Some are living in fantasy land if they think wind and solar can knock off coal at an affordable price. Despite heavy subsidies they would be impractical without flexible gas fired generation to smooth the variations. However gas will be largely gone by mid century. All that wind and solar will be of little benefit to today's kids if there is no gas backup. Compounding the problem is the likely rise of gas as a transport fuel (CNG diesel substitute) on top of existing demand for fertiliser manufacture, domestic and industrial heat.

Within a decade or so we'll need to run semitrailers and farm tractors on natural gas as oil depletes. Gas will also be needed to make the urea fertiliser for farms because there will be more mouths to feed. That's why it is puzzling that we are in such a screaming hurry to burn gas in power stations and sell it to foreigners. The answer must be to progressively replace coal with nuclear while at the same time conserving a lot of gas for future generations.

On Timor I think Australia has pulled a swiftie but if China controlled the resource it would be gone in a blink

It'll be a gradual switch. Solar is still in it's infancy & there are other inventions just around the corner.
I'd imagine the search for a crude oil alternative is in full swing. Going green in Australia will make many of us feel warm n'fuzzy but it is the global side of things which are the real issue.
Solar doesn't have to be that expensive. Like with everything produced here the Government charges will make any enterprise unattractive. Unless our Governments wake up Australians will not benefit much from anything better or smarter.

I’m not sure how the Australian Strategic Policy Institute did their calculations but the $100 billion figure sounds way too low.

We use about 30 kWh per day per person in Australia (both domestic and industry). One square metre of panel generates about 0.4 kWh per day average over the year. So each person needs about 75 m2 of panels (not 200 as stated).

At $2/W (low commercial price today), PV panels cost around $300/m2. With 22 million people that works out at $495 billion. Even if the panel price drops by half, this will still be around $250 billion.

And that’s before you add the cost of electricity storage to provide power at night!

I suspect the real cost to convert to all solar will be closer to $500 billion not $100 billion.

To cite costs of solar technology on the basis of present developments in that area is to ignore the way in which costs in any scientific technique go down with new technological developments. Coal and other fossil fuels cause more environmental and health consequences then more environmentally friendly energy sources such as solar. A significant investment in solar technology will pay off in lower costs.

Sorry david f and individual, but Martin N and Taswegian are far closer.. in fact, solar and wind energy has been the subject of decades of intensive research, and there is no real hope that they will replace the conventional generator network for many years to come, if ever. As matters stand they may account for 20 per cent of generation in 2020 (the legislated aim) if you assume that a negawatt generated from these projects amounts to a megawatt saved.

Even that will be expensive and difficult. The problem of intermittency still remains, and isn't made much better by spreading these projects over a wide area or relying on diffent types of generation. Overseas experience, incidentally, shows that photovolatic projects are particularly useless.

Perhaps there may be a breakthrough. Difficult to see where it will come from though..

Curmudgeon: a name that really does reflect your posts!... Could almost be a member of the 'grumpy old men' club, or perhaps the 'realist pragmatist' club?... Once again you have accurately placed your digit onto the 'nub' of the matter. How many more years do we have to hear of the 'just around the corner' mantra associated with wind and solar power... Heard it for years now... $into a bottomless pit, need the miracle battery! All of the angst is based on the presumption that CO2 is a 'pollutant' and that this pollutant is driving climate disruption/change/warming/cooling.....

oh dear the average Australian does not use 30Kw a day it's more like 4Kw. The problem is you Alan jones fans boys on the East coast. Using your blow dryers to put a wave through your perm.

Only right winger's creating strawmen are saying that solar alone can meet Australia's power needs.

Global oil supply peaked in 2005-2006, marking the beginning of a tidal shift in the world’s economic trajectory. Petroleum is the most energy dense and most useful fuel source we’ve ever exploited, there is no replacement waiting to pick up its slack. When oil peaks it all peaks. Comparing other energy sources to oil is like comparing apples to orang-utans. It’s that different. At a vastly smaller scale, PV solar and wind might replace some coal use, but oil is responsible for virtually ALL of the world’s transportation, and the “replacement technologies” on offer, if we should give them even that much credit, are highly dependent on oil in the first place. Imagine the global economy without transportation fuel, or even with $5/litre fuel. How long would it take for it all to come to a grinding halt?

It is impossible to overemphasise [the energy problem’s] centrality. As long as there is enough primary energy at tolerable prices there is no reason to believe that bottlenecks in any other primary materials cannot be either broken or circumvented. On the other hand, a shortage of primary energy would mean that the demand for most other primary products would be so curtailed that a question of shortage with regard to them would be unlikely to arise.

With solar and wind power technologies obviously “secondary” instead of “primary energy”, secondary is obviously reliant on primary energy (notably oil). It should become considerably easier to understand why peak oil matters as much as it does. Coupling the shrinking global supply of the stuff with a rapidly rising global demand for it should give you the serious pause for thought. Alternative energy will be a luxury for those with foresight, not the basis of an emerging energy economy. In the end, its possible electricity will once again be a novelty, reserved for clever basement tinkerers, or those who have really valuable goods to trade for it. If nobody is manufacturing replacement parts for your washing machine, what’s the point really?

Sorry Kenny. We use about 240 TWh per year for 22 million people (look it up on Google). That comes to 11,000 kWh per year per person = 30 kWh per day per person.

You may only use 4 kWh per day in your home but that is only a small part of total consumption. And, by the way, I am certainly no fan of Alan Jones!

Boy, oh boy, some fudging of figures and slight of hand, bundling industrial consumption together with household consumption to come up with 200 square metres of panels per household. Let's get real. Separate out industrial consumption, and home solar becomes manageable and affordable. Industrial consumption will require a far more high tech solution. $100 (or $500) billion are rubbery.

Wow, $100 billion painted as an impossibility? That's rich. What may be the average net assets of each Aus household, and the total Aus budget? A very solid set of figures I would suspect. So, with quite a modest subsidy from government every Aus household could have solar electric and solar hot water, and relevant coal fired demand cut to...? Minimal. How much was spent on the Education Revolution and Pink Batts? NBN, $57 billion? Given a vote, what do you think the Aus public would plump for?

A comprehensive conversion to gas for base load generation and transportation would be economical, and afford long term supply security, but diesel motors will probably require biodiesel. Oil imports cut to a minimum.

Solar concentrators and high tech heat sink facilities to meet peakload industrial demand will not be easy, but hopefully will become do-able. Coal exports can still boom, with much reduced domestic demand.

Not to reject wind, geothermal, hydro or wave, but what is needed is a start, and a fairdinkum setting of policy objectives. When we see what's happening in China, the pollution, the widespread health problems, the virtual enslavement of the poor, it becomes very clear that a start must be made on clean energy, a weaning off from oil, and a concerted effort on coal-burning particulate and CO2 sequestration, and offsets - but offsets aren't going to help those poor b's in China.

We can do with a lesser NBN, with fibre to node and fibre to essential services, hospitals, doctors, banking sector, universities and schools. The banks should be willing to contribute. Current home internet ain't so bad, in the scheme of things?

So, what are we waiting for?

Thanks John for the informative article and the link to that 'think tank' - I will read their paper.

They seem fixated on fossil fuels as does Curm - the 'can't do' it's too big to solve'; / 'cant provide base load' attitude. Obviously you either don't read or prefer to ignore the specialist renewables information blogs such as 'Climate Spectator'.

The price of solar PV is coming down very fast. Concentrated solar thermal tower molten salt storage technology is poised to do likewise; there are four, up to 20 MW capacity already operating commercially. Mirror technology is advancing rapidly bringing capital and maintenance cost of solar thermal intallations down. It wont be long before larger solar farms of hundreds of MW are in commercial operation. While capital cost is high there are no fuel costs - decades of power free from the vagaries of oil gas and coal prices and CO2 emissions.

Also the ASPI analysis appears to ignore climate change which amazing at it is the 'elephant in the room' which should be impossible to ignore. Forget the miserly cries of 'we're only 1% of emissions' etc. We are also (per capita)the world's biggest CO2 producers, among the wealthiest and also have the world's best solar resources. If that's not enough incentive to 'go for solar' I dont know what is!

'just around the corner' mantra
Prompete,
Well yeah, in Australia but if you check overseas sites you'll find that they're way ahead in that field.

The shift to renewables cannot be compared on a "Coal->Solar and keep everything else the same" model. The assumption of a near 100 year old distribution model and no efficiency measures at all is quite disingenuous!
Folks in the country are doing very nicely with total solar and wind power and ROI is more like 10 years than 25. These folks are using LED lights, passive solar building design (think 9 star+) and refrigeration with real insulation instead of mass produced items with poor insulation and silly wastage. Build housing properly and the tech that powers them is paid for before the mortgage is paid off.
Central generation and distribution wastes a lot of power and has costs that are not paid for. Using locally generated power eliminates the waste (though storage inefficiencies also waste energy, this can be mitigated somewhat: waste heat can be useful in the home).
Renewables for home use is a no brainer...but how will industry then get it's cheap energy? And mass transport still has no real alternatives to fossil (although things are finally moving here). Power bills currently have a sort of "jobs tax" built into them in that households are broadly subsidising industry...which provide jobs so folks can afford housing. A huge amount of cash is currently tied up in the faux "privatisation" of energy marketing fronts, who simply tell the foreign owned power distribution and generation companies who to bill.
Anyone using overly simplistic analysis will come to the conclusion that renewables are a hopeless cause. The same was thought of private cars, routine flight, space technology, municipal sewage and water supplies, etc.
BTW. For the "stop the subsidies" crowd...how about some parity (at least) with fossil fuel subsidies? Gaining world leadership might give Australia something to export instead of rocks and cashed up bankers.

Roses1

you and I have been over this stuff before and my recollection is that you had no answers. I'm well aware of the propaganda suggesting that somehow renewables will be able to provide base load and it just isn't happening. The best so far is that pilot solar plant in Spain that may be able to operate 20 hours day. It is always misrepresented as a base load plant. It is not. It is you who should make an effort to read material not on propaganda sites.

Saltpetre

Speaking of propoganda, where on earth did you get the idea that housholds could be made self-sustaining in energy terms, if that is what you meant? There is no possibility of that occuring, at least with current networks. The present concessions are little more than vote-buying. Because of the way the network is set up I'd be surprised if any carbon is saved at all - although I suppose its possible. If you will recollect, the same voltage is delivered to all areas regardless of what domestic supplies they may have. It is possible that if you have enough of those domestic systems it might alter demand in certain areas - several commentators have suggested this - but how would that affect how they manage the grid on a regional level? To get real savings you may have to wait for smart networks. But self-sustaining? No. Forget it.

Hay Oz, I don't know what you're drinking, but I want some, & a few pairs of those rose coloured glasses too thanks.

What you don't mention with your glorified vision of home power is the cost & the hassle.

Fortunately for them, many of those country folk have large incomes. That's a good thing if you are silly enough to generate your own power, it's a bloody expensive business.

It's also very time consuming. Maintaining battery banks is a real pain, & expensive, if you know how. If you can't do it yourself, add another $25,000 to your annual cost of power, to get those service men out there, regularly.

Then you have the fuel generator backup, petrol if your a fool, diesel if you're smart. However you had better be able to do your own servicing, & know how to hook the car up to run at least some lights & freezers in the house during the regular break down of the system.

Make sure that backup generator is a good one, you'll end up running it a great deal of the time.

My brother in law has recently moved to a small property near town, after years living with solar arrays, windmills & generators. He doesn't like town much, but when asked why he'd moved, he had a two word answer, "mains power". Having done it myself I knew just what he meant, & were both engineers.

Create your own base load solar, with battery back up, easy. Has any one confirmed that carbon in the atmosphere is not a cancer causing carsonagene. Soot or carbon is what is causing the trouble, from fossil fuel.

Wind is not so flash either.

A strong puff of wind and they fall apart:

http://images.smh.com.au/2011/12/09/2827950/art-winds1-420x0.jpg

Disconnecting from the grid will get you no where, Your batteries are solar charged during the day, and charged during the night by electric charger, both permanently connected. Deep cycle sealed batteries need no maintenance. During the day the house runs off a solar array, with excess going to the grid. 2 fridges and one freezer are on the batteries, with 24 volt inverters. Times have changed in the battery set ups,

Hasbeen: 10 years ago I would have agreed with you. I've lived with a couple who tried and gave up...alas the story is common. Early adopters used old car batteries (shallow cycle), cruddy inverters and very early PV cells. It is also unwise to try and "rough it" in an old weatherboard home without modern passive solar design and insulation.
Electric cars also suffered from the "hype curve": folks got excited before the tech was really viable (my father, an engineer was one of them). I won't touch e-cars for a while yet, but they will get there.
Times are changing, modern electronics and materials makes systems viable that once were not. It also helps that there are experienced pro's (instead of passionate amateurs) around now to help with design and maintenance.
As for cost: With economies of scale and new tech bring prices down and rising "traditional" costs, the future viability is assured.
For setting policy ask yourself: Do you want your kids to be 100% on Chinese companies for their power, or should we get in and have a go?

Shadow Minister: I can send you pics of oil tanker wrecks, oil well fires, transformer explosions, petrol explosions and "black lung" cases from coal mining...but this kind of point scoring is pointless. It will come down to viability and economics in the end.
The massive infrastructure of oil exploration, capture, transport, refining, transport, storage, distribution, seems pretty unlikely to be viable given the cost, risk and waste...but it works, sorta, with lots of taxpayer assistance and ignoring environmental costs.
BTW. Household wind systems solved this problem a few years ago with tilting towers...big scale systems use other methods but being built by humans, still fail spectacularly from time to time.
I wouldn't build a house under *any* big structure...even high rises and steep mountains give me the willies...seen too many shots of villages swallowed by mud, failed bridges, falling glass, etc

Ozandy,

The pic was simply to show that wind power was not as safe and infallible as the greenies would have us believe. 2x as many die per MW of power generated with wind power than with nuclear.

But as you said, it will come down to cost and reliability, which is the Achilles heel of all renewable generation.

Energy independence is possible.

I have a $22,000 stand alone solar set up which is self sustainable; I have proven this with a 10Kw solar system that is off-grid, with a carefully selected suite of energy efficient appliances. I have 32 x Showa/Shell BX-65 Advanced thin film, CIS panels. 2080 peak Watts, temperature stable, enhanced Infra-Red response under cloudy conditions. Integrated circuit construction, 1 x Solar Master 80 Amp Maximum Power Point Tracking regulator. 8 x BSB 12 V 250 A/H, 24 Kilowatt-hours, state of the art, Hybrid Nano GEL batteries. Safe, clean and maintenance free. 2000 cycles to 50% discharge and a Solar Master VULCAN 6000 Watt, true sine wave inverter. Low frequency design with massive toroidal transformer. 7500 watt 30 minute rating. 18,000 watt 5 second surge.

I will be adding a new French designed wind generator, not the normal propeller type, this is a curved conical design that picks up wind from 5kmh, runs virtually silent and has a 25 year design guarantee and will work with wind coming from multiple directions and speeds.

I am also in the process of purchasing a SolarVenti and a Solar Whiz, both very cheap to buy, see http://www.ges.com.au/ these are brilliant cheap additions that should be on all Australian homes.

I also collect all of my water into a 247,000 litre rainwater tank which has a solar powered/Gel battery mains pressure pump attached.

I use my microwave a lot, have a gas oven and cook-top, don’t use a dryer and can state that you can be energy self sufficient, contrary to what some are saying above, if you work hard towards getting these items being installed. I do agree some are not cheap but over the long-term will more than pay for themselves!

Except for your gas oven.

Shadow Minister: I'd argue that *all* power generation has the issue of reliability and cost. The oil spills in US from drilling and the slick from a ship grounding in NZ are examples of the costs and weaknesses in petroleum...there are many more such costs that are almost invisible: pm10s from diesel is a public health issue, most ocean pollution is "out of sight, out of mind", and of course there is the fact that it too needs massive taxpayer subsidies...even now.
New technology surely is pricey and unreliable...just look at cars 50 years ago compared to now, same with computers, metallurgy, aircraft...
I agree that some folks have completely unrealistic and idealistic ideas, but not *all* "greenies" are radical ignorant ranters waving flags.
Not pooing in your own nest is the essence of environmentalism, and that should be sensible enough to make us all "greenies" to some extent.

Shadow Minister, yes I have a gas oven and cooktop, this is my indulgence for now, It is an expensive model that I can convert to wood cooking. methane gas into the future if I wish to do so.

Just because I have a gas stove does not mean I am not energy self sufficient in real terms, I just choose to have the gas as it is cheap and easy to have at present.

Any arguement against the rest is pointless, I think I have proven my point!

A gas oven will light quite well on solar generated power. Can not use a wind turbine here we only get an average of 3 metres / second wind speed for the year. Plenty of solar, generating 1.166 kwh / 175 watt panel/ day. Just waiting on 2 new batteries, will run 190w tv and computer, and that will complete me, Grid connected and service charge is covered.

And this massive investment of yours is how old, Geoff?

In my 20+ years here, using lots of power with a rural property my total electricity bill has been just $14,000. It was running at about $500 a year until Beattie started ripping cash out of the power system to cover his profligate spending habits.

I must admit I'll be interested in hearing more about the running costs in 10 years time. My experience is that the major problems commence about year 5 or so.

I am usually one who prefers to do their own thing, but electricity is the one thing I have found the utilities do better. Nothing like having it at a switch on the wall, rather than have to wander off to start an engine, every time you need to do something a bit power heavy.

Hey Hasbeen,

I appreciate that the older solar system (monocrystlyne sic) is probably open to high maintenance and poor performance.

My system is about 4 years old, have had no issues and it is a dream to watch in action.

I think the original solar systems on offer had some severe limitations but technology has moved ahead in solar in leaps and bounds in recent years.

I have a good wind climate, not too much, but enough for me to have calculated the benefit of investing with the right equipment.

It all comes down to cost, ability to use and a bit of lateral thinking. I do not advocate this as the panacea for the entire energy future for Australia, but I think that I have demonstrated that with a little ingenuity and a bit (around $30K) on can step off the energy merry-go-round. I know it sounds like a lot but my energy return on energy invested (EROEI)is close to hitting the mark, I will be spending more, but this will assist to give me heating, cooling and other benefits moving forward.

Research is the key, take nothing for granted, the homework in this area is worth the investment

Cheers

Geoff

Geoff, I really do hope you're right, but I have a deja-vu feeling about it all. They were telling me the same type of stuff in the 70s when we were bolting all this stuff into my yacht.

I know many people who have spent more than you running power lines, to get away from home generation. They them had to pay power bills of course, but that was cheaper than buying diesel fuel, & running a generator capable of driving welding gear, air compressors & all the other maintenance gear you need on a property.

Good luck with it.

Just out of interest on solar setups, does anyone have any figures on hail damage to solar panels ? How do they stand up to such weather ?

You have to be unlucky to break a glass , it is toughened glass. If a brick happens to fall out of the sky and breaks the glass, they say to lay another one on top leave the broken bits there. Hail does not rate at all.

Individual,

If you google search the type of panels that I have you will notice that they are not glass, they are thin metal panels so hail will not break them although a big enough hail storm may have some impact if severe enough.

See my earlier posts

Geoff

579, its not particulate matter the greenies are on about, its carbon dioxide emissions. Tastless, odourless, harmless gas (except if you step into a room full of it with no oxygen). Given the amount of it coursing around your body and out your lungs at any given point in time, I think its safe to say its not cancerous!

The idiot greenies have just renamed it "carbon", because few mugs would get worried about global warming if they called it by its normal name. Yep, they've now found a way to tax the air we breathe. Labor should be proud.

Carbon emissions is what is being taxed. The carbon particles are causing a green house effect. Carbon is from burning fossil fuel. It is black, and measurable particles. C02 and carbon are created at the same time, from burning air with the fossil fuel. Every thing needs air to burn. Put your hand over the exhaust of your car and you will get a black stain, that is carbon.

Carbon has been found to be carsnogene in animals. Human tests were inconclusive.

@Martin N: At $2/W (low commercial price today)

Your information is a little out of date. Prices FOB China are $1/W, in quantities for a 30KW system, as in that is what was paid a few weeks ago, shipped to Brisbane. Prices have dropped by 20% in the last 6 months, and by 75% in the last 2 years.

So assuming you are right and it is 30KW per person per day, and assuming an average of 4 peak hours per day, that is $1 per 4WHr / day, or $7,500K per person to supply the entire electricity needs of Australia. And those panels will last at least 30 years. I'd be amazed if that price hasn't dropped to below $1,000 per person by 2020. That for all intents and purposes is close enough to free.

There are lots of other costs of course, and the storage problem is still with us. But nonetheless, when you are looking at paying $7/W for nuclear generation capacity, versus $0.10/W for PV Solar and $0 fuel and disposal costs, that leaves a lot of money lying on the table to solve those problems.

To put it in perspective, 240TWhr at a retail price of $0.20/KWhr is $48 Billion/yr. $48 Billion can build a lot of pumped storage, DC transmission lines, smart meters, and car batteries.

I wasn't a huge fan of these solar subsidies. But world wide the effect of them has been nothing short of remarkable. They have lead to the price of PV solar halving multiple times during the last 10 years, and this trend looks set to continue.

You can-not have DC transmission lines. DC power does not travel to well. power has to be converted to AC first. Solar will make a gigantic difference in the coming years. Get in early and set up a solar farm, sell shares to the locals.

@579: You can-not have DC transmission lines. DC power does not travel to well.

Nah 579, you need to read up on DC transmission. As always, the Wikipedia article is a good starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

You have it backwards. High Voltage DC Transmission travels far better than AC. Here "far better" means efficiently. A High Voltage DC transmission line running from Cairns to Perth following the coast would lose 22% (8,000 km) to line losses. That doesn't sound good, but AC could not do it at all. As a consequence the transmission lines that connect Tasmania’s Hydro Dams to Victoria are DC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basslink

AC's advantage is it is really easy to convert High Voltage (which is good for transmitting efficiently) to low voltage (ie, 240V) which is safe to use in houses. All you need is a transformer, which can be mounted on a pole. HVDC needs huge expensive stacks of semi conductors do the job. It is a very expensive technology, but can move enormous amounts of power huge distances.

The reason it is useful for renewables is it can help mask their unreliability. Whether the wind blowing in Perth is unlikely to be correlated with whether the wind is blowing in Cairns, thus the sum of the power generated by both of them is more reliable than the power generated by just Cairns or Perth alone.

That is right what you say, i was inferring you lose to much power. Long distance DC is good for just that, it's like pumping water, if you take some out half way you only get half at the other end. My solar loses 2% from the panels to the inverter, a distance of 6 meters. AC is more constant power because it rocks back and forth. DC goes one way. IT is not practical to have DC in suburban lines.

Sigh!