Craig Minns
- thanks for that.. your suggestion may be part of the answer. I'm fully aware of the problem of wind being unreliable. The problem is, as you know, they've found that when the wind goes down it does so over the whole of South East Aus.. even Tassie so those tracking it say.. the only solution I've seen that makes any sense is to import renewables over large distances using DC lines.. which would be horrifically expensive..

I'm not anti renewables per se since I've had PV since 2005. What I don't like is their guaranteed market share and what are unambiguously generous subsidies, unlike say the diesel tax break for coal miners. I think all that should stop when the RET supposedly expires in 2020 after which the main driver should be emissions targets. Then wind and solar will stand or fall on their merits as low carbon affordable cost. The big players who have wind farms, solar farms and fossil fuel generators can work out what percentage of each, noting the CO2 cap must shrink over time.

Given the mediocre results of SA, Germany and California and the lack of cheap Gwh scale energy storage I'm fairly sure it can't be done without a lot of nuclear. That is for serious emissions cuts from 800-900 grams of CO2 per kwh down to 50-100 grams. That's for the power sector. Then there's replacing a few million fuel guzzling cars with EVs to get transport sector emissions way down. All the non-nuclear scenarios seem to be riddled with leaps of faith.

D.C. was abandoned way back when they discovered it could only be pushed around a mile from the generator, before encountering mountains of resistance! The mountain pass is A.C. which in a D.C. Plant can be generated by a D.C motor turning an A.C. alternator?

Even then incorporating significant losses, around 20% in the initial conversion, an averaged 11% in transmission line losses and as much as 64% distribution losses.

So whichever way you play it. small walk away safe thorium power plants that can be mass produced as modules, then trucked to the consumers virtually anywhere as very localised power that produces insignificant losses and no carbon save that created in manufacture!

Even wind towers/solar farms have a manufacture and transport carbon footprint!

If the average 40 MW's produced by a module that fits inside a shipping container and if 40 MW' are insufficient, then more modules can be bolted on until the very local demand is met!

Meaning most transmission and distribution losses can be eliminated?

And yes, they're walk away safe and I'd have one in my backyard!

Thorium is abundant and needs no enrichment, produces no plutonium and just a fraction of the waste produced by current uranium reactors.

There's enough thorium in the soil to power the world for a thousand years and thousands more in igneous rock!

The only reason this ultra cheap NUCLEAR technology was abandoned in the seventies, because it can't be used to build a bomb.

Nuclear technology has already proved it can be used to harvest carbon from seawater, then combine it with hydrogen harvested from that same source to produce jet fuel replacing hydrocarbons! Ditto diesels and petrol replacing methanol!

Plastics made from the methane and Co2 created in bio-digesters is done, much to the considerable distress of Lord Monckton!

See U tube and Thorium lectures/google scholar. And be reasonably well educated on carbon free energy, even if BORED BRAINLESS, the condition those welded to so called renewables, have as their starting point!?
Alan B.

Hi Mark,
Yes, HVDC linking geographically diverse sources is one solution that offers some promise. HVDC is expensive to build because of the terminal equipment required, but much more efficient over time, since the only losses are resistive. It can also be made resistant to weather and other natural disasters because it can be buried with no additional losses.

It also has the advantage that linking additional sources to a HVDC line is a straightforward matter of voltage conversion, there are no phasing issues to worry about.

It's most certainly got to be a part of any long-term solution to energy security.

As for cost, that is reducing over time, as new technology is developed to manage high DC currents with semi-conductors. There will soon come a point at which the lifetime TCO makes HVDC a logical preferred alternative to HVAC distribution.

NZ has been operating with HVDC to link the north and south islands for some time, very successfully.

An excellent article Erica, although I am not aware of government subsidies of wind and solar solving any problems.
You should be encouraged by the Hound”s comment. He has a record of being always wrong in 100% of his posts.His misapprehension of the position in South Australia typifies his ignorance.

The south north link connecting N.Z's South Island to the north was slung across as an extreme example of irrational thinking! [And, to stop the smaller island from floating away from the larger mainland? Ha, Ha LOL.]

And because some moribund bird brain kiwi idealogues thought the south's green RENEWABLE power was inexhaustible and overly abundant? And therefore could be wasted pushing power upline in spite of the considerable losses/WASTE encountered in the EXPECTED resistance! Logic would have instead, created more jobs and wealth creation closer to the (shaky island) source!

Besides, N.Z. has mineral sands from which valuable minerals have been recovered; and where there, as here treated as an almost worthless waste material that had/has to be disposed of?
And dumbly used as memory serves, on our Gold Coast as (cheap filler) sand placed under concrete slabs, (millions of tons?) to improve and stabilise the footing?
And think, just 500 tons of this stuff would power the entire world for a whole year! (Kirk Sorensen, Google tech talks) A good businessman knows when cut the losses and get out!

Even then there could be a transitional role for beleaguered coal as the basis for diesel derived from (cheap energy dependant) transformed coal!? And given our reserves of this mineral and the methane it contains, possible complete independence in traditional fuel and at far less cost than that supplied at economy crippling prices provided by putin's puppets?

And where we might replace exports paid for with our shrinking export incomes, with locally sourced transitional alternatives that comes with win/win enduring jobs/local wealth creation!
Alan B.