What a curious government we have at present, full of balls, bald heads and bravado, but not much in the brains department.
There are many possible instances that come to mind that could illustrate that well, but this week’s announcement that NZ is now going to import gas to burn to make electricity, is one of the more bizarre and stupid recent announcements. Our great esteemed leaders must have thought about it long enough to plan out a news conference, which they hosted with two bright and shiny Ministers earnestly saying that “It was all Labour’s fault” and “We need Gas drilling NOW!” but there was not a lot of thought going much further than that.
Extraordinarily, our largest industrial users are on the point of shutting up shop and closing the doors permanently because they cannot get power. We have the Pulp and Paper mills in the central North Island closing up for good within weeks, but the warning signs must have been there for a while. If they go, so does the population of Tokeroa, probably either to Auckland or more likely, to Aussie. It is absolutely a problem – once the Kawarau Mill goes, we will probably never get it back. Like everything else, we will just have to order it in from overseas.
The answer from the government lunkheads is that we need to import LPG immediately and also start to build a terminal to store it. Plus foreigners might want to give us money to dig some holes in the ground to find more gas. How many years would that take? At a guess, maybe 3 years at a minimum? More like 5 years probably? It may well have rained in the intervening period – and in fact, it rained non stop for the last 48 hours, although all in the wrong areas. The problem is, of course, that our Energy market is broken. There is little incentive from industry to do anything to lessen the problem, because of course when we (the public) suffer, the energy companies make their millions of profit. And that is the way some previous bright spark government minister set up the whole system to work.
A far better idea would be to mandate every single new house in Aotearoa to have a solar PV electric array (except maybe Gore). And then plan for ALL the existing houses to be retrofitted with Solar PV as well. Yes, that would take some time as well, but it would all work towards an overall change in our power consumption as well. Most countries in Europe understand this well, and have retrofitted their electrical markets to work this way.
In Germany, you used to get four times the price of energy when you generated it off your rooftop and sold it back to them. There was a big fuss when the Merkel government reduced that down to merely three times. As a result, PV cells appear on every rooftop in Germany and other enlightened countries. Even the cowshed and the pig barn at my friend’s place in Germany has PV cells on, generating power and earning money. So much so, the Germans are turning off their nuclear power stations, and have phased out coal. Plus, thanks to Putin and his mad war, they’ve turned off gas as well.
Here in NZ, we are currently allowed to be officially screwed by the Electric system. Here, you might get back one third of the price you pay, if you’re lucky. There is literally no incentive to put solar on your rooftop, or a windmill in your back yard. If we had a government who was competent and could think intelligently, we too could power our country without gas or coal generators.
THIS is what we should be doing.
As much as I agree with you on the egg headedness of the govt decisino making, I believe your stats about German solar are a bit outdated. Currently you get about 8ct/kwh when partially feeding back from your home PV (“Einspeisevergütung”), compared to paying about 40ct/kwh when using power from the grid. A lot of the “money earning” happened in the 2010s, with generous decade-long state guarantees on high buy-back prices. Source: https://www.lichtblick.de/wissen/solar/einspeiseverguetung-in-der-eu/
I’m a German living in Wellington, but back in the motherland at the moment. It’s really interesting talking to Germans about heat pumps: For many it’s either not cost effective due to the cost of retrofitting into brick walls and radiators, or they’re scared of electricity market shortages in winter. Solar battery storage ain’t going to heat your home at -10 degrees outside. On the other side, Germans produce so much peak solar in summer that larger arrays need to have a function to be remotely shut off to protect the grid (reducing your earnings).
So overall I consider myself very lucky living in NZ, with our natural advantages around stored energy (hydro lakes), and solar+battery nearly close to making financial sense *without* subsidies now (as per http://rewiring.nz).
Thank you Ingo, and yes, I am truely saddened that you have provided me with updated figures. But it was a brilliant move by the German government, who changed the way that their country generates power, for ever. If only we had a governemnt with enough nous to figure out that THIS is the way forward, and building a gigantic gas storage facility is not the way forward.
If you are reading this again Ingo – can you give us an update on the rest of the German power system? Are the nuclear plants still closed down? or was that just a temporary thing? And the coal-fired plants – there still? or gone? I know they have huge amounts of windmills generating power – is there any hydro? I’m presuming not, as the rivers are fairly flat and used for freighting goods on barges.?
Not Ingo, but from Germany:
Nuclear plants are all closed now and won’t open up again in a hurry. We’re still burning too much coal and gas (just no longer mostly Russian gas).
In their homes, people still burn a lot of oil (or gas). Some (many?) freaked out when the current government recently wanted to phase out private oil & gas heating and installed new gas burners so those would be grandfathered.
Current plans are to phase out coal by 2038, but who knows.
Lots of rules around solar still not optimized as incentives for new private capacity building.
We share a house with our landlords. They put a large array up and wanted to sell electricity to us. But they are not allowed to (because they received public subsidy or loan I believe).
Now they have to sell their over production at 8C/kWh to the grid and we have to buy it at 26C or thereabouts, despite effectively using the power they generate.
But at least the energy will also be used for the central heating (heat pump + solar thermal + PV) and make that a bit cheaper.
There is also no financial incentive for people to buy ‘clean’ energy. It is typically a Cent or two more expensive than ‘regular’ power.
There is hardly any hydro power generation.
On the plus side, the rules around running ‘balcony solar power’ are now improved.
Lots of people in Germany rent and don’t have control over what goes onto their roofs. But they can put up PV on their balconies and reduce the amount of power they need to pull from the grid.
Thank you Diessoli – fantastic informative reply. I love the idea of balcony solar power, and also the heat pump / solar thermal being generated by the landlord and so the whole building gets warmer. We almost never do that here, more’s the pity.
Welcome back Fishy one. Another point worth noting is that the process of digging up natural gas and refining it to make petroleum gas and then condensing it into liquid form so then you can burn gas to heat water to create steam to spin a turbine to create electricity is… just about the most wasteful use of energy on the planet, not even counting the colossal waste of fossil fuel. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Most of the energy is wasted along the way.
By comparison if you use natural gas to cook with, nearly all of it goes straight into cooking the food. Similarly, while PV panels are only 15-20% efficient in converting the sun’s energy into Electricity, at least that all goes straight into your powerpoint to run your fridge etc.
Bishop needs to go back to school to learn some basic physics!
And it turns out that using gas to cook your dinner gives you cancer, so another reason not to use it.
Never heard that one Chico – got any proof / references? I thought that it was just windmills that caused cancer! ? There’s some politician somewhere who keeps saying that, so it must be true…
But seriously, there must be millions of people using gas to cook with gas, including almost every single restaurant in the country and all around the world. Is that where all the cancer comes from? Actually, there could possibly be some truth – depending in the origin of the gas. Natural gas is, well, natural, and presumably just methane ie CH4. Which is quite a simple molecule. But on the other hand, LPG is apparently a mixture of propane, butane, propylene, butylene, and isobutane. So, something like, phew! C3H8+C4H10+C3H6+C4H8+C4H10 in some proportion – blimey! I think I’ll stick with natural gas for cooking please….
Yes to all of the above!
Can we please do it as part of a locked-in, longterm infrastructure plan though? If it becomes a political point scoring exercise (also see: ferries, tunnels, EV rebates etc. etc.) then we’ll be stuck flip flopping on each change of government while the trained people leave for places that have their shit together.
Well worth a listen if you haven’t caught it: https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018953071/electrification-could-save-nz-95-billion-by-2040-report
And a small fix – it’s Tokoroa not Tokeroa ✌️
Thanks James !! It’s always been Toke roa in my heart, maybe because of the nature of the forest greens nearby !
But I’m happy to stand corrected !
Now, how do we get the Gov to make these big connected-up-thinking jumps that it needs to make ?
Govt legislation to mandate solar charging credits at , say, 3x cheaper than delivery for x amount of years for new solar installs
Company tax credits for warehouse roof solar installs provided there is enough backhaul in the power distribution network to take it
A levy on power gentailer profits to fatten out backhaul capacity in networks near and where they supply
An algorithmically calculated tax on gentailers which rathets up when they profit-take and down when they commission new-build capacity
People respond to incentives
Best answer yet Mr 60MPa ! Four points absolutely nail it. That’ll do it. Simeon, and various Chrises, if you’re listening / reading this – please follow 60’s instructions.
Meanwhile they are cutting cycleways
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/526837/government-to-spend-nearly-33-billion-on-transport-over-the-next-3-years
Despite what the chattering classes may want, I think this will be popular
And spending $5.5 BILLION on repairing potholes. That’s not including $8.6 billion to state highway and local road improvements, $6.4 billion for public transport, and $4.6 billion into maintenance.
Five and a half bleeding billions on potholes !!!!! That Simeon is a fool.
IMHO, people over-think solar. At a basic level it doesn’t need to be anywhere as complicated as it normally is and a cheap-arse solar set-up could be rolled out on (say) all Kainga Ora new-builds tomorrow (and retro-fitted to others as time goes by). Probably 90% of all households already have an energy battery installed and operating at the moment; it’s called the hot water cylinder. There are basic systems being used around the world (particularly in developing countries but also in the United States) that take advantage of this. With hot water normally being the single largest electricity cost for a household, the system essentially is a 2-element cylinder. One element is connected to mains AC electricity, the other element (slightly different design) is wired directly to the DC output of a solar panel/s. There are no inverters, no electric batteries, no computer controllers, no meters; nothing that adds any complication which helps keeps the cost down. The DC element does the bulk of the heating during the day. Any further heating required to lift the temperature of the water up to the safe-zone of 60c is done using the AC mains-powered element. A simple solution resulting in substantial power saving for minimal investment.
Good on you John – very good honest straightforward thought. I guess you are 100% right – but then, so why are we not doing it?
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