http://www.smh.com.au/national/labor-counts-the-cost-of-global-crisis-20090517-b7ee.html

Also with DLF’s, how did Ergon get uniform reductions and if this isn’t really important, why are they used to calculate price?

Its not the first time I’ve been called feral.

Distributed systems could come in handy if a solar storm fried the grid! You’d need distributed storage facilities, though.

Admit though, I failed high-school physics, have no idea how electricity decides where it wants to go on the grid, and this is all based on an assumption removing serveral thousand kms of lineage in western qld would provide additional energy efficiency gains from reducing transmissions losses (as well as reducing overall useage).

As I said, comments from a lay person. But real remote communities already use generators, PV cells etc, and I have driven through parts of rural qld, and once houses start getting several kms apart and at least a km back from the road, one does wonder at what densities does locally independent systems become cost-effective. It might be the transmissions losses are negligible compared to the actual energy used in running a computer beyond the back of Bourke and the reason they use generators in places like that already are simply infrastructure costs. Either way, if the price of technologies is going to change, it never hurts to start small before you go big if our goal is reducing emissions now. And I don’t understand why so much discussion has focused on that.

What are transmissions losses like and is there benefits/efficiences in tailoring the solar systems grant and other distributed power systems to the bush first rather than wealthy inner-city electorates?

I know it already happens in real remote areas, but wondering if the costs are achanging…

wilful @ 5, I thought Robert’s Geodynamics link was broken so I went into edit mode and fixed it like this.

I forget who was worried about water, but it doesn’t need much as it is a closed system and there is actually plenty of water down there amongst the fractured hot rock at great pressure.

I understand that Geodynamics reckon the can build the grid connection and still be competitive when they come to market in 2015.

I’d like to see the government put a formal moratorium on any new coal-fired power stations. I fancy they won’t have to, because the lenders will be afraid of stranded assets. I’d like to see all forms of technically viable renewables that have any prospect of being competitive brought to market with government help if necessary, and then have the government strategically withdraw.

On the budget in relation to climate change I’d give it somewhere between a conceded pass and 6 out of 10, if viewed from the perspective being adopted by the rest of the world including Obama, ie that we can do this at our leisure by 2050 as long as we don’t go above 2C and 450ppm. And to get there we’ll adopt policies that stand at least a 50% chance of failing.

The assumptions behind that perspective are false, I think. Nevertheless the first big step is to limit emissions and start to turn them down. The Rudd government might just achieve that by 2015 if still in power, but they are no certainties.

But I do think that Rudd and Co are roughly where the electorate wants them to be. It’s just that they lack leadership and there are no signs of a whole-of-government approach.

So to sum up they are doing passably well on the wrong strategy.

I was actually pretty pissed off when I read in the Fin Review that $2.5bn from the Education Investment Fund earmarked for schools was redirected to ‘clean’ energy. BTW, Mark Diesendorf reckons that the purpose of the flagship thermal solar initiative is to keep solar in demonstration mode and leave the real work to fossil fuels.

While the rellies were out in the country my wife and I were slumming around the Rijksmuseum.

Comments on the clean alternatives:
- Wind: Scope for improving windmills limited. Kite power being touted as a more reliable, lower cost alternative with the ugly bit far up in the sky. Should at least be seriously considering more involement in kite power. (Wide open spaces required for reducing risk if kite falls down.) HIGH POTENTIAL FOR KITE POWER.
- Solar PV: High potential for dramatic cost reduction/kwh for roof top installations. Roof top avoids need for additional power lines. it is also far more robust in the sense that it is much harder for terrorists etc. to shut down. VERY HIGH POTENTIAL FOR IMPROVEMENT IF WE FOCUS ON REDUCING COST OF ROOF TOP INSTEAD OF POWER/SQR METRE.
- Thermal CV: Most attractive when we get to the point of wanting to reduce coal consumption since it can use generators, switchyards etc. as well as having a generation plant that can use coal or gas power for back-up as required. Can evolve from small installation that replaces some coal fired heat through to full replacement of saturated steam while the sun shines through to provision of superheated steam through to full 24/7 supply of superheated steam using molten salt heat storage. Can see no reason why capital and operating costs can’t be driven down by mirror develpoments, automated mirror cleaning etc,
- Tidal and ocean currents: Potential to use “undersea windmills”, “undersea kites” etc. to recover power from weaker tides/currents whithout the need for environmentally threatening barrages or long power lines from the Kimberlies. Can give more consistent power. HIGH POTENTIAL FOR IMPROVEMENT IF WE FOCUS ON HARNESSING CONVENIENTLY LOCATED CURRENTS.
- Wave and geothermal power: Leave comments to the experts.

In case anyone hadn’t seen this idea, tensile wing kites flying in a constant figure of 8 pattern at speeds up to 20x the wind speed (depends on the lift/drag ratio of the wing) with small, light high speed generators attached to the wing.

Brief intro here:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20071012_003200.html

Less info than we be good here:

http://www.makanipower.com/home.html

And a presentation by Saul Griffith at TED:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/saul_griffith_on_kites_as_the_future_of_renewable_energy.html

Wind power isn’t just a big white thing on a hillside.

” So you cut it in half, that represents about 17% of Australia’s current emissions. There’s no way in the world you can meet the kind of targets we need to meet with that chunk of residual emissions continuing for another 30-40 years. None.”

This can be cut to near zero in a 30 year time frame, then continue to replace most transport emissions with electric powered vehicles.

Renewable is the path forward….maximum pace. The arguments of cost are are opportunistic foot dragging which will ultimately be demonstrated to be such as the cost of the status quo mounts with time.

By high costs, what are you comparing it to?

From the website:

Key factors confirmed by the report are the estimated capital expenditure per MW, which positions CETO close to wind turbines, but with more than twice the operating load factor, and the estimated operating expenditure per kWh which enables CETO to be economically competitive with fossil fuel-based generation.

Then think about the CO2 cost comparisons…

Anyway, time will tell on this one. Personally, I’m pretty optimistic and glad that I managed to get in on this action at the bottom of the market.

“Guess what – a solar thermal plant needs the exact same steam turbine and generator.”

Solar thermal needs a steam turbine, yes. But it is a very different turbine to a coal fired plant. Solar thermal produces saturated steam more akin to a nuclear power power plant. Coal powered steam temperatures are much higher.

But that has little to do with the cost of the electricity produced. The main penalty that Solar Thermal suffers from is the small army of people required to keep the mirrors clean for maximum reflectivity. Until recently this kept staffing at 2 people per megawatt. You do the maths on how that figures into electricity pricing. HOWEVER…a penalty of this nature is, as any good industrialist will tell you, is a major advantage. That staffing level can be moderated with machinery. It is projected that a staffing level of 500 people per gigawatt is a practical target in the near future.

A simple example of human labour cost to machinery cost. A $100,000 (computer numerically controlled) machine will have a monthly lease financing cost of around $1500. A basic semi skilled worker will cost around $5000 per month. The machine will work 24 hours seven days for the same equipment cost, plus fuel. The machine will have roughly 6 times the productive output of a person using manually controlled machinery in an engineering application within an 8 hour period. It is this multiplication factor that makes our standard of living possible. CNC machines still need people to manage and maintain them.

So the cost of solar thermal used in most evaluations to date has been based on old information derived from small scale installations, primitive prototype operating practices, and significant ignorance of the nature of the machinery of solar power conversion.

I did try at one point to find out how many people are required to man a 1 gig steam power plant along with the coal mine to supply it, but drew a blank.