Author Topic: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever  (Read 7186 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline TerraHertzTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3958
  • Country: au
  • Why shouldn't we question everything?
    • It's not really a Blog
Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« on: May 12, 2018, 02:41:16 pm »
I was out at Lithgow today, for tours of the Lithgow Small Arms factory & museum, and Wallerawang Power Station.

Somehow I'd had the impression in recent years that though the  https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.4021669,150.0819862,811m/data=!3m1!1e3 Wallerawang station was closed, it was mothballed and could be brought back into service if needed. (And it WILL be needed.)

Nope. It's been destroyed. Already far beyond any chance of refurbishment. Massively gutted. For eg all the boiler heat exchanger piping (a nickel-bronze alloy that was worth a lot as scrap), the steam condensers, etc.

Typically, all the control systems had been modernized about a year before the place was shut down. All new big LCD screens, and computer systems. The control room is quite small and spacey looking. System still up. Pity it's all to be trashed.

Sorry not many pics, and they are crap. It was a large tour group, moving rapidly so no chance to set up time exposures. And it was at night, so no outside shots, and many areas (eg boiler rooms) were quite dark. I've attached the least crap pics.

Mount Piper power station nearby is still going, but is down to a single coal mine for supplies. So it's in a precarious position too.
https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.3569469,150.032708,1622m/data=!3m1!1e3
Collecting old scopes, logic analyzers, and unfinished projects. http://everist.org
 

Offline Halcyon

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 5613
  • Country: au
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2018, 03:17:02 am »
Thanks for posting. What an eerie place!
 

Offline Harb

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 244
  • Country: au
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2018, 11:20:51 am »
The fire they had sort of sealed its fate......bit of a shame really.....another one for the Urban explore list  :-+
 

Offline Jeroen3

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4064
  • Country: nl
  • Embedded Engineer
    • jeroen3.nl
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2018, 11:59:27 am »
It's a coal plant, those are politically end of life anyway.

Would this make an interesting EEVdiscover?
 

Offline Synthtech

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 222
  • Country: au
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2018, 12:08:38 pm »
This will make the politicians and activists that are determined to de-industrialise Australia and put it into energy poverty very happy.
 
The following users thanked this post: ludzinc, Electro Detective

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2018, 12:10:36 pm »
It's a coal plant, those are politically end of life anyway.

Would this make an interesting EEVdiscover?
Politically yes, but politics are fickle. What's completely undesirable one week could very well be the saving grace the next. Look at how Japan went from all-in nuclear to no nuclear power and back again in the name of the Paris agreement.
 

Offline Harb

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 244
  • Country: au
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2018, 12:21:39 pm »
Our dumbarse politicians seem to think each country has its own independent atmosphere, so if we kill off our coal fired plants it will keep the air here in better nick for longer........
 
 
The following users thanked this post: Electro Detective

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2018, 12:28:08 pm »
Our dumbarse politicians seem to think each country has its own independent atmosphere, so if we kill off our coal fired plants it will keep the air here in better nick for longer........
That was kind of the point of The Paris Agreement. Orange is a party and green a signatory.

 
The following users thanked this post: Synthtech

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26682
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2018, 12:29:10 pm »
It's a coal plant, those are politically end of life anyway.
Not in Australia. Not by a long shot!
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline apis

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1667
  • Country: se
  • Hobbyist
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2018, 12:37:17 pm »
You got it completely backwards. Coal is very politically popular (because it's cheap), and they are constantly building new coal power plants. The only energy source that is not politically popular is nuclear (and perhaps oil, but that is because we are running out of oil so it's just going to get more expensive).

The problem is that science shows co2 emissions causes climate change (it's not politics, it's scientific fact), so we really should stop burning fossil coal. Sadly politicians/people are idiots and ignore it or are fooled to think science is some sort of conspiracy. Doesn't help that many politicians get their fortunes from coal, gas and oil (like Bush, Putin and King Salman for example).



Picture source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/as-appetite-for-electricity-soars-the-world-keeps-turning-to-coal/1842/
« Last Edit: May 14, 2018, 12:39:09 pm by apis »
 

Offline sibeen

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 271
  • Country: au
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2018, 01:05:37 pm »
I started my own company back in 1991 and one of the first paying gigs I got was rebuilding two inverters at Wallerawang. They were 20 kVA 110VDC to 240 AC inverters, from memory. Someone had decided that they needed to be installed inside the switchboards - the reason for this is something I could never fathom. So the inverters turned up to site built in their standard box and then this box was placed inside a switchboard cubicle. Unfortunately the inverters were a ferro-reasonant design. These things run hot at the best of times and after being placed inside a box inside a box they just shut down on overtemperature.

My task was to pull it out of the swithchboard, then pull it out of its own box an then rebuild it within the switchboard and ensure that it wouldn't overheat and shut down. So I added a lot of exhaust fans to the top of the switchboard cubicle, lots of air entry around the bottom sections of the board and then rebuilt the unit within the switchboard. I then had to add external alarms and all the requisite bells and whistles and indicators onto the front of the switchboard so that the operators could know what the unit was doing.

That's where I made a serious mistake. I decided as I only needed a few hundred mA at 5 volts I'd just tap off the existing 5 volt rail - like what's an extra watt going to matter. Come the day when I had it all back together and ready to go. Went over and turned the 110 VDC circuit breaker on and watched in horror as a lot of my wiring caught fire and smoke was billowing from lots of places that smoke should not be billowing from. Checked over what had happened. The power supply in the unit was undoubatedly one of the worst, crappiest pieces of in-house design that I'd ever run across. It was basically a voltage divider into a zener reference, and when it blew it placed 110 volts onto the 5 volt rail. Every chip on every board was toast.

After a night of very heavy drinking a few hour drive down to Sydney the next day for a trip to Farnell and buying three of every chip in the unit. Lots of soldering then ensured and eventually got the unit back up and running, albeit with a new 110 to 5 volt power supply. So the first one took about three or four days longer than it should have. Was back a week or so later to do the next unit and that went far easier. I left my business card tapped to the door of the units and never heard from the client again, so I have no idea how long they remianed in service.
 
The following users thanked this post: BillyD

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6686
  • Country: nl
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #11 on: May 14, 2018, 01:13:59 pm »
it's not politics, it's scientific fact
Between population growth and resource depletion (fossil, mineral, land, anti-biotics, etc, etc) it's not even relevant. We're facing so much worse problems, electrical generation and EV is a fun diversion to think about to avoid thinking about the real shitshows taking place, but that's all it is ... a diversion.

Fossil fuel consumption took flight around WW2, our tidal gauges have yet to give a shit, I think we'll have a bit of time to adapt to climate change. Population growth in Africa, Middle East and Asia has a much bigger impact on resources per capita than climate change. It's causing wars and mass migration right now, climate change is not.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #12 on: May 14, 2018, 01:34:26 pm »
Between population growth and resource depletion (fossil, mineral, land, anti-biotics, etc, etc) it's not even relevant. We're facing so much worse problems, electrical generation and EV is a fun diversion to think about to avoid thinking about the real shitshows taking place, but that's all it is ... a diversion.

Fossil fuel consumption took flight around WW2, our tidal gauges have yet to give a shit, I think we'll have a bit of time to adapt to climate change. Population growth in Africa, Middle East and Asia has a much bigger impact on resources per capita than climate change. It's causing wars and mass migration right now, climate change is not.
We're already seeing trouble and therefore migration caused by climate change.
 

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6686
  • Country: nl
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #13 on: May 14, 2018, 02:09:07 pm »
We're already seeing trouble and therefore migration caused by climate change.

Name me a place where the impact of population growth hasn't had an order of magnitude more influence on arable land and renewable water resources per capita. Not Syria for instance. When people put their minds and loins to it, they can double population every couple decades with ease. Sea level rise is sedentary by comparison ... also at our gauges it just stubbornly refuses to accelerate.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #14 on: May 14, 2018, 02:45:18 pm »
Name me a place where the impact of population growth hasn't had an order of magnitude more influence on arable land and renewable water resources per capita. Not Syria for instance. When people put their minds and loins to it, they can double population every couple decades with ease. Sea level rise is sedentary by comparison ... also at our gauges it just stubbornly refuses to accelerate.
It's the combination that's so lethal. Places will become less habitable and yields will decline, while demand still grows. That's not going to fly. Either one is already an issue.
 

Offline apis

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1667
  • Country: se
  • Hobbyist
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #15 on: May 14, 2018, 03:03:10 pm »
Fossil fuel consumption took flight around WW2, our tidal gauges have yet to give a shit, I think we'll have a bit of time to adapt to climate change. Population growth in Africa, Middle East and Asia has a much bigger impact on resources per capita than climate change.
I worried about overpopulation as well before, but the fact is that birthrates are not increasing anymore. As people get more educated and child mortality goes down the birthrate also goes down. The earths human population will continue to grow for a few more years (because the largest generations haven't gotten old enough to start die yet) but is believed to stabilise at around 12 billion. It's explained well in this TED lecture:


Our tidal gauges do show an acceleration in sea level rise:
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/impacts/causes-of-sea-level-rise.html
And here is a animation by NOAA showing how the arctic sea ice is disappearing:

It's now so little ice you can reliably ship goods on the arctic ocean (north of Russia) during summer, which is why Russia is retrofitting their old ports along the arctic ocean:
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2018/01/arctic-seaports-bustle-shipping-northern-sea-route-reaches-new-high

There is inertia in the climate system. Unfortunately the really bad effects will not be apparent to "joe average" until several years from now, but the chance to do something about it is today (or rather yesterday really). We should have stopped emitting co2 completely already, instead we are not only emitting more co2 than ever before, the rate at which the emissions are increasing is increasing (i.e. we are accelerating when we should have stopped already :().

EDIT: sorry, looks like we got way off topic here.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2018, 03:19:58 pm by apis »
 
The following users thanked this post: BrianHG

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6686
  • Country: nl
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #16 on: May 14, 2018, 03:18:30 pm »
Our tidal gauges do show an acceleration in sea level rise

Except they don't, it's the satellite data which is more sensitive which just happens to show a break from the trend which for pure gauge data is so faint that it disappears based on your choice of statistical tools ... I'll wait till I can see it on the actual gauge data, which I trust far more. Especially the ones read by my countrymen, I'm chauvinist like that.
 

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26682
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #17 on: May 14, 2018, 03:45:31 pm »
Name me a place where the impact of population growth hasn't had an order of magnitude more influence on arable land and renewable water resources per capita. Not Syria for instance. When people put their minds and loins to it, they can double population every couple decades with ease. Sea level rise is sedentary by comparison ... also at our gauges it just stubbornly refuses to accelerate.
It's the combination that's so lethal. Places will become less habitable and yields will decline, while demand still grows. That's not going to fly. Either one is already an issue.
Not just that. If the sea levels really rise than many places will have huge problems because they have no walls to keep the sea water out. When I visited Helsinki I noticed that the level of the water was only like 50 or 60 cm lower than the shore.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline station240

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 967
  • Country: au
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #18 on: May 14, 2018, 04:12:45 pm »
Coal is dying for economic reasons anyway, cost to much to run compared to alternatives.
Nothing new about equipment getting upgraded one year, then shut down for good the next.
At some point the cost of repairing what did need major repairs, exceeds what money it could bring in as income.

Compare solar to coal
Solar produces power when pointed at the sun.
Coal turbine produces power when feed tons of coal, and keep clean of ash.

Solar maintenance is cleaning dust from panels, and the odd bit of electronics to replace.
Coal turbine maintenance is not bothering to clean the black dust and rust off, heavy welding, pipework, electrical work etc.

Solar power plant is still young in age.
Coal Turbine is a from the 1950's to 1970s, with all the problems that come with it.

Solar produces power where ever there is sunlight
Coal Turbine produces power in places where coal exists, or a railroad.

Solar is just far less work/expense to keep running, has almost no single points of failure, no need to keep shovelling black dirt into it.
As for all this baseload nonsense, the terms you need to learn are "minimum load" and "demand curve"
Solar isn't a problem as people tend to use most of their power when the sun is in the sky.
Wind isn't a problem as the wind is always blowing somewhere in the country, site lots of turbines in areas with few wind free days, and switch off some if you get too much energy.

From wikipedia: "EnergyAustralia began the process of removing useful equipment from the station in 2015"
This didn't happen yesterday, the company are the ones that pulled the plug to lack of cheap coal.

I don't see why politics needs to be involved, in what is honestly about modernising the power grid with modern technology.
NSW does have a very heavy use of coal generated electricity, compared to all the other states, not sure why they are forcing their outdated thinking onto the rest of the country.

I'm not going to shed a tear for a power station built in 1957, it's probably lasted far longer than the engineers that designed it ever intended.
 

Offline apis

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1667
  • Country: se
  • Hobbyist
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #19 on: May 14, 2018, 04:30:02 pm »
Our tidal gauges do show an acceleration in sea level rise
Except they don't, it's the satellite data which is more sensitive which just happens to show a break from the trend which for pure gauge data is so faint that it disappears based on your choice of statistical tools ... I'll wait till I can see it on the actual gauge data, which I trust far more. Especially the ones read by my countrymen, I'm chauvinist like that.
Looks like your fellow countrymen also think there is a problem:
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/01/average-sea-level-rises-along-the-dutch-coast-hits-highest-level/
https://www.uu.nl/en/news/total-range-of-sea-level-rise-greater-than-expected

If you are only willing to believe in cherrypicked data from the Netherlands no amount of facts or science will change your mind so discussing it further is sort of meaningless.
 

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6686
  • Country: nl
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #20 on: May 14, 2018, 04:43:03 pm »
The latter is prediction, the former doesn't even care about acceleration, just the steady rise. The gauge data is in the thread for anyone to see. Den Helder is representative, averaging our gauges with long term data just makes it even more of a straight line.
 

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6686
  • Country: nl
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #21 on: May 14, 2018, 04:53:40 pm »
Coal is dying for economic reasons anyway, cost to much to run compared to alternatives.

Autarky is worth a bit of money, paying a premium for native fossil fuel makes sense. It's not like we haven't had a systemic collapse of the global economy and trade before. Given the lower price of gas turbine plants, (underground) gasification might make more sense than pure coal for Australia though. Especially if it's just for backup for solar/wind.

Quote
Solar isn't a problem as people tend to use most of their power when the sun is in the sky.

Not if they start using EVs.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2018, 04:56:23 pm by Marco »
 

Offline nctnico

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 26682
  • Country: nl
    • NCT Developments
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #22 on: May 14, 2018, 04:55:04 pm »
The latter is prediction, the former doesn't even care about acceleration, just the steady rise. The gauge data is in the thread for anyone to see. Den Helder is representative, averaging our gauges with long term data just makes it even more of a straight line.
The problem is that measuring the exact sea level is next to impossible because the water surface on earth isn't shaped like a perfect sphere. There are not only the tides and winds but also gravitational effects caused by other planets and the uneally distributed land mass on the earth itself. So even without tidal effects from other planets and wind the water level still wouldn't be shaped like a sphere.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #23 on: May 14, 2018, 04:56:09 pm »
The latter is prediction, the former doesn't even care about acceleration, just the steady rise. The gauge data is in the thread for anyone to see. Den Helder is representative, averaging our gauges with long term data just makes it even more of a straight line.
Let's assume you're right and it's a steady rise. We're still boned. There are plenty of countries where a small rise means swamping huge bits of land. People tend to concentrate near the coast. Massive amounts of people will be displaced. There are already inhabited islands disappearing under the sea. Whether it's an accelrated or steady increase is patato patato. It's very bad news either way.
 

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6686
  • Country: nl
Re: Wallerawang Power Station is dead forever
« Reply #24 on: May 14, 2018, 04:58:12 pm »
As I said, we're fucked in so many ways ... climate change is just a funny little far off problem we can concentrate on to distract ourselves from the more intractable ones on our doorstep.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf