Coal use for electricity gone up from 2 to 10%...

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rogercruse

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#2750303 27-Jul-2021 06:59

All quiet from the Minister of Energy (Megan Woods) and Jacinda as they know the policy is daft and difficult to defend.

Expect a rush of baby / wedding / cuddly toys stories as their bury this news.

Earbanean

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#2750341 27-Jul-2021 08:32

Dynamic:

I don't believe that is accurate. Solar, Wind, and Tide all have slack periods and you need backup infrastructure to cover those times. The alterative is to have massive battery farms. Both of these options further increases the cost of our energy as we are having to 'double up' on generation facilities or add power storage.

Nah, that's when you use your hydro. Lakes are 'hydro batteries'. If we had sufficiently more solar, wind, tide etc, then we could manage the lake storage properly over a year.

The problem is also the state of the Transpower network - not just the lack of generation assets. i.e. we can't always get all the electricity from where it is generated to where it is consumed.

Note, there are also resource consent issues around those renewables as well. e.g. the greenies blocked a wind farm in the Maniatoto, for visual reasons.

Geektastic

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#2750985 27-Jul-2021 23:36

Europe has a fair few off shore wind farms, I assume for good reasons. Do we have any?

Scott3

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#2751076 28-Jul-2021 10:05

Geektastic:

Europe has a fair few off shore wind farms, I assume for good reasons. Do we have any?

No.

Offshore wind costs more than onshore wind, and we are far from utilizing all suitable on shore wind farm sites in NZ.

Also our onshore wind resource is some of the best in the world. Tararua wind farm runs at about a 46% capacity factor.

2017 data has Europe based onshore capacity factor avarage at 21.7%, and about 41.1% for offshore. I.e. at Tararua the same wind turbine could be expected to make over double the power as if it was installed onshore in Europe.

Geektastic

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#2751083 28-Jul-2021 10:38

Scott3:

Geektastic:

Europe has a fair few off shore wind farms, I assume for good reasons. Do we have any?

No.

Offshore wind costs more than onshore wind, and we are far from utilizing all suitable on shore wind farm sites in NZ.

Also our onshore wind resource is some of the best in the world. Tararua wind farm runs at about a 46% capacity factor.

2017 data has Europe based onshore capacity factor avarage at 21.7%, and about 41.1% for offshore. I.e. at Tararua the same wind turbine could be expected to make over double the power as if it was installed onshore in Europe.

However if people (rightly) object to ruining wild landscapes with rows of ugly turbines, perhaps off shore will allow a capacity increase that onshore would not.

wellygary

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#2751085 28-Jul-2021 10:49

Geektastic:

Europe has a fair few off shore wind farms, I assume for good reasons. Do we have any?

Europe has lots of offshore wind, because it has lots of people living in a small area and little spare land to plonk turbines on....

Also turbines work beast "near" the coast.. NZ has lots of land near the coast with few people on it... Europe not so much..

Offshore is significantly more expensive than onshore, and wind in Europe/UK is significantly subsidised...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/offshore-power-will-fail-without-subsidies-bx8908gm5

mdooher

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#2751086 28-Jul-2021 10:49

Geektastic:

Europe has a fair few off shore wind farms, I assume for good reasons. Do we have any?

no, but we will need one of we go down the green power route (even though they are short lived and hellish expensive) it will be in the Taranaki basin

land wind farms don't work well at night

Solar farms don't work all that well at night either

people want to charge their cars at night...

Every time we want a new hydo dam there is a skink or special grass in the way

Matthew

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SaltyNZ

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#2751108 28-Jul-2021 11:12

Geektastic:

However if people (rightly) object to ruining wild landscapes with rows of ugly turbines, perhaps off shore will allow a capacity increase that onshore would not.

Personally I think a row of wind turbines is a lot prettier than the Soviet-inspired pile of ugly that is the Huntly power station. Or the Taranaki gas fields & Methanex plant. Better still they don't have to ruin wild landscapes. You can put them in a paddock with cows (again. unlike any of the former).

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Scott3

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#2751110 28-Jul-2021 11:22

Geektastic:

However if people (rightly) object to ruining wild landscapes with rows of ugly turbines, perhaps off shore will allow a capacity increase that onshore would not.

I think concern about visual impact is dropping, with a wind turbine becoming the symbol for clean energy. Of course concerns about the likes of noise and shadow flicker remain (but in NZ the latter is normally mitigated by an automated shutdown of the turbine at time the it's blade shadow will fall on a house)

As somebody else said, In NZ they are rarely installed in a wild landscape, generally the surrounds are farmland.

In NZ capacity is constrained by peoples willingness to actually fund the construction if wind-farms, rather than onshore sites. As an example here is a list of consented sites:

https://www.windenergy.org.nz/consented-wind-farms

With offshore wind turbines costing more to build and maintain, it is unlikely we will see any in NZ in the near future while decent onshore sites remain available.

Should note that there are a bunch of criteria for offshore wind sites too, they need to have a good wind resource, be fairly shallow (33m is the average depth in europe), not to far from shore (59km is the average in Europe), and ideally where sea state isn't going to be huge.

One thing happening in the wind industry at the moment is that everything keeps getting bigger, and onshore stuff is hitting / approach limits size limits where components can be transported by land. Obviously no such size constrains apply on the water. Currently 5MW is a big onshore wind turbine, but the average nameplate capacity of offshore wind turbines installed in Europe in 2020 was 8.2MW.

Will be interesting to watch, If offshore wind turbine keep getting bigger, while onshore turbines stagnate in size due to transport constraints, it is possible that the economies of scale of large offshore turbines will eat into, or even exceed the current cost advantages of onshore wind. (in say 20 - 30 years).

noroad

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#2751117 28-Jul-2021 11:39

eracode:

So we’re all being railroaded into using electric vehicles - so that NZ can burn this dirty coal to get the electricity to charge them. Brilliant.

It would take 50 years of transmission and local distribution upgrades to even come close to being able to put electric cars at every residential address. People only ever look at where the electricity starts and they conveniently forget to look out the window at the big green humming box on the road. Your average fast charging Tesla can consume what 20-25% or more of the capacity of that street transformer? (somebody run the numbers, I just made that up) Now work out how many houses that transformer is supplying. Then look up at the 33kv overhead line feeding it and look at how many houses that is feeding before it gets to the 110kv sub station. Really these things make the electric revolution a pipe dream. Don't get me wrong, I would love a Tesla, but the reality of the situation is we are not even close to having the infrastructure to support an electric fleet. Its put a lot strain on the system converting everybody to electric heating already.

Remember the stink that all the farmers kicked up when Transpower wanted to upgrade the 220kv lines feeding into Auckland to 400kv and Transpower had to back down and put in more 220kv instead. None if this adds up to an electric fleet.

SaltyNZ

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#2751119 28-Jul-2021 11:46

noroad:

Your average fast charging Tesla can consume what 20-25% or more of the capacity of that street transformer?

Except that you'll be fast charging that EV a minority of the time - especially once EVs get to the point where Vector stops letting you charge for free. You'll be charging at home, overnight, mostly when your other consumption has dropped off. So, yes, EVs will drive increased generation. Is your car going to consume 25% of the existing capacity? No. They come with a charger which plugs into a regular power point.

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wellygary

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#2751132 28-Jul-2021 12:02

noroad:

It would take 50 years of transmission and local distribution upgrades to even come close to being able to put electric cars at every residential address. People only ever look at where the electricity starts and they conveniently forget to look out the window at the big green humming box on the road. Your average fast charging Tesla can consume what 20-25% or more of the capacity of that street transformer?

A Model 3 is under 15KWh/100km..

Even off a regular 2.4Kw 10 amp outlet 8 hours of charging will add ~17KWh or 110km overnight...

@3kw (the power of a regular Hot water cylinder) you can add 160km in 8 hours

How driving do you do in a day...

plo009

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#2751889 29-Jul-2021 17:23

Geektastic:

It's akin to when Germany voted to shut down it's efficient nuclear plants. Now it has to rely on imported energy - 60% of the total it uses.

High ideals are great - but introducing them before you put in place the alternatives required is not terribly bright.

Can't agree more.

mdooher

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#2751896 29-Jul-2021 17:35

wellygary:

noroad:

It would take 50 years of transmission and local distribution upgrades to even come close to being able to put electric cars at every residential address. People only ever look at where the electricity starts and they conveniently forget to look out the window at the big green humming box on the road. Your average fast charging Tesla can consume what 20-25% or more of the capacity of that street transformer?

A Model 3 is under 15KWh/100km..

Even off a regular 2.4Kw 10 amp outlet 8 hours of charging will add ~17KWh or 110km overnight...

@3kw (the power of a regular Hot water cylinder) you can add 160km in 8 hours

How driving do you do in a day...

Even that will effect the network. Do you realize that even the transformer in your street is only (because of cost) rated as it is with a 60% duty cycle. ie it needs to cool down at night.

Basically the distribution network is at capacity now... that is how it is designed. Don't even get me started on the transmission network.

We are blowing pole fuses and transformer fuses now because of the "hour of free power".

To badly quote someone who has been quoted before..."we just don't have the power captain, we're giving her her all shes got"

Matthew

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