“Powering #Australia with #nuclear-energy would cost roughly twice as much as renewables, CSIRO report shows” #news #solar-energy #energy
on 02026-04-08#news #video #interview of #Palmer-Luckey from two weeks ago. Apparently he’s mass-producing robotic "Ghost Shark" submarines in #Australia now, delivering the first submarine a year ahead of schedule. He describes himself as a “caricature” and a “larger-than-life character”, and says that gets him retweets, which is only helpful for recruiting. Only about half of #Anduril’s products are public, he says, choosing to single out Fury, the autonomous fighter jet. The first Arsenal-1 production lines are going live in a few weeks, so, I guess April, rather than the planned June, and will be making Barracuda, Fury, etc. He expects it to be in full-scale production by Q2 02027. Oh, and he says he has prototype autonomous #subterrenes. #weaponry
on 02026-04-04#KMart still exists in #Australia and was using #facial-recognition #biometrics in a way that violated #privacy laws
on 02025-11-11#Australia #energy #statistics: 18 186 063 TJ/year (576GW)
on 02024-12-09#Sky #news propaganda #video opposing #solar #photovoltaic #energy. Shows the nameplate of a house-sized Mitsubishi Hitachi hydrogen-cooled steam turbine generator (310RK09-776-1) producing 3-phase 20kV at 50Hz and what looks like 17984 amps, saying it produces 570–580MW, though my calculation gives 360MW from those numbers. Shows a real-time power price of [AU?]$235, presumably per MWh, attributing the high price to a cold snap in Victoria. Says 1200 tonnes of cheap brown coal per hour produces 1140 megawatts electric, which works out to 3.4MJ/kg, which would be about 15% efficiency, which seems improbably low. “[In the past] you were seeing wholesale prices around (...) $20–40/MWh”, says a guy who’s been working in the field for only 30 years; that also seems improbably low. “10 Australian coal-fired power stations closed in the last decade. There are 15 still running, but most are slated to close in the next decade.” 62% of electric generation on #Australia’s main grid is from fossil fuels, the other 38% from renewables. At 7'51”, it profiles Belinda Jones, a pensioner who’s paying AU$1073.31 per month (US$697/month) because she’s paying AU$0.191/kWh for 3410kWh (AU$651, becoming AU$716.63 after GST) and AU$0.216 for 2700kWh (AU$582, AU$640.10 after GST), from which subsidies are deducted. That implies her house is averaging 8400 watts! Possibly in part because she’s using resistive space heaters instead of heat pumps, but more likely it’s not actually a one-month bill — yes, in fact, at 9'13” we see it’s for 92 days, but she’s still averaging 2800 watts around the clock. (The average comes out to 11.4¢/kWh, which is very cheap by retail standards.) Also, we see at 9'22” that the previous bill was only AU$457.45. A different power bill shown at 45'04” shows someone paying $415 with time-of-day billing — also for 92 days. “Energy scarcity emerges everywhere #wind and solar become the dominant form of electrical generation.” Shows the #LNG export gas terminal at Gladston, the Petra Nova #carbon-capture pilot plant in Houston, and a US$21B #nuclear power plant in Georgia, the second to be built in the #USA in the last 30 years. #Microsoft has signed a deal to reopen #Three-Mile-Island. #politics Viper-7 reports paying 27.56-67.44c/kWh: Peak time (4:00pm to 7:59pm): 67.44c per kWh; Shoulder time (7:00am to 3:59pm, 8:00pm to 9:59pm): 29.65c per kWh; else 27.56c per kWh, including GST.
on 02024-11-27#USA (especially #Trump) persuaded #Australia, #New-Zealand, #Japan, #France, #Germany, and the #UK to ban or partly ban #Huawei after adding them to the #export-controls list in 02019; the UK in particular mandated removal of Huawei equipment from #5G networks by 02027. #HarmonyOS #politics #China
on 02024-11-27A 30MW #solar thermal power plant in Port Augusta, #Australia, by company Vast Renewables, “the first large scale #solar-thermal project in the country”, may get funded, but it apparently needs [AU]$360–390 million? Which would make it AU$12–13/W, which at 64.6¢/AUD would be US$8/W, about twenty times the price of #photovoltaic power plants (and 120× the price of photovoltaic panels). So it’s trying to get grants from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena). #CSP #concentrating solar power
on 02024-11-26353MW Walla Walla #solar #photovoltaic farm in Riverina, New South Wales, #Australia, “consisting of approximately 700,000 solar panels installed across 605 hectares,” comes online, the biggest of the eight solar farms built by Spanish company Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV). No notes on contract pricing. #energy
on 02024-11-26#clickbait #video on #solar #energy claiming #China is “no longer approving” coal power plants. Talking-head filler interspersed with web-page screenshots and misleading stock footage (e.g. of concentrated solar power to illustrate a #photovoltaic plant). Claims #Australia will build an even larger solar farm than China’s at, implicitly, Crescent Dunes within the next 5 years. Claims 210 gigawatts of renewables added so far in 02024 (as of November 19, according to a Renew Energy reneweconomy.com story) of which 161GW was grid-scale solar, 39.1GW of #wind power, 7.97GW of hydroelectric, and 1.37GW of biomass, and that coal power plant approvals have fallen 80% according to Greenpeace, or that last year approvals for new coal power plants fell by 92%, or that over the first 9 months of 02024, an increase of 21% over last year; “86% of all power added to the Chinese grid was renewable energy” (unclear if peak or average). Claims that the average [residential?] solar [power] system being installed in #Australia now is 10 kilowatts. Claims that 70% of coal power plants are running at a loss, and that coal power plants need to hit a 70% capacity factor [in what country or countries?] to be profitable. Claims that China shuts down its coal power plants during the day, which seems unlikely to me. Claims that at the end of the third quarter this year, “China’s renewable energy generating capacity had reached 1.73 terawatts, a year-on-year increase of 25%.” Confusedly claims that the difference between the 25% increase in total renewable energy capacity and the 21% increase in the pace of renewable energy installations results from installing batteries and therefore improving the capacity factor of solar, but of course there is not particular reason why these figures ought to be close (it just indicates that growth is nearly exponential) and both numbers are nameplate capacities into which the batteries don’t figure at all. Claims China has installed more solar than the rest of the world combined this year, which is of course true. Claims Tesla’s installation of [utility-scale?] batteries this year is double that of last year, and that they have a two-year backlog of orders.
on 02024-11-26#clickbait #video on #solar #energy claiming #China is “no longer approving” coal power plants. Talking-head filler interspersed with web-page screenshots and misleading stock footage (e.g. of concentrated solar power to illustrate a #photovoltaic plant). Claims #Australia will build an even larger solar farm than China’s at, implicitly, Crescent Dunes within the next 5 years. Claims 210 gigawatts of renewables added so far in 02024 (as of November 19, according to a Renew Energy reneweconomy.com story) of which 161GW was grid-scale solar, 39.1GW of #wind power, 7.97GW of hydroelectric, and 1.37GW of biomass, and that coal power plant approvals have fallen 80% according to Greenpeace, or that last year approvals for new coal power plants fell by 92%, or that over the first 9 months of 02024, an increase of 21% over last year; “86% of all power added to the Chinese grid was renewable energy” (unclear if peak or average). Claims that the average [residential?] solar [power] system being installed in #Australia now is 10 kilowatts. Claims that 70% of coal power plants are running at a loss, and that coal power plants need to hit a 70% capacity factor [in what country or countries?] to be profitable. Claims that China shuts down its coal power plants during the day, which seems unlikely to me. Claims that at the end of the third quarter this year, “China’s renewable energy generating capacity had reached 1.73 terawatts, a year-on-year increase of 25%.” Confusedly claims that the difference between the 25% increase in total renewable energy capacity and the 21% increase in the pace of renewable energy installations results from installing batteries and therefore improving the capacity factor of solar, but of course there is not particular reason why these figures ought to be close (it just indicates that growth is nearly exponential) and both numbers are nameplate capacities into which the batteries don’t figure at all. Claims China has installed more solar than the rest of the world combined this year, which is of course true. Claims Tesla’s installation of [utility-scale?] batteries this year is double that of last year, and that they have a two-year backlog of orders.
on 02024-11-26#Australia to build a 2GW #HVDC powerline to #Singapore to sell #solar #photovoltaic #energy
on 02024-08-21a #video about anti-drone #weaponry being supplied to #Ukraine, the Australian "Slinger" system by “Electro Optic Systems”, which turns out to be a truck-mounted single-barrel machine gun with automatic targeting via image processing, using “the tracking (...) the stabilization algorithms we’ve used to develop for deep space tracking”. Ten were to be delivered by the end of 02023. #Pricing “less than under one million US dollars”. #Australia #politics
on 02024-06-25#Australia #solar #photovoltaic and other renewable #energy: “In 2024, we expect at least 3.1 GW of rooftop solar and 2.5 to 3.0 GW of large-scale renewables to be added. If the large-scale power stations under construction progress on schedule, the total renewable capacity added in 2024 could exceed 6 GW.”
on 02024-06-18#Australia has such high vegetable prices that it’s likely profitable to build Sundrop Farm, a US$200M plant using #solar #desalination of seawater for desert #agriculture
on 02016-10-07