News & Discussion: Electricity Infrastructure

[Nort]

https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-sunsh ... panel/amp/

Big announcement by Aus government today, aiming to get Australia producing panels. Will be interested to see if we can actually compete on price with Chinese ones, but still great to see investment in getting more Australian manufacturing reestablished.

[abc]

https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-sunsh ... panel/amp/

Big announcement by Aus government today, aiming to get Australia producing panels. Will be interested to see if we can actually compete on price with Chinese ones, but still great to see investment in getting more Australian manufacturing reestablished.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese has pledged $1 billion in production subsidies and grants...

oh boy...

“Arena will look at the entire supply chain from ingots and wafers to cells, module assembly and related components, including solar glass, inverters, advanced deployment technology and solar innovation.”

module assembly = 'Australian Made '

[rubberman]

https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-sunsh ... panel/amp/

Big announcement by Aus government today, aiming to get Australia producing panels. Will be interested to see if we can actually compete on price with Chinese ones, but still great to see investment in getting more Australian manufacturing reestablished.

Great news.

[SBD]

Gas plant to pay a fine for failing to be available during high demand period back in 2017.

From Renew Economy

"this was a stuff up" is not exactly journalistic language but then I realised this publication came from "Renew Economy" blog. Their editorial license put a spin on the unrelated facts in the article to slant it in a way to indicate there was no fault of renewables.

I am paywalled from https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... URf5Ks7DPl which might use different language.

[Nort]

https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-sunsh ... panel/amp/

Big announcement by Aus government today, aiming to get Australia producing panels. Will be interested to see if we can actually compete on price with Chinese ones, but still great to see investment in getting more Australian manufacturing reestablished.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese has pledged $1 billion in production subsidies and grants...

oh boy...

“Arena will look at the entire supply chain from ingots and wafers to cells, module assembly and related components, including solar glass, inverters, advanced deployment technology and solar innovation.”

module assembly = 'Australian Made '

There will no doubt be some electronic components that have to be imported, that's the nature of modern high tech industries, but the announcement is very clear that the plan is to have the whole pipeline, from digging up raw materials to turning those raw materials into useful parts to assembling them happening here.

Once again left wondering if you are confused about what was written, or being intentionally misleading

[Algernon]

https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-sunsh ... panel/amp/

Big announcement by Aus government today, aiming to get Australia producing panels. Will be interested to see if we can actually compete on price with Chinese ones, but still great to see investment in getting more Australian manufacturing reestablished.

Seems a bit of a PR policy more than anything. Solar panel production costs are down roughly 85% in the last decade purely on the back of Chinese manufacturing scale. Kind of hard to see the upside in a market where the price is falling like that and an absolute juggernaut is well established.

Australia isn't alone in this though. The EU also is trying to do the same so as not to rely on china for panels. I think the context is different between the two though. EU has a bad experience having energy linked to security (Russia and its gas) whereas I think for Aus, it's more about seeing the raw materials being scooped up and shipped off and thinking it's worth a go value adding them.

In either case, I really don't see the problem buying panels from china if they're able to make them cheap.

[PeFe]

The Tindo model is best described as a "solar panel assembler". Tindo imports it's required parts (from China) and assembles their own panels. This sounds like the model Albanese expects the "new" industry to follow.

I don't think Australia will be able to undercut (economically) the Chinese manufacturers....certainly not at the base level. The best hope is that Australia becomes known as a "quality" panel assembler.

India and Indonesia both have plans to become large scale panel manufacturers but their progress has been very slow.

[abc]

https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-sunsh ... panel/amp/

Big announcement by Aus government today, aiming to get Australia producing panels. Will be interested to see if we can actually compete on price with Chinese ones, but still great to see investment in getting more Australian manufacturing reestablished.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese has pledged $1 billion in production subsidies and grants...

oh boy...

“Arena will look at the entire supply chain from ingots and wafers to cells, module assembly and related components, including solar glass, inverters, advanced deployment technology and solar innovation.”

module assembly = 'Australian Made '

There will no doubt be some electronic components that have to be imported, that's the nature of modern high tech industries, but the announcement is very clear that the plan is to have the whole pipeline, from digging up raw materials to turning those raw materials into useful parts to assembling them happening here.

Once again left wondering if you are confused about what was written, or being intentionally misleading

Once again left wondering if you are confused about what was written, or intentionally ignored the $1 billion in production subsidies and grants

[abc]

AGL makes an announcement that nuclear is no good and a week later AGL gets a billion dollar gift from government - nothing to see here.

[mattblack]

Using the boffins brains on this forum, can someone please explain why you u can't transport electricity with fibre optic cables?? I understand that they are not conductive so you would need to transfer electricity into light and then have receptors or converters at the other end (like solar panels). Is the power need for conversion to/from light loss too great??? Seems like the transmission capacity would b far greater.

[mattblack]

Additionally, as part of the national grid, when power gets exported/imported who gets paid?? Is there a windfall for state govt seeing we fund the infrastructure??

[rubberman]

Using the boffins brains on this forum, can someone please explain why you u can't transport electricity with fibre optic cables?? I understand that they are not conductive so you would need to transfer electricity into light and then have receptors or converters at the other end (like solar panels). Is the power need for conversion to/from light loss too great??? Seems like the transmission capacity would b far greater.

You can't transport electricity through fibre optic cables because they are insulators, not electrical conductors. Fibre optic cables transmit light. So, you can transmit energy. However, in order to transmit appreciable amounts of energy, the temperature would have to be raised to the point where the fibre would melt, OR, the fibre would be so large as to be impractical over any distance for higher power usage.

It is, however, possible for low levels of power transmission by using photoelectric technology. It is relatively inefficient, so not really much use on a large scale. However, it has some uses. It's termed power over fibre.

https://www.rp-photonics.com/power_over ... %20systems.

[mattblack]

Using the boffins brains on this forum, can someone please explain why you u can't transport electricity with fibre optic cables?? I understand that they are not conductive so you would need to transfer electricity into light and then have receptors or converters at the other end (like solar panels). Is the power need for conversion to/from light loss too great??? Seems like the transmission capacity would b far greater.

You can't transport electricity through fibre optic cables because they are insulators, not electrical conductors. Fibre optic cables transmit light. So, you can transmit energy. However, in order to transmit appreciable amounts of energy, the temperature would have to be raised to the point where the fibre would melt, OR, the fibre would be so large as to be impractical over any distance for higher power usage.

It is, however, possible for low levels of power transmission by using photoelectric technology. It is relatively inefficient, so not really much use on a large scale. However, it has some uses. It's termed power over fibre.

https://www.rp-photonics.com/power_over ... %20systems.

Ask and u shall receive Knew there was a nerd out there to help. Nerds rock .... and too the question of who actually benefits from electricity exports???

[PeFe]

Additionally, as part of the national grid, when power gets exported/imported who gets paid?? Is there a windfall for state govt seeing we fund the infrastructure??

The buyer pays the wholesale cost of the elcetrcity......buyer pays electricity generator.

The buyer pays the cost of transmission along the poles and wires......buyers pays owners of poles and wires.

State governments make nothing out of the sale directly (although this does increase economic activity boosting state government's revenue via the GST)

Poles and wires in SA are privately owned.

[mattblack]

Additionally, as part of the national grid, when power gets exported/imported who gets paid?? Is there a windfall for state govt seeing we fund the infrastructure??

The buyer pays the wholesale cost of the elcetrcity......buyer pays electricity generator.

The buyer pays the cost of transmission along the poles and wires......buyers pays owners of poles and wires.

State governments make nothing out of the sale directly (although this does increase economic activity boosting state government's revenue via the GST)

Poles and wires in SA are privately owned.

Right, so the government's desire to have 500% electricity generation should be used in state to generate greater economic stimulous, or buy back the rights to the poles and wires. Would of thought that if the state government pays for the infrastructure e.g. transmission to the border there should be some financial return.