Australia has too many electricity distributors shipping profits overseas instead of upgrading the grid
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, this feels like a good place for Hydrogen power to step in.
One of the oft repeated concerns is that generating hydrogen to power vehicles the takes a lot of energy, which often comes from dirty sources.
One of the oft repeated issues for solar (or wind etc) is that it's available at certain times and not in and of itself storable or transportable, so excess is lost.
So, take the excess solar energy, produce hydrogen and store for off-peak times or to distribute.
Seems like a win to me.
V2G and V2H is here, so you'll be able to store there and draw down overnight in a suitable ecar.
A large pumped hydro in Qld has been cancelled by the new Lib government, so won't be able to store it there. Snowy Hydro pumped storage is way behind schedule and locally Redflow went backrupt, so huge Zinc Flow storage batteries arent available to rollout to store excess energy and Lithuim is a shitty choice for large grid batteries.
Subsidise home battery systems so that the excess is stored locally instead of going back into the grid.
Which also has the additional benefit for homeowners of local backup power in the case of a blackout :)
How else will they be able to continue justify pulling coal out of the ground if they have a robust power grid based on renewables
No such thing as too much solar to anyone but an oil man
Not currently, no. But it’s easy to envision a future where we have to do something with solar production in excess of power needs when all forms of energy capture are exhausted.
Desalination, aluminum recycling, ad infinitum. Anyone who says excess solar is an insurmountable problem is manipulating you.
Ai training is a great one that the product isn't hard to move so you can smack it wherever the grid has too much power.
Hydrogen/electro chemistry is another use of too much batteries.
Speaking of too much battery, an EV range is often 3-5 times daily use (60km average per day is vehicle average, but many use less). It's not a big deal to have several days worth of fuel in your tank, and so V2G is a good way to have too much batteries, and let consumers profit from their vehicle. This is the app that exterminates oil and other FFs. Hydrogen or your listed apps are good ways to drain having too much battery charge for the next day.
I expect to eventually see a lot of storage as long term investment, especially gravity, flywheel, and molten salt due to cheap safety.
Just read the same article about CA last week; too much solar to be used so the excess solar generated, get this, was sold-often at a loss--to Arizona(the fact AZ can't make it's own sufficient solar shows the willful neglect, economic and political nature of energy!) and it lowered AZ bills but not CA. We're back to energy traders and Enron price manipulations in the US after 20 years.
Batteries will fix much of it but until the grid has proper storage consumers getting fucked by businesses per usual.
What's also interesting to me is that we here in Utah used to (and maybe still do?) sell dirty electricity to CA (we produce a lot from coal and gas), because they didn't have sufficient base supply.
CA really needs effective base power supply, whether that's batteries or some other clean-ish energy source/storage solution. Meanwhile, electricity here in Utah is quite cheap at $0.12/kWh-ish, which is nice, and something like 1/3 of what CA charges.
Every smart person told them, "update the grids before adding solar."
But did they listen? No. Because updating the grids was an expensive and difficult endeavour and they just wanted to lower their costs first.
Obama tried to push grid upgrades for years, kept getting shot down. His plans would all be done by now. Throw in the fuel economy requirements of 54.5 mpg requirements for cars and light trucks and we would have seen billions of barrels of oil not being needed. (Lower gas prices as well). Granted it wasn't everything, but it was what we needed to start doing. Now 13, 14 years later after Trump rolled back those fuel efficiency policies as much as he could because it cost manufacturers more money in research, we are much closer to a rock we can't live on and haven't advanced nearly enough. So we voted in Drill Baby Drill to finish off the rock.
Sometimes the best way to get things done is to wedge your way in and cause a problem. It sucks, but humans be humaning
Which is so odd to me, because electricity just a couple states over is about 1/3 the cost vs CA. I pay $0.12/kWh in UT, whereas CA pays more like $0.32/kWh.
If we look at solar generation, we're doing pretty well here in Utah vs other states in the US (source). Taking a rough average of that data, here's what the numbers look like:
- California - 8500 MWh, or ~217 MWh per million people
- Utah - 650 MWh, or ~203 MWh per million people
- Texas - 4800 MWh, or about 160 MWh per million people
- Arizona - 1700 MWh, or about 242 MWh per million people
I just don't understand why California electricity prices are so high. It's not like they're generating a ton more than other states in the area or anything.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the figures, but the source I quoted didn't say anything about per-capita production, so I think it's total for the state.
California rates are high because everyone has to pay for forest fires. Everyone except shareholders.
I paid $0.52/kWh in California before I moved out of state
Even more with fees tacked on.
Wow, that's nuts. After all fees, I'm around $0.12-0.13/kWh, and it seems we generate a similar amount of solar.
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That's what hydrogen production from water electrolysis is for.
Ohh, you gave me an idea! Given that it also happens in CA, maybe we should use the excess for freshwater production from seawater.
That still leaves the brine problem. Youve just traded one for another.
Hydrogen wouldn't cause another problem.
Some could be used in molten salt reactors/batteries, no?
I imagine so, but were talking about at best case of a 50% water 50% brine solution with reverse osmosis, and worse if it's a thermal desalination plant. It's a fuck ton of liquid, more than we could ever hope to use in a reactor like that.
Some other ideas are evaporate the brine and use the salt for roads in winter, but again, it's more than we could manage at scale, and salting roads isn't ideal either.
Are you saying that we could make use of sodium metal for batteries of all sorts at reasonable prices due to it's over abundance by just getting more of it using solar power?
I don't know if the output of the desalination is what we actually need or how much refinement it would need, but the salt output would probably still outpace our ability to use it. Sodium is just 1 factor of building these newer batteries.
e.g Tesla has a factory with a 40gwh storage output when fully scaled, and it's taken years to get there. Cells weren't the only factor in that.
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Ka...booom!
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We are sick of the arseholes that are running the power companies, and we are sick of the outrageous prices they are charging for electricity.
Simple as that.
10 years ago, my gas bill was $80 a month. Today (and nothing has changed) it is almost $300 a month. Same shit has happened with Electricity and water. They are fucking scum.
They can go fuck themselves. If there was a free version of gas like electricity, I would install it in an instant. (I only use gas for kitchen hob, my BBQ outside - both of which get fuck all use, and my hot water which only really gets used when I wash my balls in the morning.) 300% price hike in 10 years.... They can all suck my balls,
Check if your state government offers any upgrade incentives. Most of them offer rebates for upgrading appliances, e.g. for upgrades to heat pump water heaters.
Sounds like you should be in the market for an electric boiler and induction cooktop.
Seriously... If he's spending ~3k a year on gas and even half of that is cooking, an induction stove would pay for itself within a few years.
Same for the water heater. The fossil fuel industry didn't spend decades promoting gas because it was the most efficient option.
It's not even all usage, it's all the other fees they slap on to make more profit.
You could save money on gas by not washing your balls every morning, seeing as you're planning on getting the energy company execs to suck them anyway.
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