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Australian Farmers Switch To Diesel Power As Electricity Prices Soar (abc.net.au)
"As power prices rise, some farmers have been forced to turn off the pumps," reports the Australian Broadcast Corporation. Long-time Slashdot reader connect4 shared their report from the coast of Queensland, where the price of pumping water to sugarcane fields has doubled.
Local irrigators council representative, Dale Hollis, says right now, irrigators have two options. "They have to switch off the pumps and go back to dryland [cropping], and that impacts upon the productivity of the region and impacts on jobs" he said. "The second option is to go off the grid and look at alternatives." Another option is solar and there are plenty of farmers installing panels, but many growers irrigate at night and can't afford the millions of dollars it could take to buy battery storage. That's pushing many of them back to a dirtier option. "Right now, diesel stacks up," Mr Hollis said.
The head of farm operations for a sugar producer says it's now 30% cheaper to pump water with diesel than electricity, even before you count the subsidy from the federal government, and they expect to save even more money as energy prices go up.
The head of farm operations for a sugar producer says it's now 30% cheaper to pump water with diesel than electricity, even before you count the subsidy from the federal government, and they expect to save even more money as energy prices go up.
Bath County Pumped Storage Station
Elevated storage tanks aren't free. Perhaps you underestimate the amount of water involved.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Tell that to the idiot farmers growing fucking SUGAR CANE in South Australia, the driest state in a famously dry country
1. Queensland is in NORTHERN Australia.
2. It is the WETTEST state.
Night time irrigation reduces water loss from evaporation. Irrigate at night and there is 12 hours or more to soak into the ground and be absorbed by the crops before it gets to the hottest part of the day.
Electricity is about $0.50 USD/KWh in Australia (compared to about $0.20 in SF and NYC). For $1 USD you get 2 KWh of energy. A motor turning a pump is about 75% efficient - so you get 1.5 KWh of energy at the water pump.
Diesel in Australia is about $1 USD per liter to farmers who don't pay road taxes. A liter of diesel has about 10 KWh of energy, and a diesel engine is about 45% efficient. So for $1 USD you get 4.5 KWh of energy at the pump - 3x cheaper than electricity.
But if the diesel engine has to turn a generator, which then powers an electric motor for the pump, you probably loose about 40%. So for $1 USD you get about 2.5 KWh of energy at the water pump - still better than buying electricity.
And as someone else here said - it seems the Australia electricity market is under heavy market/political forces - like electric supplies holding back supply when they know that prices will soar and brown/black outs will occur.
Absolute bollocks.
We have very little renewable energy production in Australia and was has been built had to beg for scraps of subsidies. Coal fired plants get more public money.
The ridiculous rise in costs is due to privatization, and infrastructure overbuilds. In many states electric utilities were allowed to build infrastructure and charge the consumers for it, so they turned that into a revenue stream by overbuilding and charging excessively. In some cases whole substations sat idle.
Eastern Queensland is tropical. Think Florida with hills. They grow the sugar cane in the river valleys near the coast (or at least they used to). LOTS of water in the Summer rainy season, not so much in their Winter.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey