Tag Archives: Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)

False Energy Transition: The View from Australia (Nick Cater, Menzies Research Centre)

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Previous energy transitions adopted energy sources of greater density and efficiency than those they replaced. Those advantages became a natural incentive for their adoption. In the current ‘transition’, the process is reversed unless we are prepared to countenance the mass use of nuclear technology.” – Nick Cater, below

The political “energy transition” has predictably violated comparative energy physics and thus consumer preferences–and best industry practices. A re-look at the failing, impossible “energy transition” was penned by Nick Cater, senior fellow at Menzies Research Centre in Australia. [1] His analysis deserves wide attention, as does his other work at the energy-centric Reality Bites.

As the First Fleet vessels, propelled by wind and muscle, made their way to Australia, the last energy transition was making headway in Europe and the United States. The first commercial steamboat completed a successful trial on the Delaware River in New Jersey on August 20, 1787, heralding the arrival of a more powerful and efficient source of energy.

The ability to turn energy-dense fossil fuel into usable energy would be the key to accelerating economic growth in Australia, which began with European settlement. By the time the colony of New South Wales marked a century of settlement in 1878, steam-powered ocean-going vessels were starting to be constructed from steel. Frederick Wolseley was demonstrating a prototype set of steam-driven mechanical shears. This Australian invention secured Australia’s dominance in the supply of wool to steam-powered woollen mills on the other side of the world.

Preparation was underway for the first export shipment of frozen lamb, a technological breakthrough that would measurably improve British diets and longevity. Australia was joined to Europe by electric telegraph, the first stage in developing electronic communications that would break the tyranny of distance. A massive infrastructure investment project that would supply homes, factories, and civic spaces with electricity on demand was beginning to be contemplated. Tamworth in 1888 would become the first town in Australia to be serviced by an electric grid.

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This potted history of Australia’s industrial and economic progress tells us much about the nature of energy transitions. They don’t happen overnight, nor do they respond to government command. They take place incrementally in fits and starts. Innovation is just the beginning. Engineering and economic viability take decades to accomplish, not days.

The most profound consequences of energy transition can be unexpected. Technological applications for steel, reinforced concrete, and electricity were emerging by the end of 19th century. Still, it is doubtful anyone at the time in low-rise Sydney would have imagined the futuristic streetscapes a century and a quarter later.

The magnitude of the transition to net-zero is seldom acknowledged in public and political debates. There is a scant appreciation of the technical difficulties of decarbonising our energy supply and limited discussion about the costs.

The last transition — from wind, water, biomass and muscle, both human and animal, to fossil fuels — took more than a century to complete. It required constant innovation and an incalculable amount of capital investment. Our current net-zero path requires us to abandon fossil fuels entirely in favour of so-called renewable energy sources, namely wind, solar, biomass and water, in just 26 years.

Previous energy transitions adopted energy sources of greater density and efficiency than those they replaced. Those advantages became a natural incentive for their adoption. In the new “transition,” the process is reversed unless we are prepared to countenance the mass use of nuclear technology.

The last transition gave us more dependable sources of energy independent of weather patterns. Transitioning to a net-zero economy based purely on renewable energy presents the seemingly insurmountable problem of overcoming weather- and solar-dependent variability.

The last transition considerably reduced land demand and lifted the pressure on biodiversity. Vast hectares of woodland ceased to be felled solely to produce energy. A transition to renewable energy will once again make heavy demands on land. One recent study estimated that a transition to net zero-2050 in Australia that only used land-based renewable generation would require 129,179 sq km of land, an area roughly the size of Victoria.

The last energy transition sought greater efficiency by centralising energy production in industrial-scale fossil fuel conversion plants located close to most consumers of energy in cities. The proposed transition to renewables decentralises energy production from a few dozen power stations to cottage-scale roof-top generators and hundreds of small, part-time generators often distant from population centres.

The engineering demands are matched in scale by the economic challenges. The transition from an economy powered by muscle, water, and wind to fossil fuel means the average human has nearly 700 times more useful energy at his or her disposal than their ancestors had at the beginning of the century, according to Vaclav Smil, a Czech-Canadian scientist and energy policy analyst who writes: “An abundance of useful energy underlies and explains all the gains, from better eating to mass-scale travel; from the mechanisation of production and transport to instant electronic communication.”

According to physicist and economist Robert Ayres, economic growth and energy flow are intrinsically linked. “Nothing happens without a flow of energy. Not in the natural world and not in the human world. Thus, it is perfectly true that energy — not money — makes the world go round.”

Yet the economic consequences of pursuing ambitious renewable energy targets seldom enter the debate. Brian Fisher, Australia’s leading energy economist, is one of the few who have attempted to model the economic costs of a forced energy transition. In a 2019 study, he estimated that the cumulative GNP losses of pursuing Labor’s then 45 per cent 2030 target would be between $264 billion and $542 billion, depending on the chosen parameters. A rising energy price would lead to a minimum three per cent reduction in real wages and 167,000 fewer jobs in 2030.

The economic consequences of the government’s current policy are likely to be similar. Scant attention has been paid to the consequences of allocating vast amounts of capital to the net-zero energy transition. Australia’s Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, claims the capital cost of Australia’s energy transition will be $120 billion. Yet a new report commissioned by the Menzies Research Centre found that the Australian Energy Market Operator’s data put the capital cost at $320 billion in terms of net present value (NPV). The MRC’s report concludes that the price will be substantially higher, resulting in higher energy costs for consumers and businesses.

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Australia has taken a leap into the unknown. The scale of investment required to achieve the 82 per cent renewables target is unprecedented. The engineering challenge of incorporating such a large amount of variable renewable energy (VRE) is immense. No country has achieved anything close to such a concentration without a considerable contribution from nuclear, geothermal, or hydro generation.

The sorry history of central planning inspires little confidence that the top-down, target-driven approach taken by AEMO’s roadmap (its Integrated Systems Plan) will work. The risk of failure is high. The timetable for construction is impossibly tight. The schedule for the withdrawal of base-load coal and gas is not synchronised with the timeline for expanding the capacity of renewables. The target will increase the risk of blackouts, as the National Energy Market (NEM) will only be able to meet reliability objectives with significant investment in storage and other forms of firming capacity.

Experience has taught us that the risk of escalating costs and overruns in renewable energy infrastructure projects is extremely high. A lack of expertise, the use of non-standard technology and design, rent-seeking behaviour, community resistance, and supply and labour shortages mean that projects of this size and complexity carry considerable risk. Bent Flyvbjerg’s Iron Law of Megaprojects applies: ‘Over time, the estimated costs of megaprojects tend to increase, while the benefits tend to decrease.’

The presence of these and other hurdles invite disturbing conclusions. The cost of transition to a net-zero emission economy by 2050 will be substantially higher than the $320 billion estimated by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

Capital formation on this scale will be a significant challenge. The opportunity cost of the allocation of capital to the cost of transition will be high. The retail price of energy will continue to rise in the short to medium term as capital costs are absorbed. Without rapid technological developments, costs in other heavy-emitting sectors, such as heavy manufacturing, agriculture and transport, will increase. In an intricately linked, dynamic economy, the effects on employment, taxation, and growth will be substantial.

There are no quick fixes. Nuclear power would be a far better replacement for coal than wind, water and solar. It is denser, cleaner, more efficient, and more reliable than renewables or fossil fuels. It is widely used as a source of affordable and dependable electricity worldwide. It could be used for industrial heating and some forms of transportation. Yet, it is hard to foresee the technological breakthroughs that would enable it to meet all the energy requirements of a modern economy.

The last energy transition occurred organically and took hundreds of years. It was driven by the natural attraction of abandoning old ways of doing things for new ways that were demonstrably better. The energy transition we are currently being asked to undertake is different. It is driven by central planners who expect it to be completed by the middle of this century, which is just 26 years away.

We are being asked to give up tried and tested ways of doing things for unproven technology or technology that does not yet exist. As Alex Epstein has written, it requires a radical departure from how any energy economy has ever worked. A calm assessment of our progress so far must conclude, as does Epstein, that abandoning fossil fuels in the timescale required is virtually impossible. The proposal to replace them with renewable energy alone is totally crackpot.

[1] The Menzies Research Centre is a Liberal think tank promoting the free, just and prosperous society in Australia. More information can be found here.

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This post was published at Quadrant Online as “Leap into the Dark: The Energy-Transition Fantasy” (April 6, 2024). It also appeared at Nick Cater’s site Reality Bites. Full documentation (footnotes) can be found there.

Australia-wide assessment: climate change or instrument change?

From Jennifer Marohasy

By jennifer

In the five years following the installation of probes in automatic weather stations (AWS) as they replaced mercury thermometers across Australia, the annual frequency of extremely hot days increased by an average 18.7%.

This new analysis by Perth journalist and climate researcher Chris Gillham makes a mockery of claims by the Bureau that the transition from mercury thermometers to automatic weather stations has had no effect on temperatures, and so there is no need to transcribe or make public the parallel data.

Chris has found that a majority of these AWS stations had an average 62.8% increase in their 99th percentile observations. These are the hottest 1 per cent of days calculated since the start year of each station.

Chris also found that apart from a sudden increase in the number of these extremely hot days, they were on average also a bit warmer than in the thermometers days before AWS installation.

As well as increasing the likelihood of a record maximum temperature on any given day, the significantly increased frequency and heat of extreme maxima is likely to also warm monthly and annual averages.

Chris has analysed Australian Bureau of Meteorology unadjusted raw temperatures at the 105 weather stations that have transitioned from thermometers to AWS platinum probes within the Australian Climate Observation Reference Network – Surface Air Temperatures (ACORN SAT) used by the BoM to estimate national averages since 1910.

Last year, Chris and I made a joint submission to the NSW Flood Inquiry showing that for the 20 longest rainfall records for locations in the 2022 Australian east coast flood zone, there has been no overall increase in the intensity or frequency of extremely wet days.

The wettest year, measured as the year with the highest number of 99th percentile rainfall days by volume since 1900, is still 1974.

Chris used a similar methodology that we used to calculate the rainfall data in his analysis of this temperature data that the bureau considers to be of the highest quality and most reliable. His findings are consistent with my analysis of data from Brisbane Airport.

Chris writes:

Sixty-nine of the 105 automatic weather stations had a 62.8% increase in their 99th percentile observations.

Fifty-nine of the stations have had their platinum resistance probes replaced and in the six years following these replacements the annual frequency of 99th percentile days increased by 50.4%.

These increases are calculated by correlating the years of original or replacement probe installation to synchronise annual counts of extremely hot days, with the 99th percentile based on all daily observations since the start year at each individual station.

This analysis supports the findings of Dr. Jennifer Marohasy who in April 2023 obtained the August 2019 to July 2022 daily as A8 Reports that she subsequently transcribed and analysed.

Dr. Marohasy found the probe recorded higher maxima 41 per cent of the time, the same 32 per cent of the time and lower 25 per cent of the time.

The Brisbane Airport probe recorded an average 0.15C warmer than the thermometer after December 2019 with extreme differences on some days being as high as 0.7C.

This is an extract from the Brisbane Airport Field Book. Temperatures as shown were recorded on 1st August 2019.

The broader national analysis compares extreme daily maxima frequency within the 90th, 95th and 99th percentiles averaged in the five years before and after original and replacement probe installations.

Original probes maxima at 105 stations
90th percentile : 11.8% increase
95th percentile : 14.6% increase
99th percentile : 18.7% increase

Original probes maxima at 69 stations with increases
90th percentile : 30.8% increase
95th percentile : 41.0% increase
99th percentile : 62.8% increase

Six years pre/post replacement probes maxima at 59 stations
90th percentile : 20.6% increase
95th percentile : 29.2% increase
99th percentile : 50.5% increase

This national analysis also calculates annual minima frequency within the 10th, 5th and 1st (coldest 1 per cent) percentiles.

Original probes minima at 105 stations
10th percentile : 7.1% increase
5th percentile : 11.8% increase
1st percentile : 11.2% increase

Original probes minima at 58 stations with increases
10th percentile : 28.4% increase
5th percentile : 40.7% increase
1st percentile : 54.1% increase

Six years pre/post replacement probes minima at 59 stations
10th percentile : 0.6% increase
5th percentile : 3.2% increase
1st percentile : 2.0% increase

This national analysis also found the temperature of these extreme observations warmed when comparing the five years before and after original probe installation or replacement.

Original probes maxima at 105 stations
90th percentile : 0.15C increase
95th percentile : 0.12C increase
99th percentile : no change

Original probes maxima at 69 stations with increases
90th percentile : 0.32C increase
95th percentile : 0.25C increase
99th percentile : 0.37C increase

Six years pre/post replacement probes maxima at 59 stations
90th percentile : 0.20C increase
95th percentile : 0.15C increase
99th percentile : 0.36C increase

Original probes minima at 105 stations
10th percentile : 0.09C decrease
5th percentile : 0.05C decrease
1st percentile : 0.10C decrease

Original probes minima at 58 stations
10th percentile : 0.16C decrease
5th percentile : 0.08C decrease
1st percentile : 0.12C decrease

Six years pre/post replacement probes minima at 59 stations
10th percentile : 0.05C decrease
5th percentile : 0.05C decrease
1st percentile : 0.07C decrease

Examples include the ACORN station of Gunnedah where the annual frequency of 90th percentile days increased from 28.8 to 50.8 in the five years before and after 2001 AWS installation, with 90th percentile temperatures increasing from 35.4C to 36.3C. Gunnedah’s frequency of 99th percentile days increased from 1.8 to 7.0 a year, with their temperatures rising from 39.7C to

Gunnedah’s frequency of 99th percentile days increased from 1.8 to 7.0 a year, with their temperatures rising from 39.7C to 39.9C.

The increased frequency and temperature of extreme percentile maxima is likely due to BoM instrument averaging of AWS one second observations that are more sensitive to brief gusts of hot air not previously observable in mercury thermometers that had slower response times when the air temperature changes in their Stevenson screen.

Similarly, the increased frequency but lower temperatures of 10th, 5th and 1st percentile daily minimum observations are consistent with AWS probe sensitivity, and with observations within Bureau Research Report 32:

In the absence of any other influences, an instrument with a faster response time [a probe] will tend to record higher maximum and lower minimum temperatures than an instrument with a slower response time [a mercury thermometer]. This is most clearly manifested as an increase in the mean diurnal range. At most locations (particularly in arid regions), it will also result in a slight increase in mean temperatures, as short-term fluctuations of temperature are generally larger during the day than overnight.

Automatic weather stations became the primary instrument for official temperature observations at a slight majority of ACORN stations in late 1996, with 54 other stations converting from thermometers to AWS in following years.

Chris said:

The diurnal temperature range for unadjusted observations at the 105 ACORN AWS stations was 11.57C in 1986-1995 and 11.87C in 1997-2006, a 0.30C increase.

The average overall minimum at the 105 stations was 13.25C in the five years prior to their original AWS installation and 13.42C in the five years following, an increase of 0.17C.

Their average overall maximum was 24.97C in the five years prior to original AWS installation and 25.33C in the five years following, an increase of 0.36C.

These findings comparing observations between parallel mercury thermometers and probes in the same Brisbane Airport screen, as well as similar findings among stations spread across Australia’s national temperature network, raise questions on whether climate trends in recent decades are due to instrument change rather than climate change.

Chris has provided his analysis of the extreme percentile details and spreadsheets at http://www.waclimate.net/aws- corruption.html

It is now time that the Bureau made all the parallel temperature data public.
These are the measurements from probes in AWS and mercury thermometers in the same shelter at the same location.

So far the bureau has claimed a variety of reasons for not making this data public. In the case of the Brisbane Airport data, it initially claimed that manually scanning the handwritten A8 reports/Field Books would be too onerous. When the FOI request ended up with the Information Commissioner it was somewhat bizarrely claimed by the bureau that the parallel data for Brisbane Airport did not exist.

On Friday I discussed the issue of the non-equivalence at Brisbane Airport with Michael Condon on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s NSW Country Hour. You can listen by clicking here. I begin at about 11 minutes, or is it 15 minutes?

I was on Rowan Dean’s Outsider Sky TV program last Sunday,

Additional Information:

While I often refer to the official transition beginning in November 1996, Chris will argue there wasn’t a transition in 1996 or in any specific year. It can be argued that the transition to probes in AWS started in the late 1980s up to Karijini North in 2018. More usually the data in the ADAM/CDO Online database is mercury before 1 November 1996, and progressively more probe after this data. According to the documentation where there were both probes and mercury, the probe became the official instrument from November 1996. Yet, for example, there was no mercury at Cape Otway lighthouse from April 1994, so the ADAM database numbers from this date must be from the probe. For more information about Cape Otway, etcetera, read my blog.

Forget About Intermittent Wind & Solar If You Want Power As And When You Need It

V112 installation, Macarthur Windfarm, Australia

From STOP THESE THINGS

As immutable laws, solar output collapses when the sun sets and wind power output collapses when calm weather sets in (and when wind speeds hit gale force and turbines automatically shut down). No amount of spin doctoring, varnishing or linguistic invention can undo them.

Rafe Champion builds on those laws with his ‘iron triangle of energy realism’.

He starts with the fact that irrespective of the number of turbines or solar panels, there will be occasions when wind and solar inevitably produce nothing, at all. See above – courtesy of Aneroid Energy – the output delivered by Australian wind power outfits to the Eastern Grid during May last year. Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia the entire capacity of the Eastern Grid’s wind fleet routinely delivers just a trickle of its combined notional capacity – back then 8,587 MW, now, 10,277 MW.

The iron triangle of energy realism
Spectator Australia
Rafe Champion
28 February 2023

Possibly the most powerful argument against the quest for Net Zero can be briefly stated using the Iron Triangle of Power Supply, bearing in mind the logic of testing (or falsification, as Karl Popper called it).

The three aspects of the triangle are:

  • Continuous input of power to the grid. Adequate input is required all the time, not just most of the time or almost all the time.
  • Wind droughts and especially windless nights break the continuity of input from wind power when there is no solar.
  • There is effectively no storage to bridge the gaps (despite all the talk about batteries and pumped hydro).

Consequently, the proposition that the grid can run on wind and solar power is falsified (ruled out) and there is no justification for the decision to contaminate the grid with subsidised and mandated intermittent input from environmentally ruinous wind and solar facilities.

In defiance of the Iron Triangle, the official position is that we just need more installed wind and solar facilities, and more storage. That is stated by the Prime Minister, the Climate and Energy Minister, and the CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).  It is dutifully repeated by all the usual suspects in the ABC and the mainstream media, although over a hundred leading journalists have received the briefing notes from the Energy Realists of Australia over the last three years.

The briefing notes were compiled by an elite squad of almost-dead white males and Ben Beattie, recruited to work with The Energy Realists of Australia – joking, of course.

What is the point of more wind and solar capacity?
Wind and solar can displace coal (to a point that we have almost reached), but they can’t replace it.

The rate of exit from coal is not accelerated by increasing penetration on good wind and solar days, it is limited by the lowest level of output on nights with little or no wind, as a convoy travels at the speed of the slowest vessel, the water penetrates the levee at the lowest point, a chain is only as strong as the weakest link and stock get out of the yard through gaps in the fence even if the rest of the fence is built to the sky.

What storage?
Batteries can be dismissed very quickly by comparing the capacity of the biggest batteries in the world with the amount of power required to get through a windless night. Journalists don’t help by reporting the capacity of batteries in MW instead of MWh (megawatt hours). Scribes who report MW instead of MWh should be promptly escorted from the building with their personal effects thrown into the street after them.

More words are required to describe the inadequacy of pumped hydro because there are many large schemes around the world, and there are some small ones in Australia already. However, I am not aware of any large scheme that runs on wind and solar alone. The largest facility at Bath, Philadelphia (US), runs entirely on coal and nuclear power to enable those plants to run continuously at their optimum output.

Conclusion
We need to keep enough conventional power, mostly coal power, to meet the highest levels of demand at dinner times in high summer and deep winter, until we have nuclear power on deck.

A note on the logic of testing that was mentioned at the start of this piece. It has gone missing in science (on walkabout?) since it became generally accepted in the 1960s that Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory (science by consensus) had superseded Karl Popper’s critical approach (forming a preference after rigorous testing and comparison of rival theories.) That is an important topic for another day.
Spectator Australia

When this goes, the lights go out.