South Australia powerless as wind generators don't work.

Is it? And even if so... still are privately owned businesses who fail.
And again... that what failed was by far the fossil fuel plants.
Alternative energy just aint that big yet.

 

The 9170 is a good product. It started the modular UPS phase with hot swappable power modules and battery packs. APC and Tripplite ran with the concept and are doing very well with it. I knew that the 9170 was a Best product because of the service passwords. Powerware is still selling them AFAIK, but the 9155 is beginning to phase it out where footprint isn't critical. I think Powerware is trying to use proprietary software as apposed to password protection.

 

There are 2 reasons I want to go off grid.

1. Grid and societal instability.

2. Money savings. They have a much harder time taxing what you don't spend and providing my own utilities frees up more of my fixed retirement income for other necessities. Off grid living gives me cheaper options for finding land. Sometimes land is cheaper because utilities are not available at reasonable prices.

 

"Less than the price of wind"? Wind is free. Your fuel source can't get any cheaper than that. So if you can generate power from natural gas cheaper than from wind, that just means that you bought equipment for generating power from natural gas already, and did not buy the equipment for generating power from wind.

Oh, and also, an "all of the above" policy puts the most energy on the market, thereby reducing demand on any specific fuel like say, natural gas, and driving down its price.

 

Make peace with nuclear power and embrace it. It's already the backbone of our power. We need more of it. Wind, solar, and hydro are puny in comparison. Even their potential is puny. If you want electricity (particularly non greenhouse gas releasing) nuke is your only viable option for the foreseeable future.
Keep working on other sources. But we need power now.

 

Purchase, set up, and maintenance on wind generators isn't free. At some point it pays itself off and maintenance is minimal, but their is an up front cost.

 

So you're going to invest your money into a full blown power generating plant and the people to run it that is only going to run a fraction of available operating time and sit in an idle standby the rest of the time? How are you going to pay the operating cost and debt service on it if you dont run it?

 

They maintain about a 20% over capacity. A renewable needs a 100%

 

For a single unit, I guess.
but how many wind turbines are there?

 

Am I personally going to invest in a wind generator? Yes, I'm planning on it as soon as I get suitable land. I won't be paying anyone to run it and I'll be paying upfront so there won't be any "debt service".

 

The how and when of electricity supply is evolving - much like the motor vehicle industry has ans will. We can expect hiccoughs along the way but in 10 - 20 years time we will be looking back wondering why we had put up with such an inefficient system for so long

Going back to full reliance on coal would be link downgrading from the latest Ferrari to a beat up VW with flat tyres

 

Ahem! Ever heard of a thing called a battery?? With the advent of the "super magnets" a lot of equipment that used to draw large amounts of electricity is now drawing less and requiring less voltage for the same output. Batteries are also evolving and if weight and size are not an issue there are a lot of "micro grid" applications whose upfront costs are reducing every year. Eventually we will see the demise of a lot of mains power in preference to connected "smart system" microgids

 

Thanks for the link.

 

The price of natural gas will continue to rise. The cost of the wind is zero and always will be. So when you exclude the cost of the equipment to generate the power the wind is always cheaper. Even if the wind equipment costs more initially for equal capacity at some point the difference will be offset by the zero wind cost against the rising cost of natural gas.

 

If we "need power now" then nuclear is not the way to go because it takes about a decade to bring a plant online. In that same time frame and for less cost you can build wind farms that will provide at least the same capacity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants

 

Mate,
dig yourself a hole and jump in.....we are living in 2017, even in the US it should be 2017.

To tackle today's grid problems, different camps have to work together, which is not happening in Eastern Australia.

Politics are made, and at this point in time, our Federal Government is trying to sell coal.

That's all, that is the whole secret.....

Always looking forward, please leave the cheap (*)(*)(*)(*) to Turnbull/Netanyahu/Erdogan/Trump and others, they show the same DNA!

Yes, and by the way, I don't mind Blacks, Muslims, Jews, bankers, workers and gay and lesbians and and and....(but I do mind brownish (*)(*)(*)(*) !!!!)
Regards

 

Yep, something that is rarely factored into cost equations. And that redundant system has to be kept in a fast startup mode with an available crew to ramp it up to full power in short order. But all the while it is not running it is costing money.

 

Does the power company make more profits when it has lots of satisfied customers using lots of it's electricity without outages or when it provides lousy service and lots of loss of supply to lots of customers?

 

More because of mismanagement or extreme conditions.

 

Yeah, like happened here. Someone made a poor decision to take their backup generator offline for maintenance during a heat wave when consumption peaks because of air conditioning.

 

The elephant in the room.

 

Unfortunately, knowing what you're talking about is not a prerequisite to post here

 

Ah yes the if we ignore capital cost argument. Give me a minute to saddle up my unicorn amd we can go find those 0 capital cost turbines.

Your argument is worthless because the life of a turbine is a generous 20-25 years which is the same as project bonding. So unlike hydro which allows you to enjoy decades of cheep power once the bonds are paid off wind turbines will be at the end of their life cycle as soon as the bonding od paid and you will have yo mothball them.

 

The logistics of maintaining thousands of turbines and generators that are 250 feet up and spread out over a large area seems like a nightmare. I could see them simply being abandoned at the end of their life cycle. Won't that be a beautiful sight.

 

According to you the Hoover Dam should have been mothballed by 1960?

The turbines at Hoover dam have been operating since 1935 and only in 1998 did they begin thoroughly overhauling them and have only done 11 up to 2009 so that means that those turbines have 50 to 60+ year s ofoperating lifetime BEFORE being overhauled and put back into commission.

The cost to completely overhaul those turbines is nothing even remotely close to the cost of the original installation.

What makes you believe that wind turbines are going to be any different?

- - - Updated - - -

What an inane supposition. What is wrong with overhauling the generators and having them operational for another 20-25 years with increased capacity?