@ Elise: Am I reading that correctly? They say that the grid should buy the electricity from the fuel cells, but only at the retail electricity price, not at an inflated tarrif?Normally I’m opposed to the idea of inflated feed-in tarrifs for solar photovoltaics, etc, but if they’re just paying for the electricity at 100% of the normal retail rate I can’t see any problem with that.

CSIRO predicts huge market for Distributed Generation.

The Australian Government research organisation, CSIRO, has released a detailed study of the value proposition for distributed energy in Australia.
The study estimates the value of wide-scale uptake of distributed energy in Australia could be worth as much as A$130 billion in today’s money by 2050.

Australian Academy of Science Calls for Fuel Cell Feed-in Tariff.

The Australian Academy of Science has released a report on ‘Australia’s Renewable Energy Future’.

The report includes a strong endorsement of the need to transform Australia’s energy system, and the role for highly efficient fuel cell generators.
The report recommends several options for encouraging the deployment of fuel cell products, including a national system of feed-in tariff rates for combined heat and power (CHP) domestic generation.

ACT Government – Electricity Feed-in Tariff Consultation.

The Australian Capital Territory (Canberra, for our overseas readers!) introduced a feed-in on 1 March 2009. The ACT Government is currently consulting on the possible expansion of the scheme.

Ceramic Fuel Cells has made a submission, calling for the scheme to be expanded to require electricity retailers to buy back power exported to the grid from small scale, low emission technologies like fuel cell generators, on a ‘1 for 1’ feed in tariff equal to the retail electricity price.

Ceramic Fuel Cells in the Media.

There has been a lot of PR recently about US company Bloom Energy. Bloom have been around for about 8 years (they used to be called Ion America) but have only recently come out of ‘stealth’ mode.

Bloom is also developing solid oxide fuel cell products, but for a different application and target market: Bloom is making large (100kW) units for commercial and industrial installations; we are focused on small generators (1-2kW) for residential markets. It is quite difficult to scale fuel cells up and down between these market segments. Fuel cells are a bit like batteries: they are best suited to certain sizes (eg a watch battery cannot be scaled up to power a car or vice versa).

We think it’s good news that Bloom has generated a lot of media attention. They can help educate the media, policy makers and the general public about fuel cells and the enormous benefits of distributed generation.

The full industry news release is available on their website http://www.cfcl.com.au

Sure, by all means, let’s encourage aluminium recycling, but the need for new aluminium isn’t going to go away. The problem here is brown coal fired power stations, not aluminium. We need to substitute the coal-fired generators for clean energy.

@Danny, 50: Gavin Mudd seems to be the go-to guy for conclusions that seem to be biased towards opposing any form of uranium mining wherever possible. Are there other experts and other independent scientists out there providing a separate body of research on similar issues that come to similar conclusions to Mudd?

Putting 18 tonnes of sulfuric acid into 7000 tonnes of water is indeed a very small change in pH. And contrary to what Mudd implies, that lixiviant is continuously being recycled through the injection wells.

It’s not true that in-situ leach extraction with an acid solution is not allowed in the US – it’s just that they normally use an alkali solution because that’s what’s better suited to their rock chemistry. More info in here somewhere.

Out there in the SA outback where the GeoDynamics and PetraTherm projects are, there aren’t many transmission lines and there aren’t many electricity users.
The mines such as Olympic Dam, Honeymoon and Beverley are some of the closest other developed areas.

There is a correlation in Australia between where those hot rock resources are and where uranium resources are – and that’s not a coincidence, since radioactivity makes that rock hot. They don’t want to build long transmission lines, and those mines are the closest consumers of electricity that they can connect up to to sell their energy.

These guys couldn;t lie straight in bed, cos they’re worried s’less whether they are gonna get away with loading their debts ( which they accumulated with bad business decisions, expanding their coal exposure) onto the cost of new plant. In their parlance they can’t invest in new, more environmentally responsible, plant unless they have a healthy balance sheet. IE, “We demand the right to send good money after bad”.

How about we just take them out of the equation, let them and their chinese masters swing with their debts, and new players take up the challenge with a clean slate.
Players financed by super funds, who are said to have over a trillion dollars in management.

At the mid-cost point of McIndoes various cost reports for Tallawarra, (430-750 mill), say 600 mill for a 450mW plant, Yallourn can be replaced with less than 2 billion. The entire latrobe brown coal fleet is 6000 Mw, so a mere 10 billion will see all that off to the scrap heap, and provide some extra capacity besides.

That’s only 1% of the national superannuation kitty. And that nice Mr. McIndoe informs us that a 20 increase in the cost of electricity will cover the running cost difference, which I feel sure a large percent of the popultation, with super, would reckon is an eminently do-able imposte. Their household power bills will probably still be less than that of their mobile phones.

So when you say the problem is indifference on the part of the poplulous (sic), that can be true and still have a (significant, partial, temporary) solution coming a minor portion of the populace’s resources, a few percent of the superannuation aggregate.

And don’t tell me the money invested will be wasted, non-productive. The drover’s dog could build a healthy business selling greenish energy to Victorians, including those nice people at Alcoa.

The likes of McIndoe just don’t want to, and are being allowed not to.

None of this will ever happen of course.

You are 100% correct that the root cause of the problem is indifference from the populous. The vast majority of people simply don’t care, and that majority is clearly getting bigger in recent months. Humanity is not equipped to solve this problem.

Hydrogeologist Gavin Mudd, of the Civil Engineering Department at Monash University, states that the ISL technique “treats groundwater as a sacrifice zone and the problem remains out of sight, out of mind.”

However, Ric Phillips of General Atomics wonders what all the fuss is about. “Essentially, the mining fluid is existing ground water from the formation. We add a little bit of oxidant and a little bit of acid. … Essentially, it’s a water pumping exercise.” Phillips possibly understates the quantities required in the process, given that for every ton of yellowcake which is produced, 18 tons of sulphuric acid, one ton of hydrogen peroxide and 7,000 tons of water are required.

From what I can gather, salient (ahem) points are: the company hasn’t done much work on how the ore bearing deposit aquifer connects to other aquifers beyond it’s immediate lease area, it’s an unknown; US homeland comapanies aren’t allowed to use acid ISL, Beverley was the first in the west to be allowed to go that low in environmental maltreatment, and there’s more to follow (Honeymoon); ‘excursions’ and accidents do happen. Basically they couldn’t give a toss about polluting a groundwater resource, even though there’s good reason to expect it might be needed in the future for servicing the “actual biosphere” as you put it.

There may be no shortage of hot rocks in SA, John D, but there is an extreme shortage hot rock geothermal power there. In fact there is none of it at all.

Possibly a pedantic distinction in the context of the remark (a pedant? moi?), but I do think that in a thread railing about the evils of Loy Yang realism on what might replace it and when is essential. There are too many blithe assumptions of technological progress providing sure future answers in this sort of debate – and there are plenty of problems currently being encountered by the geothermal companies in SA with no guarantees of commercially viable solutions.