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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.
Going off the grid always sounds so complete and final, but couldn't they set up _some_ amount of solar panels that pump into raised storage tanks during the day, then irrigate with that water during the night? Seems like any power saved is good for the wallet (and, vs. diesel, good for the planet).
If a home user (including light industrial like farms) can generate for less than the grid cost, why isn't the grid using Diesel and doing it cheaper?
This isn't about "Diesel", this is about the abuses of a privatized utility.
Learn to love Alaska
If you are using electricity to pump water; and want the water at night, why would you use batteries; rather than 'gravity'? You don't need to elevate water much to get it to flow downhill; and storing water a few meters above ground level is cheaper and more mature than battery tech by a substantial margin.
(Now, anyone for a bet on how many years these guys have before 'finding groundwater that still exists' becomes a markedly more exciting challenge than 'pumping it' is?)
The electric utility might increase prices even more if folks reduce their electricity usage. The company will want to maintain profits if it's a private company or if publicly owned, maintain its current income. If fewer KWHrs are being consumed but fixed costs remain constant, the company will have less income, so will need to raise rates. The size of any increase would probably depend on the fraction of use of these farmers.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Bath County Pumped Storage Station
If a farmer can run a diesel pump, then a power company can run a diesel plant for even less. Either the government's diesel subsidies are too high or they let the power company get too greedy.
Windmills are still being used to pump water in my part of the US - the Colorado Plains and Western Nebraska. The water, though, is not for cops but for cattle watering. For crops, including corn, it seems there's a mixture of motorized pumps and electric I'd guess depending on the availability of electricity.
I wonder why sugar cane is being grown in what I assume is a pretty dry climate using irrigation. The Aussies might want to look at the history of irrigation farming in places like West Texas where wells kept getting deeper and deeper until it was economically unsustainable to pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer thousands of feed down. The destruction of this water supply has had major economic consequences. Of course in Texas, there's something else that can be pumped from the ground: black gold.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
At least in Ontario, electricity prices have become obscenely expensive recently to try and get people to reduce consumption.
The solution our factories have come up with is to close up shop, lay off their workforces and move to Mexico.
It does reduce electricity use though, so the government is happy.
It's like Enron all over again. Economist Bill Mitchell goes into detail. http://bilbo.economicoutlook.n...
if wind and solar were economical, they would be used.
You mean like in the Republican-led state of Kansas which generates roughly 30% of its electric needs from wind? Those Republicans must really love spending taxpayer money on all those subsidies.
At the rate wind generated electricity is growing, Kansas may have export electricity in the next decade. How horrible wind is so uneconomical.
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.
Had you read TFA, you would know that the problem is that the charge for use of the transmission lines is the part that's skyrocketing, not the cost of the electricity that is being transmitted. That's why prices continue rising even as actual use falls.
The power company has priced themselves right out of the market. There is absolutely no way, what with economies of scale, government subsidies, etc. that I as a private citizen should be able to produce electricity cheaper than a power company. But hey, power companies are government enforced monopolies, so it stands to reason that eventually they forget how to make money, keep putting expenses up and keep raising prices. Until this happens. Now they're going to scream for government protection to outlaw diesel generators and force people to pay much more than any sort of fair market value for their energy, just to keep the inefficient power company inefficient. Because jobs, you know...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It might have something to do with "Kansas adopted the Renewable Energy Standards Act in 2009, which required the state’s utility companies to generate or purchase 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources – like wind and solar – by 2020." That is, they forced themselves to do it -- regardless of the price. Not saying it wasn't cheaper, but that they would have switched regardless of whether it were cheaper or not in the end.
The thing is that different energy sources are going to have different prices and efficacy depending on where you are. I'm sure that fossil fuels are still cheaper per kilowatt hour in northern Canada than solar is, and that wind power in San Francisco is going to be more expensive than in Texas.
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
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.
You can get economists to say _anything_. It's called the dismal science for a reason.
I'm proud to say I'm not an economist. Which means I know you can't print money forever. Like I say: if you meet that moron, kick him square in the nuts.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No.
It's Queensland, Australia.
Coal with a bit of gas to cover peaks and one hydro plant of note.
Why spread misinformation about something you do not know about? Are you being a Good Party Komrade or is there something else behind it? My paycheck depends on the coal industry, so maybe you think you are helping me out, but I'd rather not have people pushing stupid lies for the sake of The Party doing it. Why don't you go and "help" someone else on a topic you actually know something about using truth instead of stupid lies?
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
How sad to see how blind you are to the realities. Twits such as yourself cannot see any further than the ends of your noses. There are dozens of YouTube videos showing the massive shift in energy use in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and other oil-rich countries-- where a tank of gasoline is only a couple of dollars. Saudi Arabia has found that, like Beijing today, and Los Angeles especially in the 1970's, their unbridled use of gasoline, and fossil fuels for stationary electric generation, drastically reduces the quality of life. Saudi Arabia in particular has, for about four years now, been installing thousands of acres of solar panels to eventually end their reliance on fossil fuels. LET THAT SINK IN: the Saudis have the CHEAPEST FOSSIL FUELS ON THE PLANET, yet they are switching to renewable resources not only for automobiles such as Teslas, but to power their homes, businesses, hospitals and schools. What is the difference between the Saudis and the U.S.? Here, the oil companies and their lobbyists exert enormous pressure on politicians to assure that, as much as possible, oil will continue to enrich them while reducing the quality of life for everyone else. This is not the case in Saudi Arabia, where there are no such biases. Yes, the Saudis are still horrific tyrants in other respects, but they have nothing to keep them from realizing that solar power is now cheaper than energy from fossil fuels, and continues to drop. (In the 1970's, a watt of solar panel cost nearly a thousand dollars; over the last decades, the cost has dropped to mere pennies per watt, continues to drop, and continues to increase in efficiency per square meter.) Elon Musk, in his customary confidence, has told the Aussies that he can install solar/battery storage systems within 100 days to end their crisis, and if he cannot finish it on time it's free. He has recently powered entire island societies with solar/battery systems, ending their dependence on the crushing cost of diesel power and its disgusting pall of pollution and noise... again, it's all available on YouTube. Fossil fuel is dead, literally and figuratively: long live renewables.