gumnut

I’m really hoping this is a temporary problem.

There are a lot of very large batteries in the process of being built that will start to meaningfully address this issue in the next couple of years.

American exceptionalism at its finest.

This is explicitly addressed in AEMO’s Integrated System Plan but the tl;dr is that in a national grid with geographically diverse renewable generation and a little more transmission, the chances of there being a weather-related shortfall are exceedingly rare.

For these cases we have pumped hydro being built, and we can still fall back to gas peaking plants for whatever unmet demand is left.

Yes, gas is not carbon free, and it will be expensive to run in these cases, but it won’t run often, it is already built and will allow us to operate at well above 80% renewables until we can built enough long term storage to make it redundant. This meets our international abatement obligations, and more importantly reduces the area under the emissions curve, which is all that really matters tbh.

Welcome news after a depressing week of toxic energy debate here in Aus.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Energy is bid into the market at the spot price. Because the marginal cost of producing energy from renewables is so cheap, this will displace energy from all other sources when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. This is what’s already happening with the coal generators today.

By the time any nuclear gets built, there will be so much solar in the system that nuclear will have to be forcibly shut off at least 40% of the time or operate at a loss. This capacity factor is then on par with wind, so you may as well just build more of that - it’s way cheaper.

The concept of baseload power is dead and has been dead for a while. What we need is more dispatch-able generation and storage.

Melbourne, Australia

Does this apply on the dark side of Earth? I.e. during night time?

The policy will be backdated to June 1 2023

Excellent!

Same.

First Tesla and now Polestar have quit membership of the FCAI due to the automotive peak body’s misrepresentation of, and lobbying against, the government’s proposed fuel efficiency standards: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-07/tesla-quits-fcai-over-carbon-emissions-scheme/103558374

I applaud them for calling out the BS publicly. I hope others brands follow, and I hope this story increases scrutiny on the misinformation being pushed. Unfortunately, this leaves the FCAI free to adopt an even more conservative position in its advocacy without dissenting member voices.

This is exactly how Trumpism gets seeded into mainstream Australia. Dutton can fuck right off with his racist dogwhistling, and find something better to complain about.