Power Generation Problems Down Under

Australian Electricity Generation – 2023 Update
Posted on September 18, 2023 by curryja
by Chris Morris

This report brings readers up-to-date with happening in the Australian generation industry since the previous posts: Australian Renewables Integration: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. While many were optimistic about Australia’s planned changes, we were concerned that technical problems would emerge and that the costs of the transition will also make the power significantly more expensive for a less reliable supply.

Continue reading →

 

Reading the links isn't required when a poster posts a religious response....

 

Can't reasonable minds agree that a significant REDUCTION in fossil fuel generation is a good thing?
Okay so AU is not closing ALL coal plants but they closed quite a few. Is that bad?
I mean, AU is only what, twenty-five million people?
Yes yes, I know they're all spread out, that's partly my point as well.
Typical Aussie cities number about three to eight million tops, so it's not like we're talking about Metro Tokyo or another super-sprawl like Mexico City.
The world has figured out how to power moderate sized urban areas.

 

Sure, as long as whatever replaces it is as cheap, widely available, easy to produce, and function in all weather.

Time will tell. Whatever replace coal doesn't cause production or distribution problems

They still be available reliable power and I have it on good authority that he sun really DOES SET in AU.

 

Snowy 2.0, doomed from the start — after the sinkhole came the poison gas, “worst major project in history”

ABC News

By Jo Nova

It’s just emblematic of your Clean Green Future

Complexity and false hope is eating the crown of Australia’s Net Zero transition — the Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro scheme. Things have gone from “debacle” to Soviet Grade Industrial Fiasco. After Florence-the-tunnel-borer got stuck and created a sinkhole, workers spent seven months trying to shore up the ground, playing God against the mountain — pumping in grout, cement and polyurethane foam. But the foam made a gas so toxic the tunnel had to be evacuated. To make things worse the workers were originally told the gas was water vapor but it turned out to be isocyanate. At every point the Snowy Hydro team hid the bad news and issued propaganda, and it’s only taken the ABC a year to tell us what the workers knew, and three months to investigate the safety breach.

Still, that’s better than the NSW regulator who knows all the other safety breaches but won’t even share them, because it’s so bad ” it may affect the contractor’s reputation.” (Which it surely just did anyway.)

This is your low-carbon future. It was supposed to cost $2 billion but the bill is $12 billion. It was supposed to be finished, but it’s barely begun. Florence the tunnel borer was meant to have dug a 15km long hole through the mountain, but it’s only bored through 150 meters. It did about a weeks worth of progress before being stuck for 19 months.

They knew at the start things were doomed, but did it anyway. Workers drilled ahead and hit soft ground only 100m from the opening. Water gushed out, proving there would be mass mud within. But they filled the hole and went ahead anyway. They were supposed to have a slurry system in place, to cope with the mud, but it wasn’t there. In just 8 weeks the borer was predictably bogged — wallowing in up to 4 feet of water. Drowning perhaps in fantasies of building a sacred weather talisman.

Do normal industrial projects, given normal scrutiny, go so wrong, for so long?