• 16 Posts
  • 36 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I find it highly hypocritical that while the LNP were fear mongering against China they enabled them to become the global leaders in PV manufacturing which turned into a $50 billion annual return (I think that’s the amount/rate the article cited) for them, which instead could have been flowing back into Aus.

    It’s also would have created thousands of jobs, you know, the thing the coalition were constantly proclaiming they were always working to create. Unless they meant creating jobs by casualising the work force so everyone could work fewer hours for each employer but he the “opportunity” to have multiple, lower hour jobs.










  • Unfortunately we don’t have a rail freight network that either works well or reaches every township in Australia, and until we do encouraging the switch from ICE road haulage to EV road haulage is the best way to reduce transport industry emissions.

    For a lot of the more rural towns (or a least for the ones I know of) that do have rail connections, they are only accessible using diesel locomotives as there is no electricity network set up to power electric trains. So if we don’t want to introduce more emissions from rail freight we would have to electrify the whole rail network.

    Realistically we should be building rail and allowing EV trucks to be more accessible, but Australia is a big place, building all that rail infrastructure will take time. A good stepping stone would be to build rail connections to regional urban centres and then have trucks distributing it to the surrounding towns, but even building that much rail will take time. And that’s just the construction. The amount of time it would take to secure the land corridors for the rail would be considerable alone. AEMO have been having a difficult enough time securing land rights to build transmissions networks across properties







  • Yeah these quotes from your article really got me

    “Self-serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose,” the memo read.

    “Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.”

    Utter madness



  • Unfortunately 363GWh/60kWh = 6,050,000 cars, which goes to 18,150,000 cars if we only allow 1/3 of the battery charge be used, which is over 90% of the 20 million cars figure you mentioned.

    We also havent considered things like big industrial loads, which can have very large energy demands. I think it will be more likely they would require energy storage closer to their location, as drawing power from distributed sources across the entire grid would lead to a lot of grid congestion, as well as higher resistive power losses from transmitting greater distances. Having batteries closer to the large loads would be more similar to how the grid operates now, as the big industrial loads often get their own distribution transformers and lines connected to the transmission system so they don’t negatively impact the distribution lines that provide population centres.

    I think it is also worth taking into account the evolution of energy storage tech as well. There are far fewer limitations (size, weight) for land based energy storage types, and there is a lot of research going into more sustainable batteries, but these may not be suitable for EVs for some time. https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/energy/sodium-ion-batteries/

    You are right in the sense that as a significant percentage of the population owns a car, and therefore will forseably own an EV, it would be more sustainable to use that energy storage for the grid, rather than doubling up on energy storage devices.

    I’d be interested to know what Australia’s annual energy use would be if the large industrial loads weren’t considered. It may even be that EVs could cover a considerable percentage of residential and commercial energy demand.

    Either way, V2G will have an important role to play to completely electrify Australia and the rest of the state governments should pull their fingers out and allow it.



  • Yeah I agree V2G will play apart in complete electrification of the grid, but I think other community or residential energy storage will be necessary too as EVs aren’t guaranteed to be connected to the grid during peak solar generation times. They will be good for supply during peak demand times though, especially as demand peaks when everyone gets home from work, at which time they will be grid connected and can discharge when necessary, with the EV the recharging overnight while energy is cheaper.

    The only way I can think of making them a primary storage source is if absolutely every car park in the country has an V2G EV charger installed. That way the online time they would be disconnected I when they were in use. The complication I can see with this though is its hard to predict user habits so if the batteries discharge to the grid too much then the user will be limited to travelling shorter distances. A way around that would be to allow a maximum discharge amount be set I the EV, but this could lead to everyone setting it very high to limited energy is made available to the grid anyway.







  • As other people have said, this seems sus. I work for a PV, inverter and battery manufacturer and that flier has left a lot of things unclear. Like what brand the modules are from? what is the kW rating of the PV array? what is the throughput of the inverter (both ac and dc)? how many batteries? what the kWh storage of each battery?

    Even things like: what is the weatherproof (IP) rating on the inverter and battery, this will impact where you install it. What are the warranty periods on the solar modules and battery and inverter.

    If you were to even consider going with that you should definitely call and seek clarification on some of the above questions.

    If you are generally interested in getting some installed, a good resource to know is Solar Quotes (https://www.solarquotes.com.au/). It is run by an electrical engineer who doesn’t seem to be a representative of any of the manufacturers, so it’s pretty unbiased. He rates all the different manufacturers for each product too.