cohenite - Solar panel FIT installations received up to 200% of the capital cost in subsidies depending on when they were installed; and after that initially 60c per Kilowatt hour [compared with 2-3c per Kilowatt hour cost from fossils at wholesale which is what the FIT competes with] for what they put into the grid [sic].

I'm certainly not aware of any 200% subsidies. Mine was, as far as I'm aware, the best available at any time and the federal subsidy was around 20% of capital cost. Oh sorry, just forgot another little one I had years ago whereby both state and federal subsidies applied with the result I paid a grand total of $168 for a 1kw system. That arrangement was only ever available to 1000 Queenslanders, 600 odd in Brisbane and the balance spread throughout the state.

Dunno about 60c per kwh, I get 52c for nett to the grid & thats the best I've ever heard of. I believe there was at one point a crazy 'whole of generation' arrangement in NSW but as far as I'm aware thats been switched to a nett arrangement some time back.

There are several issues you are conveniently ignoring. Firstly, PV system owners entered into a commercial arrangement with the then authorities based on cost / benefit figures provided at the time. Both parties signed a mutually binding contract that in my case expires in 2028. Any attempt to vary the terms of the contract without mutual approval clearly constitutes breach of contract, and that will understandably trigger the biggest class-action lawsuit in history with around a million plaintiffs involved. Queensland Energy Minister McArdle has already been down that track and after being warned of the inevitable consequences, quickly retracted.

to be continued

continued

Secondly, electricity retailers are legally compelled to source 20% or whatever of their power from GREEN providers. In Queensland that means PV systems apart from the itty-bitty Barron Falls hydro station just outside Cairns. For what its worth, PV generation is in fact a significant contributor to power supplies in Queensland due to the number of airconditioners running during peak PV generation times. We'd be in deep do-do without them, well either that or there would be an awful lot of very smelly people :)

Thirdly, the price paid by the Queensland grid for emergency peak power from interstate grids is in fact many times what is shelled out to even the highest FiT recipients (like moi).

Fourthly, the financial wheelings and dealings in Queensland consequent to retail privatization & corporatization of the wholesale infrastructure mean that the average cost per electricity connection in the state associated purely with privatization is in the order of $2500 per annum. Thats made up of gubmunt drawings from wholesale operations (Energex & Ergon), fatcat salaries (Origin, AGL and the rats & mice retailers), shareholder dividends & retail operating profits. Attempts to demonize PV system owners as the prime cause of power price escalation are conceived to divert attention from the privatization debacle.

The NSW rebate of 60c was downgraded to 20c just before Keneally was thrown out.

Initial federal capital subsidies were up to $8000 until this scheme was replaced by credits in 2009. The average roof top FIT was then about $2000-4000.

Then you had the state subsidies on top.

You are incorrect about the MRET. This is the amount of power produced not used. The target is 20% by 2020. It is a complete farce. Because renewables are so unreliable, as I explained, their introduction does not reduce fossil energy because fossils have to be kept running to provide the back-up for the renewables:

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/renewable-power-versus-coal-fired-power-and-the-winner-is/

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/more-renewable-power-leads-to-an-increase-in-carbon-dioxide-emissions/

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/02/%e2%80%98carbon-price%e2%80%99-won%e2%80%99t-reduce-emissions-from-power-stations/

I'm aware of the contractual issues with large groups of people who have contracted with state governments in respect of their solar panels and the so-called sovereign risk if such contracts are not honoured by a succeeding government. But I think you are confusing McArdle's political response with a reasoned legal response; it will be interesting to see Abbott's attempts to get rid of the CO2 tax and whether any parties disadvantaged because they contracted with Gillard, bring action against Abbott. IN respect of FIT contracts I would like to see what obligations FIT owners have in respect of their 'power' supplied to the grid.

No doubt some spot prices are much dearer than FIT prices but FIT is unreliable from minute to minute which is why fossils are used for peaking:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/a-nation-still-drawing-18000mw-in-its-sleep-cant-go-solar/

As a general rule I don't mind people getting one over a government as long as I do not have to pay for it; and that is what I am doing with FIT.

Hasbeen, I can't address specific detailed observations because I simply don't know enough to be able to do so, but I am sure that there is lots of chemistry going on.

Now to my rather long-winded point(s) from the other day.

Thermodynamics tells us that the total energy of any chemical species has 3 forms, two of which are thermodynamically important because they determine whether a particular reaction will occur (free energy) and also what rate it will occur at (temperature). The temperature also determines what the equilibrium between reagents and reaction products will be and how long equilibrium will take to establish.

Because the rates of different reactions are different, the net energy balance of a complex system like earth varies over time as reactions take place to emit or absorb energy. Some reactions can only occur after other reactions, because they require the product of those reactions as reagents or catalysts. As well, the incident energy fluctuates with solar activity and variations in both the planetary orbit and its axis of rotation, while convective flows transfer energy by transporting material and the energy it contains causing local conditions that are considerably different from the planetary mean.

The concern about AGW is entirely because one particular set of reactions has shown a massively rapid rate increase over a very short time frame of a few hundred years and is scavenging the reaction products of earlier cycles which have been sequestered in geological stores making them available to participate in climate thermodynamics once more.

That set of reactions is, of course, us. Biological processes are very fast compared to geological ones and very sensitive to the conditions.

Temperature increase through AGW is likely to be a short-term blip on the scale of hundreds rather than thousands of years which will be followed by a long period of declining temperatures over tens of thousands of years. In terms of survival of the species these temperature changes are not a threat, because the species has survived similar conditions more then once in the past. They are a major problem for carrying capacity though. The long-term average excluding the massive growth that has occurred during the current extended warm phase is a few million, not the 9 billion on the surface today. Even with cheap energy from nuclear sources that would probably not go beyond a hundred million or so.

We need to be focussed on managing the transition from a high-energy, high growth, high population species to a smaller one on about the same time frame as it expanded in a way that doesn't cause our technological capacity to be lost. That must include some consideration of the effects of AGW, but only as part of the overall picture.

In about 20-30 generations we need to reduce our population by around a factor of 10 peacefully and purposefully and then start working to get it down by another factor of 10 over the next couple of hundred generations.

War will probably play a role too, as competition for habitable areas occurs.

Let's hope we learn our lesson and the next interglaciation doesn't see the same thoughtlessly opportunistic growth behaviour.

Time for a change of climate?

Can we now debate the latest peer reviewed science on CFC’s as the old CO2 debate seems to have stalled?

“The peer-reviewed research by Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry at Waterloo University, was published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B”.

"The change in global surface temperature after the removal of the solar effect has shown zero correlation with CO2 but a nearly perfect linear correlation with CFCs,"

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/cfcs-are-the-real-culprit-in-global-warming/story-e6frg8y6-1226655487533

Next, poor Obama.

“But such a carbon price proposal is not coming back, even if Democrats reclaim the house and hold the Senate in the 2014 elections. House Democrats never want to hear the phrase again; next to Obamacare, voting for the cap-and-trade bill in 2009 that was defeated in the Senate the following year was the most unpopular vote they cast during that 2009-10 congressional term”.

“Meanwhile, Obama and the climate campaign are pushing uphill against public opinion as well as the basic economics of energy. The best public polls -- such as Pew and Gallup -- that ask the same questions year-on-year find public belief in catastrophic climate change continues to ebb. Pew's annual issue poll continues to rank climate change last out of the 20 most important issues facing the nation.

This is a movement that has run completely out of gas, so to speak”.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/world-commentary/obamas-carbon-war-running-out-of-gas/story-e6frg6ux-1226655450742