Open Thread 20

This is an interesting read:

ANALYSING TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS ON RENEWABLE GENERATION TO 2050

Click to access 232_Report_Analysing%20the%20technical%20constraints%20on%20renewable%20generation_v8_0.pdf

MODERATOR
Scott – please be aware, before you post next time, that BNC requires you to have read any links and be able to express your opinions on the content. As this is on the more relaxed Open Thread your comment will stand.Future violations of this rule may be deleted.

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Eamon, on 10 January 2012 at 1:08 AM said:

He says plant workers regularly manipulate their radiation readings by reversing their dosimeters or putting them in their socks

Alpha particles can’t penetrate the paper safety suits the workers at Fukushima wear. Wearing your radiation badge backwards or in your sock just avoids ‘clocking’ radioactive particles that aren’t going to penetrate the paper suit anyway.

On the other hand, I would be surprised if the gamma radiation readings taken at Fukushima were lower at ankle height rather then chest height. The primary contaminant at Fukushima is cesium which tends to bind to the top couple of inches of soil. In theory measuring at the foot rather then the chest would give a higher reading.

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Scott — Helpful study. Thank you.

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@eamon

Why do you “think there would be also be heavier radioisotopes closer to the plant.” ?

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Roger Clifton, on 10 January 2012 at 2:36 PM said:

@eamon

Why do you “think there would be also be heavier radioisotopes closer to the plant.” ?

I was thinking plutonium and uranium would be scattered, but being heavier than radioisotopes like caesium they’d travel less and so be concentrated more around the plant and it’s environs. Please feel free to poke holes in this – this is a subject I’m new to (though I have an old Physics degree lying around…somewhere)

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John, my point is that the findings are invalid; they did not compare like with like. Without entering into any further discussions of the formats grids will/won’t take, the actual finding of the report is not consistent. One option can change load to meet a change in demand, the other can not. Comparing the carbon intensity of those scenarios is not useful.

All of the studies you have provided are interesting at best; they are not informative in an Australian context, which is all I really care about. We do not, and will never, have a grid that is just wind and gas. If we introduce wind in Australia right now, the power produced displaces coal power. Not gas. And contrary to popular belief coal can actually ramp up and down quite a bit.

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Hi all,

I’ve been digging around trying to get a bit of info on skill set requirements for a nuclear energy industry in Australia. Forgive me if BNC has already touched on this, but I couldn’t find much.

Has anyone had a good look at the state of nuclear education and research required for an industry in Australia? Presuming the ban is lifted on Gens III+ and IV and we decided to pursue such an industry, how are we positioned to deal with such a task?

Of course there are some undergrad courses with nuclear relevance in such disciplines as medicine and science, though nothing directly pertinent to nuclear energy such as nuclear engineering. Taking a look at relative legislation in the parliamentary library, there doesn’t appear to be any block to it’s teaching. Interesting to note however, if we click ‘Nuclear Energy in General’, two sources are provided; ‘Nuclear power & Australia’ (link doesn’t exist) and ‘Friends of the Earth Melbourne: Anti-Nuclear Campaign’, in the case of the latter, I question if it should really belong on the APH site!.

Research schools/facilities such as Uni of Sydney and ANSTO exist of course, without the nuclear energy generation.

The Australian Nuclear Forum has some useful articles on nuclear education with a policy submission to Government. I particularly admire their advocacy for nuclear science to be taught in high school.

I would imagine if we were to build reactors in the near future, GenIII+ would be a good starting point, with a view to develop such technologies such as the IFR. Some questions based on this scenario:

1. What are the sufficient size and depth of educational/research needed in Australia for having a nuclear energy industry?

2. What will it take to modify existing nuclear science/engineering undergrad courses already offered here?

3. Can existing science and engineering graduates easily supplement their degree with nuclear components, e.g. A mech engineer –> nuclear engineer?

4. Could we attract nuclear energy experts from overseas to ‘kick-start’ industry and research?

Cheers,
Paul

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@Eamon speculated that fragments of heavy metal would fall sooner, and thus closer to the plant.

As far as I know, the cores did not fragment at all, although two of them did melt. However, as well as dissolving some of the skin on the surface of the cores, the violence of the redhot reaction with steam probably did mobilise tiny flakes that travelled as suspensions in the eventual droplets. These would have been too small to affect the terminal velocity of the droplets. A significant amount of the aerosol would have plated out onto the walls and ceilings of the building panels that were subsequently shattered in the explosions. These fragments, that is, of building materials, can be seen in the video footage falling short as sheets of debris. Almost certainly the decreasing size of the fragments remaining in the air would be distributed in decreasing size with distance downwind.

As Finrod has pointed out, the clumping of the showers of debris would have made them easier to find, scrape up and leave the soil cleaned for business as usual. However where they fell would have been more to do with the nature of the building product than any radioactive passengers.

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It appears that a contraction may be looming for Australia’s aluminium smelting industry which has 6 smelters and consumes 11% of all domestic electricity
http://www.theherald.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/hard-times-for-smelters/2417588.aspx?storypage=1
They don’t blame the impending carbon tax (from which they get substantial export exemption) but perhaps they see tough times ahead regardless. This could be a good thing globally if the industry recycles more or relocates to hydro based production.

However it is not good if the industry relocates to another country that uses not only Australian alumina (refined bauxite) but Australian coal to help generate the electricity. Overseas steel makers can use both our iron ore and our coking coal, steel producing about 1.7 tCO2 per tonne of steel. A tonne of aluminium needs about 15 Mwhe to smelt. If our local industries disappear it seems crazy that we would have to import product made with our own ingredients.

I think the answer has to be something akin to the EU’s proposed airline carbon tax. Right at the moment the public doesn’t see it. However within the decade it seems likely that one or both of Australia’s primary steel producers will close and perhaps half the aluminium smelters. I’ll repeat my 5c worth when that happens.

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PaulQ & evcricket — My opinion is that other aspects in the curriculum for mechanical engineers are far more difficult; anybody who does adequately in the (mechanical) dynamics course (and also thermo) will find the nuclear aspects smooth sailing.

There is a world-wide need for qualified nuclear engineers. The Idian government as started a training program for Idia’s needs but finds that the graduates are hired abroad (for considerably higher pay).

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David B. Benson and evcricket: are either of you familiar with the course structure of mech vs. nuclear engineering? I wonder if it is possible to do a Post/Grad Dip to qualify a mech eng to nuclear engineer?

I assume that would be quicker to organize and cheaper to provide!

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@ evcricket, on 11 January 2012 at 6:07 AM, re wind+OCGT Vs CCGT alone:

…[M]y point is that the findings are invalid; they did not compare like with like…One option can change load to meet a change in demand, the other can not. Comparing the carbon intensity of those scenarios is not useful.

Sorry to differ, but straight CCGT probably can do an adequate job at load following. The trick would be to keep the first (GT) stages of at least some of the CCGT plant part-loaded, thus retaining some very quick ramp up capability. Ramping down is a snack for CCGT – just back off the GT stages and re-balance the thermal side of things.

The Guardian’s article was comparing reasonably equivalent hypothetical generating mixes, of the type which a solar-starved Britain may eventually become after the Greens have forced closure of NPP’s and political reaction to climate change has forced closure of coal fired thermal which could be the case if CCS remains only a dream. Thus, in a British context, the Guardintly framed.

However, the new twist is to demand that the context be Australian. I cannot go there and this new requirement is irrelevant – the article is from a British newspaper.

Where I can go, however, is to the recent blackouts in South Australia, which happened on hot days under the influence of a widespread High pressure cell. The wind simply did not blow enough to achieve that which wind spruikers often claim to be a truism – that hot days and high air conditioner loads will be matched by higher generation from wind, if not locally, then from somewhere else.

Well, South Australia could not drag enough power across the interstate connectors to supplement its flat out coal and gas system to keep the state running.

If Australian context is what is required, then that is it.

Let’s get away from the endless search for academic, constraint-bound, artificial analyses of the beauty or otherwise of individual protagonists’ affirmations re competing generation sources.

What will produce results in the longer run will be removal of tricks such as legislated high feed in tariffs and mandated renewables quotas and billions of green energy iniatives from the public purse.

It is up to the renewables/unreliables industry to show how they can provide whatever is needed to complete the generation mix – reliable, cheap (ie competitive in a market), safe and flexible. Renewables compaigners have never been able to do this and they know better than to try, except in abstract terms, because the real world numbers don’t add up.

When the Guardian runs an article which kicks at one flat tyre on the renewables’ chariot, it is not reasonable to then argue that somewhere else, perhaps on another chariot, in a far away land, there may be another flat tyre.

In my opinion, there are plenty of flat tyres.

Renewables – They may look good on the showroom floor, but look out for the flat tyres.

In closing, respond to the affirmation that coal’s ability to ramp up and down is contrary to popular belief. I must enquire just what it is that the public was indeed believing, in a SE Australian grid which historically consists of about 9% hydro with limited water and the rest coal. Of course the public appreciate that coal fired units ramp up and down. It is recent blarney from outside of the industry that has sowed this seed. Why water it?

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@evcricket, many of the comments I have read here have been very supportive of renewables, and some of those commenters have put lots of their money where their mouth is. However, they too speak in quantitative terms of the problems for household supply and scaling up for community supply.

One of the problems discussed (you can find it yourself using the sidebars) is the rate of change of supply from renewables, relentlessly changing, faster than demand changes and out of step with them. The analysis more or less concluded that open circuit gas turbines would be the only backup that could balance extensive unreliables. By implication, any legislation requiring wind or solar effectively favours the gas industry.

For small grids on the scale from households to townships, you will also find here extensive analysis of storage. Many commenters hope earnestly for a revolution in storage technology. But the 200-year-old lead acid battery is getting to look very much like the other flat tire on the chariot.

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Urgh, WordPress crash lost my comment. Anyway, from the top.

Roger, I have no doubt there are many renewables advocates here, and I probably count myself among them. Note though that no where here have I advocated for renewables; I just want to talk about this study and would love to actually answer the question they sought to address properly.

I’m, pretty interested in your claim that the rate of change (dP/dt) in output from renewables is greater than dP/dt of demand; this is of course an important problem in grid design and one I’ve been looking for some answers to. Do you have a link to a paper on this? I wonder too if this takes into account CSIRO’s Wind Energy Forecasting project?

I know quite a bit about storage and in particular small grid stability. I can assure you that lead-acid is probably not the leader in this area any more, thankfully. For some reason as I am much more bullish about the prospects for storage than many people who haven’t studied it; I wonder if that is because it just seems so improbable?

Surely too the problem of ramp rates exists with nukes? How is this problem usually addresses; by making so much power that the unavoidable efficiency drop doesn’t matter, or by teaming up with some other peaking storage/supply? Interesting problem.

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Finrod, the boiler/heat recovery section will make steam at the temperature the metallurgy in the heat exchanger is designed to handle. Hotter = better here. This won’t change, but the amount of steam reaching the turbine will be throttled to change load. So the temp doesn’t change, but energy is lost through venting steam or throttling the flow of steam.

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@ evcricket, on 13 January 2012 at 8:32 AM:

I said: “Sorry to differ, but straight CCGT probably can do an adequate job at load following. The trick would be to keep the first (GT) stages of at least some of the CCGT plant part-loaded, thus retaining some very quick ramp up capability. Ramping down is a snack for CCGT – just back off the GT stages and re-balance the thermal side of things.”

Response: “If CCGT can adequately load follow, why not pair it with wind?”

Speed and amount of response are both relevant. A 100% hypothetical CCGT system has 100% of CCGT plant to ramp up and down. That can be adequate, as I said. About one third of the plant consists of the GT sections, the remainder is the boiler fed generation plant which uses the exhaust gas from the GT’s.

However, in a grid with a large percentage of wind, in order to have sufficiently quick response, the need is for OCGT’s. The smaller percentage of CCGT’s, combined with the off-the-edge-of-a-cliff nature of some wind fades will be too slow, too expensive and, as a sideline, would pay a proportionately higher efficiency penalty, because of the ratchetting up and down of the steam side of things or through excessive gas firing of the boilers to keep them stable.

OCGT’s, on the other hand, are cheap, quick to construct, handle ramps, both up and down extremely flexibly, but throw away a lot of heat in the form of exhaust gases.

There is a significant probability that wind will die off across a wide region and need to be 100% replaced by gas, at short notice. This simply not the business of CCGT’s. If anybody wants to pretend that this is not so, then where is there a grid, anywhere in the world, that works this way? There probably is none. For Wind+OCGT, however, there are plenty of examples, including current proposals in Victoria, where the proposals are not for efficient CCGT, but for quick and dirty Open Cycle GT’s to “balance” wind.

Further: “Okay John, you don’t like renewables.”

No, I have nothing against renewables, per se. I object to renewables which are wrapped in handouts and blatant lies. IF renewables were capable of standing on their own feet and delivering the climate outcomes which we need, this site would be about climate change plus renewables. It has evolved differently, as the material posted here demonstrates, to embrace consideration of nuclear energy not only renewablesbecause hard, well thought through analysis via dozens of leading articles have looked every which way at the emerging climate and energy problems and come to the realisation that, absent unexpected major developments in renewables, storage and more, we simply cannot save our globe’s climate system from collapse.

That is far more important than demands that multitudes of studies be repeated in an Australian context because an individual observer is unwilling to consider overseas experience.

I am sure that your knowledge of improvements in energy storage options would interest us all. How about a post some day?

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John, this is something I’ve heard from a number of people:
“IF renewables were capable of standing on their own feet and delivering the climate outcomes which we need, this site would be about climate change plus renewables.”

This seems like a different requirement than every other generation type we have used. Why the double standard? Details of this are discussed here, but from a US study:
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/great-big-subsidy-myth

No doubt too you acknowledge that nukes will not get up without government assistance, at least in the form of underwriting their insurance? Or would you rather foresake that assistance as you require of renewables?

And on storage, I keep directing people here:
http://www.electricitystorage.org/technology/storage_technologies/technology_comparison this is a brilliant website.

Overall, much like renewables, I doubt we’ll see a ‘step change’ in storage tech. Also like renewables, costs will come down mostly through increases in production. For this reason, my money (figuratively speaking, being a public servant I can’t actually invest in any of this stuff) is on an improvement in capacity manufacturing technology or one of the modular battery units, particularly Na/S batteries.

Further, I also think that we’ll see more integrated renewable installations in the next few years, something like 200MW wind farms with 20-50MW of on site storage. The market is set up so that there is incentive for investors to design their plant in this way, but until the price of electricity goes up the economics don’t make it.

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@evcricket : “something like 200MW wind farms with 20-50MW of on site storage”

if you intended to say “20-50 MWh of on-site storage”, I would be very interested to hear of the technology used. Such would indeed be a game changer.

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Roger, these guys have something similar:
http://www.ecoult.com/a/10.html

The little 660kW wind project at Hampton is an example. I wouldn’t like to call it a game-changer BTW… it will probably trickle out slowly as the vaguaries of economics dictate.

I’m mostly making the point that storage won’t be a grid wide problem in the future, it will be handled on site, and there are benefits there for the smart operator.

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Haha, woops, read the article Ev; both single and multiple shaft designs exist.

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John, a quick read of the article would show that they have thoroughly cited their source:
“According to the study by Nancy Pfund, a managing director of VC firm DBL Investors, and Ben Healey, a Yale graduate, the amount of government subsidies for renewables in the US pales in comparison to that of its energy rivals in their early years.”

Hyperlink has dropped out, but it is there if you would like to challenge their method or findings.

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PaulQ — I would have thought that a good degree in MechEngg would suffice as a starter for some courses in nuclear engineering sufficient for operating an NPP. That probably isn’t enough for design engineering, but nobody is suggesting that. The situation in Finland, as sketched by Janne Korhonen in a prior comment on this thread, suggests otherwise. Or else that is done simply to limit the number of graduates. I’d look at actual requirements in several countries before coming to a definite conclusion; after all, if the Chileans can do it the Aussies certainly can also and more easily.

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Yes David, that’s the key to this I suspect; much early ‘nuclear’ funding probably went to military spending. We might have thorium reactors across the country now if they’d spent the money making electricity rather than bombs…

The thing I found interesting about that study was the amount of help coal received in the early days. Just dig it up and burn it; I can hardly imagine a cheaper mine/power supply scenario than say Hazelwood, yet it was still subsidised in the early days.

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Energy Minister Ferguson has expressed the hope that Australia will overtake Qatar as the biggest LNG exporter
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/inpex-and-total-approve-ichthys-34bn-lng-project/story-e6frg9df-1226243970568
It is hoped within a decade that annual LNG exports with increase from 20 to 80 Mt. Elsewhere the hope has been expressed that Australia’s coal exports will increase from ~300 to 450 Mt. The article points out Japan’s new found need for coal and LNG.

Some may recall at the Copenhagen climate conference Obama was to give the closing speech but he handed over to our then PM Rudd who stressed the urgency of global carbon cuts. Ultimately annual CO2 from Australian exported coal and LNG will be well over a gigatonne, noting total 2010 global emissions were around 31 Gt. Think of that coal and gas as carbon that has been safely buried under Australia for a few hundred million years and could happily stay there. Now compare that 1000+ Mt of CO2 from exported fuels with the domestic 160 Mt Australia has to lose by 2020. If we’re not on track apparently we’re obliged to buy foreign carbon credits to make up the shortfall which could cost billions of dollars.

Thus Australia
– earns billions selling carbon fuels overseas
– spends billions buying overseas carbon credits
Somehow this makes sense in political circles.

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John Bennetts — That was, once again, informative. Thank you.

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RC duly noted. It is still along way to Darwin ~900km if I recall. I guess I was insinuating that Australia was muscling in on Timor’s nearby resources and putting them on pocket money. I won’t mention ‘imperialism’. Recall from the SBS program ‘Coast’ there is a 1200 km undersea gas pipeline (Langeled?) from Norway to England. Not sure in that case how much of the heating value is sapped by pumping. I have heard that 45% of the starting heating value of SIberian gas is consumed by pumping to the UK. This evidently troubles the Brits but not the Germans.

Since there are gas pipes from Darwin to Alice Springs via Mereenie that could be the conduit for gas to south eastern Australia. That would materialise Rex Connor’s vision in the 1970s. Imagine gas from next to Timor ending up in Hobart by pipeline not LNG.

Interestingly some Canadians are now questioning the wisdom of exporting tar sands syncrude when it will one day be much needed at home. Ditto Australian offshore gas.

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EN,

If the super-battery trial mentioned below ever ACTUALLY became a cheap and viable commercial product, I would immediately change my mind about nuclear power. Anyway, ultimately pro-nuclear activists would be swept aside into irrelevance as the marketplace flooded homes and industry with these cheap nano-solar power windows and batteries

In 1902, 28% of the vehicles in the US were powered by batteries. It has been a long 100 years of ‘next year’ we will finally solve the problems related to batteries.

I see a Nissan Leaf on a daily basis now. Someone in my office building bought one. They plug it into a ‘maintenance’ outlet in the parking lot and charge it during the daytime peak so they will have a ‘full tank’ to get home on.

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DBB they make it hard by variously quoting gas prices in cubic metres, cubic feet, pounds, tonnes = metric tons, decatherms, million British Thermal Units (mmbtu) and gigajoules. Fortunately
1 mmbtu = 1.055 GJ so they can often be equated
Now 1 kwh = 3.6 MJ. Thus
1 mmbtu = 1,055 MJ = 1055/3.6 kwh = 293 kwh rounded

Check http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Mmbtu_convert_to_kwh

I think we should measure gas by weight to cover each of ambient conditions (1bar, 30C), liquefied (-173C and up, vapour pressure dependent on container), compressed natural gas CNG 220 bar and absorbed natural gas ANG 15 bar. Pressure and temperature don’t matter if we go by mass though pressure tanks can add a lot of weight.

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John Newlands & Evcricket — Ok, for natgas I suppose I can use approximately 1 MMBtu = 300 kWh?

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Some time soon I will find out in some detail the efficiency of Torrens Island. I am very interested in this.

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@ evcricket, on 17 January 2012 at 5:41 AM:

Orwellian, perhaps, but isn’t that the direction we are heading? When there isn’t enough oil being offered to USA or China to drive their economies, do you really expect them to sit idly by or to happily share with every other country on the planet? Civil war and war between nations are not out of the question.

Without rationing, how will the meagre non-fossil fuels going to be stretched? Meeting the challenges of climate change is going to cause enormous social disruption, as the economy is re-tooled around alternatives.

I am entirely serious about my assessment of military and social disruption ahead. A touch frivolous and melodramatic, perhaps, bur emtirely convinced and Not Happy.

With a slightly different tone: A Leaf owner could have a timer set to charge outside peaks, and be ready to drive when the timer goes off. Residents could choose to defer their large loads when offered a price signal by their smart meter, much like is already happening on Magnetic Island.

1. The point, of course, is that there is no such timer on a Leaf.
2. Many so-called smart meters currently being inmstalled should be called “Purposefully not so smart meters”. It is entirely feasible for market prices to be reflected in retail tariffs, perhaps smoothed to remove some volatility, and displayed via in-home screens backed up by SMS messages when the retail tariff goes out of range, either high or low.
3. Such meters, if truly smart, would easily be set to knock out pre-selected power circuits as selected by the customer (not a retailer of market administrator) in response to these price signals, yet there is no proposal I know to provide this functionality anywhere in Australia. I would be happy to have my aircon knocked off for several hours, then at a higher level have my fridge and freezer knocked out, etc. If the retail cost exceeds a certain level, I would even be happy to sit in the dark and shiver – for a while. I ask for retail customers to be given real choice about what price they are prepared to pay for energy and to be given access to the tools which will assist them to do so.

Instead, and in the absense of customer-adjustable options, a central despatcher or system operator will more frequently rotate suburb-wide and life threatening blackouts, as happened thoughout metro South Australia earlier this month. That is what happens right now. That is not melodramatic.

Regarding old cars being good cars. Caveat: If well maintained.

It is also avoidable, if technological solutions are implemented.

But I agree on the embodied energy stuff. Old cars are best cars.

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Stumbled onto them myself, in NSW anyway:

Click to access 10948commattwind.pdf

~30% acceptance, less in some areas. You’ve got some work to do guys.

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