OT: Snowy Hydro

"In one hour it could produce 20 times the 100 megawatts an hour expected from the battery proposed by the South Australian Government, but would deliver it constantly for almost a week," [Mr Turnbull] said.

I thought he'd know better than to come out with such gibberish. Maybe he was misquoted.

That aside, Snowy Hydro is energy limited, because there is only so much water (less in extended dry spells). If it produces a higher power output, it can do so for less time. That is why it's not used for base load - it would empty its reservoirs.

Maybe the government intends to use the extra power generation only during extreme demand to avert rolling blackouts. That wouldn't use much of the water in the scheme of things, but I seriously question whether the proposal is the cheapest solution.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else
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Stupider than anyone Else

** It's not it not wrong - just a bit awkward.

** The high lakes in the Snowy scheme get filled up at night.

With water from the lower ones.

It's a huge "water battery".

** It can do that, but more importantly it allows the storage of excess power in the grid at any time of day.
** Probably is, when you take into account the limited life of the thousand batteries and the electronic converters needed to turn DC into AC.

... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

Typo correction:

** Probably is, when you take into account the limited life of the thousands of batteries and the electronic converters needed to turn DC into AC.

... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

There isn't an excess of power, there's only an excess of capacity. During the day, the marginal excess capacity is gas generation. I doesn't make economic sense to use gas to pump water just so that that water can be used to displace gas generation on another day.

At night, the marginal generation is sometimes coal based. While it does make sense to use coal during the night to pump water that can be used later to displace gas, it also substitutes a more polluting form of generation for a less polluting one.

In any case, we're not short of generating capacity per se, we're short of peak generating capacity that's only required in extreme weather. All building additional hydro-generating capacity using pumped storage will achieve is to discourage investment in other capacity for use for a significant part of the day. It doesn't nothing to address the extreme peak capacity issue.

The cheapest solution to the problem we actually have is probably diesel.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

Don't use gas, use solar... gotta build it first though.

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Reply to
Jasen Betts

No. Not if you measure power as heat generated in the coal-fired boilers and consumption as power extracted from the generators.

The heat production has a huge time-constant - like 24 hours - so you cannot simply increase heat for each daily power peak. You have to run with enough for the peak, and waste or store the extra in-between.

Clifford Heath.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

Not necessarily, though it would take longer than 100 days. See

Clifford Heath

Reply to
Clifford Heath

No. The heat is released into the atmosphere instead of wasting water. It's a simple matter of diverting the combusted gases away from the boiler.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

Its called pumped storage, it has been going on in the Snowies for more than 50 years.

Pumped storage wouldn't work in South Australia coz its flat, and any new pumped storage in the Snowies will probably take the best part of 10 years to come online.

Reply to
keithr0

** That is complete BOLLOCKS.

Excess power generation occurs all the time, whenever the load drops.

** More complete BOLLOCKS.

The Snowy provides peak load power every day.

Pumping goes on every night.

Stop posting you mad, unsupported guesses as facts.

..... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

Power generation equals power consumption, second by second, always.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

"In one hour it could produce 20 times the 100 megawatts an hour

They could put these at the bottom of the dams to increase the capacity without extra earthworks...

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That's if the dams are deep enough to be useful...

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Cheers, 
Chris.
Reply to
Chris

That doesn't seem a very sensible measure of generation, since some of the heat is unavoidably lost due to the laws of thermodynamics.

Coal fired generators are run with very slow changes in power output for that reason. Variations in overall load are handled by other generation with quicker response times.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

Adani does not care whether the government is Liberal or Labor. They are happy to bribe anybody. Getup has summarised some of their misdeeds here . Getup is biased but they provide evidence to back up their claims.

Reply to
Gordon Levi

IMO the federal govt should be spending whatever it takes to keep Hazelwood going, because its right next to brown coal that is useless for anything else, and if fools like Trevor don't like that, they should go and f*ck themselves.

Reply to
Rod Speed

That means an entirely new plant.

leave it in the ground and in a few million years, with a bit of luck, it will turn into black coal and won't be quite so useless. As it is, brown coal is coal that's not quite aged long enough. Like a good wine, it should be left to age a little more. Then future generations can derive the benefit, if any, from it.

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Xeno
Reply to
Xeno

No doubt you think that the federal government should start making axes and other tools out of stone instead of wasting the stones that are just left lying on the ground. I suggest you spend your time worrying about all the wind that is not being used to make electricity and is useless for anything else.

Reply to
Gordon Levi

Gordon Levi wrote

Reply to
Rod Speed

They have a surfeit of *wind* in Queensland just at the moment! ;-)

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Xeno
Reply to
Xeno

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