Diesendorf has abandoned all reality for a fantasy world where no technical difficulties exist and all contrary information is ignored, or perhaps does not register.

This article represents the extreme end of the renewable energy activist spectrum. Only a few would claim that fossil fuel power stations are in any danger of being banished from power networks entirely in any foreseeable future. If you go and look at the supposed renewable energy base load stations which Mark and others talk about, you quickly find that they are pilot plants built in remote locations operating reliably for perhaps 10 hours a day, if that. Then you realise that they operate in what amounts to alpine desert environments, of which there is a shortage in aus.

I also glanced at the various studies Diesendorf cites. They amount to more valueless, activist assurances. Wind is by far the most common renewable energy source in Aus and there is no indication that wind energy is going to replace one bolt of one conventional power plant station. And if you don't want to believe this, then where are the statements from the Australian Energy Market Operator (the group that operates the electricity grid for Eastern Aus) about plants that will be replaced?

For that matter where is the hard evidence from any operating grid that renewable energy is anything more than a nuisance

Just in case Curmudgeon's comments are seen to be tainted by his well known climate change scepticism, let me, as a scientist who accepts climate science, add my support to what he says. I have been an observer of the various claims made for renewable energy over perhaps 40 years, through its various ups and downs. I reckon it's time for action, not claims. So, frankly, I can't be bothered reading about the models that announce baseload electricity to be extinct and replaceable by large numbers of intermittent sources with a bit of backup. To be convinced after all these years of promises, what I would need to see is a commercial operation making electricity profitably without crying out for taxpayer funding - yet again. And please, don't mention geothermal. In principle it's a baseload technology. But according to the US DOE there are something like 43 critical steps in the overall development pathway of geothermal sources of energy. About seven are in a satisfactory state of development. If one assigns a probability of 80% success for each of the other 36, the total prospects of seeing geothermal as a reliable power source are 0.03%. In other words, zero. A rough calculation I know, but I think I'm being generous with my probabilities.

As Curmudgeon has pointed out, this flight of fantasy is based on absurd assumptions and pure whimsy, and constructed with wildly optimistic theory.

For example:

"Secondly, some renewable energies are just as reliable sources of base-load electricity as coal, while being 50 times less greenhouse polluting. These include bio-electricity generated from burning the residues of crops and plantation forests, concentrated solar thermal power with low-cost thermal storage, and hot-rock geothermal power."

is ludicrous.

1 - Bio electricity is heavily dependant on fuel availability, which depending on crops is largely cyclical. Only forestry is not, but is limited to pulp milling or wood plants, in which case the output is tiny.

2 - "low cost" (still horrendously expensive) thermal storage and hot rock geothermal are still experimental, (and the author acknowledges they have not expanded beyond demonstration plants) and thus their reliability, capacity and cost of running is still theoretical.

This is followed up by a second piece of whimsy:

"Modeling (see below) shows that it’s relatively inexpensive to lift the reliability of the total wind output to a level equivalent to a coal-fired power station by adding a few low-cost peak-load gas turbines that are operated infrequently."

While gas fired systems are typically far cheaper than coal, the infrastructure to support them is not. The turbines, gas supplies and pipelines need to be sized to supply the up to 90% of peak load for occasional use would need to be of titanic proportions, which is difficult to justify for occasional use.

The base load could be replaced at a fraction of the cost by nuclear power, and this entire mumbo jumbo is to promote the fantasy that climate change can be done without it.

Is this seriously thrown up for consideration to the populace, or is it just preaching to the stupid for donations?

The latter is most likely to be very successful, so let's just leave at that - a very good pitch, for stripping money from idiots.

Activist groups are full of them it seems, stupid, and with more income than they know what to do with. So papers like this, with promises and speculation, some exaggeration with a lot of hysteria, show them at least one place to park some money.

They can help the world be a better place, or maybe fund some more research eh, a couple more reports eh, wink wink, eh mate, couple of grants eh what .. lovely stuff.

As they say, where does the money go? Follow that and you find the motivation. Why would we expect less from businesses like the activist industry, whose goal is to make money .. from fools.

Thankyou for posting this good sense and truth Mark. I too have studied this and know that there are many options. Pyrolysis power station run on biomass crops (mallee trees) on just 10 % 40m has of dryland agricultural land in Austrlalia could easily supply 4% of our electricity. It would emove about the same percentage of our emissions (see www.TheBiocharRevolution.com,ch 20 of the book, which I wrote)
Re base load I think certain polluting industries perpetrate this myth because they want the cheap off peak power. Non-ferrous metal refining uses enormous amounts of electricity. More than 20% of the cost of aluminium smelting is electricity. It is by far the most energy and emissions intensive of our industries, accounting for a whopping 6% of Australia’s CO2 emissions. It provides only 0.6 per cent of manufacturing employment and contributes 1.3 per cent of the manufacturing sector’s share of gross domestic product https://www.tai.org.au/file.php?file=discussion_papers/DP44.pdf. Aluminium smelters include 3 of the 10 largest mineral corporations in the world and are more than 50% foreign owned. The most polluting of these are the only operations that may be forced offshore under a carbon price.
For more than 25 years, smelters in Victoria have made enormous profits and paid less than 2c / kWh for electricity. It is the cheapest and dirtiest electricity in the world, generated from brown coal and subsidized by the Government. This industry, more than any other needs a carbon price as an incentive to clean up its production. Replacing Victoria’s brown coal power stations with low carbon/renewable generation as soon as possible is an obvious top priority to reduce Australia’s emissions.

oh dear the lobby supporter group has arrived

roses quote...""Thankyou for posting this good sense and truth Mark.""

ok thasts only opinion

""many options...Pyrolysis power station
run on biomass crops..(mallee trees)..on just 10 %
40m has of dryland agricultural land in Austrlalia could easily supply 4% of our electricity.""

great how much to build the pipeline to brissie
you paying for the new power lines..needing to go there?

how long is the regrowth period
in the next 10 year big dry?

is this like the sceme they got in africa
paid for..[subsidised by their carbon credit raquet?]

jobs for the locals..at the small price
of giving the scammer the land in perpetuity

[ie getting the blacks to cleasr your land..
while you steal their homes and rivers]

noting these green jobs
will be cutting mulga..in the never never
but heh you got the cash..OR do YOU NEED GOVT GRANTS?

""Non-ferrous metal refining uses enormous amounts of electricity.""
yes lets burn the mulga

""More than 20% of the cost of aluminium smelting is electricity.""
at a far cheaper contracted rate
than we consumers get

lets close them down
send their jobs to china

betterr yet retarain them to cut the mulga
[do we need to build any houses out in the bush
build roads?

what ya didnt think of that
ya dumb mugs

ya burning on a sklow burn
producing more co2..than coal

are you guys naturally so dumb
or does it take greed to make you lot so clever?

""as soon as possible""
well mate itrs not possable
unless we tax the rest of australia to death
[hey is that the real adgenda?

what happens if the bush catches fire from a spark
ya bright spark?

""its an obvious top priority
to reduce Australia’s emissions.""

the best way is reduce our use
think smarter..use less

if you save power
you get a discount..!

[switch off ya elect/hot water heaters folks]

lets take cold showers..
till these greenies get a new project
and the bankers..money changers..find another scam

Roses1.
Please advise if you are wearing rose coloured spectacles. Are you living on planet earth?
Renewable energy is subsidised by both users and taxpayers. All Government incentives are supported through the taxes that we all pay.
Brown coal power energy is only subsidised for pensioner use and not very much at that.
Paying a tax for carbon dioxide is going to ruin a tolerable way of life. All products and services that are made or used with electric power will increase in cost.
Perhaps another $1,500 p.a. will mean little to you but many of us will suffer. When the remaining factories close. Well, we'll all remember you.

[Deleted for abuse.]

The greenhouse mafia supporters club arrived at the run.
Now just to show how it can be done , below is an article about the real world.
A Spanish Island's Quest to Be the Greenest Place on Earth
By Lisa Abend / El Hierro Apr. 26, 2011
The project that will transform the future of El Hierro doesn't look like much more than a hole in the ground. One on top of a mountain, another smaller one down below, and in between, a long stretch of pipeline. But when this innovative wind-power system goes online at the end of 2011, it will turn El Hierro, the easternmost of Spain's Canary Islands, into the first inhabited landmass in the world to become completely energy self-sufficient. And that's just the first step in a plan that may make the island the most sustainable place on Earth.
Sound ambitious? El Hierro is located over 750 miles (1,200 km) from the Spanish mainland, and its stark, volcanic landscape harbors no coal or fossil fuels. Fresh water is scarce, and for electricity, its population of 10,000 has long depended on the diesel brought in weekly by tanker. Which is why, some 25 years ago, the islanders began thinking about ways to convert to renewable energy, using the two resources that they actually have a lot of: wind and water. Now, with oil supplies dwindling worldwide and the Fukushima disaster offering a reminder of the perils of nuclear energy, El Hierro's hydro-eolic plant looks positively prescient.
"At first, it was simply an issue of becoming more self-sufficient," says Tomas Padrón, president of the Island Council, "We were completely dependent on outside deliveries and could be cut off at a moment's notice.
The future power station is a marvel of engineering. Five windmills on the northeastern end of the island will power a pumping station that, when the wind is blowing, will drive water 2,300 feet uphill, from a small, 5 million-cubic-foot (150,000-cu-m) reservoir down by the shore to a larger, 19 million-cubic-foot (550,000-cu-m) reservoir snuggled into one of the island's volcanic craters.

When the wind abates, water from the top depository will be released, along 1.8 miles (3 km) of pipes, into the bottom one, and the pressure of that falling water will drive six hydraulic turbines. In other words, El Hierro will combine the two resources in which it abounds to deliver a continuous supply of electricity, no matter the weather. "If we don't want to depend on fossil fuel, we have to have steady input and output," says Gonzalo Piernavieja. "And the only way to do that is through massive storage.
The plant is expected to produce 48 GW/h (gigawatt hours), enabling El Hierro to conserve some 6,000 tons of diesel per year, and to meet 100% of its energy needs by 2015.
El Hierro remains largely agricultural (pineapples and mangos are its primary exports). Its farmers too are looking ahead: all of the island's agricultural cooperatives have signed on to a plan that will convert their fields to organic production in the next eight years. And those farms, in turn, will be connected to a "biodigester" that converts sewage into both methane (which can then be used as fuel) and fertilizer.
How did a place so small that it lacks a movie theater and so culturally conservative that it still frowns upon unaccompanied women in bars come up with such a revolutionary plan for the future? Thank geography, says Island Council president Padrón. "We've always been doubly isolated, first from mainland Spain, and then from the rest of the Canaries," he says. "And we've always had problems with drought and with supplying ourselves. It makes us look harder for solutions."
This technology can be applied elsewhere," says Morales about the power station, "Hawaii, for example. We're already advising them." That's something that another volcanic archipelago, notably larger but perhaps newly aware of the limits of conventional energy, might want to look into

This article is based on basic facts and should be followed up, not ridiculed by the deniers.
Let us get a reasonable debate not abuse.

Sarnian,

An anecdote about a remote Island that supplies its own electricity with hugely expensive imported diesel and looks for alternatives that can be supplied locally is hardly an analogue for Australia where we have cheap coal.

The best that this will get you is an "Awww Shucks"

France did not have coal, oil or gas, so it went nuclear.

Sarian - why did you bother us with a press release from island with wind/pumped storage facility? We know how they work, and certainly agree that they might actually be of use on an island served by just a diesel system which would be horribly expensive at the moment. We would be more interested in costs and time of operation. How much of a substitute is it for the diesel system? What are the costs?

These are the hard questions that Diesendorf and others simply do not want to face.

According to the Macquarie Dictionary, Curmudgeon means ‘an irascible, churlish, miserly fellow’, which is an appropriate description based on his/her posting. This person is miserly with the truth, as anyone who visits the references I cited to 100% renewable energy scenarios can see. They are not ‘activist assurances’ as Curmudgeon claims, but detailed studies, some of them hour-by-hour computer simulations, by scientists and engineers.

Furthermore, Curmudgeon’s claim that solar power stations have to be located in alpine desert environments is nonsense. Almost anywhere west of the Great Dividing Range is suitable for concentrated solar thermal power in Australia.

Tombee objects to subsidies to renewable energy, but all new energy sources are subsidised initially. Nuclear power is still heavily subsidised after 50 years of supposed commercial operation. Fossil energy is subsidised in that its prices do not incorporate the huge environmental and health costs they impose on people and the planet.

Shadow Minister, concentrated solar thermal power stations with thermal storage are well beyond the experimental and demonstration stages. They are generally classified as 'pre-commercial', which means 'limited mass production'. They will be fully commercial long before commercial nuclear power or coal power with carbon capture and storage exist in Australia.

"According to the Macquarie Dictionary, Curmudgeon means ‘an irascible, churlish, miserly fellow’, which is an appropriate description based on his/her posting. This person is miserly with the truth, as anyone who visits the references I cited to 100% renewable energy scenarios can see."

wow check out the thin skinned science type, who doesn't like disagreement with his ideas ..

next ..

After I read the author's biography I was surprised he made such a
dopey statement that night time is a low demand time.
For his information it gets quiet dark around 5pm just before the
ovens and stoves go on for the evening meal. The tv is almost certainly
on also at that time. Oh, don't forget the reverse cycle air conditioner.

The Germans discovered that the wind can also drop to calm everywhere
at the same time.

Geothermal, hot rocks is the great possibility.

Mark,

Pre commercial essentially means not yet commercially viable.

At a cost of about 40c/kWhr Solar thermal storage is 4x the cost of nuclear or any other form of renewable power.

Given the 200ha the 50MW (average 20MW) occupies, economies of scale are difficult, and if built in central Australia, where the sunshine time is greatest, the huge water consumption would be a problem.

So while it might look promising, it is still decades away from approaching viable. The base load myth is far from busted.

You know, the idea of pumped storage just might work even in a “clever country”. For instance the Blue Mountains are not out of reach from Sydney and I am sure that there would be sites there that could be used as storage.
It could even perhaps alleviate the incredible cost of running desal plants for potable water for the City.
That is just one place along the whole NSW coast,
I am pretty sure although I am not into surveying that as most of Australia’s population live in the coastal strip that it would be feasible in most States. Certainly in Tasmania.
But of course the Greenhouse mafia would object to this strenuously.
When you consider that the WA premier thinks that his canal from the Kimberley’s is “all down hill” and the water will run down with gravity, anything is possible.

Mark, excellent article, unfortunately many of the poster's replies are childish to the point it hurts to watch it.
It seems most are intrinsically against renewable energy on the sole basis that Greens/environmental lobbyists (or some fantastical mythical dope-smoking hippy "activist" group) want it judging by some of the sillier name-calling used.

I will only point out
Cudmidgeon- Australian Energy Market Operator is a retail operator- coal, gas, oil- any power source that must be mined, manufactured and purchased has retail and marketing value- sources that come down to an automated receiver by themselves for free, do not (wind, solar, geothermal). Biofuel has limited market value because it requires existing crops be redirected.

Pheonix- "Renewable energy is subsidized by both users and taxpayers."
Just like any other form of energy- and seeing that all taxpayers are energy users but not all energy users are taxpayers, there is both an extensive power bill and often a pensioner-subsidy in tax to go with it.
The only difference is that many renewables do not require resource or personnel input, greatly reducing their cost or need for management;
To be more precise, they only need to be payed for construction, initial transport and fitting; otherwise, repairs (which are much less than combustible or nuclear due to the simplification of parts, and reduced heat-intensity).
In other words, when you pay for solar, you are ONLY paying for the panel's costs itself.

King Hazza - no, AEMO operates the grid. Check out their site. The organisation has other functions, so that may be where the confusion arises.

Mark Diesendorf - so you do actually respond to contrary information, even if simply to dismiss or misunderstand what was said? The actual statement I made was that the supposed working baseload power stations (as in ones actually built) are nothing of the kind and are in those odd geographical locations I mentioned. Sure you can find areas in Aus where solar thermal might work - but would they work well enough to sub for base load stations considering that no one yet has been able to to build a satisfactory one, even on a pilot station scale and even in odd geographic regions?

Yes, the reports you cite are activist publications. Imagine the screaming that would go on if I presented reports funded by coal or oil companies as "proof" the solar really didn't work? Then you'll get some idea of just how little regard we have for those things.

As another poster has pointed out, this has all been going on for years. If you want to get rid of this draining criticism produce a working solar powered base-load plant, the performance of which has been certified by an independent body. Then curmudgeons like me will go away. (Liked your foray into the dictionary, incidentally, I'll keep the abuse in my scrapbook.)

rosie "smelters in Victoria have made enormous profits and paid less than 2c / kWh for electricity"

Yes, and paid over 30% company tax on those profits, employed people, bought goods and services locally, generated transportation jobs, business for suppliers of various materials, local councils also benefited

.. not quite the parasite you make out. this is the snide inference that "big polluters" are the enemy of the state, and because of them, the world is ending (horrors!)

Previous governments competed for companies to set up in Victoria, as do other states, and offered them cheap electricity as an incentive to bring the jobs and business to Victoria.

you want it to appear they are doing something devious by paying that amount for energy

that's why the eco alarmist lobby and followers are losing traction, it's loose tricky and downright misleading rubbish like this article and the alarmist supporter comments that set people not just offside, but against eco whackos and their ilk

you all get tarred with the same brush, which is only fair, if you want to be devious and attempt to mislead people, you are reinforcing to the community that you cannot be trusted, no one like you can be trusted, that anything you support cannot be trusted

then you complain no one listens, or understands you are only doing this for their own good .. oh, we listen, we just DO NOT TRUST YOU

Mark, interesting stuff but like so many proponents of renewable energy, there is often some real life, well documented actual (grid input) performance to counter the “dreamtime evangelists”.

Most recently, the UK based John Muir Trust Produced (Analysis of UK Wind Power Generation, November 2008 to December 2010). This was based on actual input to the grid and tracked by the generators themselves at 5 min. intervals.

The following is a brief extract:
“During the study period, wind generation from the UK wind turbine fleet (with an average capacity over the period of the survey in excess of 1600 MW) was:
Below 20% of capacity more than half the time
Below 10% of capacity over one third of the time
Below 2.5% capacity for the equivalent of one day in twelve
Below 1.25% capacity for the equivalent of just under one day a month
The discovery that for one third of the time wind output was less than 10% of capacity, and often significantly less than 10%, was an unexpected result of the analysis.

We are also fully aware that the Danish produce 13% of their electricity from wind. Over four fifths of this is exported to adjacent countries, sometimes at zero income because it is produced when not needed. The most recent estimate of costs to the Danish public is above DKK 1.5Bn. (approx. A$220m). (Ref. “The Wind Farm Scam” by Dr. John Etherington).

In Dec. 2010, Transfield CEO announced the suspension of two wind farm proposals in Australia due to lack of green investment funds.

The renewable energy product, target market, economics, logistics and efficiencies are all badly flawed.

Sarnian, dream on sweetie, the same report also covers the much vaunted pumped storage for both potable water and hydro. The total capacity of all UK hydro storage is 22 hrs. We really do need to stop dreaming.

Mark Diesendorf ” should also recommend funding for research into thorium nuclear reactors instead of uranium in nuclear reactors for efficient electric power production.This research could be part of multi national effort with Russia, India, and in 2011 China. All have plans to use thorium for their nuclear power reactors, partly because of its safety benefits. (Shiga David 2011). The largest new U S giant uranium reactors in South Texas have been dumped because of safety concerns about the nuclear disaster in Japan ; writing off $A 315 million already invested. (Wald, Mathew.2011)

The US from 1964 to 1969 used Thorium-232 for breeding nuclear fuel – uranium-233, for example, in the molten-salt reactor experiment (MSR) However most of the US test reactors were closed down as their primary concern was producing nuclear weapons. It is clearly time for the nuclear power generation to shake off its military past (Editorial New Scientist 2011)

Thorium nuclear power reactors, are needed because they are potentially safe and can be used to replace coal fired power stations to reduce CO2 emissions to a level that does not produce a genocidal increase in global warming. Without these reactors to bolster the development of renewable energy, the preservation of a democratic and frugal but healthy way of life will be impossible. I agree with Marks general argument but it would take a lot longer that 20 years and as some on this list have commented we safe nuclear power and throrium reactors may be the solution with a 30 year timeframe

In a decade or so electricity from black coal power stations can be replaced with even more efficiently. Carbon capture is coming (Haszeldine & Scott 2011) but instead of shoving our CO 2 emissions underground - we should also recycle CO2. Several companies have proposed turning cement making on its head, so that it captures more CO2 than it now generates; cement now produces around 5% of all Australian CO2 emissions.(MacKenna, P 2011

Mark Diesendorf could have made a much more compelling argument about the viability of sustainables if he'd coupled their exclusive usage with cuts in consumption of energy. There are umpteen examples of where electricity is just wasted and could be radically cut as well as made more efficient. This applies to all forms of energy. We could easily cut our usage by half without any real depreciation of living standards. Indeed we could rediscover lifestyles that didn't depend upon massive amounts of energy. Our energy usage is based on profligacy and it's demand that has to be cut rather than energy having to meet demand. Even in the current system scarcity of energy would be a much more effective driver of innovation than unrealistic glut. Put a cap on energy consumption per head of population, across the board, and watch what happens.
But it won't happen, the wealthy want the ordinary scum-bags to drive innovation and the scum-bags are gutless.

The pivotal point of this article is this paragraph:

"Firstly, night-time demand is low compared
with daytime demand. This base-load demand
could be further reduced by improving efficiency
of energy use and by the forthcoming phase-out
of electric off-peak hot water and its replacement
with solar hot water and instantaneous gas. This
is the reverse of previous policies, which
deliberately encouraged an increase in night-time
demand to allow inflexible coal-fired stations
to generate 24/7."

The point upon which I take issue with the article is its claim of encouragement of night-time demand having 'allowed' inflexible coal-fired stations to generate 24/7. Was it not he case that the practicalities of coal-fired electricity generation meant that even if there was minimal night-time demand, generation had to proceed around the clock?

In this circumstance, would not ANY sale of electricity during this low or non-existent demand period, no matter how little the price per KWh, have made the most sense? And is this not exactly the (logical) pricing regime that was adopted by Australia's respective State-operated publicly-owned electricity generation and distribution industry prior to all this buzzword-infested 'privatisation' mania?

Is not the myth as to base-load generation capability a diversion from the undeniable fact that whilst Australia may well have huge renewable energy resources, so too does it have immense cheap coal resources ALREADY INTEGRATED with a coal-fired generation capacity largely built by taxpayer investment, a capacity which, in the absence of attempts at sidelining it via legislative fiat, would have decades of productive life still to run, and with that residual productive life the feature of cheap off-peak electricity an embedded feature of the electricity market?

How, on the face of it, encouraging that there is to be a Royal Commission into the attempted fire-sale divestment of the NSW component of that carefully built up capability, and even more so, that the sell-off, to the extent that it has proceeded, may yet be reversed.

Off-peak tariffs are the 'bogeyman'!

i agree with most of your post forrest
except that last line

[i gone fully onto off peak]
you trying to double my power costs?

i realised those people
getting solar cells for near free
[paid for by the muggins paying normal rate]

yet they..feed-in [solar during the day]]..
via the day tarrif meter
[recieving double and near tripple normal rate]

and draw off..all their use..
via off peak..[@..half price]

its a double scam

but squeers got it right too

""ark Diesendorf could have made a much more compelling argument about the viability of sustainables if he'd coupled their exclusive usage..with cuts in consumption of energy.""

""There are umpteen examples of where electricity
is just wasted and could be radically cut
as well as made more efficient.""

""We could easily cut our usage by half""
he he..like me and those getting free solar

""without any real depreciation of living standards""
yes i was ready to accept 18 hours a dat acces to power
but find its 24/7...lol

""it's demand that has to be cut
rather than energy having to meet demand.""

i like to think
use whats available...*better

""scarcity of energy""
mate thats a myth
its the haves allways want more for cheaper
and the mugs getting second class value..
while the rich get spoiled..cause they know how

itsd time we all got wise
and govt allowed the poor paying for all of it
to simply get the same as those 'in the know'

[like web acces..i pay $10 bucks a gig
500 meg a mth...via dodo..50 bucks a year]

yet other [people get their gig ay a gig a day
for a dollar a day]..and free phone

i dont use phones
""But it won't happen""
never say never

mate its about ripping off the poor
become rich in wisdom

[but dont tell no-one]

ooops

Some of Mark's statements are extremely misleading. For example, whilst the lowest demand is between 12pm and 6am, the highest demand peak of the day is between 5pm and 10pm when the majority of people return from work have their meals and fire up their TVs.

The consequences to small businesses such as restaurant of a power failure at peak time is many times greater than the cost of electricity, and the Achilles heel of the renewables is the inability to guarantee supply at this point.

No renewable supply presently available can deliver guaranteed supply at any where near the cost of gas, coal or even nuclear power.

Mark Diesendorf makes sense. The situation is even better than he explains as he has left out the use of electric car batteries as load leveller. Because of its reduced complexity electric cars will cost significantly less than combustion engine driven cars once they are in mass production. Most new cars sold in ten years time will be electric because they will be cheaper and the per km cost of electricity is cheaper than burning carbohydrates. Most cars are only used a small proportion of each day and plugging them into the network allows demand to meet supply through the battery buffer.

Electric cars will also prevent the existing base load system continuing to waste large amounts of power when the demand does not match the supply.

Responding to Shadow Minister of 3 May:
1. The power station type that is the biggest user of water per kWh is nuclear. Coal and solar thermal are currently large users, but wind uses no water. All inland thermal power stations can and should be air cooled for a small loss in efficiency and a small increase in price.
2. The additional cost of energy in c/kWh arising from adding thermal storage to concentrated thermal power (CST) is quite small, because storage results in an increase in capacity factor (average power divided by rated power). In addition, the economic value of CST is increased by storage, which provides an increased ability to provide reliably high-value peak-load power between sunset and midnight as well as low-value base-load power.

Responding to Curmudgeon of 3 May:
By repeating your original misrepresentation that the studies on grid integration I cited are “activist publications”, you are demonstrating that either you are too lazy to check the references or that you have checked them out and are deliberately lying about them. Let me draw your attention specifically to the two studies I cited on the integration of wind and solar into the eastern and western USA grids. These are detailed computer simulations prepared by teams of engineers for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In no way can these be described as 'activists'. In particular the 400-page report of the Western Grid study finds that it is operationally feasible to integrate 30% wind and 5% solar into the grid without additional storage and without any additional long-distance transmission lines going out of the region. However, some strengthening of internal transmission lines would be required. The study did not investigate larger than 35% penetrations of renewable energy into the grid.

air colling isnt as sensable as it may appear
[nor water cooling]

so whats left?
we hear that things arnt energy efficient
we need high voltage..to go accross distance
but often the stuff we run..could run on 12 volt

industry on 24 volt...but unlimited amps
there is so much our experts dont know

but i feel the point is being missed
we cool water into the air..
[ie add in warm air/..at its most simplistic level]

instead we should run say a flow of steam...
[ignoring for now how it was heated]..
and run its motion[heat energies]..like a river
with paddle like wheels...generating 12 volt

figuring out [precisly what energy inputs
re heat it along its...long winding course]

i often wonder why we dont return to water power/gravity
ie water sluces..and coffer dams...water wheels
the proven HYDRO-power..[till bigbusiness stole the concept]

sure were the dry cuntry...but mate
canals are great[were the most flat earth continent there is
if we cant fully manage our water power,,we all doomed

water
works

at non peak energy
we store its weight[mass]
times the clear thinking that sees magnets
driving magnets[within a coil]..is what makes power

magnets can drive the 'other magnet..'
se magnetic moters link

then there is the joe fuel cell
which makes a gass[that IMPLODED..ie dosnt explode]
it generates suction..to suck water up hill
more efgicient that blowing it up hill

thing is the joe fuel cell costs 100 bucks
of stainless steel cylenders..that generate this gas
orgon gas...HH gas...

who knows...but it also can burn
and neutralise radio-activity..!
search for joe fuel cell

but so much more
never put all your eggs in the one basket
dont just have glass windows on ya roof..
when insurance says...its not coverd for hail damm-age

Responding to spindoc of 3 May:
You are indeed a spin doctor for anti-wind power interests, even quoting your guru John Etherington, a retired biologist who has no scientific or engineering credibility in this field. Wind power supplied, not 13% as you claim, but 21% of Danish electricity in 2009, and with the recent new installation is expected to supply about 24% in 2011.

Your claim that ‘over four fifths of this is exported to adjacent countries’ is incorrect. Because wind power has the lowest marginal cost to operate, it gets top priority for use in Denmark. When the marginal cost in the Nordpool electricity market (of which Denmark is a member) rises to a sufficiently high level, Denmark fires up some reserve fossil-fuelled power stations to supply exports. Your myth is busted in detail in the report by Danish energy experts, ‘Danish Wind Power: Export and Cost’, <http://www.ceesa.dk/publications.php>.

Responding to Forrest Gumpp of 3 May:
My answer to your ‘pivotal point’ is no!
4600 megawatts of Australia’s base-load coal-fired power stations are used to heat water, which is supplied to customers at cheap off-peak rates. This is the result of the operational inflexibility of base-load power stations, which cannot be switched off overnight. If cheap off-peak electric hot water prices and hot water systems based on electric resistance heating were both phased out, these unnecessary 4600 MW of coal-fired power stations could be retired. Water would be heated efficiently by solar, gas and, in the minority of cases where neither solar nor gas is available, electric heat pump. The intermediate-load power that is today supplied by these unnecessary coal-fired power stations between dawn and midnight would be replaced by renewable energy with a little peak-load gas turbine back-up.

Mark,

Your comments on nuclear power stations being the largest consumers of water is deliberately misleading.

Nuclear power stations can also be built using air cooling (and use no water) at extra expense and loss of efficiency as any thermal power station, but, because they can be located far from the fuel source, many of them use sea water which currently is not in short supply.

Secondly, the largest consumers of water per kWhr are the geothermal plants which in spite of using air cooling, lose prodigious quantities of water into the fractured granite.

With respect to the liquid salt based thermal storage, again you are being deliberately misleading.

For example, if one considers a solar thermal plant that can generate a peak capacity of 100MW between 9am and 3pm, the capacity factor is simplistically 25%. (6hrs/24hrs) with an average of 25MW.

If you modify the plant using the same solar collectors, and put in a 50MW generator, and salt storage, you can extend the generating time to 9am to 9pm. (assuming no efficiency or thermal losses) This will now have a capacity factor of 50% (12hrs/24hrs) with an average of 25MW.

In this ideal scenario, the salt storage has not added any capacity whatsoever, but has enabled generation during peak periods. However, the difference in the cost of the generator saved is a tiny fraction of the cost of the salt thermal storage, thus increasing the cost per kWhr of the entire system. If the loss of efficiency and heat is factored in, one then reaches the 40c kWhr of the trial plants, which is roughly 4x the cost of nuclear.

Although it is probably decades from being financially viable, it is the single technically viable renewable alternative.

The suggestion that electric cars can be used as an on line buffer for
the grid is I suspect flawed.
Most cars will be charged at off peak rates during the night.
Battery life is longer at slow charging rates, so most will charge at
the lowest rate consistent with getting a full charge in the period.

If it was my car I would not be happy with a discharge happening during the charge time or after it.

I don't think it has ever been tried.

Shadow- few things

Salt water is in no short supply- however unless you apply materials that can withstand salt water to line the cooling channels with (possible, but not so easy), it would become a huge expense (and pollutant) to desalinate it (as the fiasco in NSW demonstrates).

Solar-thermal? A rather pointless power supply actually- PV panels can obtain energy from the exact same power source, but in a direct conversion of energy- and use no other materials (or even moving parts) for energy generation to occur.
Furthermore, they don't even actually need to be run through a centralized power-plant but can be directly applied to households and businesses.

KH,

There are grades of stainless steel produced in vast quantities for chemical plants all the time that can withstand sea water. So much so that this is quite common.

PV is not viable in houses, as the cost is about 40c /kWhr to produce.

A 4kw solar panel can be installed for a total cost without rebates of $19,000 in NSW and the ACT. http://www.australiansunpower.com.au/

My 1.5 kw system averages 7 kwhs of energy per day or a total of 2555 kwhs per year. At price of 12 cents per kwh a 4kw system will give a return on investment of 4.25% and it should last 25 years and return the value of the investment. (the ACT feedin tariff of 50 cents that I have in place means my return on investment is closer to 17%). If you can afford to install solar panels and you get the government rebate and you get a feedin tariff then you get a very good return on investment.

Solar installations have dropped in price significantly over the past two years and we can expect the price to drop by at least 20% per year each time we double installed capacity. It will not be long before solar panels will require no feedin tariffs or rebates to become a very sound investment. Even today without rebates and feedin tariffs they make good sense because the price of mains electricity is going to increase substantially over the next few years.

Fickle Pickle,...""Even today without rebates and feedin tariffs
they make good sense...""

yes 17 percent
little wonder the 'clever guys are getting us normal rate payer..TO BUY FOR THEM..

""because the price of mains electricity
is going to increase substantially..over the next few years.""

MAINLY BECASE WE
ARE BYING SOLAR CELLS
FOR THE CLEVER...[read rich]

a great scam aint it

switch it all..over to off peak

comprehensive dissing of wind power on abc

seems these monsters cost 2/3 million a meg
are makling people sick up to 5 k away
form its lower level vibrations

but worse...

if they arnt...*making power
THEY ARE DRAWING..IT OFF..[the grid]
and in low wind times..no energy produced

but worse thing energy drawm off the mains
to keep their cooling functions going..
seems these things hate it
..too hot...AS WELL as too cold..

add in things like loss of power on the line
and infastructure*[recall our energy prices have GONE UP ..because of '''IN-FASTstructure'''

[ie gas lines to gas wells to ports..for export.
.or power-lines to solar cells in fields in the nwever never..
or of course to wind turdbines...

every way we look at it its a con
add in the fact..without GOVT/subsidy
none of this stuff could be wasting our attention spans

besides its cooling not heating
this clamate chanmge term is annoying

because climate is nought to do
with ripping off..the ignorant..who cant change

who cant afford to 'go green''
by baffling them with lies masked as science

[or hate clear lies/con..

of wasting govt funds..to build investments[owned by others]
that wont last as long as the carbon chewed up
to build these wepons of mass destraction]

first the sun gives us cancer
then we find people getting sick from no vit D

so we get the cli-mate change
stealing 25 billion in tax...[direct from your pocket]

*into building..the govt surpluss..*

[till the sir-plus..gets given out...to mates

via the budget/next year's]

ok it might be as little as 12 billion
but expect the greens to go for a higher 'target'
[for its green industry supporters/carbon traders..and bwankers]