⚡️Taking Australia 100% onto renewables eventually? Been asked a few times - so I’ve tried to write up some logic off top of my head, I hope others can bring the maths & fact check my thinking paths. apologies for typos - it’s late. We can do this 🇦🇺. More… (1/8)
Most important issue to grok? Time shifting. We need to shift the time energy is captured to when it is used. Multiple techniques like batteries and time zones (continent wide grid). (2/8)
1. Massive amounts of consistent sun & wind - far, far more each day than we can use. Forget the brown, polluting stuff - this is our biggest natural resource. LCOE of both ☀️&💨 is below coal today or will 100% be within a year or two (irrelevant the data set you choose) (3/8)
2. Highest penetration of residential solar in the world - we’ll follow with batteries too (after capex paid off of panels, bill reduction continues as interest payments for your battery, solar installer motivated to sell to you again) - all smooths household peak periods. (4/8)
3. Our geography - aka Western Australia! Seriously. Three hours means that the sun is still shining (5pm) while the Eastern seaboard (75% of population) is in peak period of usage (8pm). High capacity, long distance lines are getting better & better at continent scale. (5/8)
4. Continent size - The size of our continent also helps reduce the intermittency of renewables. It’s never cloudy everywhere, it’s always windy somewhere. Lucky country indeed! This effectively means less redundancy of panels/turbines - which reduces overall cost. (6/8)
5. Industrial scale storage (LiIon & hydro) continue to get more economic. We’ve proven this in SA. We have potentially massive new hydro storage options. Combining these with the previous points gives us a redundancy we need at prices we can afford. (7/8)
As I said - that’s the logic path I think. A lot more work needs to fix holes & crunch some big numbers. What have I missed? (8/8)
