Originally Posted by AuthorEditor
Do some Googling to read the truth about wind and other alternative energy sources. It's already the cheapest way to produce new power and getting cheaper. Every energy source has its ups and downs in the growth phase. Just ask insurance companies how exciting nuclear is. When your money is on the line you think a little more clearly about these things. Fukushima will cost something like $500 billion.
You need to do some googling about how the grid works.
Thermal (and hydro) is "schedulable"...the grid operator sends (in Oz) signals out to the power stations every 5 minutes to change their load to meet current market needs and bid stacks... Wind is not...it's there when it's there, and everything else has to react around it.
In a meeting with one of the honchos in the Market Operating company a few months ago, he said that they used to have to use weather to predict demand, now they have to use it to predict supply as well.
As to the costs being cheaper...they ARE...while they are in disruptor phase...put 1MW of unschedulable wind in, bid it in at -$1,000/MWh, and wait for the wind to blow....it displaces 1MW of coal, and you get paid the market rate plus clean energy certificates.
However, when you go to the next part of the future, when you've closed that thermal plant down, wind and renewables suddenly become much, much more expensive...
WHY ???
Thermals can run at any point in their load range, as requested by the market operator, 24/7...they have capacity factors in the 80s and 90% range.
What is capacity factor, and why is it important in the debate ?
It's the amount of energy generated in a period of time...a 1,000MW thermal, 80% capacity factor, over 8760 hours in a year will generate 7,000GWh over the year.
1,000MW of wind will generate 2,200GWH...in a manner related to the weather at the time.
WHEN we come to rely on renewables, we will need at least 4 times the nameplate rating, plus somewhere to put all the spare electricity, as it will be generated lumpily across the year....
THAT's when "cheap" renewables become expensive...when the grid is reliant on them, and you need to multiply the costs, land use, and materials consumption by 4, PLUS install storage (Li grid batteries add $250/MWh round trip cost to the electricty, and LOSE 20% of it in the transaction)...oops, you need FIVE times the nameplate capacity plus storage...that's more expensive, and resource hungry than any nuke can be.
You later made the statement about outages...thermals have a lifecycle plan of maintenance outages, that is submitted to the Market Operator, and negotiated and agreed on such that capacity is there...including the Market Operator pushing them around so that they all fit.
For unscheduled outages (breakdowns and trips), the Market Operator maintains an N-2 contingency of spinning reserve, so two units can fall over and not risk the grid...two units rarely fall over concurently...
As to your statement that the thermals are backed up by renewables...that's patently false...they can't be scheduled into the market (they can be curtailed when they (increasingly) become a nuisance and risk stability)...if they can't be directed to generate, and to what volume, they aren't capable of backing up anything...
While googling, you could also look up the effects of
* Inertia in the grid
* Synchronous versus asynchronous machines
* Frequency Control
* Power Factor Correction
All services that the grid required for the lights to stay on, and that typical wind and solar don't do.
South Australia has oversaturated itself with renewables...they have to turn thm off regularly (curtailment) when there's too much of them on. And regardless of how they hyp the fact that the state COULD have been entirely self sufficient on wind on some given day or another, the fact remains that they have to pay the thermals to run, so that they even HAVE a grid to inject this power into.
So while asking others to google...it would do you well to delve deeper into the actual issue than one line soundbites.
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