If you are wondering why wondering why Peter Dutton is so enthusiastic about nuclear – apart from having Gina Rinehart issuing instructions down the phone line – it is worth considering that this guy apparently does not know the basics about energy and electricity.
In defending his policy on Friday, Dutton made a series of highly contentious claims about costs and the primacy of the fiction called 24/7 “always on” nuclear power.
But what really jarred was his argument that rooftop solar was no good because – according to him – you can’t charge your car and fill your home battery at the same time.
“So think about it this way, if you’ve got solar panels on your house at home, and you’re charging up your car during the day, you can’t store energy into your battery,” Dutton told media at the presentation of the costings of his nuclear energy policy in Brisbane on Friday.
“You can’t, you can’t add the energy at the same time to your car, into your battery at home. And so this is why their system is being over built so dramatically, and this is a cost that’s already been passed on to consumers now.”
Wtf? Did he make this stuff up himself, or is he getting advice from complete idiots?
Let’s remind ourselves that the average solar system being installed in Australia is over 8 kW. Some are 20 kW. That will provide plenty of capacity to charge a car, charge a household battery, and keep the lights on at the same time. And even help out the grid in an emergency.
All those inputs – particularly the EV charging rate and the battery charge, can be controlled and modified by a simple touch of button on an iPhone – or, even better, automatically by software that calculates the amount of solar being produced, and then moderates its use accordingly.
Here is an example above. Even with just 4.7 kW of rooftop output, some is going to the car, some to the battery, some to the house. All can be adjusted according to needs and wants.
This is about the smart use of energy, about demand flexibility, about maximising the resources that are available. This is fundamentally about the future of energy systems, which will depend greatly on consumer energy resources.
But these concepts of flexible demand and flexible supply are completely foreign to Dutton and the fools and malfeasants who advise him, and who are still beholden to the energy-system thinking of half a century ago – on so called “always on” 24/7 baseload power, which has one fundamental problem: It is not always on.
And this is where Dutton may come undone. The complexities of the electricity system – its rules, regulations, engineering and pricing – are too complex for just about everyone to understand.
Most people struggle with their electricity bills – although that is largely the fault of retailers still following the old energy industry maxim that “confusion equals profit.”
But more than four million households have rooftop solar. Several hundred thousand have electric vehicles and a rapidly growing number – likely already more than 150,000 – have household batteries. Most of them will understand that Dutton talks complete shite.
More wish to follow, because they are starting to understand the value of their consumer energy resources, how it can lower their bills, and cut the emissions they create, and provide them with resilience to the grid.
The Coalition has always struggled with such concepts. They have deliberately railed against wind and solar, against big batteries, and against electric vehicles – possibly out of ignorance, but just as likely under instructions from the fossil fuel industries whose interests they are so keen to protect.
See also: Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan: Mad, bad, and extremely dangerous
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