I don't know weather to cry or laugh. Julian no one wants to buy our power, or anything else that has used our labour to make, or we have profited in making. They have their own labour to employ, & they buy our raw materials to profit from converting them to products.

That's the problem with your suggestion Mark. Stop supplying raw materials, & they'll go else where, it's not as if we have a monopoly on any of the stuff. If you can do it better, & cheaper, go for it, but that's where we have a problem. It's always our price that kills us. The world would love to drive Commodores, if we could make them cheaply enough.

We actually tried that with aluminum a while back. We have an alumina industry, because the inputs are bauxite & power. We developed it when our power was still cheep. The idea was to go the next step, & produce first the aluminum, then supply finished castings like automotive engine components.

Everything looked good, until the price, where we couldn't compete. I think there was $150 million tax payer money went up in smoke with that one.

Renysol I would love it if you blokes would restrict yourselves to what works, & has a track record. You are always telling everyone about what is only a "gunna do".

For years it was all Spain. They were going to rule the world with free energy. Well, now the billion dollar wave gear slowly rusts on a sand dune, the windmills catch unwary birds, & Spain is bankrupt. Now you champion some new unproven pie in the sky technology basically because it hasn't failed yet.

For every missionary who became lord of an island or tribe, a thousand or so got eaten. Missionary work does not have good statistics, & is best avoided, leave it to the dreamers. Then buy the new improved second edition, that one usually works.

Hasbeen wrote:

„Renysol I would love it if you blokes would restrict yourselves to what works, & has a track record.”

I am sorry I can’t. Life would just be too boring ;-)

I am very happy that Edison did not think so. He would not have attempted 11,000 times to get the light bulb working, and we would still use candles.

Spain's bankruptcy has nothing to do with renewable energy but with real estate. You are right, that wave energy snake off Spain did not last long, neither did the wave generator off Nowra.

That does not mean to stop working on better technologies, see Edison. There is now a much better wave design, and we will soon see how it works.

If Desertec in Europe/Africa ever does see the light of day - once it has solved the many issues that go with such a project, it might well be worth considering for Australia into Asia. It will certainly take many decades to get to that point (notwithstanding the optimism of Beyond Zero Emissions).

Just a correction Julian to your article. I think you will find that it takes an area 50x50 kms or 2,500 sq kms (not 250) to meet Australia’s current needs with CSP and I suspect that is just the solar collection field. Access roads and heat storage tanks will increase this further.

http://www.desertec-australia.org/content-oz/australiacsppotential.html

To supply a significant proportion of Asian demand would increase that area substantially. This is no small engineering feat which will cost over 100 billion dollars just for the solar field to supply Australia and does not including the cost of transmission lines or storage tanks.