Climate Change | PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
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Climate Change

TigerForce said:
Yeah probably relating to predicting that El Nino was to start in Sept last year.
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It was about their forecasting, insufficient warnings, lack of reliability, poor resourcing, climate change etc etc

I have to say they are very hit and miss. Even their radar info is rubbish at times. Few weeks ago set off with the Chief in the car - 8 or 9 klm trip to a restaurant. BOM radar showed zero rain, zero prediction of rain. Well, it utterly bucketed down
with pretty intense rain the whole 9 klms over 25 minutes or so, and continued to rain heavily for the next hour at the restaurant. But not one skeric of rain on their radar or update to their forecast the entire time. Must have been 5-8mm or so.
 
Redford said:
It was about their forecasting, insufficient warnings, lack of reliability, poor resourcing, climate change etc etc

I have to say they are very hit and miss. Even their radar info is rubbish at times. Few weeks ago set off with the Chief in the car - 8 or 9 klm trip to a restaurant. BOM radar showed zero rain, zero prediction of rain. Well, it utterly bucketed down
with pretty intense rain the whole 9 klms over 25 minutes or so, and continued to rain heavily for the next hour at the restaurant. But not one skeric of rain on their radar or update to their forecast the entire time. Must have been 5-8mm or so.
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Agree. Sometimes when it breaks down, they say to check another weather station's radar which is useless if you're not in that region. Their website is still 1990s level.
 
Redford said:
There was an article in The Age a few weeks back highlighting the “pressure” (to use a pun) that the BOM is under.
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The irony of the El Nino prediction is that the BOM were getting all sorts of criticism last year when the US NOAA had already declared an El Nino and the BOM were saying they were not yet convinced. A few months later they did say there is an El Nino (and there is) but it isn't the only determinant of our weather. Also, those of us in Melbourne should ask those further North about this summer's weather, we have missed out on the heat, but they haven't.

While we perceive the summers not being very hot over the last few years, most were at or above average, we have all forgotten how crap summers were in Melbourne back in the 70s and 80s.

DS
 
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taztiger4 said:
expecting 43 in Perth today, 9am & its already 32 at work, 15 min south of city
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the lad clocked up 20km in 40 at training last Saturday :oops:

he'll be able to ride the bottom weight in the Railway Stakes if he keeps that up
 
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The capacity of rooftop solar in Australia will eclipse the country's entire electricity demand in coming decades, according to a report that charts the technology's "staggering" rise.
  • In short: The capacity of rooftop solar will soon exceed that of coal, gas and hydro combined in Australia's main grid, a green energy report finds.
  • There is already almost 20GW of rooftop solar in Australia, but this is forecast to more than triple in coming decades.
  • What's next: The report's authors argue rooftop solar will play an outsized role in helping Australia meet its climate goals.
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www.abc.net.au

In coming decades, solar cells on Australian rooftops could provide more energy than we need, a report shows. But there is a catch

The capacity of rooftop solar in Australia will eclipse the country's entire electricity demand in coming decades, according to a report that charts the technology's rise.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au

So much for the "we need coal" lobby.
 
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spook said:
www.abc.net.au

In coming decades, solar cells on Australian rooftops could provide more energy than we need, a report shows. But there is a catch

The capacity of rooftop solar in Australia will eclipse the country's entire electricity demand in coming decades, according to a report that charts the technology's rise.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au

So much for the "we need coal" lobby.
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I've been saying similar for a while. I'm also not sure why we are going down the path of having large scale renewable generation projects hooked upto the grid system. The grid is an outdated concept.

The one thing I was disappointed not to see in that article was talk about community batteries being the way forward. If the focus is on individual batteries being required in each premises, then we never really rid ourselves of the "grid" system as much of the production of power will essentially be lost as when batteries hit max capacity they will cease to draw from the panels, and I don't believe the excess of these systems feed back into the grid. I understand that its a 1 or the other policy that you sign upto. Either you have a battery and therefore the feedback loop doesn't exist or you feed all overcapacity back into the grid (unless they turn your system off).

Community batteries rid the requirement for every household to have solar power and would stop any focus on overcapacity which is essentially what the reporters are writing about, that we will end up with a significant and excessive overcapacity position. I read somewhere that in order to produce enough energy for all households and businesses we would need something like a 50-60% takeup of rooftop solar throughout the grid, which community batteriers would aid the distribution of that power to the houses / businesses that do not own rooftop solar.
 
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mrposhman said:
I've been saying similar for a while. I'm also not sure why we are going down the path of having large scale renewable generation projects hooked upto the grid system. The grid is an outdated concept.

The one thing I was disappointed not to see in that article was talk about community batteries being the way forward. If the focus is on individual batteries being required in each premises, then we never really rid ourselves of the "grid" system as much of the production of power will essentially be lost as when batteries hit max capacity they will cease to draw from the panels, and I don't believe the excess of these systems feed back into the grid. I understand that its a 1 or the other policy that you sign upto. Either you have a battery and therefore the feedback loop doesn't exist or you feed all overcapacity back into the grid (unless they turn your system off).

Community batteries rid the requirement for every household to have solar power and would stop any focus on overcapacity which is essentially what the reporters are writing about, that we will end up with a significant and excessive overcapacity position. I read somewhere that in order to produce enough energy for all households and businesses we would need something like a 50-60% takeup of rooftop solar throughout the grid, which community batteriers would aid the distribution of that power to the houses / businesses that do not own rooftop solar.
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Yep, decentralised is the way to go. Better for storage, better for preventing large-scale outages.
 
mrposhman said:
The one thing I was disappointed not to see in that article was talk about community batteries being the way forward. If the focus is on individual batteries being required in each premises, then we never really rid ourselves of the "grid" system as much of the production of power will essentially be lost as when batteries hit max capacity they will cease to draw from the panels, and I don't believe the excess of these systems feed back into the grid. I understand that its a 1 or the other policy that you sign upto. Either you have a battery and therefore the feedback loop doesn't exist or you feed all overcapacity back into the grid (unless they turn your system off).
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That's not correct. You can have a battery and still feed power back into the grid, once the battery reaches full capacity.
I believe some systems are capable of draining the battery back into the grid when the grid system needs it (or when the grid will pay a high price for it) and also use the grid to charge the battery when it is cost effective.

But I agree with your overall points.
 
EVs eventually become the battery / community battery that obviates / minimises the amount of grid capacity that is needed. Would recommend reading Big Switch by Saul Griffith.

It’s a fair journey to get there. I work for gas industry so you can say I’m biased and np but gas to me should be a part of the transition route to get there in a fixed quality of life / electrical reliability scenario. (Gas firming and not coal firming).

As I’ve said elsewhere if we are truly serious to go net zero quickly then I don’t see a pathway that doesn’t result in rapid QOL reductions due to power reliability and big spikes in cost of living. (Green energy generally is much more expensive than fossil equivalent = inflation) it’s politically untenable to do which is a real trap for us. At the household level though solar plus batteries can be pretty competitive but we should acknowledge is built on the back of slsve labor in China and not union employees earning $k120 a year for holding a stop sign.

Demand reduction is the other lever that should be getting pulled really hard by government. Insulation and some of the things the vic gov are doing to encourage heat pumps etc. shrinking global pop….
 
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RoarEmotion said:
It’s a fair journey to get there. I work for gas industry so you can say I’m biased and np but gas to me should be a part of the transition route to get there in a fixed quality of life / electrical reliability scenario. (Gas firming and not coal firming).
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To my understandgin the issue with gas is that it will always prodcude emissions- so any investment in gas supply is an investment in emission production.
At this point a lot of electricity production is emissions producing, but it is feasibly possible to get down to zero emissions using electricity, hence more and more people, and councils etc, are moving away from gas.
 
Brodders17 said:
To my understandgin the issue with gas is that it will always prodcude emissions- so any investment in gas supply is an investment in emission production.
At this point a lot of electricity production is emissions producing, but it is feasibly possible to get down to zero emissions using electricity, hence more and more people, and councils etc, are moving away from gas.
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I think the point RE is making is in the word he used, transitional. Gas does still give off emissions, but far far fewer than coal as an example. Also until batteries are a much larger component of the power supply (whether in the form of community batteries or inside peoples homes) then a source of power that provides all day reliability to the grid will be required so therefore gas becomes an option to provide that. There are also still studies going on regarding carbon capture that if successful can result in a significant lowering of emissions.

I think we in Australia are in a unique position where we potentially can generate all our power from renewables, but there are many countries around the world (think northern europe for example), that couldn't get into that position, so a backup low emission fuel is potentially going to be required for a long time yet.
 
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Brodders17 said:
To my understandgin the issue with gas is that it will always prodcude emissions- so any investment in gas supply is an investment in emission production.
At this point a lot of electricity production is emissions producing, but it is feasibly possible to get down to zero emissions using electricity, hence more and more people, and councils etc, are moving away from gas.
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That is correct. If you don’t care about your power going out / people who gas heating / cooking not being able to do that then you can ban it right now.

In Europe when the Ukraine / Russia war started and gas supplies were disrupted people burnt wood to prevent freezing increasing emissions.

in Australia when there is no gas and there is a reliability challenge it is coal that gets burnt. That is at a very high level roughly double the emissions of natural gas to make the same amount of power.

So if we make natural gas the firming source it is less emissions than coal but not zero emissions.

Otherwise if we want zero emissions (quickly) we need to impact our standard of living massively. A government that does that will get voted out so it just doesn’t work IMO and anything they do will get reversed.
 
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RoarEmotion said:
That is correct. If you don’t care about your power going out / people who gas heating / cooking not being able to do that then you can ban it right now.

In Europe when the Ukraine / Russia war started and gas supplies were disrupted people burnt wood to prevent freezing increasing emissions.

in Australia when there is no gas and there is a reliability challenge it is coal that gets burnt. That is at a very high level roughly double the emissions of natural gas to make the same amount of power.

So if we make natural gas the firming source it is less emissions than coal but not zero emissions.

Otherwise if we want zero emissions (quickly) we need to impact our standard of living massively. A government that does that will get voted out so it just doesn’t work IMO and anything they do will get reversed.
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I did say moving away from. Nothing is close to getting banned in Australia. We arent getting to zero emissions in the near future.
But more people are getting rid of gas- my house hasnt had gas for a few years, when our old gas hot water system died we replaced it with a heat pump and bought some cheap portable induction cook tops. and turned the gas off.
More and more councils are doing away with making gas connections compulsory in new housing estates.
The need for gas is going to reduce. and the reliance on coal is also going to continue to reduce.

But yes, gas still has its place. at this stage. one question is tho is how much is it worth investing in if the aim is to continue to reduce its use down to zero in the future?
 
mrposhman said:
I think the point RE is making is in the word he used, transitional. Gas does still give off emissions, but far far fewer than coal as an example. Also until batteries are a much larger component of the power supply (whether in the form of community batteries or inside peoples homes) then a source of power that provides all day reliability to the grid will be required so therefore gas becomes an option to provide that. There are also still studies going on regarding carbon capture that if successful can result in a significant lowering of emissions.

I think we in Australia are in a unique position where we potentially can generate all our power from renewables, but there are many countries around the world (think northern europe for example), that couldn't get into that position, so a backup low emission fuel is potentially going to be required for a long time yet.
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Im certainly no expert- I havent had the time to do my google research yet- but i have a feeling no one outside carbon producing industries thinks carbon capture is a feasible solution.

but yes, gas still has its place, but whether it is worth investment from the government is debatable.
 
Brodders17 said:
I did say moving away from. Nothing is close to getting banned in Australia. We arent getting to zero emissions in the near future.
But more people are getting rid of gas- my house hasnt had gas for a few years, when our old gas hot water system died we replaced it with a heat pump and bought some cheap portable induction cook tops. and turned the gas off.
More and more councils are doing away with making gas connections compulsory in new housing estates.
The need for gas is going to reduce. and the reliance on coal is also going to continue to reduce.

But yes, gas still has its place. at this stage. one question is tho is how much is it worth investing in if the aim is to continue to reduce its use down to zero in the future?
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gas for household use should reduce. It is way more efficient/cheaper to electrify heating/cooling (heat pumps) and cooking (induction) than to use gas.

Gas for electrical production IMO should be getting actively supported by government to replace coal electrical production (instead of subsidising end of life plants).

Gas for industrial use - usually very high temperatures - is still at very low TRL levels to replace with electrification. Biogas (same chemical composition but from biomass) is not there yet not does it have the scale.

Gas for hydrogen production (steam methane reforming) which is a key input into fertilisers / explosives is just massively cheaper than green hydrogen and not going away in the short term. Get ready for mass food inflation if it shifts to green ammonia.

From an investment perspective my personal view is anyone who makes east coast gas is going to do very well in the next decade at least. Looks at the AEMO supply / demand outlook. Supply is shrinking way quicker than demand (end of life of Gippsland) so will move to import parity pricing. You can’t just look at demand - look at both supply AND demand.
 
spook said:
Yep, decentralised is the way to go. Better for storage, better for preventing large-scale outages.
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Whats the downside?
Is there an inpact for smaller, rural communities?
For example if Australia shifted to house solar and local community batteries, could that leave small towns with higher costs?
Or without adequate supply?

Lets face it, cynically and practically it would be a big hill to climb. All major power companies and the infrastructure are geared toward wide distribution so its a significant barrier.
But I'm ignoring that.
There would be a market cost for using the network as backup and to access the community batteries. So I'm finr skip over it.

@mrposhman too.
I'm generally in agreement with this idea, but looking beyond the easy suburban experience
 
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