Nick Young: Some say the wind isn’t a reliable source of energy in New Zealand. The wind:

Some say the wind isn’t a reliable source of energy in New Zealand. The wind:

What was my Great Great grandparents' farm

I’ve seen trees like that at Slope Point in the Catlins

That is Slope Point. My grt great grandfather planted them www.stuff.co.nz/business/far...

Stuffwww.stuff.co.nz

Ok then. Well done Grandpa. I had great great? Grandfather farming near Invercargill in 1890’s at Orepuki

Lol.the other side of my family is from Colac Bay

My ancestor was born in Ireland in 1856 and came to NZ in 1880. He was a violinist, policeman and farmer and learned Maori. He probably met some of your family too.

Looks like they pissed off a witch

I always love how the criticism of renewable energies is typically “it’s not always windy” or “it’s not always sunny” as if by accident you haven’t just defined two separate uses cases that lock in interdependently. It’s rarely a dull dark day with no wind.

and honestly in the other cases, we just need better batteries

The battery question just seems to be the fundamental issue

Why does everyone insist the one way to garner sustainable energy isn't reliable. Wind doesn't always work, nor solar or hydro, but collectively they do provide sufficient power and at the very least, heavily subsidise fossil fuel use.

Theres also the less conventional power plants. Tidal generators are kinda cool. Geothermal That weird algae one thats kinda like solar, Helioculture. Space lasers! of course nuclear. We have so many options and we should be using all of them

And more to discover I'm sure. I was a fan of nuclear in the 90s but after I learnt about geological repositories for nuclear waste, I'd like to see their reliance phased out too.

supposedly they are using above ground storage facilities now because it can be recycled later. least thats what ive heard. dont know how true it is.

Recycling nuclear waste is a step forward but few countries have adopted the practice. There's still too much money to be made in the mining process before resorting to reuse. Still, there's hope for the future that it's a consideration.

If your average annual wind speed is ANYWHERE in the double digits: wind turbines pay for themselves. My Los Angeles CA farm has a wind turbine & 15mph average annual wind speed. My Bergey Excel10 has been generating average of 600-800kwh per month since 2002. Added solar for net surplus electric

There's a place for wind for sure, but I wouldn't call it reliable, especially when compared to geothermal or hydro. Even solar is generally more predictable and reliable.

It doesn't matter what the source of the energy if you store in batteries. This is the game changer for solar and wind that the current government seem to have (wilfully) missed

Tiwai deal opens door for new power projectswww.nzherald.co.nz Contact Energy has started its first battery project and says more will follow.

Like everything it comes down to where is the best place to spend limited money, in the end it's always going to be a combination of supply and storage. Government subsidies for household batteries would be money well spent too. Personally I would have liked onslow to have been given more thought.

Community solar schemes should be mandatory for any public housing development. It takes someone to think differently, no politician will do it

I think solar and batteries should be compulsory for any new build.

That and heat pump hot water systems. They’re all solar compatible by design and use a lot less than the standard hot water tanks NZ has so many of.

We're not 100% off grid but are hitting decent numbers, the misnomer of poor ROI is, again, not accounting for storage. System cost $25k, only had the battery for just under a year

I think Onslow was a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. Deployment of grid scale batteries and incentives for residential solar and batteries which could all be used in VPPs to give resilience to the grid (very important in disasters) Hub and spoke transmission builds in huge risk as we saw last week

It's true, but when our generation is so dominated by hydro we need a better dry year solution than batteries are capable of providing. I'm not sure too many people are aware of the state of shit we are in right now with major gas supply issues and low lake levels.

Even more reason to reduce the reliance on hydro and massively increase solar, wind and tidal (we are in a great spot for that too) Solar and wind were always left behind because of the "unreliable" tag, that's not the case anymore when you can store the energy

Our technology - Minestominesto.com

I think pumped hydro for storage is cheaper than batteries where that is applicable. ArcActive in Christchurch working on cheaper enhanced lead acid batteries. Next gen.

Intolerance

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In Germany, a household battery does not need any subsidies. If I install PV (i.e. 10 kWp for 5,000 €), a matching battery (i.e. 10 kWh <4,000 Euros) is a no-brainer as the solar power is free of opex and the power from the grid is >0.25 €/kWh. A charging cycle costs well below.

It shouldn't need subsidies here either, except we're a low wage economy with stupidly high housing costs, so by the time we are looking at the nice to have things we're out of money.

Fossil Fuels are mostly obtained in warzones or dangerous offshore sites. Wind is probably more reliable on that front.

We've got our own fossil fuels here, but we also have abundant renewable resources so we shouldn't need the fossil fuels at all.

In Europe wind and solar is a good match since one delivers when the other doesn't. We need all of them. It's not a pissing contest, but a cooperation.

100%, I just wish we had more geothermal going in, we need more baseload generation so we can hold water back in our hydro systems, that will allow us to manage the solar and wind variations a lot better, then throw in batteries as well.

Wind is actually incredibly reliable in both average direction and speed, reliable enough for airport runways to be built facing into the wind to assist takeoff and landing

Well, when you look at utilisation factors of wind vs geothermal or hydro you will see that it's not as good as you may think. I think we need wind generation as part of a mix, but I don't consider it particularly reliable, especially when our national demand peaks on cold still nights.

Wackos fear that prices for land property might decrease because of wind farms. Mostly because other wackos are fearing that but claiming it’s because of birds or audibility. What if we just put them near loud streets?

That's a very startled Ent.

it's literally an island. islands are perfect for wind?

We’re an archipelago, not an island

yes i know

Good, because that’s a bit of a tender point with a few people 😁

You don't want Jacky as your Archipelago nemesis!

😄

really? sorry i had no idea.

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