1. Jellyfish on the march
This impressive bloom of blue blubber jellyfish showed up a few weeks ago beached at Deception Bay, just north of Brisbane:
Tag Archives: Solar power
Gas, pumped storage and energy futures
Craig Emerson says we can get the gas we need, but is it necessary?
Craig Emerson has an article in the AFR, also on his site, suggesting that politicians need to urgently turn their minds to gas supply in east Australia. Emerson had warned them back in 2014, but they took no notice, and AEMO assured everyone there was no problem.
Suddenly there is. The price of gas-fired electricity threatens manufacturing jobs, and gas is needed to replace coal-fired power. Continue reading Gas, pumped storage and energy futures
Climate clippings 191
1. Tesla solar roof cheaper than regular roof, with electricity “a bonus”
- Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has again set tongues wagging, this time with his declaration last week that his newly launched integrated solar roof tiles could actually cost less to install than a regular roof – making the renewable electricity they produce “just a bonus”. Continue reading Climate clippings 191
Grid-scale battery storage: can it happen in Australia?
David Leitch’s article Battery storage: Bad advice about costs is fooling Australian governments reviews two American reports on grid-scale battery storage in the states of Texas and Massachusetts. He says the reports:
- are detailed, professionally modelled and far more forward looking and sophisticated than anything so far produced by traditional Australian electricity consultants such as Jacobs, Frontier, IES, Ernst & Young or ACIL Allen.
Leitch, the principal of ITK says in their view:
- Australia is being held back, in part, because consultants in Australia provide advice to federal and state governments based on expensive models that are basically out of date. The models don’t, and in fact can’t, take an integrated (whole of system) view.
Continue reading Grid-scale battery storage: can it happen in Australia?
Climate clippings 188
1. Electric car revolution may drive oil ‘investor death spiral’
Bloomberg is warning that the multi-trillion-dollar ‘big crash’ in oil investments could start as soon as 2023. However, the smart money is bound to move earlier. Here’s the progress of electric car sales:
Climate clippings 185
1. Linking extreme weather events to climate change
In what is called ‘attribution science’ climate scientists are getting better at analysing how much climate change has influenced particular extreme weather events.
In short, it is no longer a question of weather there is an influence, rather how much.
It would be useful to know, for example, whether the kind of storm that hit South Australia is still a once in 50 years event. Continue reading Climate clippings 185
Climate clippings 181
1. Solar delivers cheapest electricity ‘ever, anywhere, by any technology’
Half the price of coal!
- In last week’s energy auction, Chile accepted a bid from Spanish developer Solarpack Corp. Tecnologica for 120 megawatts of solar at the stunning price of $29.10 per megawatt-hour (2.91 cents per kilowatt-hour or kwh). This beats the 2.99 cents/kwh bid Dubai received recently for 800 megawatts. For context, the average residential price for electricity in the United States is 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Climate clippings 177
1. Potential One Nation senator wants climate scepticism taught in schools
His boss, Pauline Hanson, thinks he has the “true facts”, and in denialists quarters he has gained a reputation for exposing corruption in the IPCC, the CSIRO and elsewhere. Continue reading Climate clippings 177
Bloomberg’s New energy outlook, 2016
In Climate clippings 175, Item 4, I made reference to the Bloomberg New energy outlook, 2016 report which identifies eight “massive” shifts coming soon to power markets. In this post I’d like to take a closer look.
The summary sentence tells us that “coal and gas will begin their terminal decline in less than a decade”. Frequently the title of an article and the summary lead-in sentence are not written by the authors. In this case the “terminal decline” of coal and gas is more than a little misleading. Continue reading Bloomberg’s New energy outlook, 2016
Climate clippings 171
1. 3D solar towers
MIT researchers have developed and tested a range of 3D solar towers to achieve power output that is up to 20 times greater than traditional fixed flat solar panels with the same base area. Here is an example of two of the models tested: Continue reading Climate clippings 171
Climate clippings 163
1. Tesla Powerwall explained
- The Powerwall is a 7 kilowatt hour (kWh) lithium-ion-battery system that stores electricity generated from rooftop solar panels (or PV panels) during the day so that electricity can be used at night during the peak-usage times.
Most existing solar panel owners will need to obtain a new inverter to connect with the grid. Continue reading Climate clippings 163
SA green energy crisis
South Australia has rightly been acclaimed as a leader in renewable energy. Already 38% of their electricity comes from wind and solar. Yet
- Futures contracts on the ASX Energy market for electricity delivered in 2016-2018 are between $86 and $90 a MWh in South Australia, compared with between just $37 and $41 MWh in Victoria and between $43 and $48 MWh in NSW.
What’s going on? Continue reading SA green energy crisis