OPINION: Discussion getting lost on power generation Opinion Property/Sports/Opinion - popup ad by News Of The Area - Modern Media - January 25, 2024 DEAR News Of The Area, I’VE recently retired to Tea Gardens after a 45-year career in power generation and wholesale distribution. With an engineering background, I understand the technical challenges to decarbonise our electricity system with far more, and vastly distributed inputs, than we currently have (i.e. renewables). The basic problem is that achieving Net Zero by 2050, which has bipartisan political support, can’t be achieved 20 years earlier than agreed. It’s just become a debate in ideology for the sake of expediency where proper planning has gone out the window. And we’ll all pay a price for accepting such a risk. Just by way of example, to replace the recently retired 2GW Liddell Power Plant near Muswellbrook with small modular nuclear technology would mean no additional transmission infrastructure costs and no change to the current land area already zoned for power generation. However, to replace Liddell’s capacity with wind turbines would require over 300km2 of physical area whether it’s on land or offshore. And this is where the discussion gets lost. The sheer numbers involved to decarbonise the entire energy market are staggering. And it will be well beyond 2050 just to physically achieve it, costing an estimated $1.5 trillion of taxpayer money along the way. Regards Derek MUSGROVE, Tea Gardens.
The development of nuclear energy supplies in Australia is a minimum of 20 years away. In that time Australia could well and truly be fully reliant on renewable energy, preferably sourced from onshore infrastructure placed on degraded space. Reply
The quoted area needed to provide a similar amount of energy to the Liddell power station output is 300 sq kms on land or water. That’s only one sixth of the offshore wind farm Declared Zone off Port Stephens. That amount of degraded and mining land, and more, is readily available in the Hunter Valley obviating the need to buggar up mostly pristine marine ecosystem. Reply
Dear News of the Area, Re letter 25 Jan 2024 ‘Discussion getting lost on power generation’, could equally be headed ‘Never miss an opportunity to plug the totally unjustifiable, uneconomic Nuclear’. Two details that upset the letter’s argument: Liddell’s closure is a loss of an unreliable 800 to 1.25 GW, not 2GW. Ref Climate Council. Refined nuclear is currently a scarce resource: US had to qualify its import ban on Russian nuclear fuel due to world demand following the Ukraine invasion, Ref; Reuters report 23 Dec 2024. Also, the Russian war highlights the potential threat N power stations can become. Further as our energy minister is correct to point out N is a very expensive energy source, Ref: DCCEEW Press Release 23 Dec 2023. The addition to the grid, and much of the proposed wind power and centralised PV, is indeed redundant and I would refer you to the ARENA, V2X.au Summary Report – Opportunities and Challenges for Bidirectional Charging in Australia 30 June 2023. Figure 14 and the accompanying text highlights this point; “The challenge for Australia is establishing an effective framework to access the capacity that will already exist in our EV fleet. The marginal cost of this is relatively low. Based on an incremental cost of purchasing an DC-AC EVSE, we can expect capital costs in the order of $25,000/MWh, or 6% of current large-scale battery costs (~$400,000/MWh)4 5 on a simple per MWh basis. The basis of this advantage is that the cost of enabling V2G is only a marginal increase in the cost of installing a V2G-capable EVSE. The battery comes with the car. Despite the size of the prize, no Australian jurisdiction has policies or programs designed to promote V2G capability in our vehicle fleet, or consumer uptake. This is understandable given the nascent state of vehicle and equipment supply chains however the headline from our analysis is that this will change quickly over the next two years, and it is time for Australian governments and regulators to get their skates on, and prepare the policy and regulatory frameworks, and industry support infrastructure, that will enable the benefits of V2G to be realised.” Australia is well endowed with solar irradiation compared with northern hemisphere regions from which much of the science originates thus making distributed PV (household, parking lot, industry) BEVs with bidirectional charging, and distributed batteries our best solution. ACCELLERATE BEVs, PVs and required relatively minor grid modifications and save us from the proposed redundant expenditure and solve transport and energy emissions. Reply
Dear News of the Area, Re letter 25 Jan 2024 ‘Discussion getting lost on power generation’, could equally be headed ‘Never miss an opportunity to plug the totally unjustifiable and uneconomic Nuclear’. Two details that upset the letter’s argument: Liddell’s closure is a loss of an unreliable 800 to 1.25 GW, not 2GW. Ref Climate Council. Refined nuclear is currently a scarce resource: US had to qualify its import ban on Russian nuclear fuel due to world demand following the Ukraine invasion, Ref; Reuters report 23 Dec 2024. Also, the Russian war highlights the potential threat N power stations can become. Further as our energy minister is correct to point out N is a very expensive energy source, Ref: DCCEEW Press Release 23 Dec 2023. The addition to the grid, and much of the proposed wind power and centralised PV, is indeed redundant and I would refer you to the ARENA, V2X.au Summary Report – Opportunities and Challenges for Bidirectional Charging in Australia 30 June 2023. Figure 14 and the accompanying text highlights this point; “The challenge for Australia is establishing an effective framework to access the capacity that will already exist in our EV fleet. The marginal cost of this is relatively low. Based on an incremental cost of purchasing an DC-AC EVSE, we can expect capital costs in the order of $25,000/MWh, or 6% of current large-scale battery costs (~$400,000/MWh)4 5 on a simple per MWh basis. The basis of this advantage is that the cost of enabling V2G is only a marginal increase in the cost of installing a V2G-capable EVSE. The battery comes with the car. Despite the size of the prize, no Australian jurisdiction has policies or programs designed to promote V2G capability in our vehicle fleet, or consumer uptake. This is understandable given the nascent state of vehicle and equipment supply chains however the headline from our analysis is that this will change quickly over the next two years, and it is time for Australian governments and regulators to get their skates on, and prepare the policy and regulatory frameworks, and industry support infrastructure, that will enable the benefits of V2G to be realised.” Australia is well endowed with solar irradiation compared with northern hemisphere regions from which much of the science originates thus making distributed PV (household, parking lot, industry) BEVs with bidirectional charging, and distributed batteries our best solution. ACCELLERATE BEVs, PVs and required relatively minor grid modifications and save us from the proposed redundant expenditure and solve transport and energy emissions. Rod Fletcher Corlette Reply
