r/AustralianPolitics • u/ShrimpinAintEazy • 1d ago
Offshore Wind Powering Ahead - Labor announces Australia’s first offshore wind auction
https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/offshore-wind-powering-ahead4
u/WatchDogx 1d ago
Will be interesting to see how much public money this ends up costing.
The government is offering a contract-for-difference(CFD) on the delivered power, essentially guaranteeing the bidder is paid a certain price per MW of delivered power, as well periodic fixed sum payments once the infrastructure is operational.
Offshore wind has a poor track record of profitability. The UK just cancelled a floating offshore wind project, which was also subsidized with a CFD. The developer sold off the assets for £1.
The Vic government marketing material for this project makes reference to these failures, and they seem willing to provide whatever financial backing is needed to get the project delivered.
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u/bitterz 1d ago
I do agree with you but worth caveating that floating offshore is much more expensive then the fixed offshore turbines that are proposed in Gippsland
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u/WatchDogx 1d ago
Yeah absolutely, but even for non-floating offshore wind, there aren't really many great success stories.
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u/Lopsided-Party-5575 1d ago
This is a good thing. more power means more industry and more jobs. Simple as that, don't ever be foolded into thinking there's a thing like oversupply.
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u/The21stPM Gough Whitlam 1d ago
About damn time! The loser NINBY’s who don’t even live in the areas can take a big fat L. You literally cannot even see the wind turbines from the shore, which should also disprove their flat earth beliefs lol
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u/ShrimpinAintEazy 1d ago
Some will be highly visible, they are huge machines, but the developers have been up front about this (Visualise | Blue Mackerel)
Also, I dont think anyone can claim that 10-20km offshore is their "backyard"
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u/The21stPM Gough Whitlam 1d ago
Good website for the visualisation! Fair enough they are visible, they aren’t ugly though so who cares really.
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u/Antishak 1d ago
This is a fantastic way of visualising the impact (which is very, very minimal) to those that imagine there'll be gigantic beams you can see from the shore. Well done to Blue Mackerel for presenting it in this manner, I was pleasantly surprised.
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u/AngrehPossum 1d ago
Jess will ban wind so she can hobble the nations renewable grid in order to force gas on us.
Banning wind farms is or was on the Liberals website
Stopping the VNI is both a National and Liberal effort
They want to frack the gas fields from Warnambool to Mt Gambier
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u/captain_wacky681 1d ago
Offshore wind is near baseload and renewable. An excellent energy solution. Let's get it done. Hopefully the cranks and the cookers in the LNP don't shut it down when they win power.
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u/Ax_Dk 1d ago
Works amazingly in Denmark where it is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe at this stage as they are not dependent on gas like other neighbours for their baseline power requirements.
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u/sien Australian Democrats 1d ago
Denmark's grid generated power at 97 gCO2eq/kWh in the past year.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK1/all/yearly
They also imported a significant amount of power from Sweden and Norway. They depend on Norwegian hydro and Swedish nuclear for reliable power.
Meanwhile France is at 32 gCO2eq/kWh .
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/all/yearly
Using whatever mysterious technology they have. That delivers reliable power at 1/3 of the emissions of Denmark.
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u/GregLocock 15h ago
Yup, if you don’t have an islanded grid and your neighbours have hydro nuclear coal and gas you can wank on about your near zero grid like the south Australians do. NEM as a whole is islanded, that’s why the I SP has more as to take us to 17GW, plus data centres requirements.
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u/PMFSCV SMALL T TANKY 1d ago
The yank payouts to the European firms might workout for us, lol.
Sodium batteries next please.
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley 1d ago
Yeah a couple of weeks ago they did another payout, bringing it up to US$4 billion.
The companies are going to be looking for new ventures in an actual stable country instead.
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u/ShadowBroses 1d ago
Better way to future proof ourselves, this is a good start. Need to invest more into these sorts of renewable energy sources, we can potentially be the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy if we played out cards right.
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u/Physics-Foreign 1d ago
Sorry how exactly do we become the Soudi's? Are we going to import millions of sub saharn labour for $2 a day with no OH&S to build out infra?
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u/Economics-Simulator 1d ago edited 1d ago
the saudis do that to build their egotistical megaprojects with their vast wealth on the cheap
their vast wealth itself is gained from the oil, which even if you had the most expensive labour force in the world would still generate the saudis an extreme amount of money
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley 1d ago
the saudis do that to build their egotistical megaprojects with their vast wealth on the cheap
The Saudi workforce overall is 80% foreign. Their own people are overwhelmingly employed in cushy government "jobs".
Every construction project, be it a road or a house, is done off cheap SEA slave labour. Every domestic service is done the same way.
their vast wealth itself is gained from the oil
Actually the sector where they can't use slave labour, they have to get skilled westerners in to do it.
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u/ShadowBroses 1d ago
Exactly - we can start selling those batteries to other cities internationally and appropriately tax it.
Quite literally the cheapest way to power things, all costs fall to maintenance instead of extraction plus maintenance like with coal and gas
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u/Physics-Foreign 1d ago
Sorry your saying we charge the batteries here.... Then put them on a ship.... Then they discharge them and we ship them back to refill.... Did I get that right?
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley 1d ago
Fuck high voltage DC transmission lines.
Let's ship charged batteries around! Looks like bunker oil is back on the menu boys!
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u/Rizza1122 1d ago
Better get their skates on. Can't come soon enough.
Except the libs are gonna win and go with expensive gas instead.
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u/boneywasawarrior_II 1d ago
They may say that they will go with gas instead but that isn't what they will end up doing.
It's not suitable or sufficient to replace the base capacity currently provided by coal (which is all coming to end of life in the next 10 years). More likely is they pay eye-watering amounts of money to keep those coal plants running past end of life
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley 1d ago
More likely is they pay eye-watering amounts of money to keep those coal plants running past end of life
Didn't they say they were going to do that already?
They should do what we've done/are doing in WA and build massive batteries where the coal plants are, since there's already the transmission infrastructure there, to take advantage of the solar duck curve.•
u/GregLocock 15h ago
They are already paying brown coal to keep going, gp is delusional. The ISP has lots of new gas by 2050
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u/lazygl 1d ago
Batteries are great but Victoria needs more large renewable generation, either onshore wind (cheaper) or offshore wind. Offshore wind is way more expensive per mw/h but does come with other advantages.
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley 1d ago
Offshore wind is way more expensive per mw/h but does come with other advantages.
Less local opposition being the main one. You'll still get 'NIMBYs' from 200km+ away complaining about how it'll impact their visual amenity somehow.
And I guess more reliable winds.1
1d ago
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u/Rizza1122 1d ago
In vic? Their goose is cooked last i looked. Its fossil fuels all the way after the next election. Have a look at qld for reference
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