A near 100pct renewable grid for Australia is feasible and affordable

hackerlight | 65 points

I worked as a quant in energy for the Australian market.

I did the same thing as OP but didn't assume electricity teleported 3,000 km from Tasmania to Northern Queensland.

Using the proprietary data for what each pole could carry I build a first principles simulation of the Australian grid to find where medium sized battery installations should be placed to provide maximum grid frequency correction.

The grid is already close to collapse on 40C days.

Forget moving to a renewable grid, keeping the lights on during a five day heat wave over the eastern seaboard is currently impossible.

llm_trw | a month ago

Just saw this story that the Australian government is to kick-start a billion dollar program to develop the solar panel supply chain here. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-28/anthony-albanese-anno...

martyvis | a month ago

Feasible in a technical sense, but you have to unseat the coal industry representatives, which is going to be hard.

sp332 | a month ago

Interesting that this is achieved with only a 5% overbuild. The simulations I have seen to get to 100% for Europe and North America without long term storage have used a 200% (aka 3X) overbuild.

Probably partially due to Australia being a good place for sun and wind, and partially for targeting 99% rather than 100%.

bryanlarsen | a month ago

This is great for homes, but one thing I keep thinking of is if one wants to run an aluminium smelter using renewable electricity you'd need a huge bank of batteries. I guess these would still need large hydro power.

But that's the thing if the market becomes more reliable, than larger loads become feasible, which means usage, and economics start to move in unforeseen directions.

zeristor | a month ago

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aaron695 | a month ago

We can build it next door to the carbon credit scheme!

https://www.sciencealert.com/shock-discovery-huge-carbon-cre...

doctor_eval | a month ago