Damn hot here

[Exfso]

We cracked over 42 today, same for tomorrow. My Holman weather station peaked at 48deg. It is situated next to my Sat dish..:eyepop:

[Atmos]

If it wasn't so humid I wouldn't care about the heat as much, just so sticky!
Afraid to go outside tonight though, the mozzies are bad enough when it's cooler, I aware they'd bleed me dry if I went out there now!

[Dealy]

Yep, I'm hearing ya.

Forecast for our future home an hour NW of Newcastle is Thurs 36°, Fri 43°, Sat 45°, Sun 46°, before a cool change.

Hands up if you're sick of summer

[Exfso]

Holy Cow Kev, I thought we had it bad, that is horrendous...:eyepop:

[Dealy]

It gets worse. I just checked the Weather Channel:

Fri 43°, Sat 46°, Sun 47°, then plummets to 30° on Monday.

I think I'll move to Tassie instead.

[luka]

You can also come to Perth. We have not really seen much summer this year. 20°C tomorrow.

[el_draco]

Here in Hobart, 26 and rain, headed for 17 on Sunday. Give me 3 months and we'll be topping out at 10 and looking for snow. I reckon we have had a couple of days over 30 this Summer, most a balmy 20 +/- a couple. Thought I saw a sprinkle of snow on a local peak a week or so back... Sure felt like it!

Problem with moving here is the lack of work, moronic government and bogan plagues ;) Otherwise, perfect!

[Atmos]

I'm thinking I might move to Atacama, Chile. Top of 27° and a low of 9°, low humidity and AMAZING seeing :)

[glend]

And the RAIN!!

[glend]

And now you have more power problems ( aka rolling blackouts) to contend with. I can just imagine how folks would feel getting home from work and finding they could not turn on their air conditioners.

[AussieTrooper]

No mosquitos in the Atacama either. ;)

My family actually came very close to moving to that area. My father’s company was one of the bidders for a copper mine job inland from Antofagasta, and we all would have relocated. How different life would have been…

[drylander]

Harden up guys its summer in Sth Aus. just think how hard we had it with no a/c in the 50's and early 60's.:eyepop: Loving this weather its what makes Australia great :D
Pete

[el_draco]

Hows your Spanish amigo? Eppa Eppa aundera aundera... Eeeha! :P

[Exfso]

Yeah this state is stuffed, most expensive electricity in the world and most unreliable supply. The govt is broke as well, not a good scenario:screwy:

[AndrewJ]

I know its still early, but i have been hearing on the news this arvo that people in SA knew that there was going to be an evening load problem due to "predicted" low winds, and wanted to fire up Pelican point as a backup just in case, but AEMO, ( the managers of "the grid" ) refused to authorise it???
Be interesting if that is true.
ie reliability comes down to a cost equation run by some wallahs in a building somewhere in another state.
Essential services should never have been privatised.

Andrew

[gary]

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) Market Notices (https://www.aemo.com.au/Market-Notices)are indicating
today potential shortfalls of power tomorrow (Friday) for Queensland and
NSW.

AEMO's weather forecast service provider has issued temperature forecasts
"equal to or greater than the Generation Capacity Reference Temperature".

Blackouts may occur in NSW and Qld on Friday afternoon as there is a
forecast shortfall in power generation capacity as everyone switches on
airconditioning.




Similarly in South Australia, AEMO, has issued another Market Notice
and are "seeking a market response".

Notices here -
https://www.aemo.com.au/Market-Notices

Article in SMH here -
http://www.smh.com.au/business/energy/warning-of-nsw-power-shortages-after-soaring-temperatures-stoke-demand-20170208-gu8rv5.html

[glend]

Just saw a story that AEMO asked for more power from the suppliers five hours before the predicted demand surge and the suppliers sat back and did nothing. It is clear they have no authority to direct but can only ask. Suppliers will wait until they can get maximum price for their power. It cost money to fire up another turbine and have it online for a predicted peak, clearly the Pelican Point operators were trying to minimise costs.
I wonder what the response would be if some old folks died because their AC would not work. I smell a Class Action law suit brewing.
There is another news report this afternoon about mismanagement in power supply, with the suppliers bascially " gaming" the system to increase their profits.

[gary]

In the United States in the early 90's, a character by the name of
Kenneth Lay was one of those who lead the push for the US to create
an electricity energy market.

Lay was the CEO of the now infamous Enron.

In 2000 and 2001, what became known as the "California energy crises"
resulted in California having a shortage of electricity and blackouts
caused by an artificial shortage illegally orchestrated by Enron.

Energy traders intentionally took capacity offline for "maintenance" on
days of peak demand to raise the market price.

The deregulation of California's energy market made it possible and the
blackouts affected millions of people and businesses.

Many will remember the 'Enron scandal' that resulted in Enron going
bankrupt and Kenneth Lay being indicted by a grand jury and being
found guilty of securities fraud.

Lay died of a heart attack whilst on vacation awaiting sentencing.

Many Electrical Engineers had warned that the power grid had been
engineered with the primary goal of reliability and warned it had
not been designed to become a dynamic platform for market traders.

[Shiraz]

good info Gary. Private industry has no incentive to stabilise the supplies when they can make a killing out of selling spot power at huge prices. Now the coal industry is using their press and Canberra mouthpieces to blame the outages on the lack of coal power - forget that we have an over-abundance of gas generators sitting idle and that it's all down to market manipulation. They speak with forked tongues. Weatherill has finally started to talk about re-nationalising the whole failed experiment - either full nationalisation, or the state buys a gas generator to put it on line when needed to keep the bas@#$@s honest. can't come soon enough.

meantime, it sure is hot.

[Exfso]

Ray, the trouble is you cannot trust anything the SA premier says, he has about as much backbone as a wet sponge!!:mad2: I reckon he cant wait to get voted out next erection, it is all too much for him to handle.

[PCH]

For the record, SG is saying "Arriba, arriba - andalay andalay", which means "rise up, let's get going!"

[croweater]

The spot price in SA at the moment is $13,100. Because our factory has a 30mw gas turbine generator we have shut down our machine and selling power back to grid. Instead of a paper factory we are effectively now a power station! :lol: Cheers Richard

[AndrewJ]

Bring on Elon Musks power walls, and we can dispense with the lot of these leeches.
The more i hear on the news tonight re how "investors" appear to be playing sillybuggers with the electricity market when they have the public over a barrel, the more i believe there needs to be a corporate equivalent of the abcc. Wont happen tho.

Andrew

[AndrewJ]

Gday Gary
One for you as you are into "join the dots" engineering ( Im a mech :-) )
I had read recently that DC power distibution was coming back in a big way, esp in China.
Given all the synch problems etc involved in AC power, is any real research being done re changing to a DC distribution system???
With the power walls slowling getting better, this could solve a lot of problems, esp re using yr own solar panels when the grid goes down,
as there are no freq synch problems etc
All house lighting could swap to LED with virtually nil losses
but i have no idea what other things would be affected???

Andrew

[gary]

Hi Andrew.

I have posted on HVDC (High Voltage DC) Systems in the past here on
IceInSpace -

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=138232

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/fear-of-russia-drives-highvoltage-power-projects-in-the-baltics

Rather than bring DC to the power point, HVDC is a bulk
transmission technology aimed at low losses over vast distances.

It offers the prospect of global power grids.

China has indeed rolled out the largest amounts of HVDC grids in the world.

Compared to current AC power distribution networks, the cost of
HVDC is more expensive over shorter distances but becomes cheaper
over greater distances. For example, transmission lines in the ballpark
of longer than 700km are currently good candidates.

The potential opportunity for countries like Australia is to create large
renewable energy generation and to export it to S.E. Asian and beyond
using HVDC networks.

The investment is sizeable, however with the burgeoning demand for
power in the region coupled with the vital impetrative to switch to
renewables ASAP to mitigate the effects of climate change, it may prove
not only viable for Australia but also become a major export and
source of revenue for the country.

Low-voltage DC networks within houses are a different matter.
I-squared-R losses dominate and so AC still make sense in household
wiring, especially in larger houses.

[Jen]

Hey Gday Pete hope things are well with you 😘😘😘 yep swan hill got to 45 today 😱😱😱 woohoo I love summer ☀️☀️☀️😎😎

[AndrewJ]

Gday Gary

Currently, costs are going up at way greater than inflation for a poorer supply, so at some point it will break even.
I was more thinking of if each house had a DC "reservoir" based on the power walls/etc, ( i think of it as having a large load levelling capacitor at each household thet can cover say 24 hrs running )
On loss of power, each house could safely island itself from the grid and still provide local power, and reconnect later when the grid came back.
DC to AC converters are getting much more efficient, but if more effort went into designing household appliances to run off 12/24V DC, would that be a feasible way forwards?
ie fully distributed supply source, with a grid based "top up" system.
I know it would pi$$ off all the industries that rely on flogging 240V AC,
and make a lot of their money based on fixed "supply charges", not actually from supplying electricity, but who cares if it ends up in a more robust 'grid'.

Andrew

[el_draco]

Yours is good...:rofl::rofl:

I stand corrected.:lol:

[el_draco]

What this says is simple... down with "the man" and his over complicated , profit orientated systems and bring on stand alone renewables. :thumbsup:

[Exfso]

Hey Jen, managing ok except this damn splint on my right hand is very hot. I have to keep taking it off which is a bit of a no no...;)