I'm Sorry, base load power isn't necessary? Sure but only if you eliminate industry and transport and all dwellings have storage like a battery wall?

If you want base load options and the national grid then you can't go past solar thermal, which if rolled out as very large scale projects, competes very effectively with similar size coal projects (currently operating) in roll out costs.

The real difference becomes obvious, when in the case of coal, mountains of coal need to be delivered and burnt for decades at exponentially increasing cost, whereas, with solar thermal the only ongoing costs are routine maintenance!

Even so, we can do much better with very localised carbon free thorium power generation, Which given fuel use and requirements has to be much cheaper (half price) than coal!

Moreover, this liquid heat reaction consumes around 95% of its fuel type, leaving around 5% as vastly less toxic waste, which is eminently suitable as very long life space batteries!

We have enough to power the world for around 700 years, or ourselves for far longer if we are but intelligently led!

I like electric vehicles, trolley buses can be recharged on the go with a magnetic interface that is buried just below the pavement!

The new tesla Xover has a range exceeding 400 kilometres and competes with formula 1 in acceleration and top speed. Driverless cars of that genre, would make the best possible taxi service or car pooled transport to unlock our gridlocked highways. And could even share the proposed magnetic interface?

High speed rail might be powered via gas powered ceramic fuel cells? Meaning vast savings on rollout costs and critical infrastructure! The exhaust product from this most efficient of all combinations is mostly pristine water vapor.

Similarly most households can be powered 24/7 by the biological waste they create, which can produce methane which works nearly as well in ceramic fuel cells as hydrogen! And given a world bearing 80% energy coefficient; for far less than anything else under discussion!
Alan B.

As I previously written before:

It is pretty obvious renewables will never provide our entire electrical needs at current demand levels.

Nuclear is the solution, but not existing silly uranium powered technology.

Liquid Floride thorium reactors (LFTR) are the only sustainable electrical generation source we can sustainably rely on for the future.

LFTR operation not only provides cheap electricity, it can generate liquid fuels (similar to diesel), reprocess spent existing nuclear fuels, produce much needed medical isotopes and a myriad of other benefits. LFTR is also scalable and can be mass produced if required.

This technology is also safe, it operates at low pressure/high temperature, thereby negating the current nuclear technology problems and most importantly, the world has an abundance of Thorium unlike uranium.

A no brainer, we should embrace this technology now but probably won't because of political mismanagement, corruption via vested interests and the ridiculous scare mongering by green manta advocates.

Green energy, particularly in its current guise is a Ponzi scheme.

Geoff

The LCOE for new nuclear is probably way too high (perhaps double) after several are built and the 'behind the meter' cost of batteries probably assumes cost reductions that may not eventuate. Assumptions of a $30 carbon price and removal of renewable subsidies also seem politically unlikely. The article while necessarily brief doesn't say how much energy storage is envisioned. A plausibility check is that Australia burns through a Gwh of electricity every half a minute so x Gwh of storage is 2x minutes of power supply.

Studies like these sometimes assume huge (say fourfold) increases in energy efficiency which implies draconian reductions far greater than consumers will accept. I see no way peaking plant will be run on biofuel so long as there is an ounce of gas left... Rottnest and King Island are small demo projects, not mainstream. Then the prospect of 10 million electric cars is curiously glossed over. All this requires massive subsidies and acceptance of private costs or voluntary consumption cuts which are politically unlikely.

Alan,
Yes, electric cars are the future for transport; already happening.
Geoff (and Alan), nuclear is too expensive; (Taswegian has made this point) and the cost is increasing whereas wind and solar cost is decreasing.

Re solar CST, yes it has a place in the clean generation mix and can provide 24 hour balancing power thus enabling 100% renewable energy IF it is co-fired with biomass. It is simply not economic to provide enough storage to carry the system through several cold still winter days. Gas turbines (running on gas or bio-fuel) or solid fuel co-firing of solar thermal molten salt storage (CST) are the way to do this.

Base load power is not necessary, in fact it is too inflexible and expensive when only used intermittently so really does not fit with renewable generation systems

Ben Rose,

The modelling you present is based on assumptions that make electricity more expensive. Change the assumptions and renewables can deliver CHEAPER electricity instead.

The RBA cash rate is currently 1.75%, yet you're sabotaging the case for renewable energy by using figures of "10% for all generation); Government low risk rate of 6% for transmission and pump hydro storage projects; 5% savings rate for ‘behind the meter’ PV and battery".

You've set all the other assumptions to favour renewable energy, so why do you continue to set the most important one so strongly against it?

____________________________________________________________________________________

Alan B.,

Why the idiotic base load fetish?

Nobody is saying power shouldn't meet base demand. But the number of base load power stations needed to reach base demand is zero. And supply needs to reach peak demand; base demand is irrelevant.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Geoff of Perth,

There is no good reason why renewables will never provide our entire electrical needs at current demand levels. It seems weird that you have so much difficulty comprehending what renewables can do, yet you're so enthusiastic about as yet unbuilt nuclear technology.

Aiden, it's not an unbuilt technology, the US built a working Thorium reactor in the late 50's/early 60's and India and China are surging ahead with construction of new LFTR's.

We are not just talking about base load power, these things will be scalable and therefore provide smaller scale electricity and fuel production at a cheap and safe level.

Ignorance of LFTR technology is the main reason this superb technology has not been adopted.

This is nuclear power generated at low pressure, therefore the inherent dangers and problems existing with conventional nuclear disappear.

Your concerns and assumptions are wrong