How could any electricity or energy policy be contrary to an energy law? Easy. Just make energy democratic. Forget about engineers and technologists. They are soooo 20th century. Vote for your favourite kind of energy. Don’t know what ‘energy’ actually means? Don’t worry. No-one sitting in any parliament in Australia could offer a definition or explanation. Sun is beautiful. Wind is beautiful. Coal is black and dirty. Oil is, well, really oily. Gas is frackin’ awful. Nuclear? Please don’t say that word in polite company. There we have it. Public opinion is all that counts. And the end result? Well, we are so far away from the proclaimed end (solar and wind comprise less than 1% of Australia’s total energy) that no-one can really feel now what things will be like then, with 100% renewables. But you can bet it will be ugly.

The SA Labor government is made up entirely by idiots; the SA Liberal opposition is something similar. The sooner we are rid of state government,the better.

If renewables could stand or fall, without subsidies and against any or all other carbon free competition? Then they could make a meritorious case.

Currently they are the power that the poorest subsidise with outrageous electricity charges! Charges that force our Grandmothers, you know those funny old folk who sacrificed their possible careers to stay at home as the unpaid hired help that did it all!

To go without winter warmth or hot showers, as they tremble with cold, often in overpriced shoe boxes, then fry through summer heat waves that prematurely bump them and equally vulnerable infants, off!?

with the interminable summer heat waves that assures us that climate change and heat waves occurring in an ice age? Is very real!

For these folk and the grief stricken mums cradling dead babies, all to real!

The only case for renewables is the fact that they're carbon free! The lifespan of solar voltaic is just 25 years? Wind farms 50, with some maintenance?

A thorium reactor on the other hand, may with a little routine maintenance and modest refurbishment peculate away for 100 years, using a fuel type that's cheap clean and abundant!

So much so that just that existing in the soil, could power the entire world for a thousand years for coffee money and thousands more if we start to mine igneous rock!

Separation from soils is simple and as raw mineral, needs no enrichment and less radioactive than a banana.

Get on U tube and the many highly credentialed experts who will lay out the history, the cost and who have the most to fear from the rollout of CHEAP, CLEAN, SAFE abundant energy!? Certainly not our Grannies shivering in decrepit dumps or ruins with roofs, nor the small army of infants due to be fried alive, as it were, during the very next enduring heat wave!?

Where a hopelessly overloaded system burns a few dozen really important transformers? Which will hopefully shut down the airconditioners of many moribund dreamers forcing their mad hatter ideological imperatives on us; and our consequently, dying by degrees economy!
Alan B.

I don't disagree with the article but I should point out that SA's present troubles with renewables are not due to any explicit state policy. None of the states subsidise wind farms. The Federal Renewable Energy Target seems to have resulted in a lot of farms in SA. Why?

I asked this question for another article and one poster offered the thought that it was windy in SA.. well its windy in most states. A more likely explanation is that the state has a lot of open areas, so the planning restrictions of other states are not a problem, and the land is cheaper (a lot is arid or semi-arid).

As for the Queensland target, meeting it would require considerable investment. I suppose it would be technically possible to achieve it as it has been almost achieved on isolated grids such as King Island in Bass strait, but an enormous cost. The King Island system (which still uses diesel) cost in the realm of $100,000 for each person on the island to set up..

Hi Mark,
yes, of course you're right about the geographical considerations in SA. The same considerations apply to the wind farms in NQ that Stanwell set up and couldn't operate successfully with the technology they used. NQ has some particular challenges as well, relating to weather generally.

I must reiterate that the technology is rapidly advancing in both wind and especially solar PV. Expect the base cost of rooftop solar to come down by perhaps a third or more over the next 5-10 years. This is due to both the improvements in technology and the cost of tooling being recouped.

I'm not familiar with the King Island example, but presumably the business case was soundly based on replacing diesel with renewables, resulting in a lower cost over time.

Capital cost is not the only consideration.

I think SA was the first to go large on wind power due to favourable winds in the mid north (Snowtown, Hallet etc) coupled with tit for tat energy exchanges with coal powered Victoria. A bit like Denmark and Norway. However their cheapest Pt Augusta baseload couldn't compete with a 9c per kwh subsidy for wind power.

I agree the main driver should be emissions targets not politically preferred technologies. Hopefully reliability and affordable cost will fall into line once low carbon is required. It follows that continuance of the RET is double dipping though based on overseas experience renewable energy interests are likely to insist on continued favouritism.

Now the Vics say they will shut down brown coal in favour of wind and solar that leaves gas fracking or a lifeline to black coal fired NSW as SA's salvation. Batteries will store just minutes worth of energy at state demand level, not days. We are told nuclear is a non starter, kinda weird in light of Maralinga and huge uranium deposits. The exodus of jobs and people could mean reduced industrial power demand for SA.

Justin has got this partly right, Global warming, & the attendant alternate energy, cars & the rest is a great instrument for command of control. Why else would the UN have it's dirty fingers all over it. We will find ourselves subjects of a world government pretty damn quickly if they can swing it. Yes subjects rather than citizens for sure.

However it has an even more attractive side to it for left politicians. It is the perfect vehicle for crony capitalism.

Obama managed to transfer billions of US taxpayer dollars to his campaign donors, with grants of up to half a billion dollars each, YES BILLION, to a number of start up alternatives companies, controlled by those donors. Four had disappeared as had the billions, during his first term. That he was re-elected shows just how stupid yanks really are.

Of course our South Australian & Victorian governments show us that we are not much smarter if any, as does our present prime minister.

So folks, if you are in favour of alternate energy generation, it tells me you either on the gravy train with the other smarties, & the academics, or are about as bright as those US taxpayers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q33S5iZw270

Mark, even if the States don’t provide direct subsidies, the Commonwealth via the RET does provide a “certificate-trading scheme (that) allows generators of renewable energy to earn additional income for the electricity that they generate, above the market price”. I expect that the SA scheme does contain various incentives too. Despite what Craig Minns implies, solar and wind power must always be more expensive than fossil fuels, which occur free in the ground, store energy at high density in solid, liquid or gaseous form, and are simply set alight to release that energy. Too bad that they are harmful and we have to stop using them, or that they will eventually run out, but that’s no reason to pretend that other sources are superior. Fossil fuels have been a bonanza, they got us to where we are today, they will be hard to give up and replace, and this constant exaggerated claim that renewable energy (actually just electricity) will be cheaper doesn’t help. It induces a complacency that is counterproductive.

Hi Tombee,
Actually, already solar PV is cheaper to build than new coal, regardless of subsidy. In fact new coal is more expensive to build than rooftop PV, gas, large scale solar, wind and various forms of wave and tidal generation.

In addition, the use of various renewable technologies encourages new industrial development, both through direct investment and technology transfer, as well as the creation of new workforces. Fossil fuel industries are very bad at employing people because they are extremely highly mechanised, relying on the availability of cheap oil supplies to reduce the cost of production. They are getting more mechanised all the time, with Rio Tinto now operating a significant fleet of autonomous dump trucks and looking at automating their railstock.

Craig, I think you need to be careful in making such comparisons. They often do not compare like with like and take a rather uncritical view of reported cost data. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. As I recently wrote on these pages: “There are abundant good news stories about growing renewables investment and declining costs, e.g. for solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal technologies. The technologies themselves are improving incrementally. Enthusiasts claim that renewables are already cheaper than alternatives. Great! No need for subsidies or carbon pricing! Since not a single national climate policy is based on this premise, it seems safe to bet that the enthusiasm is premature.” Of course the topic deserves continuing careful critical analysis, but exaggerated claims about declining costs, which have been a feature of green advocacy for many years, are simply not helpful.

Yes Tombee, and energy suppliers have to date charged as much as the gold plated market will bear! And completely missing in the debate is energy density comparisons?

Where 500 tons of clean safe cheap CARBON FREE thorium has more energy density that a million tons of CARBON LOADED coal?

Molten salt reactors and thorium have a proven track record of being inherently walk away safe.

Yes salt corrodes and sacrificial anodes; plus electrolytic precipitation may help minimise that! Moreover, the right choices of heat tolerant construction materials, takes care of most heat issues!

We have an inherently walk away safe process that is arguably cheaper than coal! Can be mass produced in factories, which if building larger more complex aircraft, are limited to one a day! [And think, refueling may only be necessary once every 100 years? Put one in my backyard, please!]

And given similar mass production, one shipping container sized reactor a day is doable!
What in the living blue blazers are we waiting for? Permission? From whom? Mr Putin?

A place like King island would be overpowered around the clock? With one 40 MW generator and likely for less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour, of carbon free energy!
Try doing that (anywhere) with diesel/solar panels/wind turbines.

All NUCLEAR is not the same. The gamma radiation in a fission process is potentially deadly and can kill!

Whereas the alpha radiation of NUCLEAR isotopes can and has cured previously incurable cancer! Similarly not all nuclear reactions are the same. Some are fast some are slow!

Even so, the slow thorium molten salt reactor can burn current nuclear waste and create modern miracle medical isotopes, we are either running out of or getting short of?

Simply put, we've never ever needed fast breeder reactors!

What are we missing and why are we still waiting? Surely it can't be something as simple as rank vested interest on the part of this nation's gormless decision makers?
Alan B.

Hi Tombee,
I favour a level playing field approach being implemented sooner rather than later.

Solar thermal is still considerably dearer than most other forms of generation, but it does have the advantage of providing some storage to meet AM and PM residential peaks, so it's a useful adjunct to PV in some situations.

I'm not by any means a renewables fanboi, I just think that the business case is becoming increasingly compelling. There are a few very promising technologies that will come on stream commercially over the next decade and they are likely to change a lot of the calculations. For the medium term future there is no doubt that fossil sources will be needed, but beyond a 30 year horizon it's very difficult to see how they will be justified.

Time will tell.

Alan B...

Thorium reactors are too sophisticated for the Greens and the Labor party to understand.
But since thorium reactors can actually consume nuclear weapons stockpiles for fuel, one would think they would be excited with the prospect: it seems not if the technology stands in the way of totally unreliable windmills.

Environmental concerns of ordinary folk, have been usurped by environmentalism ideologues, dressed as caring environmentalists, when actually they are dinosaurs standing in the way of "positive" technical processes, towards environmental solutions.

Justin Campbell is displaying his ignorance: SA has NOT lost its baseload energy capacity, nor lost the capacity to meet peak demand. SA has for decades been more reliant on gas than coal, and some of SA's gas fired power stations are well suited to providing baseload supply. And pursuing reductions by other means would've been difficult (closure of the coal fired power stations was due to the coal mine closing when they ran out of coal) and would not have enhanced reliability.

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curmudgeonathome,

SA does not presently have any problems with renewables. The huge problem that occurred about three weeks ago was a one off, due to freak events, and will never happen again. With hindsight it should never have happened in the first place, of course. The unforeseen events should have been anticipated, and there should have been technical and procedural means to prevent it.

SA does have a problem with expensive electricity. It's been that way since privatisation, with generation companies using Enron tactics to rip us off. SA's enthusiasm for renewable energy is partly because it reduced the energy companies' ability to do this.

However, use of feedin tariffs is an expensive way to encourage renewables. It would be far better to use concessional loans to reduce the impact of the high capital cost.

As for King Island, the sensible approach would be to link it to Tasmania and mainland Australia.
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Alan B,

As yet there are no commercial scale thorium reactors, so it is too early to say what their operating cost will be. But it makes sense to develop them first in places where renewables can't easily meet the requirements and where there's experience of nuclear power.

Alpha radiation is generally less dangerous than beta and gamma radiation, but that doesn't make it beneficial. Yes it can be used to kill cancer (by attracting alpha emitters into cancer cells) but it also kills healthy cells. People have contracted lung cancer from inhaling radon, and if you swallowed a strong alpha emitter it would probably kill you.