I live in a jungle north of Sydney. No solar panels. However, new portable batteries have allowed me to time shift all of our electricity to the off peak rate on our time-of-use grid. Plug and play. Everything is on WiFi, so I can see instantly how it's all working. I'm shocked at how easy it's all becoming.
Yesterday early afternoon 69%of the national energy market was renewables, NSW was 74%, South Australia was 126.4%, all 5 states had spot prices negative
Australia can make most of their deserts green, with solar. If you block out some sun with solar, you can grow plants underneath. This will make Australia a power house in agriculture.
search for Agrivoltaics. Sheep are #1 for grounds maintenance. They can be rotated too, and produce wool + meat. If you already have a couple of border collies, you are set
Hello Sam. I live in the ozarks in Missouri enjoy your podcast you are the man.. I drive a Tesla model 3 in self Driving Mode 99% of the time I'm 85 years old and it is a dream having this thing drive me around I believe it's 50 times safer for me to use this than drive myself. Keep up the good work buddy.
l agree totally. Despite all the road blocks being put in the way, l am quite optimistic on our transition to renewables . Renewables are proven. Replacing spinning reserve with grid forming inverters is proven . Electric cars are proven and getting better every year . Running all our houses off solar and batteries is proven . lt's already over for fossil fuel generated electricity . Our biggest problem now is how we manage the backup issue smoothly as coal shuts down. We have the luxury of a bit of time but we really need to get on with the job asap.
@@billhill4479 I think It’s important a backup plan. Biomass should be in equation too. You could faze natural gas to a backup system and new technologies will bring up much more alternatives which increases resilience of the system. One misread of Alternative Energy is add new sources and technologies to strengthen robustness of the system and be less dependent on certain countries
We don't want fantasy we want cheap electricity and preserve how habitats for the NT wildlife.All those solar panels are ugly and won't last long.What are you going to do with all the useless material that isn't recyclable?Associated toxic chemicals could ruin the groundwater and there goes our precious ecosystems. The NT environment is delicately balanced and dependent upon the monsoon rains.Invasion with all this infrastructure will destroy in time.
@@lloydsingline340 The technology for floating solar is mature and will last 25 years. After that, the panels can be recycled. As long as the rise and fall of the water can be accounted for, the reservoir (and the adjacent land) is a perfect place for solar, since the transmission lines are already there. Which part do you think is fantasy?
@@lloydsingline340And get the beef cattle out while you are at it. They are not natural. And don’t take any water from the artesian basin, that isn’t natural. And did up all the roads because cars and natural. And get rid of the cars because they turn into hulking rust buckets. And get rid of the service stations because they pump dirty fossil fuels. And get rid of the aluminium mines and smelters because they make aluminium that makes solar panels. And then go back home to England.
It's an awesome project. Environmental approval recently achieved. Each step is getting ticked off one after the other. The Sun Cable project and the Xlink Morocco-UK Energy Project will be the pioneers in internationl HVDC grid systems. Outstanding.
@@robertfonovic3551 it is happening. In Nederland we have now 3 million Houses Rooftop Solar. 6000 kWh average. 12 Panels. 18 Billion kWh Solar Rooftop means Money in the Pocket.🙂👍
The customers (Darwin's proposed 'green projects') do not exist yet. And a 4200km cable to Singapore seems expensive, wasteful, and precarious. IMO it's all hype for now, pie in the sky.
@@David-ee1pi You do understand how many cables already traverse the worlds oceans. Yes/No? Just because you have an inability to conceptualise the realities, doesn't mean it is "pie in the sky". Plus what is your meat in the game anyway, why should it matter to the point you need to try and discredit the project?
Nuclear power make sense for China, but not australia as we don't have any expertise in this area in terms of building and maintaining. If we are going that path, we would have to use European or the American companies due to our geopolitical all eggs in one basket approach, which is going to be extremely expensive to build and maintain them. It will be like Ankus, a huge financial disaster with very little to show for with decades of time and billions wasted.
Australia has lost its sovereignty to the US. China is currently constructing the first of many Thorium/liquidsalt reactors for backup power but Australia wants to re-invent the wheel under US direction.
You fool, Dutton said it is great for us, so it must be….. Just like the right honourable previous dickhead, sorry PM, in saying Coal is king. If we unwind the hype and look at who would benefit from promoting Nuclear? Would it be large utilities that would maintain their grip on the cost of electricity? No, I think I must be a complete Numpty thinking ill of politicians.
At this moment in the UK 68% renewable electricity generation. Year to date just over 38% renewables. Add in 15% home generated nuclear, 10% imported French nuclear and 4% imported Norwegian hydro and that's around 67% low carbon generation.
Wow Sam 24Kw of Solar that is huge. Earlier this year I had Tesla install 7.29Kw of solar plus 2 Powerwall 3's and my electric bill went to $0 I have a 1.5Kw pool pump, air conditioning and Model Y house is 1,800 sq feet in Southern California. What are you doing with all that solar generated electricity?
It is worth noting the transformation of feed in tarrifs coming over the next 12 months. 1.2c/kwh exported to be charged to solar owners between 10am and 3pm. Will push more people into batteries though
At 19:20, 22 August 2024, nowhere near 50% of electrcity is from renewables. In renewables vanguard South Australia, renewables - including batteries - are providing 168 MW, whereas gas is providing 1,442 MW.
I keep telling my dad that every time he fills the diesel tank and has to pay and solar would cut down the electric bill every month but he knows best 🤨
Australia has a lot of land, so on shore wind power makes more sense and is cheaper than off shore. My country, the Netherlands, has hardly any unpopulated land and a large rather shallow sea and that's the main reason to build off shore wind farms as well.
As at 22-08-2024 (16.50) fuel supply type in Australia is Coal (60.00%), Gas (8.4%), Wind (13.7%), Solar (9.1%), Hydro (9.2%) and other 0.6%. (NEM data).
A global net zero world in 10 to 15 years, seriously? Electricity is not the only form of energy, it's about 20% of a country's total energy consumption. If china keeps exporting cheap metals and PV modules, then the west should be able to pull this off (even though it's still going to be difficult).
Im a pessimist and even I can see what batteries are going to do to renewable energy, 5 years ago made it a no brainer to diy financially and since then it has just become cheaper and easier with the all in one inverter chargers you can get now, you pretty much just need to connect a few cables and turn it all on and it works. Its just a matter of time until it reaches a mass adoption tipping point when it gets cheap enough and fossil fuel options get more expensive. Keep getting shafted by corporate energy or become your own energy producer and power your own house and car for free forever.
Sam you currently live within a 100 KMs of several coal fired power stations and we won't mention a massive coal terminal within a stone's throw away 😮
Summer here in Spain. Highest prices because in the afternoon nuclear, hydro and wind are not enough and have to burn gas. Still no national storage policy, which could well be coupled with our solar thermal plants (and by the way, expand those). But this is Spain and energy self suffciency is not a priority when you can buy Russian gas at premium prices.
according to recent sensitivity study in EU/CZ. Wind and followed by solar lowers the electricity price the most . Nuclear does not lowwer the price, it remains the same or goes up a bit.
Have you seen the brown coal (lignite) that is being burnt in the Yallourn, Vic area ? It is some of the worst coal on the planet (only Germany's brown coal is anywhere close).
Sam, I noticed the Solar Farms appear to be in a fixed position?. For maximising Solar 'Intake' I thought they would have implemented that mechanasim where the panels would tilt and rotate to reap the maximum sunlight. Naturally, that would be an added cost to the Solar Farm Initiative. It will also be of interest as to when electricity rates start falling, and in having said that, I think it's not going to happen anytime soon. 😥 Corporate Greed seems to be always floating about in the back ground...... Great Report, as always. 👍
Does Australia need offshore wind? In the UK all the flat land available is already being used for other things. The islands near Scotland are also setting up floating tidal generators one island already has too much renewable energy!
169Twh for gas & coal vs 80Twh for solar & wind... Means G&C is still 2.11 times bigger than S&W, although it is shrinking every year. But it's still going to be a looooong time until S&W takes over completely IMO... As for being crazy for living less than 200km for a coal powered generator, that would cover all of Melbourne, and probably Sydney and Brisbane as well as your home town of Newcastle NSW... We are all doomed !!!
16million buildings in Australia. 20million vehicles More buildings being built. With 18million rooftop PV, with 7kw, is more than fossil maximum generation. Just do the maths Off shore is just more expensive GRID ELECTRICITY. Sam talk about the cost of the GRID. It is fragile because it is EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE. Hello, hello 👋 hello anyone home???
The figure shows the Australian electricity generation fuel mix in shares from 1996-97 to 2021-22 and calendar year 2022. Fossil fuels contributed 68% of total electricity generation in 2022, including coal (47%), gas (19%) and oil (2%). Coal’s share of electricity generation declined from 83% in 1999-00 while the shares of natural gas and renewables increased. Renewables contributed 32% of total electricity generation in 2022.
I think "electricity generation" is misleading term, because majority of power is used in peak periods where solar isn't helping all that much. What we really need to know is how much use full power is coming from renewables, I'll bet its a lot less than you'd expect.
Countries with large offshore wind do it because they don't have the land to put it onshore where it's cheaper. We will get offshore wind farms but the low hanging fruit of locations are onshore.
While that's true, it overlooks a lot of other factors such as winds generally being more powerful over water than over land, and the hassles of dealing with NIMBYism. Everyone wants the benefits of windmills, but everyone wants to cry about them being visible from their properties, too. That severely restricts which places will end up actually getting wind turbines. Offshore avoids a lot of those NIMBY issues.
Most of Australia's population live near the coast (far away from the deserts where the solar should go) meaning no need to boil huge transmission links thousands of km when the off shore wind would be a mere stones throw...
I've decided not to get solar for my current house because I think my wife and I will move interstate soon (currently in Tasmania and there are not many opportunities for jobs in our profession here) but my next home will definitely have solar and batteries!
South Australia has always highest power prices… that was one of the reasons for Premier John Olson to privatise the SA grid in the 90’s (following Jeff Kennett’s lead)
The GRID itself is the biggest factor. Grid construction is extremely expensive. No grid construction ROOFTOP PV is the cheapest electricity, just plug in a BV with its oversized battery.
Live in Blackwater Central Queensland. We have huge piles of overburden from coal mining that are just sitting idle. They can be up to 50 metres above the landscape and standing on the top you basically get blown away. No good for anything else so why destroy good land instead of making use of these areas.
My question is why curtail excess renewable power. Why not use the curtailed power to run a device that converts CO2 to O2? My understanding is the cost for the electricity would be free.
Or run data centres that can execute heavy computations around the world following excess solar energy. The ability to compute, currently limited by silicon and energy, will be the resource of the future...
I watch a TV show in Australia that homes that produce too much power will now half to pay the power companies money, and they predict each year that fee will rise. So the home owners are mad as hell about the new fees,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
something is just wrong with classic wind turbines, let's please have something new : a vertical axis wind turbine (spinning like a carousel) this wind turbine would look exactly like a tree, I call it : e-tree the trunk of the e-tree is brown, the spinning sails (blades) are green, and finally attached to the trunk of the e-tree are features of : wifi/mobile network, light and power outlet, to charge a car for example
A net-zero global economy in 10-15 years is impossible even theoretically. 30 years is possible only if everyone fully commits to its, and clearly that's not the case. 50 years is possible if the current political and economical trends continue.
Nonsense. Tesla published a 1300-page white paper on the subject. Their findings were that $10T in investments would cover the transition entirely. For reference, per the IMF, fossil fuels receive $5.9T per year globally solely in subsidies. Less than two years of global fossil fuel subsidies would pay for the world to convert to 100% renewable power. It's not that it can't be done; it's that the vested interests don't want to spend money, and the world's most lucrative industry cries every time someone suggests they should perhaps no longer need handouts from the governments at taxpayers' expenses.
Forget unreliable intermittent power generation this is the future and it is now. Quaise, Inc was founded in 2018 to develop a millimeter-wave drilling system for converting existing power stations to use superdeep geothermal energy. The system repurposes existing gyrotron technology to drill 20 kilometres beneath the surface, where temperatures exceed 400°C.
We need cities to put chargers on the street where the parking meters are and to require landlords to offer charging. They can contact me if they don't know how to make this happen.
the biggest battery in Australia can power 50k homes for 1 hour and a half. Australia has 11 million homes. If we want power to last 12 hours. We will need about 2000+ of these systems. Not to mention they aren't designed to be cycled 100-0 every day, So probably double or triple that. There is 0 chance we get there under 10 years.
All these solar farms are the reason power prices are so good, is what the Government is trying to convince everyone. But in reality we have ridiculous high power prices and can only go up from here. Australia will be desperately in need of storage for electricity within the next 10 years because of more closures of baseload power like coal power plants. We should be building more mechanical storage using old mining sites and not these Lithium batteries as they are not the best for long term use and are too expensive.
I love how Australia are going in the right path, but Norway are doing it wrong. They had huge subsidy at solar installation, and had record high installation, but then suddenly they cut it too very low amount and more electricty companies are removing the goods the customers overproduced the electricty (it was sent into digital storage) so they could overproduce in the summer, save it for the winter were coming), but almost everyone has removed that now. Here the government should have come in and support the customers and helped us, but instead like always when it's hard times they are completely silence. It's soo environmentally friendly and cheap solution, but because the companies are losing money on it (because we could be overproducing when the prices are low, but sell it toward the companies when the prices are high) they shut it down completly. Those who were on the fence are no longer thinking about it because of these things have been happening. It's very little interest about solar (it was huge interest in it before), but it's been very low at the moment and i don't understand the reasons because Norway have defintly the money and should instead cut the subsidy they should have increased it specially when the interest of it was so high. In that way we could cut every need of oil and increased the renewable energy and installing storage of batteries like you are doing. Every country should been looking at what you (Australian government) have been doing. Remember the costs are record low and the benefits of having solar panels would be for minimum 20 years ahead! I'm just rental my apartment my self, but i'm having a small solar panels outside when the sun is up and yeah i did pay some money for the system and i will increase it in the next summer with bigger batteries and more solar panels, but then i'm self-sufficient every time the sun is up. The stupidity of our politicians!
Great for Australia!. Far more advanced than the USA on this. I am jealous of your costs for installing solar and batteries, not to mention EVs. I truly hope US solar panel manufacturing companies and auto manufacturers (except for Tesla) focus on catching up rather than pocketing profits. Of course, net metering must allow reasonable returns/profits for solar companies and homeowners too.
@@robertfonovic3551 Where do you get that info. I just googled it and a Tesla Powerwall 3 is about $14,500 Australian installed. Lots of the companies do deals to make them cheaper too
Net metering doesn't exist in Australia (AFAIK). The Feed in Tariff in my State (Victoria) just recently dropped to 1.5c/kWh (I think that's correct, someone please correct if I'm wrong).
I was a stay at Home mom with no money in my IRA or any savings of my own, which was scary at 53 years of age. Three years ago I got a part time job and save everything I make. After 3 years, I am 56 yo and have put $9,000 in an IRA and $40,000 in my portfolio with CFA, Evelyn Infurna. Since the goal of getting a job was to invest for retirement and NOT up my lifestyle, I was able to scale this quickly to $150,000. If I can do this in a year, anyone can.
I know this lady you just mentioned. Evelyn Infurna Services is a portfolio manager and investment advisor. She gained recognition as a former employee at Goldman Sachs; a renowned investor she is. Evelyn Infurna has demonstrated expertise in investment strategies n has been involved in managing portfolios and providing guidance to clients.
I went from no money to lnvest with to busting my A** off on Uber eats for four months to raise about $20k to start trading with Evelyn Infurna. I am at $128k right now and LOVING that you have to bring this up here
"The grid was saved by electric cars plugged into the grid". So how does that work? In an emergency the grid sucks the power out of your battery that you are trying to charge?
Hi Viking Rafael from Carlos Alcaraz city. The question is, in Australia or Europe there are a lot of roof wich solar panels, but in China they have personal roofs or solar gardens(Big extensions) ?
Rubbish. SolarVic offers INTEREST FREE LOANS and subsidies to install solar. I paid $3050 (out of pocket) six years ago, it paid itself off in 18 months, after that, it was FREE POWER.
Australia 🇦🇺 has so much empty non productive land and huge amounts of sunshine and wind , renewables now that they are cheap make so much sense for such a massive country .
Not in Australia. Coal gen is dropping like a stone. It just isn't profitable any more... except when there is a power station 'down for maintenance' which happens a lot.
@@greghudson9717 amazing that that happened. The government gives no commitment and tells the plants that they will close them down l, and you wonder why these companies won't commit to millions of dollars of maintenance. You show why people like you are brain washed.
This makes perfect sense for a country like your's,and people in far flung places have been wise/smart about solar for a long time Now.great news,and cheaper than nuclear,maybe Australia could get wind of euro tech,and Europe up wind of some north African heat.the solar project in India is interesting also
Ever since the Inflation Reduction Act was sighed, all of my climate anxiety disappeared. Renewable energy is unstoppable at this point and it’s only going to accelerate to the point we’re going to meet our climate goals ahead of schedule.
Nothing to be proud of. In South Australia, we have almost 100 percent renewables, but we have the most expensive power prices almost on the planet. It’s sending us all broke. It’s become a total joke.
Correlation is not causation. Here in central PA (US), the renewable options are by far the cheapest - in some cases almost half as much as traditional sources. Just because your local utilities want to price gouge you doesn't mean renewables are not inherently cheaper.
Stop 🛑 talking about batteries 🪫 and start talking about under sea 🌊 cables that transmits power at super high voltage from Australia 🇦🇺 to America 🇺🇸 To Europe. If everyone can produce over 100% of there power from solar and transmitting excesses midday power to places that don’t have sun ☀️. You only need small number of batteries 🔋 to stabilize grid we already have billions of miles of fiber optic cable under water now is the time to run power under water ⚡️
When power is setting in Australia 🇦🇺 sun ☀️ is risings in Europe and it’s dark in American 🇺🇸 problem solve just need small number of batteries lol 😂 5%-10% batteries storage is all you need not 100% just to stabilize grid
That doesn't work due to transmission losses. IIRC, it's about 2-3% per 1000 km of lines. So, transmitting power to the far side of the planet would waste about 60% of the energy. It make s a lot more sense to build small grids everywhere. Maybe long-distance connections could make sense in severe emergencies, like earthquakes, etc., but for everyday use, that would be insanely wasteful.
Petroleum comes from where? Forget arab oil, or Malaysian oil. Produce Solar panels are easily processed and all process are known. There’s a lot of korean, german or american brands producing outside China
@@victortaveira8271 Solar panels are also made in Australia. And, the biggest solar company in china is actually run by 2 Aussies who used to work for the AU Govt CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation). They couldn't get finance to get a startup going, so off to china they went, with our technology in their heads.
Not promoting this or saying I agree with this but one nuclear power generating station which if you look at Arizona nuke station shows can build in a desert no problem you'll have so much electricity in Australia given what already is extant will create a massive economic boom same true with South Africa as well actually. Natural gas cogen which have been around for decades yes much moar cheap to build and operate but require an intensive and extensive pipeline network too although can double as a fueling station too. 🚉 yes that's right fuel for rail 🚇 🚇 🚇 transit surface and sub surface for population density issues as well. Ain't cheap tho. 😮😮😮😮
Nuclear is a colossal boondoggle. We hide the true economic costs of nuclear, and then pretend it's remotely affordable. The Hanford, WA site in the US has run up a tab of over $625B in cleanup costs. Those are costs that magically never make it into the spreadsheets when people project the costs of nuclear power... and that's from just *ONE* site. Nuclear, in the long-term, is nation-bankruptcy scheme. The money we set on fire cleaning up nuclear waste is enough to pay for a second military if we wanted to. That's absolutely insane. As solar and wind get progressively cheaper in accordance with Wright's Law, there really isn't much point using anything else from a financial perspective.
