My bill just tripled!

Hasbeen, pants on fire, I'm not against coal per se, just the way we do it.

Given my druthers they would sit alongside a large coal seam and another area covered in snaking, large clear plastic pipes.

These pipes would contain treated, nutrient rich effluent and grow oil rich algae.

Some of which are up to 60% oil and absorb 2.5 times their body weight in CO2 . And under optimised circumstances as outlined, able to double that body weight, oil content and CO2 absorption every 24 hours!

In fact, able to eventually absorb every ounce of CO2 such a plant could make!

But ought to be rolled out ahead of the build with maximised capacity already operational and daily harvesting of some of the oil rich algae, done daily as an automated, drum filter process. Removing ready to use oil simple child's play. And only involves sun drying then crushing the harvested material.

Other mineral contaminant smoke stack material removed ASAP by electronic precipitation or electronic deionization dialysis desalination, which also removes many more ions than just salt. Some of which could be refined for industrial applications?

Boiler water would go through the normal demineralization, to be followed in my model by vacuum tower degassing. To remove any possibility of oxidation of the boilers.

Meaning shutdown for boiler maintenance could be halved.

If we are to build a Great big coal fired power station, with public money?

Then lets design it as a zero emissions plant only needing assistance from nature to sequester CO2, which instead could become, ready to use diesel and jet fuel and a reserve for the defence forces, if we ever do need to become entirely self sufficient?

Looking more likely by the day.

As a publicly owned and operated amenity also producing transport fuels. I'd expect the median cost of wholesale/OP power, could be as low as 3 cents PKH, particularly for those businesses and households with battery backup systems.

Sadly, these plants produce not so much as a single gram of life saving bismuth 213!
Alan B.

Hey Alan, remember Telecom. Yes Government owned.

How much did your phone calls cost then?

How many dead head employees did Telstra do away with, while improving service? Something like a 70% reduction in staffing, & still overmanned.

If they used local call centres, I'd be a customer.

Everything that I have read about the Turnbull government's talk of
lower power prices leads me to believe that it is all bulldust, as usual. The same people who caused our electricity problems cannot fix the problems.

Comparing apples with oranges there Has. When East Timour rolled out her telecommunication service, like so many Asian countries, rolled it out as a wireless system and costing less for them, than our antiquated Land line.

Or our quite massively price gouged mobile phone service!

Yes I do remember telecom and the annual 7 billion it earned, with all its faults, for consolidated revenue! And I agree with your call centre sentiments!

I also remember some notable telecom, press club addresses. The most memorable by Honest John Howard shortly after he rammed his G.S.T, down our collective throats and against the polled 87% of a representative polled wishes/opinion.

And as he finished explaining his reform? [Or tax surety merely masquerading as genuine reform?]

One of the reporters in the room asked, why a G.S.T?

To which the former PM replied, well it was either that or a transaction tax and the transaction tax was thought to be regressive. Quote, unquote.

Our electricity system could be vastly improved with a different generation/supply model. Micro grids and genuine competition from suppliers, be they public or private, clean coal or cheaper than coal, thorium!
Alan B.

And to set the record straight Has, I'm probably one of a handful posting here that has actually worked in a coal fired power station, in a science related capacity and actually understands the difference between a smoke stack belching CO2 skyward and a cooling tower belching clouds of water vapour.

The difference?

You can actually see water vapour! Be it from a cooling tower or the exhaust pipe of a still cold engine.

But then, as one of the better informed, you already knew that, didn't you?
Alan B.