That’s still deceptive. Renewables don’t cancel out fossil fuels, whether you import them or not.
Tasmania is an exceptionally small state. Population 500K. Based on the renewable power sources available, they must rely on a network for stability. Otherwise, they would have to massively over-develop their power infrastructure. This itself would be unsustainable.
The issue is not that Tasmania needs to over-build. It's that Victoria needs more renewables. If TAS was a net importer, that would be a different story.
So it is not in their control to be powered only by non-renewable energy. The rest of what you have written doesn’t change this simple fact.
Nuclear has similar issues where baseload generation is inefficient when trying to cover shifting power demand. Thus small cities next to nuclear will import power even if they are a net exporter. In the end larger electricity grids are simply more efficient.
So, simplified you can produce 120% export 15% and import 5%. That’s net export, and covering 100% of demand. That’s also how they can have a “200 per cent renewable target by 2040.”
Batteries for example aren’t actually renewable energy sources. So when a solar or wind powered off grid home uses batteries to store solar energy for later usage is that 100% renewable energy as long as the power is originally from sunlight?
It seems somewhat silly to say such homes are battery powered. The same terminology is used when homes skip the batteries and send power to the electric grid only to use that amount of power later. Sure, they could spend more resources building batteries, but that’s wasteful.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to disagree with the common definitions. However, as long as the definitions used are common and describe the situation you can’t say they are lying.
PS: Fossil fuels are also from sunlight just like wind, so saying their not renewable is really talking about the ability to use them vastly faster than their created. Which fits the batteries / grid as renewable energy storage definition just fine.
Yeah, so why choose deceptive ways to define things?
> Batteries for example aren’t actually renewable energy sources.
They aren’t a source at all. They are just a way to store energy.
> So when a solar or wind powered off grid home uses batteries to store solar energy for later usage is that 100% renewable energy as long as the power is originally from sunlight?
Sure, why not?
> Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to disagree with the common definitions. However, as long as the definitions used are common and describe the situation you can’t say they are lying.
I don’t know about that. It seems quite hard to disagree with the common definition. It seems very apt. The definition you seem to defend on the other hand seems like meaningless political drivel.
As per the GP's comment, in 2020 that is not the case and have been a net importer.
Edit: per comments downthread, perhaps they're actually not quite there yet, but still I think the principle holds if internal generation is exclusively renewable and net imports are negative.
So it is actually over 100%? I don’t understand what you are even calculating when you say 100%, for me it makes no sense.
If renewables+fossil fuels allow you to pollute less than either renewables alone or fossil fuels alone then that's what you should do.