Author Topic: Flinders Island goes R.E.!  (Read 3018 times)

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Offline rossw

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Flinders Island goes R.E.!
« on: November 05, 2017, 06:23:36 am »
Caught a 5-minute filler on the national news today that Flinders Island (south of our Big Island) has just, or is about to, switch on a bunch of new Renewable Energy. The article says they're going to go from 1,000,000 litres of diesel a year for electricity generation to a mere 400,000 litres and that this will reduce their emissions by 60%

I thought SOME of the residents there were already off-grid and had been for ages :)

G'day Oztules, good to see your part of the world make the national news (for the right reasons!)

Offline oztules

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Re: Flinders Island goes R.E.!
« Reply #1 on: November 05, 2017, 03:21:17 pm »
Yes the boffins at the Hydro are weaving their magic again, and should soon get their incredible complicated silly scheme to run....

Only a few years late perhaps, and twice over budget... seems they can't find the ignition keys.

Actually it is a complicated integrated system that will defy gravity and the laws of the universe, and deliver clean green energy to the island whatever the weather or cost for that matter.

They have spent so much, that they could have bought the next 20 years worth of deisel, and given the island free power.

It consists of a flywheel generator, battery storage, inverter, the whole power station as it stands, solar panels, and a control system that no-one seems to understand.

One can only assume they will commission it, have a few stuff ups in the first months, find it is too hard to keep integrated as they wanted, and go back to just windmill and solar with a 1mw generator pinning it down...... like the last 20 years or more..... very similar to the king island vanadium thing.

I should take this opportunity to thank all our poor taxpayers out there who funded this white elephant, as it has been a constant source of amusement for all of us, as the deadlines all pass, and they make new ones on a monthly then yearly basis.

I must say, that we do have a very good system as it stands, and it is a credit to the authorities that it is so good, but it seems to require a bottomless pit of money to keep it going.

It used to be a few gennies, and two blokes to run the thing, now it is about 20 people, engineers, electricians, and lord knows what else, to do the same thing, and 20 million dollars of plant and equipment that runs no better than it always has.

The reticulation system is very good considering the 1500 sq km surface area, and only 400 or so meters on the island, but there are plenty of places with no power lines any where near them... so a lot of off grid places.

There are a lot of new  retiring baby boomers that buy bush blocks in the middle of nowhere, spend a fortune on new palaces, only to find there is no power for miles ... so there are more off grid places coming into being that  seems right.... ie population is slowly increasing, but new meters may not be.

Hydro provide a very good system, but I would not like to pick up the costs.



...............oztules
Flinders Island...... Australia

Offline rossw

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Re: Flinders Island goes R.E.!
« Reply #2 on: November 05, 2017, 05:12:58 pm »
I suspected it might be like that.
They made such a "big thing" about it all being built into 20-foot containers so it could be delivered to various sites and other islands. When I saw "Flywheel" on one of the containers, I thought... right, we're clearly spending someone elses money here, and building with technology demonstrated 60 years ago....

But thats ok, we'll stick a "Clean and Green" sticker on it, whack a 0 on the end of the pricetag, and everyone will be falling over themselves to order it, and proclaim how wonderful it is.

Offline DJ

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Re: Flinders Island goes R.E.!
« Reply #3 on: November 06, 2017, 01:31:14 am »

Yep, all about " Clean and green". Even when they head green washed leftist the gubbermint base all their green paranoia on admits if Australia did not emit 1 gm of Co2, it would make ZERO difference to the world Climate.
Yet still we have to spend Billions on this complete scam because wherever you find a gummermint or big biz talking green, what they are really referring to is the money they make from it.  Anything that's green but they can't make a buck from is either never heard of or against the law.

Quote
They have spent so much, that they could have bought the next 20 years worth of deisel, and given the island free power.

Isn't this always the way?  They are going to save emissions/ fuel/ Co2/ whatever but the way they are going to do it will take so many resources, create so much emissions in it's construction and cost more than it will ever recover in it's life time and doing things the way they have been done for years would have net a much better over all result from every aspect from cost to environmental and everything else.

Maybe the people that designed this system on FI were the same geniuses that decided all the coal fired power stations had to be blown up because it's so unfashionable to have anything fossil fueled but then realising there wasn't going to be enough power in their " Fossil Fuel free" states that they have been trying to get generators installed in a gut busting hurry to make up for the shortfall that will use 80,000 liters of fuel an HOUR. Not a day, an HOUR.
That's 2 tanker loads. PER HOUR!

Yep, such a better idea than burning that dirty coal stuff. We'll burn something far more dirty and loads more expensive that we have to import instead of digging out our own back yards. That way we can lessen our dependence on other countries and have something to bitch about when the national debt and balance of trade goes further out the window as well.
Thats why they pay themselves the big bux!  Ordinary people wouldn't come up with stupidity like this. They would mess things up with silly notions like common sense and logic and try to minimize expenditure and other amateurish practicalities .

And don't forget the big torch battery that musk used as the ultimate Publicity stunt by saying he'd have it built in 100 Days or it was free but omitted to mention the fine print that the 100 days started not when construction started but when his mate signed off on connection to it meaning he had the thing half built before the deadline commenced counting and could screw the greenwashed Gubbermint out of $50M+.

The " bright" side is it should be able to keep the lights on for up to 30 min or so before it goes flat..... As long as all industry and manufacturing shut down because they could wipe it out in 10 seconds.

What would we do without these morons looking after us... and their mates in big business that get all the contracts.

NBN anyone?

Offline lighthunter

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Re: Flinders Island goes R.E.!
« Reply #4 on: November 11, 2017, 07:55:23 pm »
 ;D Mercy you guys are funny i only got through half o second post before i had to stop, i was laughing to tears.

If only the misguided decisions were confined to RE but sadly more and more children grow up with video game educations and schools that teach little to nothing practical.

Health Warning: May contain traces of nut!
LH

Offline Pete

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Re: Flinders Island goes R.E.!
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2017, 04:35:24 am »
I guess the boffins did not consider something like pumped hydro, or using wind power to send a large weight up a mountain and using that stored energy when the wind stops to run a generator. Or maybe wave power,
It seems that if you have a bottomless treasury pit with a bunch of lunatics in government that you can do anything.
Pity that the government a few years ago, did not think to run the Basslink cable via Flinders, they could have sent power from the big island or Tassie via Flinders island and had a convenient place to check the cable when it broke down. Nothing like planning is there.
It seems it is better to miss the island with the cable, wait until it develops a fault then cut it in the middle to find where it is damaged.
Yep definitely a plan.
Oz really you could have offered up half the power you produce to run the island. You missed your chance to make a fortune.
Cheerio
Pete

Offline DJ

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Re: Flinders Island goes R.E.!
« Reply #6 on: November 23, 2017, 11:37:57 pm »
Oz really you could have offered up half the power you produce to run the island. You missed your chance to make a fortune.

I doubt it.
If he could supply the entire island even on greenwashed renewable power saving them having to spend more than the line to hook it up, he'd be lucky to get .6C kwh from the Gubbermint and then they would want HIM to pay them a supply charge which would probably equate to .8C Kwh!
If they can't do that, next best thing is to spend as much as possible on the absolute worst solution available. 

Gubbermints Charging for whatever they can then pissing the money up the wall is what they do best the world over.
Coming up with viable and economic solution's to problems is something they are all ideologically opposed to and secretly sworn against.



Offline noneyabussiness

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Re: Flinders Island goes R.E.!
« Reply #7 on: November 26, 2017, 04:37:23 am »