You seem to be suggesting that only residential households should be generating the nation’s total power requirements? I am deducing this from your figures that total electricity consumption was 187 TWh, and 3 million residential natural gas customers, all equipped with 4 BlueGen units. Why only residential households? Why not install BlueGen in office blocks, small businesses, light industry, etc?

You also seem to be suggesting that the government foots the bill for all of the generation capacity? They don’t foot the total bill anywhere else, so why would they do so here? It would seem more likely that they would provide an incentive with a rebate or favourable feed-in tariff arrangement, thus paying far less, whether up-front (rebates) or by installment (feed-in tariff). The total would thus be far less than the stimulus package.

Furthermore, why would the generation capacity be installed all at once? You are talking about 3 million households @ 4 BlueGen/household, i.e. a total of 12 million BlueGen units! There is a small problem of rate of supply of units, and skilled manpower to install them. It would all take considerable time, even where there was an urgent mandate.

I did a previous blog on estimated time for installation of household solar PV, using a compound growth model, to show that even a reasonably steep rate of growth of installation capacity say 26% pa would mean a 20 year installation period. To shrink it to 10 years (a DECADE, no less) would mean an annual growth rate of about 60% pa. Surely something similar would apply here?

The cost of any rebate or subsidy is probably going to be spread out over a decade or more, even with the best will in the world. Rome wasn’t built in a day…

At June 06, there were 3.755 million rswidential natural gas customers in Oz, lets say 3 million. If they were all bluegen equipped, each @ 17,000 kwh/y, that’s 51,000 million kwh/y, = 51 billion = 51 TWh. produced.

In 2006 Australia’s electricity cosumption was 187 TWh after production and transmission losses, energy sector cosumption, and aluminium exports.

So we just need to bang in and connect 4 bluegen units on average per gas household. HB had a $8k/unit cost, so that’s 8000 x 3miilion sites x 4 units per site = 96 billion bucks.

Ross Gittins reckons $97 billion went up in the Government’s explicit spending and revenue decisions since last year’s budget,’aka the economic stimulus. So let’s not say it’s an impossible spend. I’m sure the future would thank us more for that sort of enterprise than the bunch of tin sheds pretending to be school buildings that Julia has given it.

We could put the bluegen devices in the school tin sheds, schools have a good dispersal factor, as to matching population density, and they are a catchment for superannuants, aka parents. Maybe there’s a business model whereby schools leasing their sheds to the greener power providers, which actually are financially formed from part of the parents’ super arrangements, creates a distributed education financing opportunity.

However the replacemnt gets done: Power generation contributes 37% of the country’s net carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions, so the 2-3 fold higher fuel-to-power efficiencies of SOFC compared to from coal, which accounts for 77% of our power generation, would halve the coal-fired power generation CO2 imposte, meaning we would have more or less achieved a 20% reduction in the country’s net carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions.

Which would be a super thing to do with super.

My current belief is that Huggybunny was on the money, suggesting that a smart grid and localised power generation (BlueGen, solar PV, small wind turbines, etc) could totally revolutionise the power generation paradigm. We may be at the cusp of something really amazing.

Further to BlueGen, it can be modulated from effectively 0 – 100% power. This means that you can use it to take up the slack from your solar PV system, thus minimising gas consumption.

Of course, if the government saw fit to arrange a decent feed-in tariff system, then households might be pursuaded to run their BlueGens flat-chat, which generates income for themselves and power for the grid. Beats the hell out of building more coal-fired power stations for our future Big Australia.

Smart meters and a smart grid makes this brave new world feasible. But we need a change of mindset in the government. Rudd/Wong need to really decide whether they are honestly trying to reduce reliance on coal-fired power or just feeding us spin.

If we’re going to only achieve an agreement to domestically set targets, what does that mean for the range of 5-25%? If up to 25% is predicated on internationally agreed targets, which doesn’t seem likely to be achieved, doesn’t that mean we’ve only got a domestic target of 5%?

Seems pretty light on to me.

Not sure he’ll get to read it, but, well, he does give us the opportunity to write so I thought I’d take him up on the offer.

This diagram shows emissions growth developing countries relative to developed countries.

With lags in the system and if we remove aerosols we are already committed to perhaps 1.9C.

- took up the challenge of managing the cornerstone financing of a distributed green(er than coal) power company, based on Bluegen or other sofc technology,

- whereby participants (= holders of greensupershares) hosted bluegen units, which sound amenable to automatic remote management and accounting aftere the incoming gas is connected, and the outgoing power is metered,

- and sold the excess greener power onto the grid at a premium over browner power, contributing to the mandated RET tally, (such as is the case in germany and some US states), creating an earner for the distributed greener power company

If you were allowed to, as a hupothetical wageslave, would you be keen to have *some* of your compulsory super, AND the government rebate your investment would attract, (like your investment in suburban solar pv does) put into such a hybrid super fund/ greener power infrastructure financing vehicle, if the numbers stacked up to deliver returns on par with say capital guaranteed funds?

Since the objectives are to encourage reduction in aggregate power usagee, and for the facility to make money, an arrangement whereby greenersupershareholders get a supplementary dividend based on the net power they export to the grid, (encouraging mismisiation of their own consumption, and maximising the earnings of greenersuperpower copmny), could be suitably carrot like.

There are precedents for super funds being owners of power company: Industry Funds Management, an umbrella management group for 36 industry super funds, owns 350 megawatts of hydro and wind power operating in Australia, Asia and Brazil, and another 340 megawatts under construction in Chile; and the motor trades association superannuation fund is 12.8% owner of Loy Yang A brown coal power station.

It looks like the existing coalified utilities have neither the brains, conscience or guts to do their bit, so someone’s gotta step into the breach, and super funds are perfect for such a long term enterprise.

Consider the converted Hyundai Getz with the 16 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery pack: 16 kWh gives 120 km of driving, or 0.13 kWh/km.

If the power was from normal household electricity, generated using coal-fired power, then we have about 1 kg CO2 emissions per kWh. Thus charging the car produces 130 g/km emissions. The best ECO cars and small diesels also produce 130 g/km.

If the power was from BlueGen electricity, then it has about half the emissions per kWh, so charging the car would produce 65 g/km emissions. This would provide a significant improvement in the annual carbon footprint for most households, which would have cars producing more than 200 g/km (and thus more than 2 tonne/year for each car, assuming 10,000 km/year).

To my knowledge there are no cars commercially available with emission levels this low, not even the latest Prius (which is somewhat over 100 g/km, IIRC). A few European car manufacturers have prototype diesel-electric cars which could produce similarly low levels of emissions.

In terms of running costs for the electrified Hyundai Getz, say we assume 30c/kWh (i.e. peak electricity rates) then for 100 km we have:

Electrified Cost/100 km = 0.13 kWh/km * 100 km * $0.30/kWh = $4

By comparison, say petrol prices are $1.50/litre and it is city commuter driving @ 10 litres/100 km then we have:

Petrol Cost/100 km = 10 L/100 km * $1.50/L = $15

The electrified car is about a quarter of the running cost, assuming peak electricity rates. Off-peak recharging overnight would be at about one-third of this cost, say 10c/kWh, and thus the running cost of the car would be only $1.30/100 km.

Hey, how good is that!

$1.30 to drive 100 km, and you can wear your green halo as well…!!!

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