Tom MacDonald

Not great!

‘Catastrophic’ failure delays massive $1b Waratah super battery The BlackRock-owned development is the largest storage project in the world and a key part of the transition away from coal power.

www.afr.com//companies/e...
Looks like the very large 850MW Waratah Super BESS has popped one of three 350 MVA transformers just short of completing its already long delayed commissioning process 😬
Seems they're still partially operational, but that's a *big* delay and expense to deal with

Excellent essay here on the slow strangling of mass literary culture in the West - most clearly in the US, but it's obviously happening here too

Important news, but I'm surprised at how favourably this report sees the economics of gas reciprocating engines - I've heard complaints about the cost and complexity of maintenance + disappointing reliability. Would love to hear if any others are seeing recips as a serious economic challenger to GTs

I haven't seen any very convenient free sources, but I think NEMOSIS is reasonably effective at automating the pull and reformat from AEMO's clunky MMS files

Cool idea in its simplicity, but geez there could be a lot of regulatory and economic difficulties in the way of actually making this happen:
reneweconomy.com.au/solar-sharer...

US accused of threatening EU diplomats during bid to kill green shipping rules Negotiators at shipping talks in London were told both they and their countries could be punished unless they voted with the U.S.

European negotiators were personally targeted by their American counterparts during a brutal negotiation over green shipping rules, European Commission officials told POLITICO. 

This highly unusual gambit left diplomats shaken after the meeting. 

Also those ISP assumed upgrades I've never seen costed at Gordon (#4,5 turbines?) and maybe Reece over on the west coast - speaking of, REECE2 still isn't back in action after the fire in July. Wonder how expensive that'll be to fix?

Important piece on Hydro Tasmania's growing debt and falling revenue: reneweconomy.com.au/hydro-tasman...
To my knowledge, none of the system planning in Australia thinks particularly hard about what happens to hydro inflows as the climate changes - possibly because the answers are too unpleasant.

Can't really see how we avoid going back to scholarly work via small, exclusive webs of trust. The openness of the early 2000s was great - I benefited from it a lot - but with persistent AI exploiting and degrading open social systems wherever they're found, those systems won't stay open for long.

I suppose the real test here is "if the PRC threw its full economic heft behind sanctions to stop You/Us/The West accessing a mineral or material with strategic significance, could they succeed?". Seems to be yes for Dy or Gd, no for steel or copper, maybe for many things in between.

Just pulled it out as an example of something very niche with few producers and little/no market incentive to add capacity, but with a few key uses (BeCu tooling, aviation alloys) that would suffer from losing access - which is more plausible than losing access to e.g. steel. That's the point.

The government view on this is pure politics, but if "critical mineral" is to have any value as a concept I think it needs to focus on essential materials with smaller supply chains at risk of market capture. Fe, Al, Cu are clearly critical - but also somewhat distinct from Nb, Ga, Be etc

Aluminium smelter closure tests Labor’s clean energy goals Federal Industry Minister Tim Ayres says every option will be exhausted by the government to prevent the closure of Australia’s largest aluminium smelter.

Tomago smelter maybe closing in 2028: www.smh.com.au/business/the...
Tomago faces a doubling of supply costs when their power contract expires in 2028 and want a ten-figure handout to cover the difference. They may get it - but is this really the best 21st century use of our limited generation?

Time for 2025 updates to my annual “opinions about solar” thread. If you like these, you might like the second edition of my book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon. A 30% discount code WSQ0437 is valid on publisher website until end of November 2025.

www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...

Weird scheme here - tempting to view this as money shoveled into the fire, but since the hydrogen support will be as production tax credits there's a decent chance the money is simply never spent (as the H2 won't be produced). Overall, hard to say if the scheme is naive or cynical

people become terrorists when they get engineering degrees, offering us a simple solution.

New round of CIS winners announced today, showing a continuing shift away from wind and toward solar+BESS hybrid generation: reneweconomy.com.au/solar-batter...
This really isn't the energy transition we expected a few years back but it seems to be the one we're getting. Onwards!

Coordination polymers! Congrats to the team, and great to see Robson recognised - I'm sure the Australian inorganic community will be enjoying a few beers this week

not quite there personally but I'm really starting to feel this one looming

I realized I’ve been sort of mourning the internet lately. It’s odd. This ‘place’ that used to contain a wealth of actually valuable information, and introduced me to many people I now call friends, and which paved the way for my career, has almost completely rotted away. It’s not coming back.

Feels unproductive to overthink this until we get the new Qld plan, but the ESOO update seems to say that Gladstone PTI solves this if delivered on time. So I think that's where we stand: see if Powerlink can commit and deliver the PTI, then course correct as needed if it faces delays.

Origin made no visible efforts to replace Eraring's output, while Rio have multiple GWs of PPAs in place plus support from Powerlink to enable a '29 closure (Gladstone PTI).
Not to say that someone won't find another reason to delay retirement, but they're quite different situations.

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later.

harpers.org/archive/1941...

Do you know of previous cases of the PRC intentionally stranding assets and shrinking an industry for policy reasons? Any comparable cases to the coal industry that we can learn from historically?

The basic dilemma for China's leaders is: you have to cut either the clean energy industry or the coal industry down to size; both can't continue to grow like they have. These targets just show they still haven't made up their minds, balking at the economic fallout from either.

Now that China's new climate targets are out, here's a comparison to IPCC scenarios. The 2030 and 2035 targets are weak even compared to the median of 3-degree scenarios, which would entail devastating climate impacts, but the long-term 2060 target is in line with 2 degrees.

Good angle here which i hadn't actually considered before: nature based offsets lock in increased opex while offering no long term value. Seems fundamentally short sighted to prioritise this over capex to increase operational efficiency, regardless of how you view offset integrity.

Canberra showdown to settle EU concerns over feta, meat, farming Negotiators have been clearing obstacles behind the scenes in preparation for renewed talks over a deal that could supercharge commerce worth $156 billion a year.

One of my crankier but genuine beliefs is that Australia should do literally the opposite of this and make PDO busting knockoffs at higher quality and lower price for the global export market. Not just feta but champagne, port, sherry, parmesan - let's do the lot!
www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

Utterly deranged writing here forced by Australia's ridiculous defo laws