Do Renewables Have a Future without Baseload?

On April 16th, in Spain and Portugal, both wind and PV combined to generate 100.63% of total electricity demand – a first in Spain’s energy history. Seven dts later 50,000,000+ spanish. Portuguese and some French people were left with NO power for at least 11 hours, and some for more rthan a week.
Red Energie first claimed it was a cyber attack, then moved on to some undefined cosmic atmospheric event.
Then they claimed the four nuclear plants failed, when they were offline because the Government pricing methods prevented them from opening. Spanish Politicins had already been warned of the danger of closing down nuclear plants (read coal in Australia) during high renewable input
Don't forget the failure of the French Interconnector ( that means a powerline fell dowm). France provides a max 4% of Spaiins electricity.
Eleven hours later, hydro kicked in. and so did gas. Does that mean if we extract the black colour from coal and oil, it would be as safe as gas? Apparently Turnbull's uphill solar also helped, but I wonder where it got the electricity in the first place given the early AM failure of the grid.
Anyway, as expected thr real solution is to kick the can down the road.
Get more batteries. Adelaide did that =problem solved.
Melbourne and Sydney have already had brushes with failure.
Broken Hill had a failed interconnectorand and after a week of failure, repaired an old disused coal generator.
In Australia they are not only shutting down baseload generators, they are demolishing them as soon as they are deemed useless.
We will be Spain. Batteries is nothing more than the wet dream of believers

As CLarice said in Silence of the lambs "I opened the gate to their pen, but they wouldn’t run. They just stood there, confused. They wouldn’t run."

We are the lambs.

Comments

Search through all the comments in this post.
  • What was the actual question?

    • I can help.>
      "Can you help me recover from a political and ideological smashing, and help me to still push the climate change denying BS?"

      • Just because you want base load power, it doesn't necessarily follow that you are a climate change denier. Maybe he is. I didn't bother to read his manifesto.

    • ChatGPT says

      Are we making a serious mistake by shutting down baseload (coal/nuclear) power plants and over-relying on renewables and batteries without sufficient backup or planning?

    • Do you like my poem?

    • I need a drawing for this one

    • The answer is yes, we need lots of batteries to make renewables work. The baseload is fully stored up here and can be drawn upon as required. Once the 40% of Australian households with solar panels buys up labour's 30% discount on home batteries, they will be insulated against blackouts and no longer need to pay for electricity. The remaining 60% can rely on a mix of solar/wind/battery farms. This will probably be a reality around 2035 - 2045.

      • This means that the entire grid costs are shunted onto renters/working class, who won't have access to batteries. The upper middle class will still want access to the grid when their batteries break down, but they will pay next to nothing for that insurance policy. It would be more equitable to have an access charge, the same as we do for water.

        Batteries are a poor solution for storage at scale. They eventually fail, they have thermal issues, and we have extremely limited abilities to manufacture them ourselves, meaning we would be critically reliant on imports. Pumped hydro is better, much more rugged and reliable, but apart from a few locations we don't have the topography for it.

        South Australia has one large battery installation and another planned. Together, they will be able to supply 24 hours of typical consumption to about 40,000 homes. Its obviously not enough, as is evidenced by the fact that they just signed another set of 10-year rolling contracts with the gas providers. It will be very difficult to get to net zero on the back of solar wind and storage, and extremely expensive.

        • extremely expensive

          Will it be though? Gencost report says renewables backed by storage (that means spending the money to install storage too) is the cheapest form of generation.

          Pretty easy to do the maths too. Dutton's plan was 6GW of Nuclear base load for (very generously) only $115B to build. Last year batteries were $500/kWh to build at grid scale (and dropping rapidly), so that's $42B to build enough for 14hrs supply of 6GW (i.e. 84GWh capacity) to simulate nuclear power running overnight.

          Solar is ~$1.2m/MW capacity, so you could spend say $24B on 20GW of solar capacity to easily charge those batteries during the day and supply power in place of the batteries while they're charging. That's just over half the cost of the nuclear plan (basically aligns with the Gencost numbers)

          Again, per the Gencost report, brand new coal/gas generation would be somewhere in the middle cost wise.

          Only problem with storage is we don't have enough of it yet.

          • @Alzori: Genuine question, how do we protect against a weather event that rain or cloudy for 2 weeks?

            This is yearly occurence in Sydney and without a baseload generator no amount of battery storage will last that long.

            • @stevea: Solar still works at reduced output. Wind continues to exist in inclement weather. Pumped hydro can run for many days at a time. And we will still have gas to top up as required.

              Weather and energy consumption records have been used to model how much storage is actually required. It's not as much as you would think.

            • @stevea: I imagine via diversified renewable types in diverse regions - the grid spans all of the eastern states plus SA and Tasmania. It should be sunny and/or windy and/or other in some parts of the country, or storage from those areas can fill in gaps.

              Plus like klaw mentioned, solar doesn't stop working in storms, it just reduces output. In my last year of having solar, my worst days over winter still got me 2kWh, from an average of 10kWh. We can diversify, over provision generation, and make sure transmission infrastructure is capable. I say this like it's easy when it isn't, but it's definitely achievable.

      • So basically it's just more middle class welfare (a la Johnnie Howard) for property owners and nothing for everyone else. Got it.

        • Well get yourself a property and take advantage then.

          • @JIMB0: That's the Australian way. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

      • If you decided to comment 20 hours earlier you would have realised there has been a revision. FFS.

        • But regardless of how late he is to the party, he has to hang his (invariably inane) comment off the first comment for visibility.

  • Username overstates the quality of content

  • were left with NO power for at least 11 hours, and some for more rthan a week

    So, because you don't know why there was a grid failure, it must be because of renewables?
    Not perhaps due to a mass failure on synchronisation across the grid?

      • In SA, they seem to think we can stabilise ourselves, without traditional synchronous generators.

        • Synchronous generation is not required for grid reference.

        • The SA power system configuration (as of March 2022), including synchronous condensers (syncons), grid-connected inverter-based resources (IBR) such as wind farms, solar farms and battery energy storage systems (BESS), is capable of sustaining a grid reference in SA, even during conditions when no synchronous generation is online in SA.

        https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/security_a…

      • The Practical Engineering channel on YouTube has a number of good videos on electricity systems that I would recommend. There's a few on blackouts, black starts, and large outages that would be highly relevant, and also very interesting (in my opinion at least…).

        Long story short, long, large, outages aren't caused by "not having baseload".

      • Nit picking, but just to note: baseload isn't supply, it's load. It's the minimal amount of load required for the generators to operate - you can only run the generators so low before they become unstable, unsafe, uneconomical, etc.

  • Honestly, why is everyone getting so worked up about a highly technical problem that is grid stability when there aren’t even that many experts in the industry that truely understand it. Why is it becoming so politicised?

    As others have mentioned ‘baseload’ is becoming irrelevant. Generation has already become so much more embedded in the distribution network and rooftop solar is already having a massive effect on minimum demand. Minimum demand is rapidly approaching zero almost everywhere, which means there is no ‘baseload’ anymore. Pretty much all traditional ‘baseload’ generators also really struggle to run at a reduced output and too much generation is as equally or more dangerous as too little is.This is the major driver for solar backstop initiatives in many states to be able to limit distributed solar on really sunny days with too little demand.

    What you should be mentioning instead is grid stability requirements. This would include inertia, N+1 fault tolerance, fault current to load ratios, frequency support, voltage control, etc. These massive blackouts are not being caused by a lack of generation. They are caused by a fault on a network that has not had the above requirements sufficiently considered and designed for.

    Yes, traditional ‘baseload’ generators can provide many of the above requirements, but so too can many other technologies including grid-forming inverters on dc coupled wind turbines and batteries, synchronous condensers, hydro, etc. The problem is that many of these technologies are new to the industry and require a lot of engineering and development to get right when many operators just assume everything will operate the way it used to. Even just to define what the requirements for a grid forming inverter should be is not an easy task.

    None of this means we shouldn’t or can’t make the transition. The writing is on the wall when the price of renewables and batteries is collapsing whilst the price of any major civil project in this country such as a new coal generator is going through the roof with major cost blowouts.

    • "Why is it becoming so politicised?"

      You have a lot to learn about climate change deniers( progress anchors)
      Have you slept through 4 decades?
      They are just raising any topic they can to bag renewable energy and action on climate change. Relevance Deprivation Syndrome is real.They don't seek solutions, they live off creating faux problems.

      We haven't even seriously considered thermal (solar or terrestrial geothermal) The amount of light pollution at night could probably be harnessed by ultra sensitive photo-voltaics of some kind to bolster battery storage.

      • terrestrial geothermal

        Now that's something that could give reliable baseload electricity.

        The amount of light pollution at night could probably be harnessed by ultra sensitive photo-voltaics of some kind to bolster battery storage.

        That must be what Albo meant, right?

      • loadrunner knows and was lamenting that. You have a lot to learn about the difference between requests for information and rhetorical questions.

        • Taken. But you have even more to learn about forums. One mans rhetorical question is the whole forums opportunity to consider an answer with some meat on the bone,rather than stare into the abyss.

          Whatever happened to geo thermal?

          • @Protractor: Most of the supply is in the middle of nowhere and is uneconomic for exploration, electricity production and distribution. South Australia has some that's near people but it can't compete with solar, wind, and batteries on price. There are some projects aiming to use the heat directly but they're small scale. Geothermal, hydrogen electrolysers, solar heat capture etc, are all fun to think about but we have the solution in wind and solar pv, we just need to get on with it and build appropriate distribution and firming and solve the engineering issues loadrunner talked about. Fortunately the biggest obstacles to this just had a thumping election defeat

            • @danwylie: Geothermal, hydrogen electrolysers, solar heat capture etc are specific base-load builds though. Lithium and other battery chemicals mean continuous mining. If geothermal stacked up where our iron ore mines are it could benefit entire regions. Geothermal is something the ALP should get the CSIRO to revisot exploration wise and feasibility wise.Any of those tech products just need to have justified end use, so they don't need to exist near populations. The WA goldfields is another prime opportunity for those techs you mention. They have energy drams all the time. The idea is these techs at a scale that can top up renewables.

              • @Protractor:

                If geothermal stacked up where our iron ore mines are it could benefit entire regions.

                How would geothermal help iron ore mining?

                • @tenpercent: Multiple reasons, energy supply or supplement to consider smelting(steel production coupled with gas which in WA are adjacent) and to power desal to stop them pissing the last of finite aquifers up against the wall washing rocks and wetting haul roads. The Pilbrara is a region where multiple energy sources could combine for nett output gains. And frankly ,responsible industries like mining should have contributed to that and supplying their own water supply and network decades ago. But the Ginas and Twiggies have sucked the ground water relentlessly. It's now coming home to roost and they are the ones who aren't suffering the fallout.Surprise ,surprise.

    • when there aren’t even that many experts in the industry that truely understand it.

      Because of this maybe. People in modern Australia rely on electricity to live (cook, refrigeration, see at night, earn a living with power tools or computers, shop, drive, etc). Australia's electricity grid is regarded one of the most complex engineering systems in the world. But sure let's just have a fiddle and tinker around with the system that is/was working by shutting off all the baseload power AND let's shaft ourselves if anything does go wrong by demolishing all the baseload plants so we don't even have backups just in case anything does go wrong. What could go wrong, right? Why would anyone in Australia care about this? "She'll be right", right?

      And all with huge costs to the taxpayer and directly to consumers, not to mention the envrionmental costs with cutting down world heritage forests to install pfas forever chemical coated wind turbines, or messing around with whale migration and other marine life by installing them out at sea. Why would anyone care? Why should anyone care?

      • Which state govt of fed party has committed to 'switching off base-load power? Do tell.A few links would be dandy.

      • But they can't compete. You will struggle to justify an expensive coal plant. expensive to build and to run. A plant that you need to continue to purchase fuel for. expensive fuel. polluting fuel.

        envrionmental costs with cutting down world heritage forests to install pfas forever chemical coated wind turbines

        citation needed. teflon and related products "pfas" are commonly used in all of industry. That's not a specific criticism to wind turbines and a bit of a red herring. Just a random example -> https://www.sulzer.com/en/shared/services/steam-turbine-coat…

  • Solar and modern wind turbines don't provide grid inertia. This is a challenge for proper stabilisation. It's a shared problem that I think needs a shared solution, rather than finger pointing. Part of the renewable investment should be to provide some level of stabilisation. Say you want to install a massive windfarm, there should be rules that say you also need to provide some kind of stabilisation (batteries , capacitors or whatever) before you can connect your windfarm.

    The problems seem to be exported upstream to the network operators which in turn effectively makes it a government problem and we (taxpayers) end up paying for it.

    • In Australia they seem to want to incentivise inertia separately, with payments to step up inertia when it is predicted to be low, like when a coal generator is off line for repair.
      After the big storm that broke the SA transmission network, and caused voltage irregularities that tripped some renewables to decouple from the grid, the government supported battery storage to provide synthetic inertia, and regulated the conditions under which suppliers could disengage.
      This apparently didn't happen in Spain, so it is a bit of a regulatory failing there.

      Undoubtedly, it will continue to keep giving comfort to the "we need coal for baseload" crowd, but the inertia can come from hydro, coal, gas, battery or even nuclear - so if there are more cost effective options it doesn't have to be batteries.

      • Synchronous condensor + flywheel = winning

        https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/stories/flywhe…

        • Shh you. Only fossil fuels can make large heavy things spin

      • I've seen a flywheel based UPS for a critical piece of infrastructure before made to keep it running for a few minutes while the diesel generators kick in - doing so while keeping the 50Hz power perfectly in sync. Like a two or three meter tall steel disk weighing a few hundred kilos spinning at a few thousand RPM, able to output tens (hundreds?) of kW for a few minutes, humming away in a big steel case.

        Scary standing next to it tbh, thinking about how much kinetic energy was in there.

    • That all sounds sensible. I guess we can hope ( lol) after the LNP autopsy,that they adjust their thinking to match . But I sense the RWNJ will dominate and continue to prefer to rip renewables apart rather than move fwd with solutions.It's easier to break than build, and the survivors of the election massacre are rusted on wrecking balls like Joyce,Canavan etc, and they are the same ppl who control the downstream lapdogs like Littleproud. He's just a willing fluffer for energy stupidity. He took the non negotiable nuclear option to the Libs and convinced them it was a winner.(wrong) .It would have been forced on him by those same bully boy climate change denying simians.The RWNJ will have $$$ in nuclear mining shares, and like minded donors in the wing, so they'll just keep pushing the barrow. Flat tyre and all

  • On demand gas turbine power stations in the medium term, (as we work to towards greener tech base-load) with OUR fkn gas reserves. Cover the cost by increasing the cost to the pricks parasiting off our sovereign supplies.Sequester the carbon with PROPER reafforestation in appropriate locations and appropriately managed in perpetuity. Tax yank tank utes to extinction. Admit Snowy 2 was a bigger disaster than the shit NBN we have, and walk away.Send the bill to Malcolm Turnbull. Charge the USA a 60 billion dollar parking fee per 5 year term, for nuclear subs in our harbours.Sell AUKUS on ebay or swap it for NZ.

    • with OUR fkn gas reserves. Cover the cost by increasing the cost to the pricks parasiting off our sovereign supplies

      Now you're sounding like Dutton's failed electioneering.

    • Any day now, someone might notice that coal, oil and gas are closely related.
      Otherwise calling on the government to do anything rational is not rational even if it isn't.
      Did you know another pumped hydro project has started up in Qld. So far I can't see Turnbull's connection

      • You can't see a connect between Snowy 2 and Turnbull?

        The QLD 'may' stack up in areas where monsoonal activity is still reliable. Further south rainfall is anything but as predictable and reliable as it used to be. And the sheer onitial cost of Snowy 2 never stacked up. let alone the massive (predictable) blowouts and tunnelling FU's.

        Well. let's see? Acting on climate change is rational and the LNP never lifted a finger in 30+ years, so you have a valid point. For at least one half of govt.So I think the voters are slowly waking up to the scam. Nothing they have done on energy has ever lowered bills. They will always be the better economic propaganda managers

        • its pumped monsoon is irrelevant

  • You have not made an argument against renewables at all.All you've done is point out how screwed up the European energy system is. After that it's all extrapolation with apples and oranges.If anything Russia is their biggest threat. They use sabotage on an hourly bases of all sorts of infrastructure (not just energy).

  • We could power the country from the power of your salty tears from the weekend.

    • Move over Molten Salt Reactors, we have Salty Tear Reactors on the way

  • Do Renewables Have a Future without Baseload?

    No, not without a baseload.

    Any country that heads in that direction is commiting economic suicide.

    Countries with reliable and cheap baseload will have a huge economic advantage that will quickly show up in trade deficits.

    • sigh.. see dtc comment above "The concept of 'baseload' is out of date and anyone who argues it has no idea about the issue."

      I wouldn't quite go that far, but 'baseload' should definitely mean something different now.
      Yes the "duck consumption curve/profile" is still a thing, but renewables & storage have definitely changed the shape a bit, and power companies have caught on and adjusted, as they are economically forced to.
      If it costs too much to invest in renewables, they simply won't do it.
      The question is just how much government intervention is required - to which I would propose, very little: Renewables are hugely profitable without it.
      Though I'd argue that there is currently a lot of intervention to keep coal & gas afloat - they're paying so little tax while providing not many jobs, for a resource that is limited and should belong to the country.

      • If it costs too much to invest in renewables, they simply won't do it.

        Nah…. $imon $ays to…

        • Gina Rinehart is planning to build a ~30MW solar farm to provide electricity for her Mulga Downs iron ore mine, despite her vocal opposition to renewables.

          Most of the big mining companies get at least some power from on-site wind or solar these days. BHP and Rio Tinto are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on renewables for their mines in the Pilbarra.

          The accusation that it's all a scam to get government funding doesn't hold water.

          • @klaw81:

            The accusation that it's all a scam to get government funding doesn't hold water.

            Those investments don't make financial sense without the government funding though; direct funding, tax offsets, and carbon certificates.

            • @tenpercent:

              Those investments don't make financial sense without the government funding though

              Can you provide any evidence to support that?

              The fact that mining companies are rapidly building large-scale wind and solar to power their own sites suggests it's economically viable even though their infrastructure doesn't get connected to the grid, and aren't eligible for any subsidies.

              Renewables are the cheapest way of producing energy for industrial use. That's why they're getting built.

              • @klaw81: Yes they are eligible. They will get Australian Carbon Credit Units (basically 'polluters' get paid for reducing their 'polluting' - which is kind of like bribing a serial killer to stop killing), and they will get R&D incentive tax offsets. There may be other government incentives as well.

              • @klaw81:

                The fact that mining companies are rapidly building large-scale wind and solar to power their own sites suggests it's economically viable

                Only for a small percentage of their energy needs.

                They require a steady and reliable base load to keep their operations running and profitable.

              • @klaw81:

                Renewables are the cheapest way of producing energy for industrial use.

                They are not.

                They are also no reliable enough.

          • @klaw81:

            The accusation that it's all a scam to get government funding

            Not for government funding…

            Simon just wants to influence everyone to make more $$$$$$ more quickly….

            • @jv:

              Simon just wants to influence everyone to make more $$$$$$ more quickly….

              So does Gina. So does Clive Palmer. It's common knowledge that very wealthy individuals try to influence politics for their own benefit - this is nothing new.

              • @klaw81: They are helping the Australian economy though, Simon will be damaging our economy…

                • @jv: That's an interesting assertion. I'm sure Simon would disagree (and so would an awful lot of others).

                  • @klaw81:

                    I'm sure Simon would disagree

                    Of course he would. That is just self interest

                    The more control the Teals have, the more $$$$ he makes…

                    • @jv:

                      Of course he would. That is just self interest…

                      Are you claiming Gina and Clive aren't involved in politics for their own self-interest?

                      The more control the Teals have, the more $$$$ he makes…

                      The more control the Coalition has, the more money Gina makes. Remember Dutton's promise to be the "best friend the mining industry ever had"?

                      What's your point?

                      • @klaw81:

                        The more control the Coalition has, the more money Gina makes.

                        Actually, she's made a lot more under Albo than the previous Coalition government…

                      • @klaw81:

                        Are you claiming Gina and Clive aren't involved in politics for their own self-interest?

                        They're not negatively impacting our economy… You missed the point… 💨

                        • @jv:

                          They're not negatively impacting our economy

                          You haven't demonstrated that Simon and/or the Teals are negatively impacting the economy. You've just made the claim without evidence.

                          • @klaw81:

                            You haven't demonstrated that Simon and/or the Teals are negatively impacting the economy.

                            They don't have control of the government, that's why.

                            Lucky labor can ignore their whining for the next 3 years.

          • @klaw81:

            Gina Rinehart is planning to build a ~30MW solar farm to provide electricity for her Mulga Downs iron ore mine

            Must make business sense…

            How will the mine run at night though?

            • @jv: A combination of batteries, diesel generators and/or a grid connection, I presume.

              Much like households, the purpose is to reduce reliance on external energy sources and use as much self-generated energy as possible.

              It's purely an economic and logistical decision - we all know Gina doesn't give a toss for the environment.

              • @klaw81:

                diesel generators

                Are they cleaner than coal?

                batteries

                doubt it…

      • and anyone who argues it has no idea about the issue

        because Jaspa7 said so….. 🤣🤣🤣

    • No economic suicide. Huge advantage!

      • 🤣🤣🤣

  • It's where the gas turbines come in, gas spins up and can provide power in 25mins, so if you are on battery, you can bring up gas. In Victoria we have had back-up gas for a long time, problem is not much gas left in Bass Straight, and we export gas as suppliers have OS contracts, and multinationals look after their shareholders rather than Australians, and gov is too weak to have a domestic reservation policy (though WA does).

    • If Trump can sign an executive order, Albo can do a similar thing here with gas, or tariff away until we get our gas at cost price. Or both. There is nothing smart about gifting energy sovereignty to multinationals to suck us dry.Literally. Aldo may have out "electioned" some stellar previous Labor PMs but he is yet to flex his leadership muscles. If Paul Keating or Bob Hawke were governing in this circumstance, AUKUS would be shredded paper and every coal fired coal power station hybridised, they converted to gas.That gas would be a reserved component with a minimum petajoule allowance in our favour. That should be clause one on every existing export deal, and we should repeal contracts if we have to. The gas exporters would cave. They want our gas.

      • The way Trump uses executive orders is an abuse of emergency powers, don't assume similar loopholes exist here. That's why he has to make the connection between tarrifs and the fentanyl crisis, which are of course very closely related issues.

        • It was semi facetious. All it would take is gonads and a few govt lawyers, and a friendly HoR and senate. He has it all (in spades)

          • @Protractor: Just declare a State of Emergency (Trump is good at doing that). Then it's on like Donkey Kong. Anything goes. Over a millenia of law and jurisprudence gets put on pause. Do what you want (if you're the govt).

            • @tenpercent: Did the foreign gas vampires leave WA and drill baby drill elsewhere??

              Yeah nah.All it takes is balls.

    • Sorry, but some government banned gas exploration years ago,
      And, being repetitive, how is gas any different to coal and oil except for it's colour, if we are objecting to carbon dioxide

      • Emissions are far cleaner, fewer/no particulates, etc. It's not great, but better than dirty brown coal.

        • But it's not about particulates or even dirty brown coal.
          The entire narrative is about Carbon Dioxide, the gas we exhale with every breath.
          Exterminate 6 billion people. Problem solved.

          • @Clickbait: And here you are landing 30 years in the past. Arguing that climate change is BS and co2 is great. Youre half right though. If we bred less humans, and grew and saved more trees and forests we'd be heading in the right direction.
            Once gas is tapped we aint running dump trucks,crushers,conveyors and other mechanical machinery around the clock.

          • @Clickbait: Climate change bad, pollution bad too many ideas to keep track off?

            https://www.climatechange.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/…

            the gas we exhale with every breath
            yeah there's a reason why it's going out not in.

            Take water - "the liquid we drink with every mouthful" - you want to have gigalitres in your lakes and dams. But a few cm will have you hydroplaning on the road. Context matters. Increased atmospheric CO2's effects on human biology, negligible. Effects to a planet next to a giant fusion reactor, bad.

            Different contexts - different effects.

        • Dirty brown coal, actually lignite, is a Victorian and South Australian thing. The majority of Australia's coal is some of the cleanest burning in the world.

          • @tenpercent: Is that you Scomo?

          • @tenpercent: Cool story, still kills a fkton of people through air pollution. No coal in Australia is "clean"

            • @sponson: It's another industry myth. Much like saying our farmers are clean and green. They maybe cleaner than some other dodgy places, but still saturate the land and crops with chemicals, and drench,back-line,feed dose (aniti biotics etc) almost every bit of meat we eat.Across the species farmed.
              Remember when politicians didn't act like PR agents for vested interests? Both sides do it, but by christ the LNP have made it an Olympic sport, come art form.

  • The problem in Spain was the grid.
    They were warned about the instability of the grid with all the renewable energy coming online but did not upgrade.
    It was not the renewable energy in itself, but a requirement to bring the grid up to scratch.
    Australia became aware of this issue when the power went out in South Australia (which was also a grid failure, not renewable energy) a couple of years ago, and so for the last couple of years our grid is being quietly upgraded to remove this problem.
    I don't really care which energy we use, but on all rational economic analysis nuclear is a dollar short and a day late.

  • AEMO says YES!! Baseload is a 1950s concept dus to power stations needing to generate at a certain load all the time.

    • Shush shush. AEMO are clearly extreme lefty latte sipping greenies who want to push an agenda….

  • Aussies arguing over our 1% of emissions while China starts building 100GW of new coal power plants lol

    • And 400GW of renewables

      • Does it cancel out? /s

  • Do Renewables Have a Future without Baseload?

    Does OzBargain have a future without nonsense posts?

  • What is clear to me, many people are using the term “baseload” incorrectly.

Login or Join to leave a comment