South Australia’s new Premier vows to kill the Tesla battery storage plan
Marshall’s first promise as SA premier: Kill Tesla battery plan http://reneweconomy.com.au/marshalls-first-promise-as-sa-premier-kill-tesla-battery-plan-68601/ By Giles Parkinson on 19 March 2018
The newly elected South Australia premier, the Liberal Steven Marshall, has made his first promise – his government intends to kill the Tesla plan for the world’s biggest “virtual power plant” that would install batteries in low income households for no cost.
The Tesla plan – which aimed to install 5kW of solar and a 13.5kWh Tesla Powerwall 2 battery storage unit in 50,000 homes – would have created a virtual power plant with 250MW of capacity and 650MWh of storage.
The Tesla plan was announced just before the official start of the election campaign. The first two stages of the proposal – for 1,100 Housing Trust homes – is apparently locked in with a $2 million grant and a $30 million loan, but the broader third phase is not yet set in stone.
“No, that’s not part of our agenda,” Marshall told ABC’s Radio National breakfast program, just minutes before being sworn in as premier.
Instead, Marshall said his government would proceed with his previously announced commitment to a $100 million subsidy to 40,000 homes, where he would offer $2,500 for each battery storage unit installed.
“(Former premier Jay Weatherill) was doing it for Housing Trust homes in South Australia … that’s not part of our plan. What we are going to do is provide a subsidy to get (those with) solar rooftops systems with some storage capacity.”
Marshall’s plans would, of course, be very difficult to access for low-income households because it would still require an upfront capital payments that they would likely be unable to afford. And they do not already have rooftop solar.
It’s an extraordinary start for the new Liberal government – promising to ditch a private initiative that would provide loans to low-income households in favour of a $100 million government subsidy that would be out of reach of those households most in need of it.
So much for free markets. But it also raises the issue of sovereign risk.
If the Liberal Party is to do back-flips on initiatives like this, will it also renege on the other contracts entered into by Labor’s Renewable Technology Fund – and there are many of those, for larger-scale storage developments, and for a variety of smaller and micro-grid proposals.
It could be that the Tesla virtual power plant could go ahead, seeing that it is privately funded and requires a retailer to be chosen to help roll out the scheme and act as an intermediary.
The idea was to install the solar and battery storage for free, and deliver a reduction of around one-third in the electricity bills of 25,000 Housing Trust homes, and another 25,000 private low-income households. Investors would provide the capital.
However, given the new government’s antipathy to the scheme, it is entirely possible the tender process may be delayed and the private investors would not want to go ahead in such a hostile political environment.
It could also have an impact on Australia’s only solar manufacturer, Tindo Solar, which was looking to significantly increase its production capacity at its Adelaide manufacturing plant, and hire more employees, of course.
That’s because the Tesla plan would require half of the solar capacity to come from local manufacturers. It was also seen as an excellent platform for a new retailer to enter the South Australian market. The lack of competition in South Australia is one of the principal reasons for its high electricity prices.
The irony is that Marshall admitted he could see the benefits of battery storage – both at utility level and in households.
But he re-iterated his intent to scrap the state’s renewable energy target, because it would push up prices – even though the amount of projects under construction and promised by the new owner of the Whyalla steelworks would likely take the stake to Weatherill’s 75 per cent target, probably several years earlier.
Marshall also plans a new interconnector to NSW. Marshall says this will add to the “affordable reliable baseload” the state could access “when it’s not windy or sunny” in South Australia.
But appears to ignore the fact that NSW is already the state with the highest dependence on imports, even more than South Australia and may not been a position to export power to anyone.
But he also said the interconnector would allow for the “excess renewables” from South Australia to be exported to other states, “lowering prices across the entire nation.”
Hang on, didn’t you just say that the investment in renewables would push prices up? You can’t have it both ways.
Update: Marshall later told a news conference he would not rescind contacts entered into by previous government. This however protects only the first two stages of the Tesla virtual power plant, affecting 1,100 households. The third phase, involving 49,000 other low income households, was not subject to a signed contract, RenewEconomy understands, because it would source private funding.
Can Stephen Marshall stop South Australia’s transition to clean energy? Probably not
Speed of Australia’s energy transition hostage to Marshall law http://reneweconomy.com.au/speed-of-australias-energy-transition-hostage-to-marshall-law-65325/By Giles Parkinson on 19 March 2018
The consequences of South Australia’s election result on Saturday will be felt far beyond the state’s borders.
It was barely minutes after the SA Liberals – led by Steven Marshall – were declared winners that the federal Coalition began crowing that this was good news for Malcolm Turnbull’s signature policy, the National Energy Guarantee.
Senator Simon Birmingham said so almost immediately on ABC News 24, and the level of expectation that Marshall should serve as a vassal of the federal Coalition’s policy objectives was repeated by Turnbull, energy minister Josh Frydenberg and finance minister Matthias Cormann.
It seems unlikely that the NEG, or even Marshall, could do much to slow down the pace of the transition in South Australia, for reasons I will explain below. Continue reading
The danger of foreign policy run by macho males
American Foreign Policy Has A Masculinity Problem, Huffington Post, Lauren Sandler, Columnist 15 Mar 18
Foreign policy has always had a masculinity issue: gender shapes war, gender shapes intervention and gender shapes peacekeeping. In regard to military foreign policy, women and men are divided “always and everywhere,” according to a 2013 Pew Research Center study. Not only are women rarely part of diplomatic negotiations, but a statistical chasm exists where global security is concerned. From drone strikes to nuclear armament, women tend to disagree with men’s support of offensive strategies.
With few exceptions, foreign policy, especially in its highest echelons, is a man’s territory. But even in a realm governed by a formal rotation of masculine superegos, American foreign policy has never been in the hands of such a male id. Last week’s surprise announcement of a meeting by May between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un highlights, yet again, the perils of letting fragile male egos run the world. The prospect of the summit would be comic ― a Trey Parker and Matt Stone musical number ― were millions of lives, and perhaps ultimately the planet itself, not on the line………..
Diplomacy’s masculinity problem is nothing new, though every new Republican leader seems to inject it with fresh testosterone. Consider the Bush Doctrine, which arrived under cover of so much World Trade Center smoke. It sold two wars packaged in unequivocally masculine rhetoric, using the language of strength and dominance to distract from ― in the case of the Iraq War ― a lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction or of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. As analysts at the Brookings Institution described Bush’s aggressive “revolution” in foreign policy, “other countries will either follow or get out of the way.” But such rhetoric, and indeed a defense of American manhood itself, led us as surely into the Spanish American War more than a century earlier, according to historian Kristin Hoganson. Stunningly little has changed since that war began, in 1898. ……..
Of course, what makes our situation even more dangerous is that it’s not just Trump who is operating from a place of defensive masculinity. “From the outside, it is easy to underestimate how much of North Korea’s threats and bizarre expressions of aggression reflect its sense of vulnerability and wounded pride,” Evan Osnos wrote in The New Yorker this week. It’s essentially a therapist’s diagnosis of the pain underlying toxic manhood.
We now find ourselves at the mercy of two insecure grown-up boys pretending to be men, who might deploy defensive machismo by any nuclear means necessary. Each is led baldly by fear of failing to be the alpha male. And it’s a zero sum game: There’s only one alpha allowed. Who is going to rule the locker room? And who, when hazed, will punish the world for it? https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-sandler-foreign-policy-trump-masculinity_us_5aa941fee4b0f7a689ce9915?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004
South Australia rejects the nuclear industry – as shown in poor vote for Cory ‘s Australian Conservatives
Zac Eagle 18 Mar 18, Australian Conservatives with their “All Nuclear” policy managed to get about 3% of the vote in the South Australian state election. Overwhelming rejection of nuclear industry. Bravo SA
Fukushima likely to be Japan’s permanent nuclear wasteland.
The expanse of Fukushima in and around the exclusion zone represents an already contaminated area with, since 2011, far fewer residents to protest against such plans. Such a rare opportunity for relatively unopposed intervention in a desolate area will surely prove irresistible to the nuclear lobby.
Is Fukushima doomed to become a dumping ground for toxic waste? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/16/is-fukushima-doomed-to-become-a-dumping-ground-for-toxic-waste
Despite promises of revitalisation from Japan’s government, seven years on from the nuclear disaster the area is still desolate
This month, seven years after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdowns and explosions that blanketed hundreds of square kilometres of northeastern Japan with radioactive debris, government officials and politicians spoke in hopeful terms about Fukushima’s prosperous future. Nevertheless, perhaps the single most important element of Fukushima’s future remains unspoken: the exclusion zone seems destined to host a repository for Japan’s most hazardous nuclear waste.
No Japanese government official will admit this, at least not publicly. A secure repository for nuclear waste has remained a long-elusive goal on the archipelago. But, given that Japan possesses approximately 17,000 tonnes of spent fuel from nuclear power operations, such a development is vital. Most spent fuel rods are still stored precariously above ground, in pools, in a highly earthquake-prone nation.
Japanese officialdom relentlessly emphasises positive messages regarding Fukushima’s short- and medium-term future, prioritising economic development and the gradual return of sceptical evacuees to their newly “remediated” communities. Yet the return rate for the least hard-hit communities is only about 15%. Government proclamations regarding revitalisation of the area in and around the exclusion zone intone about jobs but seem geared ominously toward a future with relatively few humans.
The Fukushima prefecture government is currently promoting a plan, dubbed The Innovation Coast, that would transform the unwelcoming region into a thriving sweep of high-tech innovation. Continue reading
Past accidents at Lucas Heights don’t augur well for nuclear dump plan
Paul Waldon Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA Today the 18th of March is another red letter day in the nuclear arena with the 31st anniversary of a accident at Lucas Heights, but first lets jump forward 29 years to the Hawker nuclear community meeting on the 6th of May 2016, where a man named Bruce Wilson from the DIIS whom chaired such meeting, a man who could be a totally inept clairvoyant, a nuclear decision psychopath, a misinformed government payed nuclear spruiker, or just a sad ignorant man.
This is a man whom said “We will NOT have accidents” while the opposing dichotomy believes in the old dictum “Pray for the best, prepare for the worst” and the such dichotomy keeps giving a resounding NO to a deadly radioactive dump, which keeps falling on deaf ears of the liars who said they would walk away from a community that doesn’t want to accept it.
Now lets return to the anniversary of the 1987 accident where a fire at Lucas Heights nuclear research laboratory resulted in the contamination of two workers and the discharge of radioactive gas into the atmosphere over populated areas.
Yes, Bruce this was a accident, however there was an event two years prior to such accident that may be called a purpose when alleged vandals dodged security patrols and smashed a underground pipe, releasing radioactive effluent into river ways. (What was this pipe made of, maybe brittle 2mm plastic?).
Are we to believe Bruce that there wont be anymore accidents, maybe because accidents will be suppressed, or called a planed event, or re-classed as “Technically produced anomalies” just like the erroneous, magniloquent re-classing of high grade waste to intermediate waste in an attempt to try and push through a egregious program while attempting to insult the intelligence of the majority of informed South Australians who don’t want a risky radioactive dump here. https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/
AUSTRALIA’S HISTORY OF MISMANAGING RADIOACTIVE WASTE
Jim Green shared a link. 18 Mar 18 “The disposal of radioactive waste in Australia is ill-considered and irresponsible. Whether it is short-lived waste from Commonwealth facilities, long-lived plutonium waste from an atomic bomb test site on Aboriginal land, or reactor waste from Lucas Heights. The government applies double standards to suit its own agenda; there is no consistency, and little evidence of logic.” ‒ Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson nuclear.foe.org.au
The myth of baseload power refuted by the experience of Germany
Energy Post 12th March 2018, The experience of the German Energiewende shows that increasing amounts ofrenewable energy on the power system, while at the same time reducing
inflexible baseload generation, does not harm reliability write Michael
Hogan, Camille Kadoch, Carl Linvill and Megan O’Reilly of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP).
American policymakers who are still skeptical can look across the Atlantic, to Germany, for a concrete example of a successful transition away from traditional baseload, the authors note.
Numerous studies sponsored by utilities, system operators, the national
labs, and others show that a large share of variable renewable energy
production can be integrated while keeping the lights on, without any
valuable role for traditional baseload.
No study, not even by the US Department of Energy, which examined this issue in an August 2017 Staff Report on Electricity Markets and Reliability, has found evidence that baseload generation is required for reliability. Most studies have found that reliability and least cost are best served by reducing the share of inflexible baseload generation.
Germany is meeting nearly a fifth of its electricity requirements with VREs while retiring inflexible thermal generation, the nation has not experienced reliability problems on either the distribution or bulk electric system. If anything, government data show that the reliability of the German system has increased. http://energypost.eu/how-german-energiewendes-renewables-integration-points-the-way/
Indigenous work for the dole scheme ‘failing abysmally’, worsening poverty, Greens say
By political reporter Dan Conifer
“Whilst this program is allowed to continue,
there are kids not getting food on the table and communities
are being pushed into further poverty and disadvantage,”
Senator Siewert said.
‘Key points:
* Greens claim scheme is worsening poverty and hunger in Aboriginal communities
* Participants receive more penalties than every other Australian jobseeker combined
* Greens senator renewed calls to scrap penalty that freezes welfare for eight weeks ‘
‘The Government has conceded the Community Development Programme (CDP) needs a “complete rejigging”.
But it has indicated an overhaul will not be fully implemented until July 2019. … ‘Remote work for the dole participants work up to three-times longer than city-based jobseekers to receive Centrelink payments.
‘The CDP covers three-quarters of Australia’s landmass,
and the overwhelming majority of its 33,000 participants
are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. … ‘
www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-17/work-for-the-dole-program-worsens-poverty-greens-say/9558012
New analysis shows NEG is worse than doing nothing — RenewEconomy
New analysis suggests the targets contained in the National Energy Guarantee are actually worse than if the government did nothing.
via New analysis shows NEG is worse than doing nothing — RenewEconomy
Carnegie wins grant to power offshore gas platform with solar — RenewEconomy
Carnegie wins NERA funding to integrate solar PV and storage at the Blacktip Wellhead Platform in the Southern Bonaparte Basin.
via Carnegie wins grant to power offshore gas platform with solar — RenewEconomy
Antinuclear 