Better laughing..
Sorry Richard, but us down the back would rather be laughing, because otherwise we'd be crying.
Turnbull transforms tech right off his agenda
Listen closely and you'll hear the tears of hipster app creators, angel investors and "Silicon Beach" real-estate speculators weeping that Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, once such folks' champions, appears now to be ignoring them. In a speech to the National Press Club yesterday - traditionally regarded as a …
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Thursday 2nd February 2017 04:35 GMT Magani
Missing Pork Products
“We've invested $590 million since 2009 in clean coal technology research and demonstration and yet we do not have one modern high-efficiency low-emissions coal-fired power station, let alone one with carbon capture and storage.”
In other words, we're having a bit of trouble finding the pig we're going to put lipstick on.
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Thursday 2nd February 2017 23:09 GMT Colin Tree
purchase the prime ministership
$590M worth of solar farms and wind turbines ?
$1.75M to purchase the prime ministership ?
Some of the education work on STEM is going ahead in leaps and bounds, if your kids are in a Qld independent school (no thanks to government meddling).
Stop calling coal fired base-load and build solar and make it carry the day time base-load,
coal is only needed to come on line when the sun don't shine, just to fill the gaps.
I got sick of watching, the press were very gentle with him, such a dignified affair,
the hard questions are so obvious, but not asked.
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Monday 13th February 2017 10:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Non-synchronous generation
He has a point in believing coal gen is their only major source of synchronicity. Coal and Nukes are the European traditional sources, both of which are generally being scaled back despite horrors like the Hinckley point project. Oz to the best of my knowledge hasn't got a lot of gas or Nuke leaving little alternative.
Gas turbines offer some inertia but diddly squat compared with a coal guzzler like Ratcliffe or Drax.
Small scale inverters on home solar are mostly programmed to match the local frequency. If that happens to fall outside of acceptable limits, they are strangely enough programmed to stop generating. That's a sensible thing for one unit to do - but the 11+GW installed base of solar in the UK potentially tripping off at the same time on a frequency issue? You need a whole LOT of Dinorwigs to compensate for that. As in, about 7 more of them. I don't see that being planned any time soon.
Now, add two and two together and you'll realise that some badly timed generator failures while the solar farms are busy could lead to a cascading fault scenario.
Energy plan? Our market-driven approach couldn't be more clueless if they tried. Too interested in satisfying pensioner's share payouts. Such a shame we lost David Mackay who attemped to bring rational debate to energy.
Bring back the CEGB. All is forgiven.
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Friday 17th February 2017 23:13 GMT GrumpyOldBloke
Re: Non-synchronous generation
Going forward we may need a different clock distribution model. The traditional solution of heavy inertia laden systems to time the rest of the network doesn't work too well as we move to many GW's of small scale or low inertia distributors who can change their frequency and phase on a dime. It is getting close to time when the big coal and nuke plants will have to change the way they generate and consume clocking rather than persisting with the current system where a big failure knocks out all the little guys as well.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
