEAAAIBRAA7 I doubt there is any way to adjust the sensitivity of this but is a feature I always order on my cars….and is one I rarely use now on this one. Rather frustrated with this. Curious to see if anyone else feels the same"
I fully agree with a response to above "I don’t use it because I feel like it resists my decisions about steering a little too much. That makes me feel like I don’t have control. Like if I am overriding the cars effort to pull me away from a line, it strongly opposes me. Hope that makes sense."
The loan car is a 2017 Nissan x trail. Interesting yet no thanks.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
DiscoDB
I have a relative who was (maybe still is) one of those guys who sits in darkened rooms watching screens trading electricity.
I understand that in SA they were allowing people to sell back to the grid at the spot price. Or maybe it was just a trial.
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Originally Posted by
Captain_Rightfoot
That is exceptionally cool.
Shame the power companies don't allow end users to be able to buy/sell into the market with instant power pricing. I guess.. it's not to their advantage..
Actually, you can play in the power market if you want to, but you need to know what you're doing and/or be prepared to cop a loss on the chin:
Power prices: Households cash in on solar energy boom (afr.com)
Edit: removed the link already in the post above.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
PhilipA
They would be financed if State or Federal governments guaranteed the loan. Funny thats how they used to be built in the "bad old days" of State Governments taking responsibility for providing a public service.
In addition if they were guaranteed payments to provide backup services when solar and wind do not work. This is the case in UK so don't say it is not possible.
It is ideology that prevents new coal power stations and many countries in the World are building new ones. how many in China? If you argue that nobody is building them how come coal production is going up?
Regards PhilipA
Actually, the Coalition offered subsidies for coal powered generation and I don't think that anyone actually took them up on it. And that was after changing the clean energy council's rules to allow them to finance coal plants.
The allegations about China building heaps of new coal plants have been kicking around the internet for a few years now, but an investigation showed that few of the announced ones have actually been built and few of those actually built are operating - because it's not economic to do so.
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Evolution of the Wind Turbine
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So all the old small ones are stranded assets. ( just like coal fired power stations?)
I can recall driving from Las Vegas across the mountains to the California coast in about 1987 and passing hundreds of small wind generators which were defunct and just sitting there, the operator having gone broke.
Regards PhilipA
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Those small wind farms were built due to subsidies being offered. A bit far back in the memory banks but it was an attempt to kick start what would today be seen as green energy. At the time it was about ‘energy security’. Unfortunately there was something about the subsidies being for building without a requirement to generate any power. Took the subsidies which far exceeded the build cost and closed down. Probably a simplification of what happened
