Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

So, "jeopardising" in the seense that, say, me driving west on a road which comes to a north-south "T" in the road, would be "jeopardising" the car's safety...if I don't turn the car in an appropriate manner when I get to the "T". Yes, if you add solar with absolutely no changes elsewhere to accommodate that, you will eventually have problems.

But, that's like saying smartphones jeopardized the cell phone infrastructure, which they did except the cell phone companies added capacity. Bicycles can jeopardize the road network of a city if they become widely used, and you don't do anything (e.g. bike lanes) to accommodate that change. Every change in technology can jeopardize the network it is part of, if nothing else is changed to accommodate it.

But, you know, there are several (already known, developed) methods of handling this (big batteries, utilities being able to turn off your solar like they can currently remotely control my thermostat). It seems a bit of an overstatement to say that it's jeopardizing the grid.

The powers that be in Australia are very, very, very friendly (read: in bed with) the coal industry. For the last 5 years they have been doing everything possible to discredit renewables, and there is a lot of money at stake.

It's a fascinating view into what happens when a few very rich and powerful people control essentially all the media in an entire country.

That pretty much describes governments around the world, it's nothing exclusive to Australia unfortunately.

Hmm, I'd say Australia's mining industry holds a significantly more hefty sway over politicians than it does in other countries, just because of how much of Aussie's GDP is based on mining - plus how the miners have attempted to controk the media there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Rinehart#Business_career

> In 2010 Rinehart took a 10 per cent stake in Ten Network Holdings; James Packer had acquired an 18 per cent stake in the same company shortly before. Since then she also acquired a substantial stake in Fairfax Media. Rinehart was a major player in the media and no longer limits her interests to the mining business. In February 2012 she increased her stake in Fairfax to over 12 per cent, and became the largest shareholder of the company. Fairfax journalists were reportedly fearful that she wanted to turn them into a "mouthpiece for the mining industry". In June 2012, she increased her stake further to 18.67 per cent, and was believed to be seeking three board seats and involvement in editorial decisions in Fairfax's newspaper division. Negotiations between Fairfax and Hancock Prospecting broke down in late June because of disagreements over Fairfax's editorial independence policy and other issues relating to board governance; chair Roger Corbett subsequently announced that Rinehart would not be offered any seats on the board. After failing to get board representation she sold her shareholding in 2015.

While that may or may not be true, I’d say it is true that the powers that be for most countries are in bed with one or more industries comparatively to Australia and the coal industry.

In Canada you have one family that owns almost all the news media in the country and also Reuters. From what I understand they are the 5th richest family in the world.

27th according to Forbes [0].

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/profile/david-thomson/#2d5599fa5628

But 5th according to Reuters!

We've got it pretty bad here.

This man is now the Prime Minister (the highest political position in Australia):

https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-m...

Yeah, it's a stupid headline. The real story here is that the government owned energy utility made a massive loss and is blaming rooftop solar. The headline should say: "Energy planners fail to account for obvious and foreseeable structural change to energy generation".

> But, you know, there are several (already known, developed) methods of handling this (big batteries, utilities being able to turn off your solar like they can currently remotely control my thermostat).

That was the point of the article: the solar CANNOT be switched off, it's dumb. That's what's causing the problem, all the dumb solar.

Interesting because I've got a box to just shut off my power. If I don't pay my bill the company can shut off my power. Seems to me that the power company should be looking at ways to handle the free power generation the public is providing and being the storage utility, otherwise the homeowners can just start storing it themselves and cut the power company out of the picture entirely.

Energy storage is a lot harder than it sounds, particularly at scale. Typical solutions are pumping water uphill in hydro stations: not particularly efficient, but it's easy to do on demand.

Western Australia is very flat (especially the bit near all the people). And pretty dry (though the bit near all the people is not so dry). There's nowhere to pump water to, and not much water to pump.

However, there is a huge demand for fresh water, and lots of available seawater. You could just soak up excess power by using it for desalination, which is power-hungry.

But that doesn't benefit the mining industry, so no-one in WA govt will think of it.

I'm curious, what's normal to do with all the waste from desalination?

The concentrated salt water is pumped back into the sea. Doesn't seem to be too damaging to the environment. See:

https://theconversation.com/desal-plants-might-do-less-damag...

Jeopardizing it as in a problem to solve. No one is saying that this is the end of solar energy, good grief. I'm sure they'll figure something out. The article is just pointing out that it is an issue and it's coming to a head. No one said it was unsolvable. Big oil/coal isn't trying to take your solar.

No, they are just working with the Murdoch press and LNP government to stymie and delay the uptake of renewable energy and ensure that enough of the electorate has sufficient doubt about possible, future ramifications of mass renewable uptake to protect the returns on coal power station investments.

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