Sydney Now Powered By 100% Renewable Electricity (itwire.com) 126
The City of Sydney is now powered by 100% renewable electricity, generated from wind and solar farms in regional New South Wales. From a report: The "green energy" deal which came into effect on Wednesday is valued at over $60 million and is touted by the City of Sydney Council as the biggest green energy deal of its kind by a council in Australia. Under the deal, all the city of Sydney operations -- including street lights, pools, sports fields, depots, buildings and the historic Sydney Town Hall -- will now be run on 100% renewable electricity from locally-sourced clean energy. The Council says the switch is projected to save the City up to half a million dollars a year over the next 10 years, and reduce C02 emissions by around 20,000 tonnes a year -- the equivalent to the power consumption of more than 6,000 households.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the new agreement will generate jobs, support communities impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and create new opportunities in drought-affected regional NSW. "We are in the middle of a climate emergency. If we are to reduce emissions and grow the green power sector, all levels of government must urgently transition to renewable energy," the Lord Mayor said. "Cities are responsible for 70 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, so it is critical that we take effective and evidence-based climate actions. The City of Sydney became carbon neutral in 2007, and were the first government in Australia to be certified carbon neutral in 2011. This new deal will see us reach our 2030 target of reducing emissions by 70 per cent by 2024, six years early. This ground-breaking $60 million renewable electricity deal will also save our ratepayers money and support regional jobs in wind and solar farms in Glen Innes, Wagga Wagga and the Shoalhaven."
Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the new agreement will generate jobs, support communities impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and create new opportunities in drought-affected regional NSW. "We are in the middle of a climate emergency. If we are to reduce emissions and grow the green power sector, all levels of government must urgently transition to renewable energy," the Lord Mayor said. "Cities are responsible for 70 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, so it is critical that we take effective and evidence-based climate actions. The City of Sydney became carbon neutral in 2007, and were the first government in Australia to be certified carbon neutral in 2011. This new deal will see us reach our 2030 target of reducing emissions by 70 per cent by 2024, six years early. This ground-breaking $60 million renewable electricity deal will also save our ratepayers money and support regional jobs in wind and solar farms in Glen Innes, Wagga Wagga and the Shoalhaven."
The city... government (Score:5, Informative)
Not the whole of Sydney.
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The citizens still have a choice of energy production. My home is normally powered by hydro electric and solar, however when I got a power outage I powered up a gas generator. Some companies with big old smoke stacks are not using renewable energy as well.
However having government switching over and showing that it is indeed more affordable and a job creator, will lead to further adoption.
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more affordable and a job creator
These are more or less mutually exclusive. "more affordable" means "costs less money" whereas "job creator" means "pays additional people a paycheck". You can't do both.
Possibly you mean "job replacer" if it creates some jobs while simultaneously eliminating others and resulting in a net decrease in payments. It is certainly possible that a new company creates some new jobs while causing a less efficient competitor to cut a larger number of jobs.
The only way to genuinely create net new jobs is to create som
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Don't you think it's at least possible that, since the inputs for renewables are free, you could have both more employment and lower costs? Or that the capital requirements could be lower to set up a solar farm vs a gas peaker plant? Certainly it seems to me that you could need 10 people to run a gas plant but 20 to run a solar plant and still produce cheaper power with the solar plant. It gets tricky when you start looking beyond direct employees, of course.
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Don't you think it's at least possible that, since the inputs for renewables are free, you could have both more employment and lower costs? Or that the capital requirements could be lower to set up a solar farm vs a gas peaker plant? Certainly it seems to me that you could need 10 people to run a gas plant but 20 to run a solar plant and still produce cheaper power with the solar plant. It gets tricky when you start looking beyond direct employees, of course.
The inputs for renewables are NOT free. You just think they are. In reality they are quite dirty, require lots of mining, and unless you are installing individual solar panels on houses (which again isn't very efficient) you aren't creating many jobs. And since they are replaced every 20 years, they actually aren't very sustainable due to the amount of mining necessary to make them. You need about 10x the mining to get the same production capacity as other forms of energy. And that's on top of needing
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The inputs for renewables are NOT free.
No, your understanding of "inputs", as the above poster is using the term, is just wrong. By inputs, they quite clearly are referring to inputs into the power generating devices. A gas power plant required the purchase of of gas to power it, coal plants require the purchase of coal, and so on for non renewables. On the other hand, sun and wind are free.
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Fossil fuel is free, it is the means of extraction costs money.
Solar energy is free, it is the means of conversion that costs money.
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Not just the extraction of those raw materials and the pollution it generates, but also the transport between the source and the refineries, the processing/transformation of that raw material, the pollution it generates, the transport between the refineries and the power plants, the pollution it generates from burning the processed material, etc. And that's for every load of fuel/coal.
By comparison, the Sun rays arrives on the panels by themselves, the wind arrives by itself on the windmills. No transportat
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I very clearly refuted what I quoted you saying. You can ad extra meaning to the parent post all you want but that won't change the fact that they were very clearly talking about strictly fuel.
I could go on to debate you from here but given your shithead interpretation of the parent post I pretty much think you're a shithead and thus have no interest in debating you on any subject. Why should I waste my time talking to a shithead.
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misinformation (Score:5, Informative)
The inputs for renewables are NOT free. You just think they are. In reality they are quite dirty, require lots of mining,
If you want to hear about "requires lots of mining," producing coal requires removing literally cubic miles of overburden.
and unless you are installing individual solar panels on houses (which again isn't very efficient) you aren't creating many jobs. And since they are replaced every 20 years,
Not actually clear what the lifetime of solar arrays is, but you buy them today with thirty year warranties.
they actually aren't very sustainable due to the amount of mining necessary to make them.
As noted: sand. If you want to hear about "the amount of mining necessary," learn how coal is produced.
You need about 10x the mining to get the same production capacity as other forms of energy.
What the? You have now departed from the talking points of whatever blog you're quoting from and are now just making shit up. This is simply inaccurate. In no way do solar panels require "10x the mining" as other forms of energy.
And that's on top of needing about 6x more renewable capacity to make the same amount of power due to solar only working at best a 1/4 of the time.
This is the sort-of half truth. You are correct, solar panels produce peak power at noon. Other times of day produce less power. But, of course, all the people installing them for energy do understand that.
And we haven't even talked about storage yet. Look, if you want to put some panels on your roof to feel good about it, great, do it. But don't act like you can power a grid this way.
You can generate a significant portion of the needed grid power. It is not a requirement that every energy source be 100% of the electrical capacity.
Also, don't act like this is anything more than an accounting trick because we know the real source of power when we say renewables are gas peaker plants anyway.
A sort of half truth again. In fact, up to about 10% source penetration, solar panels are the peak power producers-- nobody really wants power at 2AM, and the solar arrays don't produce it then, but does during the day, when people do want power. But, yes, if you just drop in a field of solar arrays with no other changes, it will only produce power during the day, and you need some other source at night. But just because the drop-in solution doesn't solve all your energy problems doesn't mean that it doesn't solve any of them. It is not a requirement that every energy source be 100% of the electrical capacity. An optimum solution is very likely multiple energy sources.
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they actually aren't very sustainable due to the amount of mining necessary to make them.
As noted: sand. If you want to hear about "the amount of mining necessary," learn how coal is produced.
Nobody mentioned coal. Wanna compare renewable to something, compare them to Thorium (or even 70's era Uranium which seems to be all we still use). That's 1000s of times more efficient for resource usage. Also, Coal compares favorably to renewables in everything except pollution, not because Coal is good. But because you have to extract so much material for the renewables. They are just very very very inefficient. They sound good though which is why you support them. But all you are really accomplish
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Nobody mentioned coal. Wanna compare renewable to something, compare them to Thorium
OK. How much commercial electrical power has been produced per kilogram of Thorium mined?
(counting on fingers)-- uh, adding all up... that would be zero.
And, if you're saying we should compare solar to hypothetical future thorium reactors... well, fine, but then you don't mind that I will be comparing hypothetical future solar arrays.
I wouldn't mind seeing somebody put a thorium reactor on line. I'd like to see if the technology can come up to the predictions made for it, and if it can solve our proble
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That's 1000s of times more efficient for resource usage.
No, it is not. Moron.
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Most companies are not around that long https://www.bbc.com/news/busin... [bbc.com]
If you believe they will be around to honour that warranty,
"sorry sir they were not installed properly you will need to claim from the installer" no go find the installer after even 5 years
or won't change their structure so that the warranty holding entity simply disappears
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You are required to give warranty by law.
And that means you have to have a warranty insurance.
Facepalm - in what stupid 3rd world country do you live?
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The inputs for renewables are NOT free.
Moronic nitpicker?
The Inputs are free: Sun, wind, water.
You don't mean "inputs" you mean construction materials.
And you know that. You are just a stupid asshole.
The rest of your post is just bollocks - why would anyone replace a solar panel after 20 years? You have no clue about the topic.
Good luck with your third world economics 101 ideas.
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"But don't act like you can power a grid this way." - i see you are still applying 19th century ideas to the future. As more and more batteries (home/business storage and EVs together with any commercial renewables) are in the mix they will become linked together in a network creating local virtual/micro grids so the "grid" will eventually becom
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It takes less people to run a solar plant than to run a gas plant, though, and less of them are highly skilled. You still need some electricians, but you don't need anyone to deal with combustion, scrubbing, turbines, etc. You clean the panels once in a while, repair anything damaged, and maybe occasionally replace an inverter.
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It takes less people to run a solar plant than to run a gas plant
Then it's not creating any jobs.
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It can't do everything, it can only help solve our resource consumption and pollution problems. Shucks.
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You create a brief flurry of manufacturing and installation jobs with solar power - the msmash summary clearly says the contract signed in Sydney will create jobs - is this what she's talking about?
Previous posts describe solar as requiring fewer on-going workers (jobs) and fewer high-skill jobs than the alternative, non-renewable energy sources.
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These are more or less mutually exclusive. "more affordable" means "costs less money" whereas "job creator" means "pays additional people a paycheck". You can't do both.
Sure you can, as long as some other cost goes down. For example, fuel.
Re:The city... government (Score:4, Interesting)
"More affordable" means lower cost to the consumer. "Job creator" means the technology creates more new jobs than the technology it replaces.
Let me give you an example. The Bessemer process of steel production, invented in 1856 by Henry Bessemer, was so much better than the old process that it made steel incredibly cheap to produce. Steel was then used for many more things. Production increased. More jobs were created, even though the end product was much cheaper than the old methods of steel production.
It's simple economics. Make something much cheaper than before, and demand will increase. Increased demand leads to increasd production. Increased production means more jobs.
Electricity too cheap to meter (Score:2)
Wake me up when I get a substantial reduction in my electric bill owing to the construction of more solar and wind farms.
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Given that we live in a crony-capitalist society where real competition is squashed by the owning class "capturing the market," there is no real anti-trust legislation enforced any more, and even regulated public utilities have bribed their way into co-opting the very government agencies meant to regulate them, you may never see a dime. But that's just what late-stage capitalism does.
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Wake me up when I...
Ah yes. The classic, "I am the world" argument. If it didn't happen to you specifically, then it obviously mustn't be true or remotely possible.
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Where is solar energy les expensive than traditional, non-renewable sources? Please include all subsidies.
Re:Electricity too cheap to meter (Score:4, Insightful)
At least we don't have to pay for cleaning up solar panel spills at beaches or cleaning up wind turbines that leak poisons into the ground water.
If you are going to compare the cost of different types of energy production, you also have to include their secondary costs.
For example, there are 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the USA, and most of them are leaking methane and other gasses into the atmosphere plus poisons into the ground water. Who do you think will foot the bill for taking care of those problems?
Also, burning any fossil fuel releases stuff that's bad for your health and for there's research indicating that there is an increased incidence of getting lung cancer if you live near a coal plant. That means you have a secondary cost in health.
There are certainly secondary costs associated with renewable energy but it's magnitudes lower than compared to fossil-fueled energy.
And regarding the direct cost, renewable energy keeps getting cheaper while non-renewable keeps getting more expensive due to increased extraction costs. I haven't looked at the data recently but from what I remember it seemed that without any subsidies the costs of renewable energy should be lower than non-renewable this or the next few years. There is some fudge-factor involved since it depends a bit of how fast the technology behind renewable energy matures and what geo-political region you look at.
Regardless, non-renewable energy based on fossil fuel has to go for several reasons - but it's something that we have to be weaned off because there's no practical way just to stop using it in the short term without some really negative effects on society and the economy.
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For example, there are 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the USA, and most of them are leaking methane and other gasses into the atmosphere plus poisons into the ground water. Who do you think will foot the bill for taking care of those problems?
Yes, I saw that story previously on slashdot, let me summarize my response:
It is not nearly the issue it sounds like, due to most people's inability to handle big numbers - divide the Estimated output by the estimated number of wells, and the average, per well "Leak" is very small, and if you were to address all the wells and eliminate ALL methane leaked, it would amount to a trivial amount, as I recall less than a fraction of a percent of the methane emitted by other means, about a day's worth of emission
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What you call "subsidies" are nothing more than the exact same deductions your non-fossil fuel industry enjoys. There is no direct subsidy to the oil industry, there are standard business deductions for capital investments, etc.
Currently, the vast majority of roads were paid for by taxes levied on gas sales - currently electric vehicles use the roads for free, when we go "all electric" will roads be free, or will we start taxing renewable energy?
I'd be curious how many solar panels go up each year without 5
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I suspect as your energy bill drops, your tax bill will go up to account for the research, manufacturing, installation, maintenance, operation subsidies are accounted for.
Oh, then again, the premium paid for solar-generated electricity even when it's not needed, may actually cause your electric bill to go up, not down.
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It might be hard because they are buying your neighbors excess solar electricity at a premium, whether the utility needs it or not.
Eliminate that "hidden" subsidy, and solar panels are not cheaper for the average homeowner. Take away the install subsidy, and the proposition falls apart quicker.
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Unless there's some systemic reason why renewable energy companies pay their shareholders and/or owners less than fossil fuel companies
Dingdingding! There are less do-nothing ownership-class leaches in the renewable energy system, at least at present. This will probably be true in the long run as well since there are fewer bits and pieces of this industry that are amenable to monopoly and arbitrage.
Also, not poisoning the population helps improve individual productivity and keeps money from being shit down the health care hole where it will instead be spent on products the more healthy people need or want.
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Or perhaps the solar industry being so new doesn't have the same amount of inefficient cruft that pretty much every other energy production industry has? Maybe? Older industries are usually hauling a lot of baggage they've picked up along the way.
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"more affordable" means "costs less money" whereas "job creator" means "pays additional people a paycheck". You can't do both.
Of course you can do both.
Are you a retard?
Jobs in construction are created to build up renewable plants.
Jobs in production of parts for those plants are created.
The energy produced is so cheap it is a net win for the economy.
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Give it time.
Oh, you mean the buildings and such?
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Well.... Montreal metropolitan area is 4.2 million and has been running virtually exclusively on renewable (hydro) power for many decades. As has almost all the rest of the province of Quebec (pop. 8 million).
The only carbon resources used are some backup generators in the far north.
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The more interesting part is that they expect significant savings. That's been my experience, renewable energy is far cheaper than fossil now. The city uses a lot of energy at night too for street lighting which is when energy is cheapest, free even. At night I get paid to use it sometimes.
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So a local government took an action that they said will cut costs in a number of years in the future? Unbelievable. No, seriously, that is not believable. Think anything might change in the next four years to alter that trajectory?
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From the article
"The “green energy” deal which came into effect on Wednesday is valued at over $60 million and is touted by the City of Sydney Council as the biggest green energy deal of its kind by a council in Australia."
Regarding the "4 year claim" read this section from the article, you might struggle to comprehend it though
“The City of Sydney became carbon neutral in 2007, and were the first government in Australia to be certified carbon neutra
is it Artisinal? (Score:2)
Locally produced? I'm thinking it was produced at the Sun. But even so, is organic, Artisinal, Craft, small batch Energy? If not it's probably full of pesticides and GMOs. Not for me.
OH! Well that explains it. (Score:2)
Now for the Angry comments. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because for some reason changing to a cleaner energy source makes people angry. With comments like It isn't as clean as You think!
Technology gets better over time. Those 1970's solar panels vs 2020 solar panels are much better and cheaper. We also have faster and cheaper computers to micromanage more complex power requirements for optimal use of devices. As well we have more energy efficient products the LED vs a Incontinence Light bulb.
Yes changes sometimes requires us to do different things, you got an electric car, you should need to charge it up from home, and on a road trip you need to schedule a charging with a stop for food and other services. Or those LED Light bulbs will give off a different hue of unnatural light than your old ones. But are they really worse than before? No, just different.
Re: Now for the Angry comments. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because for some reason changing to a cleaner energy source makes people angry. With comments like It isn't as clean as You think!
It's not the doing that makes people angry; it's the lying.
Take for example the article we are commenting on. It's presented as "entire city already green!!!11!1" when the reality is actually more like "government signs contract to eventually maybe have city services be green!". Yeah, being lied to makes people angry.
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Neither the article, nor the summary is lying.
It makes completely clear that "the city" is the "entity `the city " and not citizens.
And even if it would not make it clear it would be a no brainer that not suddenly all citizens and businesses switched to green energy.
You are just a nitpicking moron - reading comprehension - it helps.
all the city of Sydney operations -- including street lights, pools, sports fields, depots, buildings and the historic Sydney Town Hall -- will now be run on 100% renewable
Re: Now for the Angry comments. (Score:2)
Hi Angie! Long time no see. How are things? Did you figure out what capacity factor means yet?
Always nice to hear from you!
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As far as I can tell, I'm the only one on /. who know what it means. :P
But if you have valuable input, e.g. for what to use a CF, I'm full ears
Re: Now for the Angry comments. (Score:2)
Are these municipal services & facilities running on green energy "NOW" or sometime over the next 4 years.
A careful read of msmash's summary should suffice for any attentive reader to see the headline is wrong - "now" is not another way to say "over the next four years".
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- YES,its as of "now", read the effing article, its full of information.
"A careful read of msmash's summary should suffice for any attentive reader to see the headline is wrong - "now" is not another way to say "over the next four years"."
- No its not wrong, read the article and get a friend to explain it to you
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Under the deal, all the city of Sydney operations -- including street lights, pools, sports fields, depots, buildings and the historic Sydney Town Hall -- will now be run on 100% renewable electricity from locally-sourced clean energy.
So, did the signing of this contract coincide with the spontaneous construction of sufficient new, local, renewable energy sources sufficient to cover the entirety of the operations of the city of Sydne, or did it simply gather up pre-existing sources that were used by other local power customers and instead credit the city for buying the "green" power instead?
Bottom line, signing this contract resulted in zero additional power generation facilities, the net green energy output available didn't increase one
Being lied to makes people angry (Score:5, Informative)
> Because for some reason changing to a cleaner energy source makes people angry.
Being brazingly lied to makes people angry. Being treated like idiots who can't tell the difference between a building a major city makes people angry.
Let's see here:
"Sydney Now Powered By 100% Renewable Electricity"
Let's break that sentence down amd see how many lies are in just that once sentence.
Sydney : Lie. city hall, not Sydney
Now powered: Lie. All those city trucks burning gas isn't renewable. Natural gas heating in buildings is not renewable, etc. Almost every story about renewable energy intentionally conflates energy with electricity usage and typically then performs a mathematical operation which makes sense because you're dividing apples by oranges. People get tired of it
> Powered By 100% Renewable : Lie. Buying more solar electric in the summer than the amount of coal-produced electric you use in the winter doesn't make you "100% solar powered".
Three lies in one sentence is what makes people angry.
If they hadn't lied, the statement would be:
Sydney city hall to pay for more solar than the amount of coal Poe they use.
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The only lier here is you.
You are intentionally mixing up the entity "city of Sidney", with the town or citizens.
How dumb can anyone be to do that?
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Let's see here:
"Sydney Now Powered By 100% Renewable Electricity"
Let's break that sentence down amd see how many lies are in just that once sentence.
Sydney : Lie. city hall, not Sydney"
judging by that rant, you fall foul of the first statement you make in not being able tell the difference between "city infrastructure" and the city itself. When a city
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> When a city official talks about the city, it means they are talking about the infrastructure that it administers, why would they talk about anything else?
So when Trump says "the country" you think he's talking about the White House power bill? You think "vaccinate the country" means "vaccinate the administration"? Interesting.
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So ... No?
"The country" means the whole country? While "the city" or "Sydney" means "the government"? Okay, gotcha.
How about if the governor says "Texas has fewer COVID cases"? Does that mean the people in the state, or just the governor's office?
How about "the state of Texas has more gas stations than churches". Does that mean gas stations run by the governor?
How can you tell?
Oh, because you think the reporter is on "your team" and you're rooting for your team, so whatever bullshit they split, you thin
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It's angry because the Sydney government is changing to a cleaner energy source... by booting someone else off of that clean energy source. That's all these deals to purchase clean energy do - rearrange who gets the clean energy, and who gets the fossil fuel energy. It doesn't actually increase the amount of clean energy used. The power company doesn't even distinguish between the two - it just sends you whatever electricity
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That is true, but deals like this likely do facilitate that, directly or indirectly. A precommitment from a sizeable, reliable customer like the City of Sydney very likely makes the investment in the buildout the article talks about more viable, easier to finance/make a business case for etc.
The article literally has a quote stating that
“Shoalhaven solar farm could not have become operational without the City’s investment."
so at face value at least they ha
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Mis-representing their acts makes people angry.
The city has decided to switch energy providers, buy some solar panels, and maybe a hybrid cars. This is not a major announcement.
"Sydney" does not mean the 5 million residents, it means city office buildings.
"Now" does not mean now in any sense of the word, it means four years henc.
It's the misrepresentation, not the slow migration to a new electricity company that angers people.
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Because for some reason changing to a cleaner energy source makes people angry
No. What makes me angry is burning wood chips and selling that as 'green' while right now that is one of the biggest threat of biodiversity. Meanwhile (in my country) refusing to build - or even think about building - more nuclear power plants to complement wind, solar, tidal, hydro, and other sources of energy that are actually green but are not available 24/7/365.
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Those 1970's solar panels vs 2020 solar panels are much better and cheaper.
I agree. And the nuclear power plants of 2020 are safer and cheaper than those built in the 1970s. Why do people bring up Fukushima and Chernobyl when nuclear power comes up? Those power plants were built in the early 1970s, from 1960s designs.
I'll agree that 2020 solar power is not like 1970 solar power if everyone else can agree that 2020 nuclear power is not like 1970 nuclear power.
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I'll agree that 2020 solar power is not like 1970 solar power if everyone else can agree that 2020 nuclear power is not like 1970 nuclear power.
That is not how agreeing works, either you agree or you don't.
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And the older light bulbs never gave light that matched sunlight anyway.
What filament light globes give off is a wider spectrum of light energy. IIRC it is the wide spectrum of light from globes that is used on new born children to stop them from becoming jaundiced.
The other thing I'm curious about is how much waste does led and CFC lighting produce compared to those old globes, which are not much more than glass and wire compared to the mercury and other things in the energy efficient options. I think there is a lot of good reasons to keep light *bulbs* around even if it
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LED bulbs don't use mercury. CF use very little. Little enough that they are typically a net win for mercury in the environment once you consider the emissions of mercury from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.
The lights for jaundiced babies (Billie light) are high intensity narrow spectrum florescent blue lights since incandescents are deficient in blue light.
When comparing waste generated, be sure to factor in that CF and LED bulbs last far longer than incandescent.
Incandescents continue to be
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Thanks for the info. My experience with CFCs is a bit of a mystery bag, some have long life and some don't last much longer than a normal globe.
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Do you in any way think the energy savings of your current model fridge is because the manufacturer choose LED over incandescent lighting inside it? Seriously?
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IIRC, it is the ultraviolet light that that helps counteract jaundice in newborns. (At least that's what they put my firstborn son under for a few days after he was born with high bilirubin counts.) While I agree that incandescents give a much more evenly distributed visible spectrum than flourescents, they do not give off much UV.
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I think a lot of peoples' first experience with LED bulbs came from cheap knock-offs.
I have two early and primitive LED bulbs, one a name brand and one an obvious knock-off; the knock-off (as with many Chinese copies) probably was made in the same factory; it certainly used an identical and quite distinctive finned heat sink but the build quality, brightness and color accuracy were all noticeably inferior.
Today you can get LED bulbs that are indistinguishable from incandescents. Their peformance with triac
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What I find most impressive is how good the cheapest AC light socket RGB LED with remote packages are. They are almost all great. It makes almost zero sense to use any other kind of lighting now, except for extremely special cases. (Cheap volt probes, for example, or any of the places where HID lighting still produces a more useful spectrum.)
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The one about the colour of LED lights really gets me. I have heard so many complaints about the moves to LED lighting, yet for most of human history people had to deal with no light or NATURAL fire inside their dwellings for light at night. And the older light bulbs never gave light that matched sunlight anyway.
And the lumens produced by a light source is the only measure and more is better right? Especially for car headlights right? Let's make sure that anyone in on coming traffic is completely blinded by the headlights. You wanna know why people dislike LED, this is why. It is physically painful to look into car headlights now. And if your eyes are tired from a long day of driving, its really bad. Now there are also issues with the first gen LEDs have far too much blue in their light and that also causes a
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And the lumens produced by a light source is the only measure and more is better right? Especially for car headlights right? Let's make sure that anyone in on coming traffic is completely blinded by the headlights.
But those bright blueish headlights that blind the oncoming traffic were xenon bulbs. Not LEDs.
https://www.yourmechanic.com/a... [yourmechanic.com]
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Everyone in government is working from home (Score:2)
Yeah, no. (Score:5, Informative)
Sydney is not NOW 100% powered by renewable energy sources, the signed a deal that will have them be on 100% renewable energy in several years.
And we are talking about the government office buildings, depots, street and stop lights, etc., this deal does not include any residents or businesses in Sydney.
So "now" means in 4 more years, and "Sydney" means the municipal government, not the residents or businesses in Sydney - another misleading msmash clickbait article.
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msmash sees clickbaity articles, doesn't read them, fancies up the title to be even more clickbaity, posts them here on slashdot, and you and I explain to our kids to not be like this idiot on the internet.
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Sydney is not NOW 100% powered by renewable energy sources, the signed a deal that will have them be on 100% renewable energy in several years.
And we are talking about the government office buildings, depots, street and stop lights, etc., this deal does not include any residents or businesses in Sydney.
So "now" means in 4 more years, and "Sydney" means the municipal government, not the residents or businesses in Sydney - another misleading msmash clickbait article.
So what. They are actually doing something.
We here in the USA - a backward shithole - has leadership that wants to have MORE coal fired power plants. Sidney has leadership that wants to do something about the environmental disaster that will happen if we the people of the Earth do not do something.
And all these goddamn old conservatives with their misinformed opinion should shut the fuck up because they have no right to have an opinion. Everyone over the age of 55 has no right what so ever to say anything
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They are doing nothing - they signed a contract, held a press conference, and regurgitated the salesman's promises. That's what they "did".
You confuse "agreeing to buy green energy" with "generating MORE green energy", they are not building a green energy generator. Does the city of Sydney generate their own energy at any meaningful scale?
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Are you sure? Perhaps Tesla will be coming out with an electric trash truck, street sweeper, and school bus.... LOL
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Fake News (Score:2)
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If not too many people try to go 100% renewable it's not really a problem and this is a pretty tiny amount.
When the sun shines and wind blows, less fossil fuel is used for normal consumers ... and when not most the renewable generated electricity "goes" to the 100% users.
Of course that also means it's just value signalling which has fuck all impact.
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From the article
"The “green energy” deal which came into effect on Wednesday is valued at over $60 million and is touted by the City of Sydney Council as the biggest green energy deal of its kind by a council in Australia."
Regarding the "4 year claim" read this section from the article, you might struggle to comprehend it though
“The City of Sydney became carbon neutral in 2007, and were the first government in Au
250k people in a city of 5.3M (Score:2)
This is just the local area government for the CBD and surrounding suburbs of Sydney, with 250k people.
The greater metro, what any Sydney-sider would refer to as "Sydney" has 5.3M.
Does supplier use vanadium redox storage? (Score:3)
Two of the issues with using solar and wind power involve time-shifting power. Short-term (miliseconds to seconds) to handle grid load transients and power factor correction, and long-term (hours) to shift energy from times of generation surplus to times of generation shortage.
Of the three named generation suppliers, one (the solar farm) is known to use a synchronous condenser (a large frewheeling synchronous motor with variable excitation) to handle the short-term issues.
I notice the supplier contracting with Sidney and middle-manning between thm and the solar and wind farms is named "Flow Power". "Flow Power" is also a term used for Vanadium Redox flow batteries, and I know grid-scale vanadium flow batteries are used in Austrailia and New Zeland to time-shift power.
Does anybody know if this company is one of those that uses big vanadium redox batteries for day-scale renewable generation/consumption time-shifting? (flowpower.com.au and my browser don't get along, and I haven't found any other sources with info in a few minutes of search.)
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Time to invest in sea cucumber farming...
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Lets say in the worst case the whole of Australia produces just enough renewable power for them, then on paper they buy all of it. So they are 100% renewable, everyone else 0 ... works out perfectly. No storage needed.
Value signalling like this costs you very little, as long as not everyone joins in. When everyone joins in you need the massive storage and it becomes ungodly expensive.
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Absolutely irrelevant. The grid is not managed on a micro level by companies themselves. Australia has a large regulated market run by the AEMO. Companies are only responsible for their part, be it production, of baseload, intermittent, peaking, or being dedicated to frequency control services. E.g. Neoen doesn't only correct it's own issues. It provides services to regulate the grid regardless of who causes a frequency upset.
Oh and the answer is no I believe. There's no vanadium redox batteries in Australi
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Australian Vanadium/VSUN [australian...ium.com.au] are selling their redox batteries to Australian customers, and Redflow [redflow.com] has had zinc-bromine flow batteries on the market for years.
Back atcha on the "irrelevant" (Score:2)
[whether they use vanadium redox batteries is] Absolutely irrelevant. The grid is not managed on a micro level by companies themselves. Australia has a large regulated market run by the AEMO. Companies are only responsible for their part, be it production, of baseload, intermittent, peaking, or being dedicated to frequency control services.
My point is that it is NOT irrelevant whether day-scale time-shifting storage is used, if the claim that they've gone carbon-neutral on power. Without the time-shifting
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