his numbers on nuclear are completely incorrect. its more like $300-500/MWh, with a 20 year build time minimum. which is why it wont get up. his numbers on RE are also incorrect. its more like $30-180/MWh, depending on time of day. anyone who has actually traded energy in the NEM in the last 10 years knows this. we also see negative prices ($0 or less) through the day due to excess RE, particularly in SA. this is a problem and needs soaking up with batteries. not expensive nuclear. he also doesnt tell you the $180/MWh price is pretty much the price that RE displaces natural gas turbines which is actually used to balance the market along with hydro tas and snowy. this is an benchtop presentation by someone with zero practical experience. sorry. im surprised he didnt start spruiking pumped hydro too. and we all know how well that is going! i was pretty dissapointed in this superficial and largely incorrect presentation.
He has a grasp of old ways of thinking, and a fantasy that we can build nuclear, which leads to a flippant attitude to other options. We failed to design fast breeder reactors, and there are only 7 or 8 companies that build nuclear, and they can barely replace the dying nuclear fleet. In order to have this fantasy, you need to PROVE nuclear can scale to the levels of his solution, even with a looming U235 shortage. You need to prove humans are competent, and that finance of nuclear is no problem, through the next interest rates, which you cant predict. And just because you think renewables are a fantasy, doesn't mean nuclear isn't.
My brother-in-law was a controller before he retired and he often said that the addition of intermittent solar and wind made the task of keeping the grid stable was an absolute nightmare.
I suspect a bigger nightmare would be supplying the greater electrical load from the increased use of water pumps to deal with flooding, increased use of AC to deal with increasing number and length of heat waves, just to mention two of the many ramifications of continued fossile fuel use.
@@granitfoghahaha read some of the numbers for power requirements of fast charges for electric vehicles, home chargers for overnight charging before you even get to the numbers for all electric homes. Yep, here is the basket, full of eggs, one basket, all the eggs.
I am a 50+year veteran of electricity transmission and distribution industry. My take from this video is to understand our current situation and how we get off fossil fuels. This video presents a very balanced view and realization solar/wind/batteries is not a complete solution. It's called realism and owning a calculator doesn't hurt.
80% of our energy is not from electricity but oil, I think separating the two when discussing the problem shows the public what net zero really means. Could we replace 20% of our energy with renewables? Yes, Should we? Yes, there will not be a cheaper time. Utmost we need to get the public off idea that 100% renewables for electricity is going to solve our problems.
@@antonyjh1234 yes, I mean there will be a cheaper time(renewables are still getting cheaper each year) but the costs of not transitioning are staggering. Yes its part of the solution but we also need to decarbonise all systems, agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to this too.
Owning a calculator and not factoring in quite realistic S curve adoption dramatic price drops in grid batteries means the input data can be WAY OFF. Tony Seba was ridiculed for his predictions in the fall in the cost of solar and batteries 10 years ago but he was bang on the money. As solar and batteries continue to drop in price per kW, batteries now reaching something like greater than 20% every year for the last 5 years, all the economists keep doing their calculations on 2 year old data.
@@caolindennehy2553 China has used a lot of dirty coal to produce the prices we have now. It could be this is the cheapest it will ever get as we get closer to failing at the paris agreement. Agriculture if you are to look at usa, is 10% of the total, 5 % for crops and 5% for all farmed animals. Agriculture is a needed industry but this is the thing that really gets me, everybody seems to know who or what is the biggest contributor but no-one seems to know how much energy is in a tank of diesel, while people drive, for pleasure holidays. There is no replacement for the 636 kilowatts of energy per tank, but we continue to drive and then blame other parts of needed industry and talk of decarbonising that mean nothing overall in their personal lives, for that it seems business as usual and where's our next holiday. Worldwide agriculture in poorer countries might have a higher percentage than modern countries because they use animals instead of tractors, they collect the dung and dry it for heating and cooking. We would have to replace the animals they have in the fields with tractors and diesel, new forms of cooking/ heating etc. A tank of diesel is 3 months of my electrical energy with the air con going 24/7 during summer, we waste this energy because we think things are going to get better. With oil running out and rising in price and coal use being curtailed. now could be the cheapest it will ever be for a solar panel and in a hundred years people may be physically fighting over a single panel.
Thanks for your detailed presentation. This is the first detailed balanced and over arching analysis of were we are and what our political representatives are programming for Australia’s future electrical energy provision. What is most disconcerting is the way, particularly the Labor team, are not listening and following a set agenda. The greatest embarrassment is not a failure but to keep repeating the same error. With information such as this presentation being available, we can hope that a number of our key decision makers start to see the issues of the current direction for energy supply and open up to consider all options for our supply models. Thanks once again for this presentation, now we need to get the message out before it really does become too late!!!
Thanks for a lucid explanation. It would be great to see you as a guest on Canada's Decouple Media, hosted by an emergency doctor who promotes nuclear power.
Kudos to the presenter for this well articulated, and data supported explanation of the NEM and grid. "We" must also recognise that the stepping-back mentioned here isn't as far as it should be. There's no mention of the upcoming controllable loads to also stabilise supply vs. demand. Each generation technology has different capability to vary its output dynamically. The massive spinning turbines in the current steam engines are well suited to stabilising the frequency via inertia, but their ability to ramp up and down is much more crippled than big batteries, which can respond in milliseconds to changes in the balance: faster even than hydro. Currently missing, and often deliberately ignored, is controlled loads. The variability in pricing exacerbated by temporary supply surpluses can be counteracted by grid-scale variable loads. Pumped-hydro and battery demand can be augmented with production of H2 and NH4. As loads producing a product beyond the grid, they have the opportunity to buy cheaply, likely to a fairly stable price threshold, reducing price volatility, and reducing the need to build generation too far beyond what is required. What's required for generation? Well, stepping back, we can produce NH4 for agriculture, H2 for making green steel, and probably NH4 as an alternative to bunker oil fuelling shipping. Why sell ore and coal instead of value-adding onshore, to our profit? What's "required" is less important than what's desired. More than 3x generation from the big fusion ball could give us a whole new income source as the world weans itself from our coal exports.
Take a view that goes beyond just replacing generation of electricity for current consumers. Refining metals from ore, and producing fertiliser can take advantage of surpluses in energy, buying it cheaply, and open up new export opportunities.
So can someone clarify as the ANU is stating the solar panels neeeded will only take up around 1200 square klm of land area to supply Australia's power grid not 6 times the size of Tasmania as quoted in this you tube presentation ? Is this true?
I suspect that the people at AEMO, who actually run the grid, would be across most of the information here and they seem to think we can run the grid at twice the current size using only renewables (including Hydro) storage and gas. The required changes are complex but do-able, and will be largely done before the first nuclear steam generator is available. The biggest danger to a successful outcome is the political push by the Nationals and their fellow travellers to delay and prevent the renewables rollout.
Almost every Australian university has a renewable energy degree while only UNSW offers nuclear engineering. The MPPT that is used in all solar inverters was invented by a university of Queensland student by the name of Stuart Watkinson in 1985. The reason for this is that it is allot easier, cheaper and safer for researches and industries to prototype renewable energy technologies as opposed to nuclear reactors. Almost anybody can set up a small scale wind/solar system in their backyard while a research reactor requires lots of permits and safety training to set up. Also research reactors can't be made as modular and as small scale as renewable research facilities due to the nature of critical mass needed to achieve reactor criticality.
Although this is a fairly technical analysis of electricity generation, it is clear that renewables are a very costly and inefficient way to supply power to the grid. Given that DC is useless for grid distribution, the other question is how does the renewables system convert AC to DC for battery storage and then convert DC back to AC for grid transmission?
What worries me is that, whatever we do, we d... better do it right. Because everyone's livelihood depends on electricity. Ideology, wishful thinking and good intentions are no substitute for getting it right. Reality does not care about these concepts.
80% of our energy is not from electricity but oil, we only exist because of it. I think separating the two when discussing the problem shows the public what net zero really means. The reality of running out of oil in 47 years still exists.
@@antonyjh1234 Correct. But the average business, commerce, at the first degree, relies on electricity. The transport of the goods that they sell and a lot of manufacturing relies on oil. Even some electricity generation relies on it. But when electrical brownout occurs, everything, the whole economy shuts down, including probably refineries. That in a context where we are converting transportation to electricity. But I am far from certain that the planning for the required increase in electricity supply has been considered and planned for. My fear is that governments have passed laws on the phasing out of internal combustion vehicles and just hoped that the electrical supply capacity would somehow catch-up. But it takes over a decade to get all the processes done for a new dam to be build. Leave alone a nuclear central. And there will be the "not in my back yard syndrome", so additional delays due to legal challenges. So we may end-up with a lot of EV car crashing out the grid.
@@yl9154 Have a look around yourself and see how many things are oil based, the computer you are using will not exist without plastic. Asphalt even comes from the same barrel that diesel and petrol do. If you take away oil, which is coming, by choice or force then business doesn't exist, so we need to start looking at total overhauls of our systems and decide do we want to do things for profit or need.
@@yl9154 Have a look around and see how many things are oil based, the computer will not exist without plastic. Asphalt comes from the same barrel that diesel and petrol do. If you take away oil, which is coming by choice or force then business doesn't exist
@@antonyjh1234 I am not advocating banning oil and I am well aware that most consumer goods contain oil. All I am saying is that our governments better make sure we have the electrical capacity in place to sustain the EV transition that they put into laws. Because if the grid can't sustain the demand, the manufactures and business shut down during the brown-outs and the economy suffers, which makes people suffer. Ask the South Africans (or the Germans when they ran out of gas to run their power plants and manufactures could run only a few hours a day instead of 24 hours a day). Our economy run on both oil and electricity. If our governments plan to reduce the oil dependency/consumption, then they better get the electricity part right! EV car is useless if there is no electricity to charge it. Manufactures shut down when there is a power outage. That is my point.
They are. Probably the most accurate way you could describe them is cultists. The "Climate Emergency" is a cult,. and the Net Zero zealots are some of the most devoted to that cult.
6:29 " we cant tranform DC " . Once I heard I knew this is going down the hill from there. One thing he is right though. Australia has not got engineering expertise nor people to install renewables and to design and run such grid . This would require innovation, well educated engineering brains and foresight. Well, lets wait for China , France or Germany and see how it is done. Perhaps in 50 years time they may sell a turn key solution to Australia.
Actually many machines are scrapped rather than renewed - that is why they have calculated working lives. Most of the wind turbines built to date will be viewed as too small and inefficient in another decade. They'll be removed and totally new turbines put in place. The demand for power is increasing all the time, it'll always be a race to meet demand. It'll be easier to upgrade existing turbines then find new locations/grid connections etc.
Any chance you could approach the guys from the Energy Insiders podcast for a discussion. I would love to see where the debate goes. I just want to know the truth and facts. I don’t know who advises the government on planning but I am 100% sure politicians aren’t engineers, and they should be finding the most reasonable balance between what is cost effective and achievable whilst still maintaining a reliable system to provide cheap power and the least environmental damage over the lifecycle. Wind and solar farms are environmental vandalism in my opinion.
The integration system plan (ISP), which is being implemented, is developed by experienced power systems engineers (not politicians). There is a lot of cherry-picking and misinformation in this video, and many advancements, strangely, were not mentioned. For example, Grid-forming inverters and the role of batteries in frequency response are far quicker than any "spinning machines" or fast-start gas turbines. This is very odd, considering he is involved in the industry and would be well aware of these advancements, which have helped stabilise the grid numerous times over the last few years (most notably and ironically after thermal coal generator tripping events).
Yeah, i think this guy is doing old-think. There's no need to have the whole grid synchronised, when DC links will be a large part of it. He's also outright lying at the end of the video, saying renewables are responsible for the price hikes. Most of it is coal and gas hikes from chinese demand, plus they overbuilt distribution then people installed LED lighting and LCD TV and inverter fridges. Then he has a big pile of nuclear solving his problems, which is never going to happen, because we are too incompetent to build nuclear. He goes and licences his fantasy, by pretending there's another solution. Once you realise there is no other way, you cant attack wind.
Its about time an Electrical Engineer is speaking up, there should be more doing the same, unfortunely, many are profiting from renewable Projects and don't give a rats about the impossability of powering a nation with wind and Solar
It's almost equally as impossible to do it with Nuclear in a drought prone country. Soon they will say we need to add desal plants and then more nuclear to power those. Running nuclear takes obscene amounts of water.
An “electrical engineer” that says electrons travel to deliver electricity from generation? I wouldn’t trust this guy with boiling an egg let alone with the complexities of the power system.
@@robzee-4895 Yes, and yes. There are intracacies and nuances to this discussion however, coming from either ideological end doesn’t help a discussion that should be based on engineering and physics.
His graph at 16:33 purporting to show that renewables are too expensive uses studies from 2008 to 2018 (and in turn data from perhaps before that)? Does he not know how much the costs of renewables, storage, and much else have plummeted in that time? Or worse, perhaps he does, which is why he presented this old data?
If one is going to criticise any proposed solution to any problem, then one should 1) state whether the problem is real or not, 2) define the risks for not acting on the proposed solution of the problem or give evidence for the problem not existing or not worth a solution, 3) define or propose alternatives to the proposed solution. This speaker did not do any of these.
I’m assuming you’re kidding if you’re serious, grab your calculator and work out in dollar terms, size and capacity how big a grid storage you would need to provide any sort of additional stability and meaningful load, balancing to the grid
@@malcolmwhite6588 I figure production will increase by a factor of 1000 while cost will be reduced by a factor of 10 using Sodium ion batteries instead of Lithium. It will also be more profitable for Tesla than selling cars in less than a decade. It doesn't even take all that much imagination, since there are already a couple of islands that have done it.
@@malcolmwhite6588 yes, done that. Tesla megapacks : 970 kWh LCOS = AUD $0.17kWh , 200 MWh, 8 hr duration LCOS = AUD $0.112 kWh. Size of energy storage capacity required by 2050 as per AEMO 2024 ISP (optimal deployment path) = 398 GWh pumped hydro , 86 GWh grid scale battery, 160 GWh consumer energy resources (home batteries and EV with V2G/H) What figures do you have ?
@@malcolmwhite6588 Why use a calculator when you could check the cost of existing grid scale batteries that already provide that service all over Australia? The FCAS market has already been swallowed whole by batteries. They provide those services far cheaper than running a turbine on standby, burning fuel constantly without putting that power into the grid.
@@SocialDownclimber How delusional can you get? The Germans, who are 20 years ahead in renewables, have just announced that they are building 21GW of new gas-fired power plants, not 21GW of batteries.
I just wish our politicians could get together and have a major concentration on this issue - you know a workshop with presentations by leaders of the technology group with the energy gurus presenting options. Then our elected members voting individually, in secret so no Party lines and previous public utterances mattering, to select the option for Australia to head on. This political nonsense driven be extremely poorly informed voters (I include myself in this, it has so many factors) needs to end. I personally think the solar/wind strategy is chasing our tails and doomed to be hugely expensive and eat up more and more people/resources damaging the economy. But I could be wrong.
Been saying this forever, we need get off CO2 and Nuclear is the only way I can see forward within a sane time and cost envelope. Pumped hydro is great if you're Switzerland, but in our flat dry landscape it's going to be very difficult and time consuming to build at scale, and will make a few reactors look positively cheap.
The speaker mentioned Tesla, Westinghouse and Edison, a name that can not be left out is Charles (Proteus) Steinmetz. His contribution to electrical science is equal or greater than the before mentioned. The comments section has revealed some ignorance of science and engineering by laypeople on this subject.
Fable , I have worked in the power generation and transmission industry since 1986 . Plus have a college education along with the schooling within the nuclear industry . Your zeal for green is blinding your to the problems of cost , reliability , environmental damage and practicality . The earth is still warming from the last iceage . World wide CO2 levels are still at near all time lows During earth’s history . Do you not want a greener planet ? How is anything on Australia going to counteract what China is doing ? Do you not care about the retail price of power ? People are dying because they can not run their air conditioning .
I am a little confused about a couple of his remarks. First at the 6:30 min marks he mentioned that DC cannot be converted to AC. This is what a inverter does on every rooftop solar system installed on the grid. Secondly he mentioned that you cannot maintain grid stability without the spinning turbines of power stations or at least I think that is what he meant. You can stabalise the grid through Synchronous Condensers which are being used in SA to stabalise the grid and maintain 50Hz. Also more recent software management has allowed batteries to do this Virtuallt. This is occuring at the Big Battery at Hornsdale in SA. The British Government has signed an agreement with the owners of Hinckley C Nuclear P{ower Station to provide power at $A180 per Mwh for the next 30 years adjusted annually for inflation.
Firstly, 18 cents a kWh is very expensive for electricity produced by nuclear power. It is likely there are influences that have elevated this price such as excessive regulation, power unions, a lack of low cost means to cater for peak loads and the injection of intermittent power into the system from other sources which then prevents the system from running at 100% of its capacity 100% of the time. Next, he is right in what he said regarding AC and DC voltage transformation. To change the voltage of DC you must chop it up such that it is a square wave AC, smooth it with capacitors, transform it to the new voltage, rectify it back to DC and then smooth out the transients with large capacitors. Very messy and you lose a lot of energy in the process. Very high voltage DC has much lower loss than AC when transmitted over long distances and this low loss in transmission compensates for the energy lost converting AC to DC and then returning the DC to AC for consumption. That is why long distance transmission might use 500kV DC for this purpose.
The conversation was regarding Tesla and Edison over 100 years ago . Why are you trying to drag 100 year old tech into today’s conversation . To push your renewable religion . Synchronous Condensers do control noise and spikes in real time . While also providing leading power to counter the lagging power factor from electric motors . There is nothing driving the Synchronous Condensers to pickup the power grid load . When wind and solar falter. There is also no spinning reserve to pickup the load in case of transmission line or generator failure .
Regards to converting!!! He said Transform. You cannot Transform DC is a true statement. Transformers work due to the collapsing fields that are only possible with Alternating Current!!!
Actually the solid state conversion of DC to AC is efficient . The example given back in the Edison and Tesla era was lossy and expensive . Note how quick a greenie was to jump on that and attempt to twist the presentation out of context . Greenies are more about faith and feelings instead of facts .
Where did you get the $90/MWh cost for nuclear? New build nuclear is no way near this price, it's closer to $160/MWh. Why did you not provide a source for this claim?
Yeah not much detail on this slide, imagining no extra grid capacity needed for Nuclear without any idea where its being deployed, probably nothing on the cost of water needed which will go up when these things are turned on and Uranium will go up in price. Factored in all the costs of extra grid for Wind and Solar, did they factor in the cost of building the plants?
It’ll be in the paper. You can locate a nuclear plant at the exact same location as existing coal plants - they are all located near lakes for cooling. Where did you get 160/MWh from?
We're never building nuclear. We're too incompetent, and the world u235 is a bit tight. These attacks on renewables are caused by people thinking there's another solution. Once you think nuclear is an option, your attacks get more flippant and shitty. He doesn't seem to know that wind is already overbuilt, because wind plants are specified by average, not peak. What we really need is coal that can ramp fast. His diagram showing how much solar we need is crud.
Frankly speaking seems a POV of 10 years ago. 1) this analysis doesn't take into account that the stability issue can ben much more easily addressed when you impose producers to install adequate buffer batteries (say at least 4hrs of full operation). Same way the prices volatility. At the end of 2024 CATL LFP Will ship for 50 dollars, sodium batteries Will follow even cheaper. It's an affordable cost without incentives. 2) the study seems to not consider long time operational batteries like iron-air or graphite tpv. 3) 90 dollars per MWh including distribution cost Is nowhere near the Truth.
Batteries are not a realistic or economical answer. The $90m battery installed in south Australia would keep the lights on for 5 minutes. Plus....greedy capitalists (in green clothing) will need to rape and pillage the earth to obtain the necessary minerals, and usually exploiting third world people in their pursuit of green greed.
I think he is more up to date then you credit. The short life span of wind turbines is an expensive issue. Massive solar farms are an issue and the constant maintenance in remote areas will be expensive. 4 hrs is no where near the reserves needed so buffer batteries may help but a massive storage system will be needed - wind and solar can be out for extended periods (days). Yes, technology is improving all the time but at the moment little actual engineering and science is driving decisions - it is political. Very dangerous position to be in - current parties are only concerned about the next election, not what will happen in 10 years or longer time frames. Personally I am well past wishful thinking and have found my own solar panels very unproductive in winter and the pay back period much greater than expected, and they will be counter productive if they do not last a good many years yet (and I have my doubts even though they are premium panels/inverters).
With Nuclear Energy we all have to TRUST the company building and running it, then trust that they will store the waste appropriately for the next thousand years. No. Just no. Let’s overbuild renewables.
@@sussell4606 Look up product lifecycles. Fission simply cannot catch renewables, because renewables are updating at a speed 10-15 times that of fission tech. When AI fusion breaks through, that will be a different story, and even then we’ll be licensing it from Americans. Maybe AI fusion will change the game, but until then renewables will become ubiquitous by 2035.
Renewables won’t work compared to what? Business as usual won’t work, that’s why we are here. We can produce renewable energy, but whether that ‘works’ depends on your vision of what is required. The only model we have control over, is the only one not considered: economic model. So, we may not be able to power a civilization optimized for carbon molecules, but we can power a civilization. Which is the goal, to sustain civilization, but it would be naive to think that doing so would not require it to change as well.
Not questioning the professor's credentials but this needs to looked at through the lense of his involvement with the Centre of Indendendant Studies which is a part of the Atlas network, a chain of global think tanks representing the views of the fossil fuel and like industries. He is also telling a one sided story based on an old system mindset, not the opportunity to move to a move distributed and participant focused system. The current guard are desperate to lock in the current central control of power generation and distribution.
Forget the conspiracy theories. Look at the graph at 19:22, which is the NEM step-change scenario. It shows the increase in generating capacity from 80 GW now to 120 GW in 2030 and 240 GW in 2050. This is capacity, not what is actually generated. It is a fact that, because they only work 25-35% of the time, we have to massively overbuild solar and wind to produce the same energy which coal plants do, or which nuclear plants would. Yes, solar is cheap, but when you need six times as much, it starts to add up. And you must have storage to cover the times when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, and building storage is lagging way behind the installation of renewables.
@@frankszanto Yes it is well known, if you look at Tony Seba's numbers on over building on both is still cheaper and they calculate on actual power delivered not rated max output. Then if we reference the latest advice from the Gaurdian interviewing 380 top climate scientist (not economist)80% gave a forecast in excess of 2.5 degrees of warming buy the end of the centry, so it pretty much stops us all in our tracks. The Atlas links are no conspiracy theory, although Atlas thinktanks love to claim this- there is some great information out there on this from leading Australian academics as well as publicly available information - much of it from Atlas themselves.
@@markdev4796 The graph at 19:22 is of GW, which is power, not GWh which is energy. It shows we now have about 80GW installed, but the maximum demand on the NEM on a hot summer's day is around 36GW. Fossil fuels still contribute over 61% of our energy. This overbuild is not free. It uses huge amounts of materials. In the end, it will be the environmentalists who stop the transition to 100% renewables when they can physically see the cost.
@@frankszanto I think we all understand GW vs GWh, combined with battery and storage the overbuild is not as significant as suggested, you are trying to measure the new system through the lens of the now very outdated way of delivering power and through the narrative of the incumbent. Australia has an amazing opportunity through this transition, if it lets the coal and gas industries keep its control of the narrative it will miss the opportunity. It is more often than not the expense of fossile fuel power on the wholesale market that is pumping the power price up.
@@frankszanto Nothing is free we have some submarines coming apparently according to the drums of war are to stop the Chinese thinking about taking over Australia, those are not free either. The problem with this is like Mark mentions, its all based on the old centralised one way distribution/transmission system. Its the same basic system that Tesla/Westinghouse proposed in 1886 and ultimately running at Niagara Falls. Things have changed a hell of a lot since back then, we are more efficient, technologically more advanced and science is forever discovering better ways of doing things. Just because the infrastucture for centralised distribution has been in place and sticky taped together doesnt mean it should stay. I like the idea of lots of redundancies and to me thats self islanding microgrids where they still can be interconnected but you can issolate very small blocks and avoid the clamity of a problem in a centalised generation station wiping out massive areas. Take a look at Octopus Energy in the UK thats the future direction of energy providing. I am seeing positive thing here in Australia with new suburbs having local batteries and homeowners with solar storing excess into those so they can use it at night and the battery provider charging them up during the day when energy providers have cheap solar excess. Its dropping their bills by 1/3 which for many isn't chicken feed. But we need to stop looking at the grid as we did in the 50's and 60's and look at it from a whole different angle. the "alway on" one speed coal stations really just have to go they just are wasteful and a relic from the past. IMO the AEM would be far better to disband and everything become localised microgrids, to me the AEM has become an utter mess and the costs to keep putting on endless bandaids on old infrastructure make little sense in 2024.
Claiming that solar/wind/renewable electricity is too intermittent and has to be consumed as it is generated is the same argument as claiming that harvested vegetables must be eaten immediately. But look how that argument fails on so many levels, including in all kinds of living organisms. Energy storage is common and complex, the fat stored in the bodies to plants and seeds being squirrelled away. Just because some people are still stuck on promoting fossil fuels, doesn’t mean that everyone has to stay stuck on using carbon to create electricity.
I’m not sure what the point of your commentary is? if you’re debunking this piece, I suggest you do some research on electricity generation and also as some background some electromagnetic theory - you can find that in any university physics, 101 paper
@@malcolmwhite6588 Marc Jacobson published some very good data about how to get to 100% renewable energy with the current available technology for the whole of USA. Perhaps a debate between Wilson and Jacobson would be illuminating.
Did you not pick up on the fact that renewables require because of their nature of supply of AC power has to be built 6 times bigger to cope with its inefficient supply. Time to smell the roses and wake up from this dream.
Trends need to be considered. Australia has been spiralling in ever decreasing circles, since Menzies was elected by promising to end petrol rationing. ENIGINEERS ARE NOT SCIENTISTS.
Base load nuclear and geothermal, every roof top should have solar panels. Vehicles and transport needs to have a grand master plan be more efficient and off set by forestry (sitting in traffic jams is not doing the world any favours). Agriculture should off set by agriculture. Gas plays a role in heating homes. Town planning needs to encompass nature corridors, linking parklands and self sustaining principles, such as roof rainwater capture, vegetable gardens ect. Housing development should never be put on prime farmland. We live in a first world country, how is this so hard.
What is "baseload" nuclear? The industry has been sitting on a secret that they dont have enough fissile fuel for a decent amount of nuclear, and probably cant even build any net plant demand. We turned off nuclear decades ago. Yeah, KEPCO can build 4 reactors in 12 years in UAE, and the chinese can build 20, but they are BUSY, and the existing 440 plants are retiring at the same rate you can build them. There are no magic beans that build nuclear plants, and no fast breeder reactors to get more fuel. The industry has been so convinced of its own demise, that they swept the practical problems under the rug
@@smclaren67The part where he said electrons physically travel from generation to load. Anyone with basic knowledge of physics, let alone electrical engineering, would tell you why that is wrong.
Remember that supplying baseload energy requires batteries or other stotage mediums PLUS the installation of renewables like solar or wind to charge the batteries when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. You cannot count that capacity as available to serve peak loads, too. This truth is what makes net zero electric systems very expensive for the middle class to afford. Can it be done? Yes. Do we want our citizens to pay for it when we are trying to compete with China? Maybe not! Maybe we should make crypto mining an interruptible load or only allow it when surplus renewable energy is available.
Compete with China? You’ve got a third-world level economy selling unprocessed raw materials and you think you’re in a position to compete with China? A better competition would be Burkina Faso or Sierra Leone.
If you wanna go renewable but stable 100% predictable and plannable electricty generation, the australian project Hydrokite is going to do it. Ocean current 24/7 or tidal in phases.
Mining and nuclear engineer turned economist explaining technical difficulties that have already been solved; interconnectors, battery and hydro storage can and do support systems with large proportions of renewables. Last week the UK went from 80% renewables to 15% in a few hours and guess what...nothing happened. We only need 2.8% of UK's land area to satify needs and some. This guy knows his market; the homeless climate cynics and anti-electricfication fanatics who, having finally lost the 'is climate change real?' battle, are focussing their miserable efforts on the supporting critical technologies. Lots of hyperbolae and paranoia, -Trump would approve. Would like to see him perform against professional engineers involved renewables and grid support rather than the public; he'd be blown out of the water.
Put in place 60% BWRX 300 and 40% Natrium SFR with Molten Salt Storage. Offer to take in Spent Nuclear Fuel from around the world and run your reactors off the recycling of the Spent Nuclear Fuel. Give back the Spent fuel via the ANSTO technology so host country can deposit with deep bore technology. ANSTO Synroc is a technology that treats challenging nuclear waste, including molten salts from spent fuels.
If you wanna go renewable but stable 100% predictable and plannable electricty generation, the australian project Hydrokite is going to do it. Ocean current 24/7 or tidal in phases.
Exactly! Nuclear!!! By far the cleanest and most practical form of energy we can use in this period of human history. Until they allow us to use the suppressed tech they no dubitably have, we have to be using nuclear and fossil to the most part.
"Do the Math" and we are compelled to recognise Logarithmic Time, a relative-timing number at e-Pi-i 1-0-infinity functional infinitesimal coordination-identification positioning system. If we listen to authorities who wish to maintain a system of ethical standards in every aspect-version of Singularity-point Lensing Actuality, it's (too) clear and simple that the only fundamental absolute needed for a solution to the Measurement Problem situation, is Absolute Zero Kelvin, ie Eternity-now Interval is the only "discrete" definition of reality and that is the old implication of placement by epicycles in quantization jumps of No-thing definable, the natural WYSIWYG illusion of separation being a delusion of intentional displacement. The cleansing of the Atherton Tablelands is a top down absolute disgrace, the absence of the legal system processes created of, by, for people.
The problem is people no longer know how to think critically and if some AI system generates an output your not able to question it because AI is clever and your not.
He absolutely insists you can't model the whole system, and then he supports his argument on his PHD student who modelled the whole system. He says to question when somebody says, "we need", and then says, "we need". I question him. I question his motives. I question whether he's ever heard of batteries and algorithms. I question if his oldest ancestors kept his more contemporary ancestors in the caves like he is trying to do to you now. This guy is a nutcase!
Says ecologist and never mentions where all the water will come from to run these plants, not from his drinking water. He will probably try and tell farmers that they dont need big turbines and transmission wires through their country and that Nuclear is the answer and then take all their water allotments away to feed these plants.
To be fair he did say modelling to a higher fidelity, however, you can use lumped models and they’re good enough to run engineering studies and analyses on.
I got 5 minutes in and smelt an agenda, I'm not suggesting that we can 'do it all' with renewables, but the way this was formatted, seems like outsiders have written most of the dialogue. did the professor receive remuneration? We will never know.
If the world's current population were to stand side by side each on one square meter. Their foot prints would be contained in a ninety kilometres square, barely a dot on a world map.
I'm amazed that you showed so many graphs but you managed to avoid providing so little evidence for your claims. Almost every single slide was you describing a 'problem' from the slide and then talking about causation without actually showing evidence for what you were saying. Here's some very important points you missed: 1. Batteries have already dominated the FCAS market. They do it better and cheaper than traditional 'spinning machines' on all time horizons shorter than an hour. 2. Models are a thing you urged people to distrust, and then entire second half of your talk was about how certain models predict the future of the grid. You even talked for 10% of your own talk about how modelling the whole grid is impossible for anyone, then used around 4 models to predict the future of the whole grid. That's just contradicting yourself. Nonsense. 3. The 100% RVE graph you showed was almost entirely data from the EU and a bit from the USA. None of that is relevant to Australia. Might as well show a graph comparing kangaroo meat consumption and being shocked about how different the estimates are for Aus and the Eu. 4. You said at the start that you were addressing the claim that renewable energy can save us from climate change ... and proceeded to forget all about it. You didn't even have a single chart that talked about emissions of each power source, construction times, permitting and cost of each generation technology. You only showed graphs derived from predictive models, which you had already rubbished. Why did you spend 2 minutes talking about Tesla and Edison and fail to mention emissions and climate? This presentation needs some serious work to move it from 'misleading' to 'helpful'. Provide evidence for your claims, include some obvious omissions and talk about each model you use and its purpose, rather than presenting their conclusions as fact.
Why the fear and terror regarding nuclear ? Your experience is limited to anti nuclear echo chambers , anti nuclear warhead types and watchers of the Simpsons . How many years have you worked in nuclear ?
I am not "terrified" of nuclear. It would be a good option if it could be built for roughly the same cost and in the same time frame as wind and solar. It cannot! All the nuclear power stations built and commissioned over the last few years have been way over budget and taken a pond time to build. Hinkley C is a very good example. This 3.2 GW station was initially expected to cost about$A24 billion when first proposed in 2009. 15 years later that estimate is now $A92 billion and full completion by 2031. @@buickanddeere
Half truths and out of date statements. Clearly he is either deliberately misleading or is ignorant of DC transmissions lines. ETC ETC Best way to lie is to tell half the truth. Disgusting
@@normanstewart7130 Renewables are growing incredibly fast, now make up all growth in energy demand, are poised to exceed energy growth and are getting cheaper by the day. Batteries and computer algorithms are negating the need for the old, and inflexible, flywheel stability. Computers didn't even exist when the grid began developing. Leaving the caves would have been fanatical to your ancestors.
@@ronvandereerden4714 If you watch the video, you'll see that the growth of renewables is precisely the problem. Prof. Wilson, and the electricity industry, are pointing out that renewables make the grid unstable and extremely expensive.
@@normanstewart7130 Leaving the caves meant everybody would lack shelter. So why aren't we still there? Wilson and his fossil cohorts can make all the claims they want about not being fundamentally opposed to renewables, but they are fundamentally opposed to renewables. That is their motivation. Grid instability is an excuse, not a limitation. Computers and grid scale batteries didn't exist when the grid was first established so they made do with other innovations. Now computers and batteries can stabilize the grid in ways that the original designers could never have dreamed of. His claims are poppycock that sells well to old-timers and those who want to see renewables fail because they are so invested in fossil fuels. The excess capacity that an intermittent system requires does not go to waste as he coyly avoids mentioning. In a free market, businesses will make use of that excess energy during maximum output and store it in myriad ways or create a demand for products and systems that benefit from short but somewhat predictable periods of free or cheap energy. As he admitted, the entire system is in its infancy. He tried to make that sound like a bad thing. Note that he *insisted* the entire system cannot be modelled. And then he argues his case on the claim that his student modelled the entire system. He also said to question those who says, "we need". And a few sentences later says, "we need", to argue his point. So, yeah, I question him. He is a charlatan of the worst sort.
Yes - still some big decisions to come and maybe nuclear cannot be excluded yet for Australia. The climate emergencies coming at us fast now may yet demand a sharper turn away from fossil fuels but a stable electricity grid at the same time in order to power new buildings, flood mitigation, food security, rapid research, maybe defence demands etc. Rapid responses are better handled with stable power systems.
Seriously mate, how delusional are you.? Firstly the assumption to climate change is due to how we generate energy and secondly, disasters are coming at such a rate because of global warming. No data backs either of your points and it's sheer stupidity on your behalf to write such irresponsible drivel.
@@Nathan-bu5ci There are dozens of countries successfully running nuclear power plants, even Qatar in the desert, so it can be done, obviously. You squealing about water usage on every comment doesn't change the facts.
@@benmorris1968 solar and wind with battery backup is working remarkably well and transforming the power grid here in United States and this is mostly funded by private investment money they wouldn't do it if it didn't make economic sense so the picture I see is that it's working spectacularly well. there's a lot of fossil fuel company propaganda trying to confuse people on this issue. When someone tells me it's not working that's an immediate red flag.
@@scottprather5645 Please watch to the end. This professor is pointing out the issues facing us and he is advocating for Renewables with Nuclear as the percentage of Renewables grows. He's not advocating for fossil. California's grid source is 50% Gas as their turn-on source when renewables switch-off. Go Off Grid. This is an option for many homes in wealthy countries but not for 90% of the world's population. Solar and batteries might seem cheap to Californians. But try telling 800 million Indians who earn less than $2000 USD per YEAR they have to buy an off grid system. Indeed, with all the efforts Californians have put in they are still only Solar 17% and Wind 8%, which is below the renewables adoption threshold where the issues this professor is trying to address start. I believe thinking and talking about the technical and economic issues that will arise when Solar and Wind approach 40% or more should be viewed as a good thing. A problem to solve. Not accused of being a fossil fuel stooge. A corrupt person. Do better. Please. I believe Nuclear forms a big part of the way forward to save the planet and prevent the millions of human deaths that will occur if we try to force most of the world to go net zero too quickly. But we need to look at all the options. www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/2021-total-system-electric-generation
@@scottprather5645what a load of absolute garbage. California is the basket case of the US on such issues. Is there some link that remotely supports your comment. I've yet to see it.
So put the turbines in the city. Put the solar panels over car parks and highways, put the turbine on top of tall buildings. Why do his words drip with disdain, why does his arrogance overpower his arguments. Why does he lie about dc to ac and ac to dc? Why is he talking down as though we are stupid? The rotating machines...oh ffs😂 No they don't have balance the system now 😂 omg. He is being paid by fossil fuels.
"There would be considerable environmental impact I would have thought". I do not give a damn about your guesses. This is all just guesses and biased nonsense.
Those massive solar farms in the north are primarily for export. Australian net revenue. I think you are the most disingenuous presenter I've seen since Trump.
@@philipwilkie3239 Closer to where demand is. You don't need that much solar as the size of those farms. Half of you have it on your roof. Those huge farms are to send power to SE Asia.
@@philipwilkie3239 There's just some really inane strawman statements to begin with and total crap unsourced data with no assumptions given or transparency. Just total garbage for an academic. The idea that solid state tech like PV and batteries is more complex than thermal generation plants with boilers, steam turbines etc is garbage. That is tech from centuries ago. Like an EV has far less moving parts and mechanical complexity than an ICE vehicle, EV will be far more efficient and long lasting. It's just stupidity of not seeing how inefficient old crap tech is compared to new tech. Direct generation by PV and wind are for more straight forward and efficient, batteries developing rapidly
@@philipwilkie3239, except that both of the recent large-scale blackouts over the last few years (in Vic and QLD) were due to thermal coal generators tripping. An old centralised energy system is not compatible with a modern decentralised system, which is what is happening. Additionally, the energy crisis in 2022 and massive spikes in wholesale electricity prices were due to coal and gas shortages, not renewables.
@@jasonsvarc4424 So your argument is that if the relatively simple and robust system that has a pre-ponderance of high inertia rotating generators can indeed fail from time to time - then adding more intermittent, complex, zero inertia generators will somehow magically make matters better? In my working life I have seen this mistake made many times - adding complexity almost always decreases reliability. And adding poorly defined buzzwords like 'modern' and 'decentralised' does not help either.
The sooner these pretender engineers are moved on the better. Just bc they think they can solve a given problem, makes them think they have the creativity to think up novel solutions when typically they do not. This is why Elon Musk created SpaceX while the engineers merely solve the problems he frames for them. This is why Steve Jobs hired Johnny Ives - an industrial designer - to imagine the future, and then sent their imaginings to the engineering dept. These mediocre engineers are handbrakes on progress due to their stubborn ego, while the real entrepreneurs who are solving the renewables storage challenge have already past these yesteryear pedants with solutions that will make this arrogant fool look idiotic within a decade. Reminds me of the electrical engineer who spent an hour in the 1990’s telling me the internet will never have the bandwidth for video streaming. I told him he was wrong & he foolishly was. He just couldn’t factor in that people better and smarter than him would solve the problems he couldn’t even conceive of.
But do you think someone on earth is smart enough to solve long-term energy storage ? Lithium-ion batteries are only good for short term energy storage...
Gravity batteries for domestic use and thermal batteries for industry (as they are a heat source too) are in the introduction stages of their lifecycle, & are receiving significant investment capital at the moment. By the time gravity/thermal batteries get to their growth phase at scale, these renewable storage products will have solved much of the renewable intermittency issues. Gravity & thermal batteries are simpler, far less toxic, last many decades, are cheaper to build and maintain than large lithium batteries and are a superior option in the long term for suburb by suburb renewable storage (as gravity batteries are the size of a building) and plant by plant renewable storage where an industrial high level heat is also required.
@@pauld3327Bullshit. Gravity batteries are building sized & a fraction of the cost of a lithium battery or nuclear power plant. What’s more they last for 50 years minimum with little maintenance. Thankfully there are far smarter people than obscurantist idiots like you, making gravity batteries a reality right now.
Would like to shake your hand, thanks for saying what has to be said to the practical people.
You obviously work for, or are heavily invested in, fossil fuels.
@@ronvandereerden4714even with evidence right in your face, you've still swallowed the green washing.
@@ronvandereerden4714 No, David has a grasp of supply chain, mineral resources and math. You do not :)
his numbers on nuclear are completely incorrect. its more like $300-500/MWh, with a 20 year build time minimum. which is why it wont get up. his numbers on RE are also incorrect. its more like $30-180/MWh, depending on time of day. anyone who has actually traded energy in the NEM in the last 10 years knows this. we also see negative prices ($0 or less) through the day due to excess RE, particularly in SA. this is a problem and needs soaking up with batteries. not expensive nuclear. he also doesnt tell you the $180/MWh price is pretty much the price that RE displaces natural gas turbines which is actually used to balance the market along with hydro tas and snowy. this is an benchtop presentation by someone with zero practical experience. sorry. im surprised he didnt start spruiking pumped hydro too. and we all know how well that is going! i was pretty dissapointed in this superficial and largely incorrect presentation.
He has a grasp of old ways of thinking, and a fantasy that we can build nuclear, which leads to a flippant attitude to other options. We failed to design fast breeder reactors, and there are only 7 or 8 companies that build nuclear, and they can barely replace the dying nuclear fleet. In order to have this fantasy, you need to PROVE nuclear can scale to the levels of his solution, even with a looming U235 shortage. You need to prove humans are competent, and that finance of nuclear is no problem, through the next interest rates, which you cant predict. And just because you think renewables are a fantasy, doesn't mean nuclear isn't.
My brother-in-law was a controller before he retired and he often said that the addition of intermittent solar and wind made the task of keeping the grid stable was an absolute nightmare.
Poor baby. Glad he has no responsibilty.
Who has no responsibility ?
@@Tom-dt4ic tells us about your underwhelming responsibility
I suspect a bigger nightmare would be supplying the greater electrical load from the increased use of water pumps to deal with flooding, increased use of AC to deal with increasing number and length of heat waves, just to mention two of the many ramifications of continued fossile fuel use.
@@granitfoghahaha read some of the numbers for power requirements of fast charges for electric vehicles, home chargers for overnight charging before you even get to the numbers for all electric homes. Yep, here is the basket, full of eggs, one basket, all the eggs.
I am a 50+year veteran of electricity transmission and distribution industry. My take from this video is to understand our current situation and how we get off fossil fuels. This video presents a very balanced view and realization solar/wind/batteries is not a complete solution. It's called realism and owning a calculator doesn't hurt.
80% of our energy is not from electricity but oil, I think separating the two when discussing the problem shows the public what net zero really means. Could we replace 20% of our energy with renewables? Yes, Should we? Yes, there will not be a cheaper time.
Utmost we need to get the public off idea that 100% renewables for electricity is going to solve our problems.
@@antonyjh1234 yes, I mean there will be a cheaper time(renewables are still getting cheaper each year) but the costs of not transitioning are staggering. Yes its part of the solution but we also need to decarbonise all systems, agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to this too.
Owning a calculator and not factoring in quite realistic S curve adoption dramatic price drops in grid batteries means the input data can be WAY OFF.
Tony Seba was ridiculed for his predictions in the fall in the cost of solar and batteries 10 years ago but he was bang on the money.
As solar and batteries continue to drop in price per kW, batteries now reaching something like greater than 20% every year for the last 5 years, all the economists keep doing their calculations on 2 year old data.
@@sparkytas Lithium Ion Batteries for grid backup is a fairy tale.
@@caolindennehy2553 China has used a lot of dirty coal to produce the prices we have now. It could be this is the cheapest it will ever get as we get closer to failing at the paris agreement. Agriculture if you are to look at usa, is 10% of the total, 5 % for crops and 5% for all farmed animals. Agriculture is a needed industry but this is the thing that really gets me, everybody seems to know who or what is the biggest contributor but no-one seems to know how much energy is in a tank of diesel, while people drive, for pleasure holidays. There is no replacement for the 636 kilowatts of energy per tank, but we continue to drive and then blame other parts of needed industry and talk of decarbonising that mean nothing overall in their personal lives, for that it seems business as usual and where's our next holiday. Worldwide agriculture in poorer countries might have a higher percentage than modern countries because they use animals instead of tractors, they collect the dung and dry it for heating and cooking. We would have to replace the animals they have in the fields with tractors and diesel, new forms of cooking/ heating etc.
A tank of diesel is 3 months of my electrical energy with the air con going 24/7 during summer, we waste this energy because we think things are going to get better. With oil running out and rising in price and coal use being curtailed. now could be the cheapest it will ever be for a solar panel and in a hundred years people may be physically fighting over a single panel.
this is a great video. this is what the mainstream doesn't see. it's so sad. its a religion
Thanks for your detailed presentation. This is the first detailed balanced and over arching analysis of were we are and what our political representatives are programming for Australia’s future electrical energy provision. What is most disconcerting is the way, particularly the Labor team, are not listening and following a set agenda. The greatest embarrassment is not a failure but to keep repeating the same error. With information such as this presentation being available, we can hope that a number of our key decision makers start to see the issues of the current direction for energy supply and open up to consider all options for our supply models. Thanks once again for this presentation, now we need to get the message out before it really does become too late!!!
Thanks for a lucid explanation.
It would be great to see you as a guest on Canada's Decouple Media, hosted by an emergency doctor who promotes nuclear power.
Kudos to the presenter for this well articulated, and data supported explanation of the NEM and grid. "We" must also recognise that the stepping-back mentioned here isn't as far as it should be. There's no mention of the upcoming controllable loads to also stabilise supply vs. demand. Each generation technology has different capability to vary its output dynamically. The massive spinning turbines in the current steam engines are well suited to stabilising the frequency via inertia, but their ability to ramp up and down is much more crippled than big batteries, which can respond in milliseconds to changes in the balance: faster even than hydro. Currently missing, and often deliberately ignored, is controlled loads. The variability in pricing exacerbated by temporary supply surpluses can be counteracted by grid-scale variable loads. Pumped-hydro and battery demand can be augmented with production of H2 and NH4. As loads producing a product beyond the grid, they have the opportunity to buy cheaply, likely to a fairly stable price threshold, reducing price volatility, and reducing the need to build generation too far beyond what is required.
What's required for generation? Well, stepping back, we can produce NH4 for agriculture, H2 for making green steel, and probably NH4 as an alternative to bunker oil fuelling shipping. Why sell ore and coal instead of value-adding onshore, to our profit? What's "required" is less important than what's desired. More than 3x generation from the big fusion ball could give us a whole new income source as the world weans itself from our coal exports.
Take a view that goes beyond just replacing generation of electricity for current consumers. Refining metals from ore, and producing fertiliser can take advantage of surpluses in energy, buying it cheaply, and open up new export opportunities.
So can someone clarify as the ANU is stating the solar panels neeeded will only take up around 1200 square klm of land area to supply Australia's power grid not 6 times the size of Tasmania as quoted in this you tube presentation ? Is this true?
I suspect that the people at AEMO, who actually run the grid, would be across most of the information here and they seem to think we can run the grid at twice the current size using only renewables (including Hydro) storage and gas. The required changes are complex but do-able, and will be largely done before the first nuclear steam generator is available. The biggest danger to a successful outcome is the political push by the Nationals and their fellow travellers to delay and prevent the renewables rollout.
Almost every Australian university has a renewable energy degree while only UNSW offers nuclear engineering. The MPPT that is used in all solar inverters was invented by a university of Queensland student by the name of Stuart Watkinson in 1985. The reason for this is that it is allot easier, cheaper and safer for researches and industries to prototype renewable energy technologies as opposed to nuclear reactors. Almost anybody can set up a small scale wind/solar system in their backyard while a research reactor requires lots of permits and safety training to set up. Also research reactors can't be made as modular and as small scale as renewable research facilities due to the nature of critical mass needed to achieve reactor criticality.
Although this is a fairly technical analysis of electricity generation, it is clear that renewables are a very costly and inefficient way to supply power to the grid. Given that DC is useless for grid distribution, the other question is how does the renewables system convert AC to DC for battery storage and then convert DC back to AC for grid transmission?
What worries me is that, whatever we do, we d... better do it right. Because everyone's livelihood depends on electricity. Ideology, wishful thinking and good intentions are no substitute for getting it right. Reality does not care about these concepts.
80% of our energy is not from electricity but oil, we only exist because of it. I think separating the two when discussing the problem shows the public what net zero really means. The reality of running out of oil in 47 years still exists.
@@antonyjh1234 Correct. But the average business, commerce, at the first degree, relies on electricity. The transport of the goods that they sell and a lot of manufacturing relies on oil. Even some electricity generation relies on it. But when electrical brownout occurs, everything, the whole economy shuts down, including probably refineries. That in a context where we are converting transportation to electricity. But I am far from certain that the planning for the required increase in electricity supply has been considered and planned for. My fear is that governments have passed laws on the phasing out of internal combustion vehicles and just hoped that the electrical supply capacity would somehow catch-up. But it takes over a decade to get all the processes done for a new dam to be build. Leave alone a nuclear central. And there will be the "not in my back yard syndrome", so additional delays due to legal challenges. So we may end-up with a lot of EV car crashing out the grid.
@@yl9154 Have a look around yourself and see how many things are oil based, the computer you are using will not exist without plastic. Asphalt even comes from the same barrel that diesel and petrol do. If you take away oil, which is coming, by choice or force then business doesn't exist, so we need to start looking at total overhauls of our systems and decide do we want to do things for profit or need.
@@yl9154 Have a look around and see how many things are oil based, the computer will not exist without plastic. Asphalt comes from the same barrel that diesel and petrol do. If you take away oil, which is coming by choice or force then business doesn't exist
@@antonyjh1234 I am not advocating banning oil and I am well aware that most consumer goods contain oil. All I am saying is that our governments better make sure we have the electrical capacity in place to sustain the EV transition that they put into laws. Because if the grid can't sustain the demand, the manufactures and business shut down during the brown-outs and the economy suffers, which makes people suffer. Ask the South Africans (or the Germans when they ran out of gas to run their power plants and manufactures could run only a few hours a day instead of 24 hours a day). Our economy run on both oil and electricity. If our governments plan to reduce the oil dependency/consumption, then they better get the electricity part right! EV car is useless if there is no electricity to charge it. Manufactures shut down when there is a power outage. That is my point.
The people at Net Zero Australia must be nuts!
They are. Probably the most accurate way you could describe them is cultists. The "Climate Emergency" is a cult,. and the Net Zero zealots are some of the most devoted to that cult.
6:29 " we cant tranform DC " . Once I heard I knew this is going down the hill from there. One thing he is right though. Australia has not got engineering expertise nor people to install renewables and to design and run such grid . This would require innovation, well educated engineering brains and foresight. Well, lets wait for China , France or Germany and see how it is done. Perhaps in 50 years time they may sell a turn key solution to Australia.
As I understand it this problem can be solved using grid scale batteries.
Wind farms do not reach the end of their lives. The kit simply needs renewing, just like any other machine we build.
Actually many machines are scrapped rather than renewed - that is why they have calculated working lives. Most of the wind turbines built to date will be viewed as too small and inefficient in another decade. They'll be removed and totally new turbines put in place. The demand for power is increasing all the time, it'll always be a race to meet demand. It'll be easier to upgrade existing turbines then find new locations/grid connections etc.
Oh dear Stephen Wilson, how much did you sell your integrity for?
Any chance you could approach the guys from the Energy Insiders podcast for a discussion. I would love to see where the debate goes. I just want to know the truth and facts. I don’t know who advises the government on planning but I am 100% sure politicians aren’t engineers, and they should be finding the most reasonable balance between what is cost effective and achievable whilst still maintaining a reliable system to provide cheap power and the least environmental damage over the lifecycle. Wind and solar farms are environmental vandalism in my opinion.
The integration system plan (ISP), which is being implemented, is developed by experienced power systems engineers (not politicians). There is a lot of cherry-picking and misinformation in this video, and many advancements, strangely, were not mentioned. For example, Grid-forming inverters and the role of batteries in frequency response are far quicker than any "spinning machines" or fast-start gas turbines. This is very odd, considering he is involved in the industry and would be well aware of these advancements, which have helped stabilise the grid numerous times over the last few years (most notably and ironically after thermal coal generator tripping events).
Yeah, i think this guy is doing old-think. There's no need to have the whole grid synchronised, when DC links will be a large part of it. He's also outright lying at the end of the video, saying renewables are responsible for the price hikes. Most of it is coal and gas hikes from chinese demand, plus they overbuilt distribution then people installed LED lighting and LCD TV and inverter fridges. Then he has a big pile of nuclear solving his problems, which is never going to happen, because we are too incompetent to build nuclear. He goes and licences his fantasy, by pretending there's another solution. Once you realise there is no other way, you cant attack wind.
Its about time an Electrical Engineer is speaking up, there should be more doing the same, unfortunely, many are profiting from renewable Projects and don't give a rats about the impossability of powering a nation with wind and Solar
It's almost equally as impossible to do it with Nuclear in a drought prone country. Soon they will say we need to add desal plants and then more nuclear to power those. Running nuclear takes obscene amounts of water.
We have desal plants that are wasting away due to lack of use so where is the problem
An “electrical engineer” that says electrons travel to deliver electricity from generation?
I wouldn’t trust this guy with boiling an egg let alone with the complexities of the power system.
@@reez1728 Are you an Engineer? Do you believethat renewables can power a Nation?
@@robzee-4895 Yes, and yes.
There are intracacies and nuances to this discussion however, coming from either ideological end doesn’t help a discussion that should be based on engineering and physics.
His graph at 16:33 purporting to show that renewables are too expensive uses studies from 2008 to 2018 (and in turn data from perhaps before that)? Does he not know how much the costs of renewables, storage, and much else have plummeted in that time? Or worse, perhaps he does, which is why he presented this old data?
Yes, a lot of information and data presented was outdated and cherry-picked to make renewables sound unviable.
Yeah said he talked to bankers in 2017 as well....hmm you think anything on the economic landscape has changed in 7 years?
@@Nathan-bu5ci
Yeah, interest rates are gone UP significantly since 2017.
That means we will be paying CHINA even more money,
If one is going to criticise any proposed solution to any problem, then one should 1) state whether the problem is real or not, 2) define the risks for not acting on the proposed solution of the problem or give evidence for the problem not existing or not worth a solution, 3) define or propose alternatives to the proposed solution. This speaker did not do any of these.
He got so much wrong it was clear he was preaching to the choir.
Hear! Hear! Been saying it for many years.
Tesla PowerPack grid storage batteries: "Hello... We're over here 👋"
I’m assuming you’re kidding if you’re serious, grab your calculator and work out in dollar terms, size and capacity how big a grid storage you would need to provide any sort of additional stability and meaningful load, balancing to the grid
@@malcolmwhite6588 I figure production will increase by a factor of 1000 while cost will be reduced by a factor of 10 using Sodium ion batteries instead of Lithium. It will also be more profitable for Tesla than selling cars in less than a decade.
It doesn't even take all that much imagination, since there are already a couple of islands that have done it.
@@malcolmwhite6588 yes, done that. Tesla megapacks : 970 kWh LCOS = AUD $0.17kWh , 200 MWh, 8 hr duration LCOS = AUD $0.112 kWh.
Size of energy storage capacity required by 2050 as per AEMO 2024 ISP (optimal deployment path) = 398 GWh pumped hydro , 86 GWh grid scale battery, 160 GWh consumer energy resources (home batteries and EV with V2G/H)
What figures do you have ?
@@malcolmwhite6588 Why use a calculator when you could check the cost of existing grid scale batteries that already provide that service all over Australia? The FCAS market has already been swallowed whole by batteries. They provide those services far cheaper than running a turbine on standby, burning fuel constantly without putting that power into the grid.
@@SocialDownclimber How delusional can you get? The Germans, who are 20 years ahead in renewables, have just announced that they are building 21GW of new gas-fired power plants, not 21GW of batteries.
Great video thank you
Once synchronized, the generators tend to stay in sync. With inverters that natural feedback does not exist.
I just wish our politicians could get together and have a major concentration on this issue - you know a workshop with presentations by leaders of the technology group with the energy gurus presenting options. Then our elected members voting individually, in secret so no Party lines and previous public utterances mattering, to select the option for Australia to head on. This political nonsense driven be extremely poorly informed voters (I include myself in this, it has so many factors) needs to end. I personally think the solar/wind strategy is chasing our tails and doomed to be hugely expensive and eat up more and more people/resources damaging the economy. But I could be wrong.
Been saying this forever, we need get off CO2 and Nuclear is the only way I can see forward within a sane time and cost envelope.
Pumped hydro is great if you're Switzerland, but in our flat dry landscape it's going to be very difficult and time consuming to build at scale, and will make a few reactors look positively cheap.
The speaker mentioned Tesla, Westinghouse and Edison, a name that can not be left out is Charles (Proteus) Steinmetz. His contribution to electrical science is equal or greater than the before mentioned. The comments section has revealed some ignorance of science and engineering by laypeople on this subject.
"you need to understand" is not a coherent argument.
Thank you Professor Wilson. Hopefully the Greens and their followers will listen.
I mean he could talk to the Greens and maybe he gets asked where all the water will come from to run these plants.
Fable , I have worked in the power generation and transmission industry since 1986 . Plus have a college education along with the schooling within the nuclear industry .
Your zeal for green is blinding your to the problems of cost , reliability , environmental damage and practicality .
The earth is still warming from the last iceage . World wide CO2 levels are still at near all time lows During earth’s history . Do you not want a greener planet ?
How is anything on Australia going to counteract what China is doing ?
Do you not care about the retail price of power ? People are dying because they can not run their air conditioning .
I am a little confused about a couple of his remarks. First at the 6:30 min marks he mentioned that DC cannot be converted to AC. This is what a inverter does on every rooftop solar system installed on the grid. Secondly he mentioned that you cannot maintain grid stability without the spinning turbines of power stations or at least I think that is what he meant. You can stabalise the grid through Synchronous Condensers which are being used in SA to stabalise the grid and maintain 50Hz. Also more recent software management has allowed batteries to do this Virtuallt. This is occuring at the Big Battery at Hornsdale in SA.
The British Government has signed an agreement with the owners of Hinckley C Nuclear P{ower Station to provide power at $A180 per Mwh for the next 30 years adjusted annually for inflation.
Firstly, 18 cents a kWh is very expensive for electricity produced by nuclear power. It is likely there are influences that have elevated this price such as excessive regulation, power unions, a lack of low cost means to cater for peak loads and the injection of intermittent power into the system from other sources which then prevents the system from running at 100% of its capacity 100% of the time.
Next, he is right in what he said regarding AC and DC voltage transformation. To change the voltage of DC you must chop it up such that it is a square wave AC, smooth it with capacitors, transform it to the new voltage, rectify it back to DC and then smooth out the transients with large capacitors. Very messy and you lose a lot of energy in the process. Very high voltage DC has much lower loss than AC when transmitted over long distances and this low loss in transmission compensates for the energy lost converting AC to DC and then returning the DC to AC for consumption. That is why long distance transmission might use 500kV DC for this purpose.
The conversation was regarding Tesla and Edison over 100 years ago .
Why are you trying to drag 100 year old tech into today’s conversation . To push your renewable religion .
Synchronous Condensers do control noise and spikes in real time . While also providing leading power to counter the lagging power factor from electric motors . There is nothing driving the Synchronous Condensers to pickup the power grid load . When wind and solar falter. There is also no spinning reserve to pickup the load in case of transmission line or generator failure .
You need the mechanical inertia to maintain grid stability.
Nothing else does it as well.
Regards to converting!!!
He said Transform.
You cannot Transform DC is a true statement. Transformers work due to the collapsing fields that are only possible with Alternating Current!!!
Actually the solid state conversion of DC to AC is efficient .
The example given back in the Edison and Tesla era was lossy and expensive . Note how quick a greenie was to jump on that and attempt to twist the presentation out of context .
Greenies are more about faith and feelings instead of facts .
Where did you get the $90/MWh cost for nuclear? New build nuclear is no way near this price, it's closer to $160/MWh. Why did you not provide a source for this claim?
Yeah not much detail on this slide, imagining no extra grid capacity needed for Nuclear without any idea where its being deployed, probably nothing on the cost of water needed which will go up when these things are turned on and Uranium will go up in price. Factored in all the costs of extra grid for Wind and Solar, did they factor in the cost of building the plants?
It’ll be in the paper. You can locate a nuclear plant at the exact same location as existing coal plants - they are all located near lakes for cooling. Where did you get 160/MWh from?
Look up hinkley point B and C , an absolute blot on the land scape and 41 billion.
We're never building nuclear. We're too incompetent, and the world u235 is a bit tight. These attacks on renewables are caused by people thinking there's another solution. Once you think nuclear is an option, your attacks get more flippant and shitty. He doesn't seem to know that wind is already overbuilt, because wind plants are specified by average, not peak. What we really need is coal that can ramp fast. His diagram showing how much solar we need is crud.
What is a renewables superpower?
He hasn't kept up with technology. This is so old.
Frankly speaking seems a POV of 10 years ago.
1) this analysis doesn't take into account that the stability issue can ben much more easily addressed when you impose producers to install adequate buffer batteries (say at least 4hrs of full operation). Same way the prices volatility. At the end of 2024 CATL LFP Will ship for 50 dollars, sodium batteries Will follow even cheaper. It's an affordable cost without incentives.
2) the study seems to not consider long time operational batteries like iron-air or graphite tpv. 3) 90 dollars per MWh including distribution cost Is nowhere near the Truth.
Batteries are not a realistic or economical answer. The $90m battery installed in south Australia would keep the lights on for 5 minutes. Plus....greedy capitalists (in green clothing) will need to rape and pillage the earth to obtain the necessary minerals, and usually exploiting third world people in their pursuit of green greed.
I think he is more up to date then you credit. The short life span of wind turbines is an expensive issue. Massive solar farms are an issue and the constant maintenance in remote areas will be expensive. 4 hrs is no where near the reserves needed so buffer batteries may help but a massive storage system will be needed - wind and
solar can be out for extended periods (days). Yes, technology is improving all the time but at the moment little actual engineering and science is driving decisions - it is political. Very dangerous position to be in - current parties are only concerned about the next election, not what will happen in 10 years or longer time frames. Personally I am well past wishful thinking and have found my own solar panels very unproductive in winter and the pay back period much greater than expected, and they will be counter productive if they do not last a good many years yet (and I have my doubts even though they are premium panels/inverters).
With Nuclear Energy we all have to TRUST the company building and running it, then trust that they will store the waste appropriately for the next thousand years.
No.
Just no.
Let’s overbuild renewables.
No, it doesn't work like that. You have to TRUST the agency tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy.
@@ThePtolemeWrong. Aircraft are engineered not to fall out of the sky, but I trust they will from time to time. Same with nuclear.
Look up thorium reactors
@@sussell4606 Look up product lifecycles.
Fission simply cannot catch renewables, because renewables are updating at a speed 10-15 times that of fission tech.
When AI fusion breaks through, that will be a different story, and even then we’ll be licensing it from Americans.
Maybe AI fusion will change the game, but until then renewables will become ubiquitous by 2035.
Renewables won’t work compared to what? Business as usual won’t work, that’s why we are here. We can produce renewable energy, but whether that ‘works’ depends on your vision of what is required. The only model we have control over, is the only one not considered: economic model. So, we may not be able to power a civilization optimized for carbon molecules, but we can power a civilization. Which is the goal, to sustain civilization, but it would be naive to think that doing so would not require it to change as well.
Without a realisable physical system, the economic model you propose is not anchored in anything real.
Not questioning the professor's credentials but this needs to looked at through the lense of his involvement with the Centre of Indendendant Studies which is a part of the Atlas network, a chain of global think tanks representing the views of the fossil fuel and like industries. He is also telling a one sided story based on an old system mindset, not the opportunity to move to a move distributed and participant focused system. The current guard are desperate to lock in the current central control of power generation and distribution.
Forget the conspiracy theories. Look at the graph at 19:22, which is the NEM step-change scenario. It shows the increase in generating capacity from 80 GW now to 120 GW in 2030 and 240 GW in 2050. This is capacity, not what is actually generated. It is a fact that, because they only work 25-35% of the time, we have to massively overbuild solar and wind to produce the same energy which coal plants do, or which nuclear plants would. Yes, solar is cheap, but when you need six times as much, it starts to add up. And you must have storage to cover the times when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, and building storage is lagging way behind the installation of renewables.
@@frankszanto Yes it is well known, if you look at Tony Seba's numbers on over building on both is still cheaper and they calculate on actual power delivered not rated max output. Then if we reference the latest advice from the Gaurdian interviewing 380 top climate scientist (not economist)80% gave a forecast in excess of 2.5 degrees of warming buy the end of the centry, so it pretty much stops us all in our tracks. The Atlas links are no conspiracy theory, although Atlas thinktanks love to claim this- there is some great information out there on this from leading Australian academics as well as publicly available information - much of it from Atlas themselves.
@@markdev4796 The graph at 19:22 is of GW, which is power, not GWh which is energy. It shows we now have about 80GW installed, but the maximum demand on the NEM on a hot summer's day is around 36GW. Fossil fuels still contribute over 61% of our energy.
This overbuild is not free. It uses huge amounts of materials. In the end, it will be the environmentalists who stop the transition to 100% renewables when they can physically see the cost.
@@frankszanto I think we all understand GW vs GWh, combined with battery and storage the overbuild is not as significant as suggested, you are trying to measure the new system through the lens of the now very outdated way of delivering power and through the narrative of the incumbent. Australia has an amazing opportunity through this transition, if it lets the coal and gas industries keep its control of the narrative it will miss the opportunity. It is more often than not the expense of fossile fuel power on the wholesale market that is pumping the power price up.
@@frankszanto Nothing is free we have some submarines coming apparently according to the drums of war are to stop the Chinese thinking about taking over Australia, those are not free either. The problem with this is like Mark mentions, its all based on the old centralised one way distribution/transmission system. Its the same basic system that Tesla/Westinghouse proposed in 1886 and ultimately running at Niagara Falls. Things have changed a hell of a lot since back then, we are more efficient, technologically more advanced and science is forever discovering better ways of doing things. Just because the infrastucture for centralised distribution has been in place and sticky taped together doesnt mean it should stay.
I like the idea of lots of redundancies and to me thats self islanding microgrids where they still can be interconnected but you can issolate very small blocks and avoid the clamity of a problem in a centalised generation station wiping out massive areas.
Take a look at Octopus Energy in the UK thats the future direction of energy providing. I am seeing positive thing here in Australia with new suburbs having local batteries and homeowners with solar storing excess into those so they can use it at night and the battery provider charging them up during the day when energy providers have cheap solar excess. Its dropping their bills by 1/3 which for many isn't chicken feed.
But we need to stop looking at the grid as we did in the 50's and 60's and look at it from a whole different angle. the "alway on" one speed coal stations really just have to go they just are wasteful and a relic from the past. IMO the AEM would be far better to disband and everything become localised microgrids, to me the AEM has become an utter mess and the costs to keep putting on endless bandaids on old infrastructure make little sense in 2024.
Claiming that solar/wind/renewable electricity is too intermittent and has to be consumed as it is generated is the same argument as claiming that harvested vegetables must be eaten immediately. But look how that argument fails on so many levels, including in all kinds of living organisms. Energy storage is common and complex, the fat stored in the bodies to plants and seeds being squirrelled away. Just because some people are still stuck on promoting fossil fuels, doesn’t mean that everyone has to stay stuck on using carbon to create electricity.
I’m not sure what the point of your commentary is? if you’re debunking this piece, I suggest you do some research on electricity generation and also as some background some electromagnetic theory - you can find that in any university physics, 101 paper
@@malcolmwhite6588 Marc Jacobson published some very good data about how to get to 100% renewable energy with the current available technology for the whole of USA. Perhaps a debate between Wilson and Jacobson would be illuminating.
You're clueless of the reality of power generation, transmission and cost.
@@hyster16t But Marc Jacobson isn’t. Go read his published data.
Did you not pick up on the fact that renewables require because of their nature of supply of AC power has to be built 6 times bigger to cope with its inefficient supply.
Time to smell the roses and wake up from this dream.
Ramblings. You're a smart guy. How about you come up with a solution that doesn't take 20 years to build
So Edison was right but he didn't have the DC voltage boosting and bucking capability we have now.
I mean he did electrocute a while heap of animals to try and sway the argument, so he loses points for that.
Interesting Data Thanks
what will happen with my digital ID if you have no power?
Trends need to be considered. Australia has been spiralling in ever decreasing circles, since Menzies was elected by promising to end petrol rationing. ENIGINEERS ARE NOT SCIENTISTS.
Coming up to seven decades and I for one have lived in that spiral
Thank God, Science is mostly theory until built and proven correct by engineers.
Base load nuclear and geothermal, every roof top should have solar panels. Vehicles and transport needs to have a grand master plan be more efficient and off set by forestry (sitting in traffic jams is not doing the world any favours). Agriculture should off set by agriculture. Gas plays a role in heating homes. Town planning needs to encompass nature corridors, linking parklands and self sustaining principles, such as roof rainwater capture, vegetable gardens ect. Housing development should never be put on prime farmland. We live in a first world country, how is this so hard.
What is "baseload" nuclear? The industry has been sitting on a secret that they dont have enough fissile fuel for a decent amount of nuclear, and probably cant even build any net plant demand. We turned off nuclear decades ago. Yeah, KEPCO can build 4 reactors in 12 years in UAE, and the chinese can build 20, but they are BUSY, and the existing 440 plants are retiring at the same rate you can build them. There are no magic beans that build nuclear plants, and no fast breeder reactors to get more fuel. The industry has been so convinced of its own demise, that they swept the practical problems under the rug
What a load of tripe.
Why ... what part of the science do you disagree with ?
@@smclaren67The part where he said electrons physically travel from generation to load. Anyone with basic knowledge of physics, let alone electrical engineering, would tell you why that is wrong.
This guy has spoken for 23 straight minutes without saying anything.
Liquid air......look it up. Simple and no fossil fuels.
Remember that supplying baseload energy requires batteries or other stotage mediums PLUS the installation of renewables like solar or wind to charge the batteries when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. You cannot count that capacity as available to serve peak loads, too. This truth is what makes net zero electric systems very expensive for the middle class to afford. Can it be done? Yes. Do we want our citizens to pay for it when we are trying to compete with China? Maybe not! Maybe we should make crypto mining an interruptible load or only allow it when surplus renewable energy is available.
Compete with China?
You’ve got a third-world level economy selling unprocessed raw materials and you think you’re in a position to compete with China?
A better competition would be Burkina Faso or Sierra Leone.
If you wanna go renewable but stable 100% predictable and plannable electricty generation, the australian project Hydrokite is going to do it. Ocean current 24/7 or tidal in phases.
Great simple explanation - but something most would have guessed is fairytale
Solar, Wind and grid level battery storage will reduce our impacts on manmade global warming.
Mining and nuclear engineer turned economist explaining technical difficulties that have already been solved; interconnectors, battery and hydro storage can and do support systems with large proportions of renewables. Last week the UK went from 80% renewables to 15% in a few hours and guess what...nothing happened. We only need 2.8% of UK's land area to satify needs and some. This guy knows his market; the homeless climate cynics and anti-electricfication fanatics who, having finally lost the 'is climate change real?' battle, are focussing their miserable efforts on the supporting critical technologies. Lots of hyperbolae and paranoia, -Trump would approve. Would like to see him perform against professional engineers involved renewables and grid support rather than the public; he'd be blown out of the water.
Put in place 60% BWRX 300 and 40% Natrium SFR with Molten Salt Storage. Offer to take in Spent Nuclear Fuel from around the world and run your reactors off the recycling of the Spent Nuclear Fuel. Give back the Spent fuel via the ANSTO technology so host country can deposit with deep bore technology. ANSTO Synroc is a technology that treats challenging nuclear waste, including molten salts from spent fuels.
If you wanna go renewable but stable 100% predictable and plannable electricty generation, the australian project Hydrokite is going to do it. Ocean current 24/7 or tidal in phases.
Exactly! Nuclear!!! By far the cleanest and most practical form of energy we can use in this period of human history. Until they allow us to use the suppressed tech they no dubitably have, we have to be using nuclear and fossil to the most part.
After watching this I figured there’d have to be at least one anti-trump comment. Was right.
"Do the Math" and we are compelled to recognise Logarithmic Time, a relative-timing number at e-Pi-i 1-0-infinity functional infinitesimal coordination-identification positioning system.
If we listen to authorities who wish to maintain a system of ethical standards in every aspect-version of Singularity-point Lensing Actuality, it's (too) clear and simple that the only fundamental absolute needed for a solution to the Measurement Problem situation, is Absolute Zero Kelvin, ie Eternity-now Interval is the only "discrete" definition of reality and that is the old implication of placement by epicycles in quantization jumps of No-thing definable, the natural WYSIWYG illusion of separation being a delusion of intentional displacement.
The cleansing of the Atherton Tablelands is a top down absolute disgrace, the absence of the legal system processes created of, by, for people.
The problem is people no longer know how to think critically and if some AI system generates an output your not able to question it because AI is clever and your not.
He absolutely insists you can't model the whole system, and then he supports his argument on his PHD student who modelled the whole system.
He says to question when somebody says, "we need", and then says, "we need". I question him. I question his motives. I question whether he's ever heard of batteries and algorithms. I question if his oldest ancestors kept his more contemporary ancestors in the caves like he is trying to do to you now.
This guy is a nutcase!
Says ecologist and never mentions where all the water will come from to run these plants, not from his drinking water. He will probably try and tell farmers that they dont need big turbines and transmission wires through their country and that Nuclear is the answer and then take all their water allotments away to feed these plants.
To be fair he did say modelling to a higher fidelity, however, you can use lumped models and they’re good enough to run engineering studies and analyses on.
@@Nathan-bu5ci
Yeah, the water again, sigh.
Wow, just outdated information.
I got 5 minutes in and smelt an agenda, I'm not suggesting that we can 'do it all' with renewables, but the way this was formatted, seems like outsiders have written most of the dialogue.
did the professor receive remuneration? We will never know.
Everything comes back to OVERPOPULATION. Geothermal energy requires a smaller footprint 👣 and is worth the investment necessary.
If the world's current population were to stand side by side each on one square meter. Their foot prints would be contained in a ninety kilometres square, barely a dot on a world map.
I'm amazed that you showed so many graphs but you managed to avoid providing so little evidence for your claims. Almost every single slide was you describing a 'problem' from the slide and then talking about causation without actually showing evidence for what you were saying. Here's some very important points you missed:
1. Batteries have already dominated the FCAS market. They do it better and cheaper than traditional 'spinning machines' on all time horizons shorter than an hour.
2. Models are a thing you urged people to distrust, and then entire second half of your talk was about how certain models predict the future of the grid. You even talked for 10% of your own talk about how modelling the whole grid is impossible for anyone, then used around 4 models to predict the future of the whole grid. That's just contradicting yourself. Nonsense.
3. The 100% RVE graph you showed was almost entirely data from the EU and a bit from the USA. None of that is relevant to Australia. Might as well show a graph comparing kangaroo meat consumption and being shocked about how different the estimates are for Aus and the Eu.
4. You said at the start that you were addressing the claim that renewable energy can save us from climate change ... and proceeded to forget all about it. You didn't even have a single chart that talked about emissions of each power source, construction times, permitting and cost of each generation technology. You only showed graphs derived from predictive models, which you had already rubbished. Why did you spend 2 minutes talking about Tesla and Edison and fail to mention emissions and climate?
This presentation needs some serious work to move it from 'misleading' to 'helpful'. Provide evidence for your claims, include some obvious omissions and talk about each model you use and its purpose, rather than presenting their conclusions as fact.
We do not need nuclear, we have perfectly good coal fired power stations already built. In any case we need more CO2, not less.
Why the fear and terror regarding nuclear ? Your experience is limited to anti nuclear echo chambers , anti nuclear warhead types and watchers of the Simpsons .
How many years have you worked in nuclear ?
What was the matter with kerosene lanterns and wood stoves?
Still need nuclear base load . Why are you terrified of nuclear ?
Myself and two of my children were working in a nuclear power plant today .
I am not "terrified" of nuclear. It would be a good option if it could be built for roughly the same cost and in the same time frame as wind and solar. It cannot! All the nuclear power stations built and commissioned over the last few years have been way over budget and taken a pond time to build. Hinkley C is a very good example. This 3.2 GW station was initially expected to cost about$A24 billion when first proposed in 2009. 15 years later that estimate is now $A92 billion and full completion by 2031. @@buickanddeere
Andrew, congratulations . You are today’s winner of the unequal comparison argument .
Half truths and out of date statements. Clearly he is either deliberately misleading or is ignorant of DC transmissions lines. ETC ETC Best way to lie is to tell half the truth. Disgusting
Will you just as publicly eat your words and apologize when you are shown to be wrong?
Will the renewables fanatics eat their words and apologise when they're shown to be wrong?
Correction, did the renewables fanatics eat their words and apologise when they were shown to be wrong?
@@normanstewart7130 Renewables are growing incredibly fast, now make up all growth in energy demand, are poised to exceed energy growth and are getting cheaper by the day. Batteries and computer algorithms are negating the need for the old, and inflexible, flywheel stability. Computers didn't even exist when the grid began developing.
Leaving the caves would have been fanatical to your ancestors.
@@ronvandereerden4714 If you watch the video, you'll see that the growth of renewables is precisely the problem. Prof. Wilson, and the electricity industry, are pointing out that renewables make the grid unstable and extremely expensive.
@@normanstewart7130 Leaving the caves meant everybody would lack shelter. So why aren't we still there?
Wilson and his fossil cohorts can make all the claims they want about not being fundamentally opposed to renewables, but they are fundamentally opposed to renewables. That is their motivation. Grid instability is an excuse, not a limitation. Computers and grid scale batteries didn't exist when the grid was first established so they made do with other innovations. Now computers and batteries can stabilize the grid in ways that the original designers could never have dreamed of.
His claims are poppycock that sells well to old-timers and those who want to see renewables fail because they are so invested in fossil fuels.
The excess capacity that an intermittent system requires does not go to waste as he coyly avoids mentioning. In a free market, businesses will make use of that excess energy during maximum output and store it in myriad ways or create a demand for products and systems that benefit from short but somewhat predictable periods of free or cheap energy. As he admitted, the entire system is in its infancy. He tried to make that sound like a bad thing.
Note that he *insisted* the entire system cannot be modelled. And then he argues his case on the claim that his student modelled the entire system. He also said to question those who says, "we need". And a few sentences later says, "we need", to argue his point. So, yeah, I question him.
He is a charlatan of the worst sort.
Yes - still some big decisions to come and maybe nuclear cannot be excluded yet for Australia. The climate emergencies coming at us fast now may yet demand a sharper turn away from fossil fuels but a stable electricity grid at the same time in order to power new buildings, flood mitigation, food security, rapid research, maybe defence demands etc. Rapid responses are better handled with stable power systems.
Build Nuclear and add water security to that list, as he says 'Do the Math' on water usage and come back to me.
Seriously mate, how delusional are you.? Firstly the assumption to climate change is due to how we generate energy and secondly, disasters are coming at such a rate because of global warming.
No data backs either of your points and it's sheer stupidity on your behalf to write such irresponsible drivel.
@@Nathan-bu5ci
There are dozens of countries successfully running nuclear power plants, even Qatar in the desert, so it can be done, obviously.
You squealing about water usage on every comment doesn't change the facts.
renewables are working very well here in California . Are you taking money from the fossil fuel industry?
Anyone who questions solar , wind, renewables must be corrupt? If that is how you roll maybe you need to have a look at yourself.
@@benmorris1968 solar and wind with battery backup is working remarkably well and transforming the power grid here in United States and this is mostly funded by private investment money they wouldn't do it if it didn't make economic sense so the picture I see is that it's working spectacularly well. there's a lot of fossil fuel company propaganda trying to confuse people on this issue. When someone tells me it's not working that's an immediate red flag.
@@scottprather5645 Please watch to the end. This professor is pointing out the issues facing us and he is advocating for Renewables with Nuclear as the percentage of Renewables grows. He's not advocating for fossil. California's grid source is 50% Gas as their turn-on source when renewables switch-off. Go Off Grid. This is an option for many homes in wealthy countries but not for 90% of the world's population. Solar and batteries might seem cheap to Californians. But try telling 800 million Indians who earn less than $2000 USD per YEAR they have to buy an off grid system. Indeed, with all the efforts Californians have put in they are still only Solar 17% and Wind 8%, which is below the renewables adoption threshold where the issues this professor is trying to address start. I believe thinking and talking about the technical and economic issues that will arise when Solar and Wind approach 40% or more should be viewed as a good thing. A problem to solve. Not accused of being a fossil fuel stooge. A corrupt person. Do better. Please. I believe Nuclear forms a big part of the way forward to save the planet and prevent the millions of human deaths that will occur if we try to force most of the world to go net zero too quickly. But we need to look at all the options. www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/2021-total-system-electric-generation
@@benmorris1968 The speaker is taking money from the fossil fuel industry though. You should actually check before assuming innocence.
@@scottprather5645what a load of absolute garbage. California is the basket case of the US on such issues.
Is there some link that remotely supports your comment. I've yet to see it.
So put the turbines in the city. Put the solar panels over car parks and highways, put the turbine on top of tall buildings.
Why do his words drip with disdain, why does his arrogance overpower his arguments. Why does he lie about dc to ac and ac to dc?
Why is he talking down as though we are stupid? The rotating machines...oh ffs😂 No they don't have balance the system now 😂 omg.
He is being paid by fossil fuels.
"There would be considerable environmental impact I would have thought". I do not give a damn about your guesses.
This is all just guesses and biased nonsense.
Absolute rubbish
Those massive solar farms in the north are primarily for export. Australian net revenue. I think you are the most disingenuous presenter I've seen since Trump.
So where does all the domestic solar come from then?
@@philipwilkie3239 Closer to where demand is. You don't need that much solar as the size of those farms. Half of you have it on your roof. Those huge farms are to send power to SE Asia.
@@ronvandereerden4714 When? There is no current means for it to get there.
@@philipwilkie3239 the sun you dolt.
@@ivanf6938 New transmission lines are part of the project.
Some total garbage takes here, really brings down the level of so-called academic. Idiotic strawman arguments to start with
Could you be more specific?
The core argument is this : intermittent renewables = complexity = risk = higher costs
@@philipwilkie3239 There's just some really inane strawman statements to begin with and total crap unsourced data with no assumptions given or transparency. Just total garbage for an academic. The idea that solid state tech like PV and batteries is more complex than thermal generation plants with boilers, steam turbines etc is garbage. That is tech from centuries ago. Like an EV has far less moving parts and mechanical complexity than an ICE vehicle, EV will be far more efficient and long lasting. It's just stupidity of not seeing how inefficient old crap tech is compared to new tech. Direct generation by PV and wind are for more straight forward and efficient, batteries developing rapidly
@@philipwilkie3239, except that both of the recent large-scale blackouts over the last few years (in Vic and QLD) were due to thermal coal generators tripping. An old centralised energy system is not compatible with a modern decentralised system, which is what is happening. Additionally, the energy crisis in 2022 and massive spikes in wholesale electricity prices were due to coal and gas shortages, not renewables.
@@jasonsvarc4424 So your argument is that if the relatively simple and robust system that has a pre-ponderance of high inertia rotating generators can indeed fail from time to time - then adding more intermittent, complex, zero inertia generators will somehow magically make matters better?
In my working life I have seen this mistake made many times - adding complexity almost always decreases reliability. And adding poorly defined buzzwords like 'modern' and 'decentralised' does not help either.
The sooner these pretender engineers are moved on the better. Just bc they think they can solve a given problem, makes them think they have the creativity to think up novel solutions when typically they do not.
This is why Elon Musk created SpaceX while the engineers merely solve the problems he frames for them.
This is why Steve Jobs hired Johnny Ives - an industrial designer - to imagine the future, and then sent their imaginings to the engineering dept.
These mediocre engineers are handbrakes on progress due to their stubborn ego, while the real entrepreneurs who are solving the renewables storage challenge have already past these yesteryear pedants with solutions that will make this arrogant fool look idiotic within a decade.
Reminds me of the electrical engineer who spent an hour in the 1990’s telling me the internet will never have the bandwidth for video streaming. I told him he was wrong & he foolishly was.
He just couldn’t factor in that people better and smarter than him would solve the problems he couldn’t even conceive of.
But do you think someone on earth is smart enough to solve long-term energy storage ?
Lithium-ion batteries are only good for short term energy storage...
Gravity batteries for domestic use and thermal batteries for industry (as they are a heat source too) are in the introduction stages of their lifecycle, & are receiving significant investment capital at the moment.
By the time gravity/thermal batteries get to their growth phase at scale, these renewable storage products will have solved much of the renewable intermittency issues.
Gravity & thermal batteries are simpler, far less toxic, last many decades, are cheaper to build and maintain than large lithium batteries and are a superior option in the long term for suburb by suburb renewable storage (as gravity batteries are the size of a building) and plant by plant renewable storage where an industrial high level heat is also required.
As I said, while Professor Fossil Fuel Dinosaur here is stuck in the past, other entrepreneurs have already eclipsed him.
@@jginfographics Gravity batteries are way too expensive in money and space to be a long-term storage solution.
@@pauld3327Bullshit. Gravity batteries are building sized & a fraction of the cost of a lithium battery or nuclear power plant. What’s more they last for 50 years minimum with little maintenance.
Thankfully there are far smarter people than obscurantist idiots like you, making gravity batteries a reality right now.