Australia - Wind, Solar, Grid Battery Storage, Piped Hydro,

[Morris Minor]

I wish we would shed our night terrors of nuclear, haunted by technology & practices of our grandparents' generation.

Green/New Energy
Australia Is Quitting Coal in Record Time Thanks to Tesla
Elon Musk helped accelerate a transformation of the country's electricity grid to replace fossil fuels with clean power — now it's a testing ground for global climate action.

Like so much in our modern era, Australia's high-stakes gamble on renewable energy starts with an Elon Musk Twitter brag.

South Australia's last coal-fired power plant had closed, leaving the province of 1.8 million heavily reliant on wind farms and power imports from a neighboring region. When an unprecedented blackout caused much of the country to question the state's dependence on clean power, Tesla boasted — on Twitter, of course — that it had a solution: It could build the world's biggest battery, and fast.

More:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-04-04/how-tesla-tsla-elon-musk-are-helping-australia-quit-coal-power?leadSource=uverify%20wall

[AutobahnSHO]

Well they did finally turn on a new reactor at the nuc plant near here. First one in (30?)! Years!!!

[SJ_GTI]

I am all for Nuclear being a base load, but the reality is Solar and Wind are cheaper to implement than Nuclear (at least for now). NG I think is cheaper than everything, which is why it got to popular so quick. It's a huge upgrade over coal as far as environmental impact as well, which is nice.

[Eye of the Tiger]

Waiting for China to blow themselves up perfecting fusion....

[Morris Minor]

I am all for Nuclear being a base load, but the reality is Solar and Wind are cheaper to implement than Nuclear (at least for now). NG I think is cheaper than everything, which is why it got to popular so quick. It's a huge upgrade over coal as far as environmental impact as well, which is nice.

NG is also very useful for peaker plants; they can be spun up much more quickly than coal or oil. But nowhere near as fast fast as grid-level battery storage, which I believe is pretty much instantaneous. Obviously the stored juice has to come from some other method... and that's where the arguments start.

[r0tor]

The traditional grid equivalent of grid battery storage would be turbines on "spinning reserve".  They basically sit there spinning at speed synched to the grid acting like a flywheel and then can fire up at will based off of voltage needs

[Eye of the Tiger]

The traditional grid equivalent of grid battery storage would be turbines on "spinning reserve".  They basically sit there spinning at speed synched to the grid acting like a flywheel and then can fire up at will based off of voltage needs

How do you spin them in reverse? Trained birds?

[giant_mtb]

The traditional grid equivalent of grid battery storage would be turbines on "spinning reserve".  They basically sit there spinning at speed synched to the grid acting like a flywheel and then can fire up at will based off of voltage needs

Ope, then the wind dies. And all of California rolls into brownouts/blackouts again because they think that's how shit works.

[Eye of the Tiger]

What if California trained the birds to reverse the wind turbines blades during low demand hours and wrap a big rubber band around them so when they needed more power they would have extra speed

[r0tor]

Ope, then the wind dies. And all of California rolls into brownouts/blackouts again because they think that's how shit works.

Umm gas turbines

[Morris Minor]

Umm gas turbines

I think the grid storage batteries are commonly put next to solar panel farms.

[shp4man]

Hot air from Newsom's mouth could provide some energy. But not without pollution.