The inland of Australia is nothing like inland North America. There is very little water, much is literally desert.
Something like 85% of the population lives within 50km of the coastline.
Something like 85% of the population lives within 50km of the coastline.
Another aspect is we quite simply have an inflated market, driven by foreign investment, speculators, government policies and incentives that help investors at the expense of home buyers. We also have thousands of citizens with outsized investments in real estate, and the government is doing everything it can to make sure that house of cards doesn't topple down and cause a recession.
One of our last government's policies to "Help ease house prices" was to give grants to corporate investors, so that they could buy up land and rent it back to people. That's the kind of policy making we have here at the moment
Install some solar panels, and use it to crack water, to make hydrogen, and convert it to ammonia. Australia can power the next fuel cell revolution.
I'm not sure efficiency matters that much when you have far more energy production capacity than you need but it's concentrated in places and times where you can't use it.
As for costing more: compared to what ? Batteries don't seem like an economically effective option for storing solar energy at massive scale, do they ? And in any case they don't allow the stored energy to be shipped to other locations.
Run some numbers and you find batteries are surprisingly cheap at grid scale. Grid solar is already tied into the grid and does DC>AC conversion anyway as part of it’s 2c/kWh pricing. So, rather than AC>DC>AC>DC you can just use solar panel’s AC power directly. Which means your just adding minimal cabling, batteries, some electronics, and a basic box for weather protection. So, ~100,000$ for 200kWh of storage x ~5,000 cycles that’s 10c/kWh for storage + (2c/kWh solar / 90% efficiency) = ~12.2c/kWh.
Granted that ignoring some real world costs like interest payments, but battery costs are also dropping so it’s a reasonable ballpark. Especially vs a theoretical system that’s never been scaled.
PS: By comparison if your at 50% efficiency to chemical storage and world record 63% thermal efficiency at combustion that’s 2 /.5 /.63 = ~6.3/kWh just for electricity plus the cost of your combined cycle gas turbine and chemical plant.
EDIT: I think for that use case you'll find that a reasonable technology doesn't exist for transporting electrons over that distance (I don't think there are any superconducting transmission lines in actual use) but pipelines have been around for a long time.
I think I've heard that with current solar cells you could produce that much power with a 100 mile x 100 mile installation in a sunny location.
If battery storage and power transmission are solved problems, are the obstacles now only economic ?
IMO, we are headed to about 70% renewables in 30 years baring major changes.
They recently started putting together an interstate connector to other states, which allows the state to export excess power from renewables. In part to help offset grid reductions as NSW brings some of it's fossil fuel plants offline. They already have had some 100% renewable days, but plan to be 100% renewable by 2030.
Another quirk of SA's energy history was Elon Musk offering to help solve grid costly instability with a battery solution within 100 days or it was free. Odd tactic, but it happened and they have a 100MW battery reserve in Hornsdale that is set to expand to 150MW.
Out of the 8 zones, zones 3 and 4 don't seem to inhabitable, they're probably the "outback" aka desert. 1 seems to be the subtropical jungle bits. They're huge, however doing a silly size comparison with Romania, which has around 20 million people ( https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!NzkwMTU3Mg.NDI0MDg2OQ*M... ), it seems that even considering just the temperate zones, Australian population density is low.
I guess it's more an issue of bad urban planning because of economic pressures. Everyone bunches up in the same centers of population, which cover a very small area, in relative terms.