This incident has reinforced that view for me. As Robert says, it does seem to back up the idea that these plants are safe – a big quake (although far from the biggest) right underneath it and we get nothing of great danger. On the other hand they are talking about the thing being shut down for over a year. That has to play hell with the economics of such a capital intensive project. How long would it take to fix a solar plant suffering similar damage?

The “storage and conversion” technology they vaguely allude to sounds as though it would be quite revolutionary and have applications well beyond solar power. If so it would be worth billions, and probably tens of billions. Chances of an outfit like Ausra coming up with a revolutionary solar technology AND a revolutionary energy storage technology are remote.

An investor like Vinod Khosla probably has stakes in dozens of assorted technology ventures at any one time. Nothing necessarilly sinister about that, but only a pretty slim percentage ever work. There have probably been 15-30 or so “alternative power” outfits listed on the ASX in recent decades, I doubt any have had any significant sucess; except those who simply applied established technology – wind farms, landfill methane etc.

Clearly, it “works” at some level. The key question, however, is how well it works and how much it costs to build, and what their storage technology is (they’ll be heating up something, but whether it’s water, oil, or solid matter is anybody’s guess).

If you actually read the transcript, the Californian solar station is said to be 20 years old. Presumably it uses rather different techmnology to the other current initiatives mentioned by 4 Corners. It seems to be the only one actually built in California and despite Scwarzeneggers recent renewable targets there seem to be no plans to build any more solar stations in California – which makes it obvious that solar is currently uncompetitive even with other renewables and even in a sunny climate.
The solar station at Vegas hasn’t been built yet (though it sounds like it probably will be). The transcript makes it clear that it is high cost too and made viable by the geographic isolation of Vegas and presumably some form of subsidy.
I suspect for the Ausra thing to go anywhere it needs to demonstrate both that its own technology works (it doesn’t as yet according to MacFarlane), AND that that rather vague energy storage and conversion technology works as well.
Solar System’s project at Mildura could kindly be described as “speculative”.

You should be aware that startup technology companies and venture capitalists are not noted pessimism.

See this 4 Corners program for details.

So what exactly is a “Concentrating Solar Thermal Power Station” ? Are any of these CSTPS beasties currently operating anywhere on earth?
Similarly Geothermal is entirely unproven, except at shallow depths. There are no shallow geothermal resources in Australia – the nearest is probably Roturua.

Unfortunately we can’t rely on science fiction for our electricity supplies.

You’ve got that wrong if you think that I am in any way supporting Nuclear Fission reactors for Australia. Australias National power demand peaked at 33 gigawatts the other day (supposedly). That would be supplied in my scheme of things from thirty one gig Concentrating Solar Thermal Power stations and a small number of Geothermal Power stations providing non solar balancing, along with a measure of wind, solar photovoltaic, and biomass facilities. The all up investment for this could be under the 100 billion dollars. That would supply todays power needs. Then that would need to be expanded to cover electric vehicle charging.

Australia has no energy problem. It has a leadership problem.

Currently it is fact that about 15% of the worlds electricity is from nuclear – lets assume there are 200 nuclear plants operative. 10000 similar nuclear plants to supply elrectric cars implies that we would need about 7.5 times our entire current electricity supply to replace oil in cars!

Can’t see that happening.