Essay by Eric Worrall
The government has provided a $224 million battery venture budget to stabilize the 33GW grid, which is expected to be 82% renewable by 2030.
Record increase in clean energy spending as global crisis looms
Via Mike Foley
October 25, 2022 – 7:30pm…
Ambitious Agenda for Clean Energy, announced in Tuesday night’s budgetalso includes a renewable energy plan to power 82% of the electricity grid by 2030, which the government promised during the election campaign will also cut electricity bills by $275 by 2025.
The renewable energy push could create political risk as any cost would blow away tens of billions of dollars. clean energy projects should be offset through taxes or electricity bills. The budget also forecasts a 30% increase in energy prices.
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Minister for Energy and Climate Change Chris Bowen said the budget was “Australia’s road map to delivering cleaner, more affordable energy to homes and businesses”.
“The cheapest form of energy is solid renewables, even more like global coal, oil and gas
prices skyrocketed,” he said.…
Up to 400 batteries will be installed as part of a $224 million community battery program to help provide renewable energy to small, remote communities. There is also $102 million to fund solar panels for 25,000 apartment dwellers and low-income households.
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The budget also includes enhanced provisions allowing the government to deprive gas companies, should the domestic market run short of gas. There are no plans to compensate the companies for failing to meet international contracts – they are simply expected to supply gas to the domestic market on demand.
Gas companies in Australia are grappling with animosity over legislation, such as severe restrictions on the exploration and production of new fields, such as the status Victoria’s permanent ban on fracking, enshrined in the state constitution in 2021. We can only speculate what difficulties these new expropriation powers will have on Australia’s ability to supply domestic gas in the future.
There is a worse problem.
Earlier this year, Australia experienced weather conditions, with the exception of wind generation at night, across the entire continent being wiped out (see weather chart at top of page). As a winter high pressure system in the Southern Hemisphere, it was also very cold that night. Such weather conditions are unusual, but not impossible.
What will Australia do on the night after 2030, when most of our distributed generation capacity will be shut down?
Federal Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen continues to give speeches in which he casts magic terms like “sustainable renewable energy” as if they were a real thing. But the budget his government has provided for batteries, $224 million, is not enough to stabilize the grid without daily demand peaked at just under 33GW. $224 million will buy enough battery capacity to service the grid at peak demand in less than a second, not the hours or days of redundant capacity needed to make renewables energy efficient. should be reliable.
And we haven’t even considered the additional grid capacity needed to service all the electric cars that people have to buy, and the energy needed to power the supposed green manufacturing renaissance that will. happening in the coming age of expensive, unreliable energy.
Unless the Australian government rethinks their renewable energy madness, “cost reduction” and economic devastation will be our new normal.
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