The great energy debate

The current debate over renewable energy and where to spend the money has demonstrated, once again, that that our political leaders
understand little and listen even less.

Tony Abbot and Joe Hockey don't like the look of wind turbines!!! Are these machines any more offensive than smoke belching coal fired power
stations?? Even if they are this seems to be a pathetic excuse for abandoning spending on wind.

I have heard that the cost of producing electricity from wind turbines has come down to very near the break even point. Alan Jones - on last night's
QandA - disputes this, and if his figures are to be believed then spending in this way might still be a case of whistling in the wind.

Solar power is another matter. Costs of generation there have come down as production refinements and efficiency gains have crept up.
More improvements are in the pipeline but we will have to wait to see if the promised gains materialize.

Little talk has entered the debate regarding tidal power generation, a fact I find baffling since most of Australia's population lives near the coastal regions.

Other generating ideas include geothermal- whereby hot spots in the earth's crust can be used to force superheated steam through generating turbines -
and Batteries.The problems at present with these two are that hot spots seem to be located far from the population centres and the cost of development
enormous.(John Howard was a proponent of the hot spot idea if my memory serves me correctly) Batteries suffer from development costs and disposal costs.

Two things seem to have escaped the minds of Abbot and Hockey. One is that solar power is only available when the sun shines while wind power is only
available when the wind blows, be it day or night. Wind power may prove more reliable for the grid, a feature of our lifestyle that we cannot abandon easily'.

When do we think that the polies might have sensible approach and debate? Probably never!!

Perhaps the power generators have too much behind the scenes sway in this debate,> Perhaps the public at large is just not interested enough.

What says the shed's brains trust on this matter??

The powers that be are heavily invested in the fossil fuel companies and therefore they pay lip service to renewables while in fact they direct policy to the disadvantage of those technologies. Take for instance Texas. Enormous investment has been made in wind power by the big utilities and at the same time the pols are advancing the idea of a punitive tax on roof-top solar. The difference is that the big utilities, and their share holders, are the only entities having the scale needed to reasonably exploit wind. Individuals however can buy roof-top solar and the power produced by individuals doesn't contribute to shareholder value for the big utilities and their purchased politicians. When I was young public utilities were granted monopolies and in return they were heavily regulated. Now utilities are private and unregulated. Individuals that produce their own power are their competition.

The problem with all these technologies is that they are not capable of generating constant baseload energy. They are fine as a partial replacement for major power generating plants such as coal, gas or nuclear but they cannot provide all our power 24/7.

The wind doesn't blow constantly, the sun doesn't shine constantly.

The trouble with coal fired power plants, apart from their obvious pollution, is that they cannot be switched on or of at a moments' notice.

I experience the shortcoming of solar frequently in our 5th wheeler, get a few days of no sun and the batteries don't get charged, so either plug in to mains power or run a generator.

I truly believe that solar and wind will always be a peripheral power source. The other problem with solar is the energy consumed in their manufacture - China produces a very large proportion of solar panels, using very dirty power stations to generate the electricity needed to produce them. I would like to see an honest cost-benefit analysis done on solar panels in terms of energy used in production and pollution/green house gas emitted vs energy produced during their life span.

We need to look at things like (the already mentioned) geothermal, wave energy and (dare I say it) nuclear (as France has done).

I think wave energy has its uses.
http://proteanwaveenergy.com.au/

They are currently building a wave farm at Yanchep beach in WA. iirc it will have one buoy with 1.5kw output initially, but the plan is to have 30 of them in the future generating 45kw. So long as the waves are rolling, the thing is pumping out power. Ideally it will be used for island nations which are currently producing electricity using diesel. its supposed to be a whiz bang device, better than its competitors in the wave energy race. for the purposes of full disclosure, if it succeeds, i might become a rich man (though it would need epic success for my meager holdings to make me rich). it is listed on the ASX with ticker code SHE.

As usual Australia fiddles while the world passes us by.

One of the world's hardest nosed no-bulldust engineering and service based economies is Germany. remember they also don't have anywhere near the sunshine we have.

From Wikipedia.

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Germany's renewable energy sector is among the most innovative and successful worldwide. Net-generation from renewable energy sources in the German electricity sector has increased from 6.3% in 2000 to about 30% in 2014.^[1][2] For the first time ever, wind, biogas, and solar combined accounted for a larger portion of net electricity production than brown coal.^[3] While peak-generation from combined wind and solar reached a new all-time high of 74% in April 2014,^[4] wind power saw its best day ever on December 12, 2014, generating 562 GWh.^[5] Germany has been called "the world's first major renewable energy economy".^[6][7]

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and as far as targets go

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• Renewable national electricity—40 to 45% by 2025, 55 to 60% by 2035, and 80% by 2050^[19]
• Renewable national energy—18% by 2020, 30% by 2030, and 60% by 2050
• Energy efficiency:
  
  • Energy consumption—reduction of 20% from 2008 level by 2020, and 50% less by 2050
  • Electricity consumption—reduction of 10% from 2008 level by 2020, and 25% less by 2050

The German Government reported, in 2011, renewable energy (mainly wind turbines and biomass plants) generated more than 123 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, providing nearly 20% of the 603 TWh of electricity supplied.^[20]

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By the way that's 3 x total Australian electricity requirements are being produced by renewables!

The issue of baseload reduces significantly if adequate storage is provided and a national grid is running correctly. In a country like Australia its always wavy, windy or hot somewhere.

Instead of investing in non-fossil fuel power generation and storage solutions we continue to subsidise fossil fuel generators.
in a few decades time all we will have to show are holes in the ground and a bunch of run down filthy fossil fuel power generating plants and we will have to pay top $ for solutions from overseas.

I've posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating in this thread:

Good batteries are the solution to night use. The Tesla Powerwall has been recently released, which will hopefully be developed along the lines of Alum Ion batteries. The short story with Alum Ion is 1000x the recharging cycles compared to Li Ion (so 1000x less disposal problem), charging time is superfast, no danger if punctured (somehow). They can also be moulded (think car panels)

I don't know where my electricity comes from, gas, coal or nuke, but the thing I've done is put LED everywhere in this unit. I can leave all the lights on for a draw of...50 Watt. Down from 550. It was a little expensive, about $100 worth of bulbs, but my calculations based on an energy cost of around 20 yen per kWh sees me saving 15000 yen after deducting the purchase of the bulbs over a year. Multiply that by the 4 million households in Osaka and you are talking major reductions in energy consumption.

So add renewables into the mix, and the reliance on fossils is accelerated down by more than the factor of just the addition of renewables.

Everything else, is just politics.

If you are interested in this area, watch Elon Musk's Tesla power wall presentation. He's a hopeless presenter, but a brilliant mind. I found it fascinating how small an area would be needed to supply the entire power needs of the USA using solar panels. And Tesla has an expandable solution that can harness solar power for (consistent, reliable) use when the sun doesn't shine. This type of battery technology will keep improving over time.

And Australia has a vast area of sparsely populated desert where the sunshine is constant (during the day) and relentless. Imagine harnessing the solar power from the long summers of the Antarctic and Arctic regions. We're only just touching the surface in this area.

The placement of solar arrays, at present, is almost invariably done in isolated areas far from the major sources of consumption.
This being the case then transmission costs begin to raise their ugly head.

Apparently a couple of advances have been made regarding the size of solar panels and their ability to deal with extreme heat.
These two advances could drastically reduce the area needed to produce solar electricity and the need for extensive and expensive
distribution networks but, as has already been pointed out, this is only part of the solution.

Whle our polies insist that they know best and their will be done I fear we will lurch from one shoddy and hapless policy to another.

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Originally Posted by artme

Whle our polies insist that they know best and their will be done I fear we will lurch from one shoddy and hapless policy to another.

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Art, without wishing to divert too much from the main topic (although it's pretty related): I wonder how long it's going to take for another party (say the Greens) to become a sizable force to be reckoned with (I mean in the lower house where they can be more instrumental in formulating policy - not just confirming/denying what is put in front of them). Disaffection amongst the punters is getting to be right up there these days, with often very little perceivable difference between Labor and Liberal (Liberal in the normal mode, not the lurch to the 1940s that we are experiencing now). Plenty of other countries have coalitions nutted out, and maybe that's a way to get better policy. Right now it sucks.

A lady that I can't remember the name of suggested she might launch the "Normal Party" a few months ago on Q&A. Cracker! Bring it on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by artme

I have heard that the cost of producing electricity from wind turbines has come down to very near the break even point. Alan Jones - on last night's
QandA - disputes this, and if his figures are to be believed then spending in this way might still be a case of whistling in the wind.

Two things seem to have escaped the minds of Abbot and Hockey. One is that solar power is only available when the sun shines while wind power is only
available when the wind blows, be it day or night. Wind power may prove more reliable for the grid, a feature of our lifestyle that we cannot abandon easily'.


What says the shed's brains trust on this matter??

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Two things.

1) if in doubt, assume Alan Jones is wrong. It will save you a lot of time. There is a media watch episode that delves into just how wrong Alan Jones was in this occasion. Basically he the figures he used for wind costs had a decimal point moved to the right. $140.7 became $1407.0 (possibly not those exact numbers, but you get the idea). To be partially fair, he go his numbers from noted propaganda rag the Australian, which again, is only good for starting fires and lining bird cages.

Take away point is that wind is already competing with coal economically. The powers that be don't want people two know this, and so hide the fact.

2) the same powers that be spend a considerable amount of time and money spreading lies about solar and wind power, the most prevalent of which you have swallowed. Thanks to solar thermal towers that can store electricity they can produce power over night. There are some bunch of power storage options that get round the problem.

If you would like to read some actual solutions that can provide 100% of Australia's power needs via renewables then I suggest you look up the WA2.0 plan. It lays it all out there.

Currently there is no single power source that provides a perfect solution.

They all have a serious flaw. I believe that for the forseeable future there will be a variety of power options in the mix. The base load issue means that fossil fueled stations will provide that facility for quite a while yet, but that should not prohibit the development of other sources of power: Except that the vested interests of big business and the successful lobbying with associated scaremongering tactics will slow down what should be an exponential rise in alternative power.

My own belief is that solar will triumph in the end as it can be regarded as an infinite source. However the materials from which the panels are made may not be an infinite source. The cost of manufacturing panels and wind turbines being mmore than they return I see as a smoke screen by the traditional power producers.

A little more encouragement and the alternative energies will romp away. It is just that which prompts the traditional power producers and their puppet governments to drag the chain.

I have a family member who thinks solar panels are an eyesore :doh: .

(For the record, I work in a privately owned, supercritical, fossil fired power station as a control room operator).

Regards
Paul

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Originally Posted by Bushmiller

My own belief is that solar will triumph in the end as it can be regarded as an infinite source. However the materials from which the panels are made may not be an infinite source. The cost of manufacturing panels and wind turbines being mmore than they return I see as a smoke screen by the traditional power producers.
...
(For the record, I work in a privately owned, supercritical, fossil fired power station as a control room operator).

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What a reasonable thread this has been so far.

I wont add much for now, but I will comment on solar panels.

Materials, we wont run out in the foreseeable future. They are made chiefly of silicon (think sand and quartz, more than you can ever poke a stick at) with tiny quantities of phosphorus (produced in millions of tonnes per year, think fertilisers and explosives) and boron (also produced in millions of tonnes per year, used in fibre glass, insulation, glassware etc).
If we ever run out of these materials the world will have bigger problems than no solar cells (eg not enough food!)

I had the discussion at work a couple of weeks ago wrt "they cost more to make than they generate" and here's a simple first order basis to think about the problem (and applies to any other source of energy too);
You as a consumer purchase some cells. If you have done your homework, over the lifetime of the panels they should generate some energy which saves you money which covers the original cost of the cells.
But the original cost of the cells _includes_ the cost of the materials and energy in their manufacture as well as other costs like the cost of transport from manufacturer to your installation.
Unless you believe that someone, somewhere in the chain is purposefully making a loss, then the original energy used to make the cell (and even to store and transport it), which is reflected in the cost of the cell, is covered by the energy you generate up to the point of break even.
Yes, this depends on level playing field between country of manufacture costs and local rebates etc, etc. But as a first approximation this is hard logic to beat.

Regards
SWK

(For the record, I _used_ to work in a fossil fired power station as a control room operator :U).

It has been a great thread. On the solar panel cost the new ultra thin ones are close to paying for themselves in 1 yr with a 30 yr life.

The future of energy is exciting. Check out the latest developments on hydrogen extraction from synthetic photosynthesis by googling hydrogen leaf technology.



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Agree an interesting thread . . .

What intrigues me is that Aus seems to have some very heavy users in the "Industry" column that are relatively invisible to the general populace/user.

Just a rough Google comparison says that Sweden - has roughly double a per capita use of letricity and even then half the power is used by Industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...ctor_in_Sweden

Aus - Industry uses three times what residential use is - http://www.esaa.com.au/policy/data_a...y_in_australia

I think until we can go to work on the "solar dime" -We are faffing around on the edges of this debate.