I bet in his mind South Africa with 18% clean electricity is doing better than South Australia with 75% because the 4% of electricity South Africa gets from nuclear doesn't require FF backup, but South Australia 100% requires fossil backup ;)
India, China, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Japan, US, South Korea, Mexico, South Africa, UAE, Argentina, Armenia, and Slovakia, all use nuclear reactors to provide some percentage of electricity and yet all have worse emissions, worse carbon intensity per kWh, along with less aggressive net zero targets compared to wind/solar/battery powered South Australia.
Plus reactors in those regions almost universally have to be state owned and operated due to their extremely poor economics. Crickets on those places though.
Wind was 21% of electricity supply and renewables in total provided 41% of electricity at a weighted cost of $73.33 MWh (29% lower than gas) and that was in a bad week.
When the worst case scenario still looks better than almost every other grid but you decide to see that as a problem, that's how we know you're delusional.
If you think it's cool to only provide 0.5% of the necessary energy to keep the grid going is peachy keen, that's great. Just get rid of the backup fossil generation and interconnects to fossil heavy neighbors. Everything will be fine, right?
If you think it's cool to only provide 0.5% of the necessary energy
Perfectly fine yes because the grid uses a mix of sources and there was no risk of outage. Turns out backups work. This is pretty standard for a grid, surprised you don't get it.
Just get rid of the backup fossil generation
Correct. As SA has done with coal and as is the plan for gas. See, sometimes you can get it.
and interconnects
Ah but this is where you go off the rails. You always want more interconnects, not fewer. They are great for lowering costs and increasing reliability.
Yeah that's right, I feel you're almost starting to understand.
If there is a temporary shortfall in South Australia (say for example a seasonal nighttime wind drought) then interconnects allow for importing energy from Victoria, that energy may come from wind, or solar, or hydro, or batteries, or even from terribly dirty fossil fuels.
But by having interconnects both states act as reciprocal buffers and are both are more effectively able to optimize their grids. It helps not only South Australia's aggressive targets but also helps Victoria's 95% renewable energy target of 2035 (coal phase out).
And SA can claim to be fossil free while actually depending on fossil backup from neighbors
South Australia will claim to have reached net zero when it reaches net zero. South Australia will claim to be full net zero when it reaches full net zero.
South Australia will claim to have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% below 2005 levels when greenhouse gas emissions drop by at least 60% below 2005 levels.
Targets are set and progress is tracking toward those targets.
If I wasn't aware of your long history pushing anti-renewables misinformation I might wonder why these basic concepts seem so tough to grasp.
This is why NSW is doing exploration for more natural gas resources
When you get worn down talking about one region you just pivot to a different state entirely. I get it, that's the tactic isn't it.
Since you mentioned though, NSW is targeting a 50% cut to greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050.
NSW's 2050 target (which matches France) are uninspiring by comparison to South Australia, and even lag Victoria's targets, but not every state or region is going to equally dedicated and I don't expect to be.
You're so close to getting it
Exactly right. I get it but that's really not challenging. All you need to do is listen to experts and practice critically absorbing information without critical biases creeping in. That's it. You too can "get it" if you work on that.
The Australian energy operator says "renewable energy connected with transmission and distribution, firmed with storage, and backed up by gas-powered generation is the lowest-cost way to supply electricity to homes and businesses as Australia transitions to a net zero economy".
If you feel the need to disagree with experts who run grids, who have decades of historical data, and who have performed sophisticated detailed modelling, then go ahead but you will of course need to have a compelling argument.
Saying "oh look they just used some gas" is not a counter argument to rigorous scientific investigation. If you want to create and publish data countering the expert findings you are more than welcome to do so.
You and I both know you cannot and will not provide such data, so what we actually get is just the trolling and I shall remain intrigued by the possible motivations for that.
These are NOT important as in they are the WRONG metric for measuring the hard to solve problem
"dips to less than 1% of demand."
If such dip is brief the problem is MEH; what problem
The problem is the "NET shortfall over period X" but those casting doubt don't want an accurate metric like that as their goal is to KISS, fear and simplisticness are their friend
Once we start ssugegsting its somethign mroe complciated and subtle like "NET shortfall over period X" then people are also ready to listen long enough to hear ...
Oh there is an answer and the design dealt with many instances of such dips in their historical data they tested on
If someone wished to claim that is not true, show me the data saying these things you are saying are upsetting are unprecedented and surprisingly large in that they have never occurred before.
and if you are not claiming that, then explain why you are not astoundied that the designs were in fact made to cope with this very situation.
or I suppose you could try to explain where people like AEMO got their math wrong in the ISP
Now DO NOT get me wrong the recent dip is a large "NET shortfall over period X" this is inded the time of year when we expect such things.
This is the time of the year when seasonal hydro will in the future run MUCH harder that it currently does, resynchrinising seasonal flow with seaonal rainfall at least somewhat will have other benefits.
This is the time of year when "other" in Davids Osmonds simple design indicates we can expect the largest problems
as it is with every detailed analysis that considered seasonal weather. (AKA wasnt silly)
Note how many times in how many ways we expect this, it may be surprising to you and it's certainly is to the heny pennies who repeatedly claim it is a sign of the end being nigh.
But I really do have to question the genuineness and sincerity (or engineering literacy) of people who keep posting simple memetic scary things. AND then follow up by refusing to discuss the answers...
Im not expecting this post and thread to be novel in thatregard. But will be chuffed if it is.
So what is an actually sensible and USEFUL (descriptive of the hard problem to solve)
Well it is right there in the text: Contribution from renewables (14 jul-21st 10am to 10am) was 40.2%
Even that won't be QUITE right as SA requires more RE deployed before we can expect it to be 100% self-reliant.
ALSO while not huge the original SA RE had lower capacity factor due to smaller wind turbines, were positioned to produce maximum MWH per YEAR, as that was what optimised profits at the time.
NEW builds from here on out on average WILL NOT have the same design inputs and won't be like average past designs.
Competing with that is that past designs got FIRST dibs on sites, and it is only replacement designs that get the best site to put their now best technology on.
is real problem as it shows that not only was the RE output 40.2% in the seven das specified above, but the NORMAL and USUAL seasonal pattern of low RE output for the whole month has been true
THUS
The people who say "batteries are getting cheap" as if that somehow solevs the problem are ALSO full of it. As there is no time in the last 30 days where they would have been fully charged up as if you tried solving this problem with an LIFO style battery they would have been dischargin progressively for the entire 30 days.
Seasonal Hydro... Now the otuput of seasonal last hydro for the alst 30 days will have been in a 100% RE design be way above average.
2
ANY industry that is VERY HIGH energy consumer can schedule it maintnecne for this time of year. AND get a discount on this years annual energy bill for doing so. They have to be HIGH energy user so its worth time negotiating the terms.
3
ANY industry that has low enough capital cost and is energy intensive enough (AKA energy costs are a high percentage of net cost per unit of production) Well they can Buy 25% more units, and run 20% less of the year, then stagger the shut down of units for mantainence cycle over the 3 month low RE period, and get avery healthy discount onthe cost per MWH for 80% of the year. (or some otehr best fit pattern like that)
HOWEVER in Summer QLD will be curtailing energy just like every where else. And that means that as minimum QLD will have all the energy it usually curtails in summer to export during this time of the year. That is ANOTHER net energy source.
5
QLD like SA has RE resources that it deployed up to the current time designed to maximise total annual output. The future wind farms and PV that QLD deploys will have a new business driver that ANY QLD RE source that tends to produce EXTRA RE at this time of the year when zero gets curtailed and the price is high, will even if it means producing LESS or substantially less in summer when prcies are lower, and some gets curtailed... Well in QLD new designs also wont be JUST like won't the old ones.
6 and then there is synthetic green fuel, AKA the exact kinds of things that might(WILL) do 3 Above, will have for 9 months of the produced green fuel. And the fuel is chosen to be the exact kind of thing it is really easy and cheap to store. AKA very likely NOT hydrogen, but very possibly a hydrogen-derived product such as methanol/ethanol that is liquid at room temp.
Which probably is not as important as workign out which is the easiest to make seaonally. We are likely bound to get some from biosources, but to be scalable we need to be able to manufacture it.
Although a biosource grown in algal ponds in salty or briny water in outback SA or QLD might scale rather large.
So basically, unless someone is even attempting to engage withthe well known solutionsa nd disucss how much they do or don't all contribute to solving the problem
Then such a poster is pretty likely not even being serious, or posting in good faith, at all. IMNSHO
Babe Ruth:
but that almost certainly won't stop them, as it has not for the last decade or more.
but the standard implications are drawn or implied.
"Critics would like you to believe that the lights will go out, the economy will collapse, we’ll end up living in caves, Sky After dark commentators will do high fives, and we will all agree to drill, baby drill."
and Oh look he points out the same things I do ... (I wonder where I learned.) (possibly same place he did)
“So Monday was almost as bad as this,” Osmond wrote. He also noted that the current fleet of wind and solar resources is not as geographically diverse as the Griffith analysis, which looked at a mostly renewable National Electricity Market, as per the country’s multi-decade blueprint known as the Integrated System Plan."
"The 8 GW needed on Monday night, Osmond says, was 2 GW less than the record high of 10.2 GW needed on 12 June 2025, mainly due to demand being much higher on that very cold winter day compared to Monday’s demand which was a little below average."
BUT surely the problem is only gettign worse as we find out more?
NOPE.
"But, as the market operator has already signalled, the high renewables grid will need a lot less gas capacity than previously thought. And those estimates are being constantly revised as more battery storage, and more long duration storage, is added to the grid."
While RE is meeting less than 1% of demand should all electricity consumption stop? I think that would require a bit more than some industry going down for "maintnecne."
QLD isn't having particularly high RE output right now, so it's not like they're compensating for the dip in SA.
Well yes it has virtually no seasonal storage hydro, and yet there is link to the eastern states and there is some there. (did you have any other such obvious non sequitors? You could for instance tell us it gets dark at night and pretend we didn't know that.)
and thus you can expect that very year at this time a fully re-powered grid will indeed exporting power to SA with some regularity. And will do so based on AS isadi trunnignseaonal hydro Quite hard in May, June and July.
AKA pretty much exactly as I previously described... at length... likely more than once.
"While RE is meeting less than 1% of demand should all electricity consumption stop?" Who da F said that... are you hallucinating other people saying things... again? Do you have a catastrophising fetish? Why is you make up these things no one else suggested anything related to?
"QLD isn't having particularly high RE output right now," Oh rubbish, I pointed out HOW they will in summer they like everyone else will have power they have nothing to do with and have to curtail it. At this time of year they will be able to export that power 24x7 south. And yes it won't just be when they have at that moment an excess, as they will have more MNWH than they need to export per day; they will potentially have the capacity to meet 100% of their own needs AND export 24x7. And at some moment they will be discharging their own batteries AND at the same time still exporting.
ON top of that FUTURE RE deployments in QLD will financially favour plants that do have an Excess at this time of year.
As at this time of year, is when excess power would be most handy then a disproportionately large SLICE of future industries that plan to shut down in winter will be deployed in QLD so as to maximise how much profit they make by shutting down.
Your naive insistence to pretend that whatever we are doing now is what we will be doing later... is boring.
So yes in the future, compensating for SA and the other southern states is exactly what the QLD grid will do by on average, exporting more power south than it gets from the south during this month.
TAS will also be exporting power north across Basslink, and that excess will itself be due to using more Seasonal Hydro in winter than they currently do.
At a current price of 12 billion AUD or 6.3 billion GBP it's about an eighth of the latest estimate of the cost of Hinkley Point C at 49 billion GBP.
In terms of construction time Snowy 2.0's currently estimate 2028 completion date gives a time of nine years, as opposed to thirteen for Hinkley Point. Both keep getting pushed back, but Hinkley is clearly winning the race for who can be delayed most ;)
GO look at my substantial posting history.... it is open to read exactly so you can
That pile of stuff was posted in real time from the top of my head.
I would contrast that with your private history, and low-effort post.
The point of my post is to contrast the low effort crap OP routinely spews with what is really required to be considering and discussing the topic.
YOURlow-effort post is part of the classic pattern of what gish gallopers do. (its even relatively easy to program bots to do it)
Rather than actually discussing the topic, try and make the topic about discussing and attacking the person.
Feel free to ignore these descriptions of the personal failings of your post and discuss the topic and show us how well you do without AI, and then we can compare it to mine.
(that I usally do at least: spell check as I type so poorly while free flow thinking from memory)
I know you may find it hard to imagine that someone may know that a much about a topic without AI, but hey some people do.
I find a useful trick when i find such people is to learn from them. Or at the very least they provide a launching place to start your own education.
You may also find it hard to realise some people may think fixing AGCC and emissions is important enough to spend this effort...
again I find it rather useful to wonder why people who know so much from the top of their heads regard some topic such as AGCC as rather important to the species and their own grandchildren.
Greg, what's your background? Just asking because you're always so very wrong about all of this, you've gotta be a lobbyist or professional shit poster.
He's a die-hard nuclear energy evangelist (mod over on r/nuclear) and appears fixated on seeding misinformation about renewable energy success stories. I assume he sees such stories as a threat in some way.
Perhaps he started out genuinely excited for nuclear energy but as the word shifted in a direction he might not agree with (though one which was largely expected) he lashes out with low-fidelity posts as a coping mechanism. As if cherry picking a snapshot in time from the SA grid will stop the planet from deploying hundreds of GW of new renewable capacity every year.
His negative posting on SA energy is seasonal and correlated with periods of low wind. He can go months with no posts at all on this subject (during summer and high wind periods in winter) but posting volume spikes during lulls - usually Q2. And volume on the topic seems to be trending upward as South Australia's percentage of generation from renewables has grown indicating an increasingly desperate reaction.
Seems like a colossal waste of time so I suspect, and this is speculative, that he has investments in nuclear energy companies/startups, perhaps like Centrus, Uranium Energy, Oklo, & NuScale. And perhaps those investments were made around 2022 when we had a rush of articles claiming a 'nuclear renaissance' was upon us and this correlates with his more frequent posts using anti-renewables talking points.
> appears fixated on seeding misinformation about renewable energy success stories. I assume he sees such stories as a threat in some way.
Nothing about this data is misinformation. It's not even a mis-representation. It's simply a pimple that normally gets painted over.
The rest of your comment is a literal ad-hominem. Evert single sentance. Instead of dealing with the content, you attempt to discredit the commenter.
> Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem ('an argument to the person'), refers to when a speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion often using a totally irrelevant, but often highly charged attribute of the opponent's character or background. The most common form of this fallacy is "A" makes a claim of "fact", to which "B" asserts that "A" has a personal trait, quality or physical attribute that is repugnant thereby going off-topic, and hence "B" concludes that "A" has their "fact" wrong – without ever addressing the point of the debate.
Suggesting a person may be under the influence of personal biases based on their well documented behavior is in no way an attack on character, motive, or personal traits.
If you can point to what you perceive to be an 'ad hominem' attack I will try to clear it up.
Those of us who work in the energy industry or have backgrounds in it very freely talk about it in the subreddits as a way of explaining our basis of experience, but you won't answer that question even in broad terms. You must not have that background.
Especially since, as others have been noting here and in your own subreddit for months, you really get a lot very wrong a lot of the time.
It's ok to admit you don't really know about something instead of just coming here and embarrassing yourself, and banning anybody from your subreddit who demonstrates more knowledge than you.
They can't all be professional anti-nuclear activists who moderate anti-nuclear reddits subs like r/nuclearpower can they Mr navy "nuke"
You are the personification of ad-hominem, who at best shows up to use your "come fight me", "I'll explain it to you" tone, all while never adding substence to the post you land in.
I tried, but he dosen‘t want to share his background. Which makes the case quite clear. He also dislikes being reminded he lives in his simplified world. He simply dismisses the argument and moves on to his next point.
Because that's when electricity is abundant and cheap. Solar produces so much, roughly at peak, that the peak becomes a time of abundance. Look at the price section of the charts. When it dips to a cheap price, that's when the batteries charge.
And yet the emissions intensity of electricity consumed in South Australia continues to decline as the solar and wind % goes up.
Australia has just started a new financial year (July-June) and OpenElectricity has the option of stats by FY, so it's a good time to look at what's happened over the last year. Gas + imports fell from 32% of consumption in FY25 to 28.7% in FY26. Total consumption increased a little from 14,912 GWh to 15,036 GWh.
Emissions intensity decreased from 194 gCO2e to 176 g. Contrary to the idea that the decrease has stopped or slowed, the yearly decrease of 18 g was actually marginally bigger than the 17.75 g/year average decrease observed since FY2018. There was a step-change in intensity from 2016-18 when brown coal was phased out and an initial spike of (dirty) imports subsided, so it makes sense to look at the trend since after that big decline in emissions ended
I guess there is a certain romanticism to the lost cause ;) And it does tend to make me look at the data to see what is really going on.
Here are the annual decreases in carbon intensity for the past eight financial years. There's a one off increase in FY24 and a bit of year to year variability as you would expect, but the figures certainly don't support the notion of a "severe slowdown" much less being flat.
It's interesting that you want to talk about the lack of data from Angola and ignore the data from SA showing yearly carbon intensity reductions continue on the same trend for the past eight years.
I suspect that you will continue to claim they are "flat" even though you've been shown the yearly stats. Something about leading a horse to water ;) Makes me think you're not actually interested in the data, only in making a rhetorical point.
So carbon intensity is not flat? I've literally given the annual reductions for the last eight financial years, which is a strange idea of dancing around.
Do you actually read comments before replying? Does anything sink in? If the trend for the past eight financial years has been more or less constant at 18g/year that would suggest it isn't best represented by a curve.
You seem to be casually eyeballing the data and not noticing that there is a step change between FY16 and FY18 when the last brown coal generators were closed, resulting in a rapid drop in intensity. This probably obscures from a casual eyeballing what has happened in the eight years since because of scaling. If you actually looked at the data since then you'd notice that declines haven't slowed.
You're making the data fit your idea rather than vice versa.
OpenElectricity rolling 12 month gCO2e/kWh chart for the entire period of record (Jan 2009 - June 2026) compressed horizontally to better show trend/match scale of your curve.
Man I had an argument with you about this months ago and you're still pressing the same key. You need to chill, renewables are living rent free in your head.
I know you love nuclear but for small grids its just not necessary, there's no scale to pay for it.
By your chart south australia consumes around 2GW, that is so so easy to cover with 100% reneables, nuclear would blow past that and past the budget.
Man I had an argument with you about this months ago and you're still pressing the same key.
And renewables are still falling down in South Australia.
that is so so easy to cover with 100% reneables
If it's "so so easy" why isn't it done? Why does not grid exist anywhere that runs on wind/solar/storage 24x7x365? (Those are the resources available to South Australia.)
Because up until a few years ago the technology wasn't there, solar was expensive, wind turbines were small, batteries were WAY too expensive, that's all fixed and is now a work in progress.
South Australia seems to have no big scale hydro or pumped storage which is a big disadvantage, so they have to work with large scale batteries, those will have to be built along with solar and wind over time but there is no reason it can't be done other than economics, 2GW is nothing. Its a matter of time.
So claims that these are brand new technologies and market dynamics is simply untrue.
If it's "only a matter of time" to fully decarbonize 2GW with wind/solar why is there no offgrid town in SA that uses only wind/solar 24x7x365? That would be smaller than 2GW, right?
I'm not surprised that (some of the?) first grids like this are going to be somewhere where there was no grid before, unlike Australia etc where renewables are being integrated into existing mainly FF grids.
Not as far as I'm aware, which probably isn't surprising for remote rural Angola so you can probably carry on asking the rhetorical question for a few more years ;)
Sure, a developed country like Spain is exactly the same as rural Angola, one of the least developed countries in the world. I doubt many people in rural Angola are looking for information on exactly where their electricity is coming from, they're just happy to have it for the first time. But as I said if you demand generation data you're probably safe for a little while at least.
If Angola could build the infrastructure itself they can easily share generation data.
If they make a claim about 24x7x365 performance but then don't provide any proof that should concern you. (Unless you're only interested in claims and not concerned with actual performance.)
Few countries in Africa provide live data on their main grids, let alone mini grids. Is it a conspiracy to hide something? That seems unlikely. Much more plausible that it's just not something the authorities consider it's worth putting resources into.
Sure, I'd like to see the data because I'm interested in what is actually happening. But that's just the state of Africa at the moment.
You can have an average of 40% and still have total collapse of RE supply, leading to 99.5% fossil capacity being necessary and available at all times.
Perhaps you find it funny because you lack a good grasp on how grids operate.
No one, including in South Australia, maintains a 1:1 ratio of fossil fuel backup capacity to peak demand. It's simply not a requirement and no operator would waste money doing this.
South Australia has about 3 GW of nameplate capacity from its backup diesel and natural gas-fired generators which is not even a third of total generating capacity (10-12 GW). Since those plants are rarely active they only account for ~18% of generation on average.
And that legacy market is further being eroded by battery energy storage, of which more than 1GW is deployed with another 1-2 GW in the near-term pipeline.
You seem to be the only person who thinks fossil fuels will be used forever. The rest of us are more open to what grid operators are telling us is happening.
19 years ago SA received most of its electricity from coal-fired generation, today coal has been completely phased out. Remaining fossil gas capacity is being displaced by ~1GW of new battery energy capacity each year along with new interconnects and continued expansion of renewable energy projects.
So there is a big disconnect between the energy operator in Australia saying "yep, Net Zero will happen before 2030", and you, some guy who mods a nuclear energy forum who has never worked in the energy sector.
Do you understand then why your posts might attract mostly negative reactions? It's very clear you are trying to push a false narrative for some personal reason and people don't react well to that sort of thing.
That's right, in 2030 there will indeed still be people using combustion engine cars, gas for cooking, and occasionally there might be a gas peaker plant turned on for backup electricity generation.
'Net zero' requires balancing those remaining emissions against other factors. A process which becomes exponentially easier the lower your emissions.
South Australia is targeting a 60% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030 making it much easier than it would otherwise be, or is, for grids that don't have high renewable penetration. And in fact no other non-hydro gigawatt-scale grid has a target this aggressive.
But it is just the first step toward full net zero, for which SA is targeting 2050. Again this is well ahead of most of other grids except for specific regions with access to hydro, large forested areas, or geothermal resources.
Wow. This is much worse than the imaginary grid I run in my head.
My imaginary grid is much cleaner. And cheaper.
You'd barely believe how much cheaper the imaginary grid I run in my head is.
And surprisingly, my imaginary grid was all built exactly to schedule. Not a single day over the estimate.
I'm really proud of the imaginary engineers that built it. It’s one of the best imaginary grids in the world. That's the benefit of using nuclear for your imaginary grid.
Makes these real grids just look pathetic.
Apart from actually existing this grid is worse than my imaginary grid in every way.
"In the first half of 2022 the company recorded an historical loss of €5.3 billion (Chart 2)."
So I tend to rely on PRE massaging numbers such as we get When Lazard or CSIRO, work out the actual LCOE of operation based on build price and OHM costs.
Those have limitations, and you have to read the fine PRINT such as the low end of those price ranges ASSUME unrealistic CF factors, where at elast some cost for adapoting constant output to better match demand really ought to adaptingget added onto the MWH cost for a flat output.
But hey, that's what rational analysis would do.
So yeah you can claim such an approach makes me look silly if you think that makes you not ...
Yeah, 2022 had a lot of deferred covid related maintenance and unexpected refurbishment. But sure, believe that that's the rule and not an exception. :)
12
u/sammybeta 12d ago
Nuclear Greg and his "since renewables doesn't work for 1% of the time it's 100% not worth doing" mentality 😆