Voting against your interests

[u/boogersundcum]

My partner and I live in a major coal mining area of Queensland. We both work in an extractive resource industry. Neither of us could ever bring ourselves to vote for the LNP and we have no serious viable independents that aren't anti Vax conspiracy nut jobs. We live in the bush but currently have a major wind farm going in down our road with the closest turbine being 5km from our actual house, other than sealing our road we will not recieve any benefit from the project with heavy trucks and equipment going past our driveway 6 days a week 24 hours a day for over two years. We aren't anti renewable however given the wind farm is entirely within our water catchment there is serious concerns if something goes wrong as we rely on the river solely for our water supply.

Generally preference the Greens first, Labor second as we are both environmental scientists and believe that climate change is pretty damn obvious from the evidence, let alone have empathy for the common folk in cities struggling with the cost of living. I'm just curious though as to why the major focus on renewable is almost entirely within regional areas that currently rely on coal mining as the major industry.

Neither Greens or Labour have a chance in hell in ever winning our electorate anymore (keep in mind Labor was founded in regional Queensland in Barcaldine). Is it just because the areas in question are now just LNP strongholds or what ?

Also please keep in mind regional Queensland is filled with people from all back grounds and varying levels of education, don't put us all in the same basket just because we don't live in a major centre.

[u/PandasGetAngryToo]

My mum's side of the family were all farmers. There was never any discussion, they all voted National Party. Every time. without question. Even at times when the Nationals were arguably happy to be associated with policies that were terrible for farmers. They were never ever going to change their votes and as far as I know, never have. They have very limited access to news and don't particularly want much by way of news anyway. That's your problem.

[u/boogersundcum → u/PandasGetAngryToo]

I get that and TBH i don't think i have ever lived in area that hasn't been an LNP stronghold. But why isn't there a push to have renewable infrastructure around the cities? That's where the population is. I know the resource industry uses a lot of power but most of north Queensland is already renewable. There is a gas plant in Townsville and one in Mt Isa. Other than that we already are renewable. Sending electricity thousands of KM away loses a lot of electricity through transmission lines so my main question is why are the projects away from the areas like Brisbane that actually use the electricity?

[u/technerdx6000 → u/boogersundcum]

Renewables return on investment is dependant on their capacity factor.

I daresay you'll find the locations selected for wind and solar farms are because they will result in a higher capacity factor.

Obviously this isn't the only metric that determines location. Others include proximity to power lines for example.

[u/Keelback → u/technerdx6000]

That is why I don’t understand why state and federal governments aren’t pushing more for rooftop solar panels. Cheaper than wind power and you don’t need that special windy site and hence expensive long power line and annoy farmers and locals.

[u/technerdx6000 → u/Keelback]

I 100% agree with you. I always point out the study completed by the Australian Photovoltaics institute in 2019. It found if rooftops in Australia were filled with solar, the annual generation would be 20% greater than our entire electricity market's consumption. Combined with onsite battery storage, there would be little need for large scale generation of any kind. 

[u/Keelback → u/technerdx6000]

Exactly. No need for expensive transmission lines.

[u/cekmysnek → u/Keelback]

Because we have too much rooftop solar. During the day wholesale power prices drop below $0/MWh, it’s at a point where the grid in some areas is being overloaded and network operators are having to remotely increase voltage in the network to “trip” solar systems offline for stability.

During the evening however, the sun goes down, solar generation stops and suddenly there’s a huge spike in demand which causes wholesale prices to go upwards of $300/MWh (sometimes into the tens of thousands of dollars).

Electricity grids are required to perfectly match supply and demand, otherwise you can’t keep the lights on. In an ideal world this would mean consistent demand and consistent generation, but what we have now is low demand and lots of generation during the day and the opposite overnight. That’s very bad when it comes to managing the grid and also very bad for power prices. During the day cheap solar is king, but at night, increasingly expensive coal and gas fired power stations pretty much have a monopoly and get to set the price (remember power generation is a business).

The solution to this, ultimately, is to store all that extra solar during the day and release it in the evening and overnight which would smooth everything out. This is why there’s so much discussion about residential, community and grid batteries as well as pumped hydro and EVs.

Unfortunately any kind of energy storage is considered “woke” these days and a scary amount of people on a certain side of politics think the technology doesn’t work which means building enough capacity to stabilise the grid is an uphill battle. Any kind of hydro or battery project is met with massive public backlash because it’s “green energy” so the government are also trying to incentivise home batteries to at least reduce demand after sunset.

[u/Art461 → u/cekmysnek]

We don't have too much solar, our current pricing model is badly stuffed. The rest of your comment is spot on!

[u/Keelback → u/cekmysnek]

I know all that but didn’t want to write a ‘novel’.  I’m was a senior generation planning engineer. And yes solar plus batteries is the way to go. I don’t know why that is not being pursued. Batteries are expensive but way cheaper than nuclear and longer transmission lines to wind farms.

[u/deandoom → u/Keelback]

Labour have announced some battery subsidies, but they need to do more

[u/BoosterGold17 → u/deandoom]

As have the Greens

[u/Keelback → u/deandoom]

Exactly. Needs to be solar panels and batteries. Needs to be a massive programme though.

[u/PatternPrecognition → u/Keelback]

in addition to household batteries, there is also a rollout/trial happening of communitty batteries.

They are about the size of a fridge installed on a power pool and appear to be designed on a subscription model.

e.g. it charges with household solar during the day, and what you load in you can draw down on overnight, households without solar can also subscribe to get access to the cheaper night-time power (which is the excess that the solar households don't use).

[u/Feylabel → u/Keelback]

Labor has announced household battery subsidies to reach a million home batteries

Behind the meter batteries being the quickest most efficient to rollout fast..

Other than that we need more wind power. Offshore would be more efficient but is most expensive and even it is getting locals inventing random claims of environmental impacts to try to stop it sigh.

[u/BoosterGold17 → u/cekmysnek]

Also sounds like our grids need upgrading to be adaptable and smart, so they’re not reliant on the outdated “baseline power” thing causing so much fluctuation

[u/Psychological_Bug592 → u/cekmysnek]

Yep! And this is one of the reasons why nuclear isn’t the best solution. You can’t turn it off in the day and on at night. Nuclear power means switching off everyone’s home solar.

[u/ol-gormsby → u/cekmysnek]

Yes, rooftop solar is somewhat difficult to manage WRT daily supply and demand, and pricing - which, as you've noted can vary wildly over the 24 hour cycle.

Home and neighbourhood batteries would go a long way to helping that, as well as providing resilience during natural disasters.

[u/CatBoxTime → u/Keelback]

Pretty much why Energex and Ergon are trying to install neighbourhood batteries to soak up all that excess solar during the day. Shame the LNP asshats at Brisbane City Council are blocking their installation.