A sensible debate must be an informed debate. I've only written once sentence, and already there's a problem. In disussing this topic and others, I repeatedly come against a brick wall because the people I'm trying to debate with seem to lack any understanding of the basic economics and physics of the process. Attempts to educate fall on deaf ears. Anything that conflicts with preconceived notions is simply ignored. Maybe I'm also guilty of the same things - I have no way of telling.

One particular issue that some people seem incapable of getting their heads around is that financial capital has a cost. Over and over I see the idea expressed that since you only pay it once, it doesn't really need to be taken account when deciding how much the power will cost to the consumer. This is particularly noticeable when trying to discuss the economics of solar power.

I question the idea that large scale windfarms do not suffer the uncertainties of supply inherent in smaller ones. At least, when the wind farms are only on the scale of Bass Strait. Weather patterns are a lot larger than that, and I believe that there will be periods when the entirety of Bass Strait would have only minimal winds. These occasions may not be that frequent, but when they occurred, we would have to have to be a reasonable way of dealing with the power shortfall (which we don't).

One concern I've expressed elsewhere about windfarms is that they have a largely ignored external cost, that is imposed on producers that have a higher marginal cost. This is because the latter are effectively used as free backup for when the windfarms cannot produce. I've never seen this properly costed.

Nuclear power stations are not an unmixed blessing in the effect they have on the reliability of the system. If such a power station trips offline due to a network failure, and has to be shut down, it can take days to restart. Not so good if that one plant is providing a significant slice of your total power.

The following technology is worth a look:-

http://www.enviromission.com.au/

Sylvia, you’re right. Capital allocation certainly does have an opportunity cost and economic considerations are always contingent and interdependent, making consideration of them a lot more complicated than, say, buying groceries. A similarly overlooked consideration of wind power is that once built it you do not have to then buy / supply any fuel or deal with any waste.

The contention that large scale windfarms are not restricted by wind variability compared to small isolated windfarms is easy enough to checkout. Have a look at the wind speeds on any day’s weather reports of a sample of towns along the Victorian coast. Victoria has about 1800km of coastline, far far more than the UK east coast.

Power shortfalls can be dealt with as they are dealt with today, with coal. We will be using and exporting coal for many years to come; right up until renewable energy meets all demand.

Terje, Enviromission is an enormously promising enterprise. It’s a privately funded large scale “24hour supply” renewable power station. The sooner it is built and producing its 200MW the sooner large scale renewables will attract decent investment capital.

(Disclosure: I used to own shares in enviromission. In accordance with conflict of interest laws and guidelines I sold all my energy and environment related shares prior to the last federal election before I taking up work with the Federal Shadow Environment Minister.)
- Unfortunately for me but good for the company, they have risen 50% since.

It seems the Solar Tower is now the energy saviour of choice but we don't even know yet if it will deliver what it promises. I remember reading similar optimism about fusion power in a Boy's Own annual about thirty years ago. However I think the problem is now so urgent we should accelerate work on unconventional energy sources so in five years time we have a clear idea of what works and what doesn't. The reality may be that the technologies that work have major problems of capital cost, waste disposal and/or poor thermal efficiency. Like the characters in 'Waiting for Godot' we want to believe there is a simple solution.

The economics of all renewables mean that they must be aimed at base load generation. No one will construct a renewable 'fueled' peaking station.

If wind power is used as a substitute for existing base load capacity, the latter being used only when (possibly infrequent) wind power is unavailable, then it is undermining the economics of the current infrastructure. One can take the view that that's too bad - though it has implications for any future re-investment in that base load capacity.

If wind power is used to augment the existing baseload capacity, then new standby capacity (probably gas powered - it's less capital intensive) needs to be constructed alongside the wind capacity. This represents an additional capital cost that has to be factored into the economics of wind power.

Solar capacity, whether solar tube, or otherwise, has the problem that it only functions during the day, and works best when there's no cloud, so it also involves some standby capacity, and alternative generation capacity to cover the night-time base load. It makes sense for the alternative capacity (but not the standy capacity) to be storage based - perhaps additional pumped storage in the Snowy's for example together with more generating capacity there (I don't know whether that's feasible). Either way there is still an additional capital cost involved.

It's not that these issues render the renewables infeasible, but they do seem to be largely ignored by proponents, which make the informed debate difficult to start.

Sylvia.

Like all problems there are a variety of solutions. Most require the allocation of upfront capital which will then return a dividend obtained from the energy produced. The difficulty is getting the money for the upfront capital for investment in new technologies because the capital that is used to build the next set of generators comes in one way or the other from income from existing energy consumption.

This capital is mainly interested in ways of increasing the consumption of its existing products. For example it is not interested in using capital from selling energy to save energy. It is unlikely to be interested in other ways of generating energy particularly if it is more expensive. The system will continue down the path of more coal fired plants because that is the low risk path and that is where the money comes from to build more generating capacity.

Agree with last comments Sylvia. I have roof mounted solar panels but I use grid electricity at night. Tas Hydro has a Bass gas fired backup generator when the hydro and the wind farm are underperforming. I don't know what they'll do when gas is short. The southern drying trend affects rainfall in Tasmania as well as the Snowy Mountains so I don't know if repumping is a long term option. The public needs to think about all these problems and not put too much trust in unproven concepts. In fact I don't see any easy solutions at all.

Sylvia,

Your comment that "Solar capacity, whether solar tube, or otherwise, has the problem that it only functions during the day, and works best when there's no cloud, so it also involves some standby capacity, and alternative generation capacity to cover the night-time base load" is not completely accurate.

See, as Terje has wisely provided, enviromissions' web site.

Solar towers work on the basis of temperature (pressure) difference between the top of the tower and the bottom. If there is a temp difference then there is air flow. There is always a temp difference. In fact, the greatest temp difference occurs at the end of the day when the upper air temp is low and the ground temp is high. It provides 24 hour generation with peak delivery at dusk, handily coinciding with peak demand.

I think Fickle Pickle's comment illustrates part of my initial point. The issue for an investor is how big the return, or dividend, will be.

A nice brand-new wind farm was recently opened at Canunda in South Australia. This state of the art system has a capacity of 46MW, and cost $92 million. Actually, the capacity figure is a bit misleading, because that is really its maximum generating capacity when there is enough wind. Its average capacity will be somewhat less. The ratio between the average capacity and the maximum capacity is called the capacity factor. The American Wind Energy Association (who presumably support the idea) says that common capacity factors lie between 25% and 40%. If we're generous, then that means that $92 million has bought an average capacity of 20MW. To return a 5% dividend on investment per year, and returning the capital over 25 years (our supposed lifetime for the windfarm) means that the farm has to earn about $740 per hour. But each hour, on average, the farm only delivers 20MWh, so the electricity has to be sold for $37 per MWh. This doesn't even take into account other capital costs like connecting to the grid, or operating costs (personnel etc). But selling the power for $37 per MWh is already problematic. The investor could do as well by putting the money on deposit in the bank, with no risk.

There's no conspiracy to avoid financing these things. It's just that absent special financial incentives for green generation, or penalties for non-green (which would push the price of power up), the wind farm cannot give a reasonable return on investment.

BTW, look at
http://www.vestas.com/pdf/produkter/AktuelleBrochurer/v90/v90_2/V90_2_UK.pdf

as a type typical wind generator. It requires 10m/s or 36km/h winds to generate full power. That's a fair wind.

Look at

http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/charts/charts.view.pl?idcode=IDX0102&file=IDX0102.200505141200.gif

The rule is that the closer the isobars (lines) the stronger the wind. I think the whole of the coast of Victoria would have been below 36km/h at that time. I'm sticking by my position that even large scale farms cannot guarantee to deliver adequate power on their own.

I think you have all forgotten reality. Whatever form of power generation you adopt in the future would take quite a few years to bring on line. Thats after you have gone through the beaurucratic stupidity that prevails in every country. I am not an academic and don't have, Dr, phd, wank wank, before or after my name, I am just an ordinary person. But even I can see that the window of opportunity for us to turn around the decline in our environment and society has passed us by and all you do is try to semantically confuse everyone. Wind generation systems placed in Bass strait, would endure many weeks without wind. This goes for all areas that are suitable for wind farms. Sadly all you people can talk about is the economics of energy generation when you should be using you so called academic knowledge to provide solutions that take into account the reality of our energy environment and not the economic illusion. Just remember if you can, that you can have an environment without an economy, but you can't have an economy without a suitable environment. Sadly academics can't fathom that out, they just blindly go on repeating their programmed indoctrinations and attempt to semanticaly confuse us all. You have no answers, just ridiculous meaningless chatter. Even an uneducated norm like me can work it out and arrive at solutions that are meaningful for the people and not just academics or big business profits.
The alchemist

Alchemist if you have a solution you should say what it is. Then consider whether business and the public will accept it, coz that's the real problem. Even some academic 'w*nkers' have argued that in a crisis the normal rules don't apply.

My solution is to place small scale wind and solar generation on every house in rural australia as well as wave and tide generation in coastal communities. These can be placed within current wharfs and jetties. The next step is to repower the cities using the same methods. Not pratical you may say, but by using technologies that have been proven to be inefficient, coal, nuclear and gas, you only increase the problem. Firstly we have to re-arrange how those in the city use energy, as they are the ones that are the biggest waste creators on the planet. Business wouldn't like this because it would put power generation in the hands of the people and reduce their costs, academics and big business would not be able to bleed people constantly of their economic resources. We also have to stop using fossil fuels to power vehicles, the only way to do that is to subsidise the change over to electric and hybrid vehicles now, reducing pollution and energy use. We have to change our transport system to electric light rail everywhere across the country. By using small automatic vehicles, we can have a constant transport system that would be efficient and environmentally sustainable. They could be recharged by using the surplus energy of communites as well as exporting energy to cities and reducing the cost for business. This approach would create lots of long term stable jobs, reduce pollution dramatically, cut the cost of infrastructes upkeep, (roads etc) and put sustainability back where it should be, in all our lives. As an interim, biodiesel plants would need to be set up and crops planted to produce biodiesel. Biodiesel produces less harmfull by-products that fossil fuels. Again this would stimulate the economy giving farmers a viable and long term future market. It would also stabilise costs and allow industry to plan for its fuel consumption knowing that prices would remain quite static for the long term. Not enough room to give all the details here, but thats just a start.
The Alchemist

I wonder how many times I'm going to see the same naive ideas trotted out as being the solution to the world's energy problems.

Alchemist, the problem with having windmills and solar power generators on individual properties is not that it is impractical, but that it is too expensive. The resulting power costs much more than it does from your electricity retailer, because of the opportunity cost of the windmills and solar generators. BTW, you left out the batteries and other backup systems that are required for when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

An opportunity cost is real money that people can't use for paying off their mortgages or improving their standard of living.

The reason we face an environmental issue at all is exactly because coal fired power generation is so cheap. Perhaps that's not very surprising - coal is a concentrated energy source that you can just dig out of the ground with big shovels, it's easy to handle, and to get the energy out you just burn it. This means that moving away from it almost inevitably involves paying more for power.

Electric cars don't help at all. The energy they use still has to come from somewhere. Hybrid cars are more energy efficient, and as the technology becomes cheaper, and petrol becomes more expensive, I'm sure we'll eventually see more hybrids on the roads.

Biodiesel in interesting, but I couldn't find any information on how well it scales. In particular, how much water is required to grow the feedstock?

In short, most of what you've proposed is not a solution at all, and it's just as well you didn't get to implement it before some basic economic analysis was applied - it would have been a hugely expensive mistake.

Sylvia Else.

Once again you're talking sense Sylvia. I have solar panels which cost big bucks even after a greenhouse office subsidy but which still require very frugal energy use. For example I grill food in special microwave bags. I also make some biodiesel out of used cooking oil from chicken shops that ends up costing about 50c a litre without costing my time or paying the required 38c per litre excise. One estimate says we need 16 hectares of good land to grow enough oilseed to make biodiesel for one car plus a share of the farmer's tractor use. An alternative diesel technology is thermal conversion of various intractable organic materials but this won't power 700 million cars. Ditto ethanol. Basically something has to give in a very big way.

It is clear that we have to find economic alternatives and it is clear that we have to change the behaviour of people. Rather than looking for particular alternatives (which will come of their own course when they are cheap enough) we have to find ways to

Change the behaviour of individuals so they make energy saving choices through economic incentives.

Change the system so that the "better" alternatives in terms of total energy used for energy out have incentives when it comes to getting investment dollars.

Coal is good from the energy standpoint because the energy required to produce electricity is a lot less than energy we get from it. It just has some unfortunate side effects. It is very sensible to be looking for ways of reducing the side effects of coal - perhaps by someone finding a good way to get the energy without producing green house gases. However, someone has to pay for finding out how and so we need to change the system of capital allocation so that it becomes attractive for innovators to figure out how to achieve societies goals.

For example solar panels are probably not the answer at the moment even if they were cheap to produce because the total amount of energy required to produce solar panels is probably greater than the energy we will get from them when we consider the total energy consumption to get energy from them. Add in the cost of batteries of erecting them, of transport to houses etc. and you get little if any extra energy. Solar panels will probably have to wait until we get ways of constructing them onsite from local materials.

Rather than trying to guess which way will work best we need to change the economics so that it will happen as a matter of course.

Federal finance minister Nick Minchin has said that there is no economic case for nuclear power.

He's right. There isn't. Australia can go on burning coal for as long as it lasts. Indeed, doing so won't have much impact on global warming, because we do not represent that big a proportion of fossil fuel burning. If there is a global warming issue, either the rest of the world will address it, in which case we'll have no problem, or it won't address it, in which case nothing we could do would really help.

So the first question Australia needs to ask itself is whether it's willing to cooperate in a global push to limit (and indeed reduce) CO2 emissions, of prefers to follow the cheaper path of letting everyone else bear the costs.

But could we get away scot-free with doing the latter? One danger in pursing that course is that it makes it very easy for protectionist governments abroad to justify tarif barriers against us by calling it an imputed carbon tax on our exports. It could also result in anti-Australian feeling caused by our perceived (and indeed in that case actual) parasitic behaviour.

This is a world problem. We need to be seen to be playing our part - for our own sake.

(BTW, Fickle Pickle, my comment about the energy in coal was a simplification for the purposes of discussion. In reality, the energy exists because oxygen will react with carbon in a way that produces heat, and which results in CO2. The only reason oxygen is available so readily is that plants have previously separated it from CO2, by using the energy collected from sunlight. It is implausible on chemical and physical grounds that a process could be found that has a net production of energy from carbon, but which does not produce CO2 in the process. Sorry).

Sylvia.

I think we about to begin a Decade of Dithering and Denial with coal. People on diets eventually realise they have to abstain from cream cakes even though they are cheap. Just before his resignation Deputy PM John Anderson seemed to grasp the contradiction between urging more coal exports and the long dry spell in SE Australia. An imputed carbon tax would never fall on coal exports directly. In the TV ad the shop assistant asks 'what do you want the environment to do with this plastic bag?' We could ask China 'how do you propose to sequester the carbon in this shipload of coal?' Within a decade there will have been many extreme weather events and the much touted 'clean coal' technology will probably be as credible as the missile defence shield. Therefore I don't see a coal slowdown til maybe the year 2020.

Putting individual systems on each house, may sound expensive, but it would create jobs, start up new small industries and put Australia at the forefront of sustainable energy. I have been using this system for many years and on average generate between 2 and 5KWA per day depending on the day. I recovered my costs within 6 years and until a year ago used a small diesel that powered a 120amp 24v alternator that used 1lt every 6 hours, that was driven by biodiesel and costs me 18cents a litre to produce. Now I use a system that consists of 3 flywheels, drive by a 12v wiper motor, driving a 35 amp 24v alternator. It took a bit of getting going but once running it produces twice as much power as it uses, giving me a constant return of about 20ah. In more than 1 year it has not stopped, going 24/7. But I understannd that people can't see beyond economical rationalism and how things were done in the past. I believe that we are at war with the problems we have caused and if we continue to try and solve things with outdated thoughts and technologies then in 5 years time, we will be far worse of than now. What you fail to remember is that our environment is past breaking point and unless we take radical and differenmt steps now, then society as we know it and our lifestyles will dissapear. We could have biodiesel plants set up in every capitol city and in major regional centres, producing within a year. You can't do that with any other forms of energy production. I listened to Saul eslake on the radio the other day, and believe it or not, but his solution, wait for it, find more oil and look at alternatives. Wow, now thats progressive, if you want to do nothing but go down the same road. But then again have we ever seen anything constructive come from economists. Please don't hold your breaths.

Alchemist, at this point I'm starting to suspect you're just making it up as you go along. Some of your terminology makes no sense. What is a KWA, for example? Or did you mean KVA?

As far as I can tell, Biodiesel has a energy content of about 30MJ per litre. Your claimed alternator set up, even if your are quoting peak currents and voltages (rather than RMS, which is more usual), is still producing about that amount of power, which implies that it is 100% thermally efficient. This is highly improbable.

Your later claim that some gear "produces twice as much power as it uses" is either just grossly mistaken, or you are lying.

The figure of 18c per litre for making biodiesel must be excluding any effort you personally make. What's your feedstock? Would it scale?

Are connected to the grid at all? Is so, why?

You seem to despise any sort of financial analysis, but the vast majority of Australians just want to pay as little as possible for power. You're not offering that, so they won't be interested.

Sylvia.

Well done Sylvia, now at least I know that people know the subject. So all you observations are correct. I am connected to the grid, because I can't yet produce the energy for my workshop for the same value as I get from the grid. The problem is a very difficult one indeed and there may not be any economical way of changing our direction in energy production. That may place us in a situation that will stunt our growth and yet may spur rapid advancement in technology, as is the case during war periods. It is sad that the only way we can forget the bottom line is when we are trying to kill each other. We may have to look at that rational as well, before we can go forward in a different direction. I wonder why it is, that we always seem to have to be brought kicking and screaming to confront the reality before us, before we undertake what is a natural process, change.

Is this debate aimed at finding alternatives to nuclear power? Unless a bright person jams the copulation urge, next time there is a blackout we are doomed to reconsider nuclear energy as both governments and infrastructure are obliged keep pace with demand.

Before we get fired up on any technology, let’s find the technicians. We had the SECV and other corporations or commissions that both generated and maintained standards in their heyday. They seldom borrowed expertise and much wisdom was available for governments from within. Most managers grew up in the job. What’s left today?

After working for decades in a variety of hazardous industries through our post war boom I can guess that our once great workforce is well and truly rationalized. I met two chaps in my fair city this year that were drifting. One had experience in building marine pipelines after working in The North Sea, the Middle East and Bass Strait. The other designed and built water treatment plants. Are we witnessing the end of an era?

They could retrain for the nuclear industry as there is plenty of time. I reckon they both moved on. I am sitting in the favored swivel chair of one. As independent contractors we at times worked for major international groups like Bechtel Pacific. My jobs once involved automation around reactors in the petro chemical refineries, sometimes after spills and fires. It too was a risky business then.

Have we improved or is human progress truly self eliminating? A former supervisor survived a similar job in our first uranium mine. We often discussed why we moved on and what we left behind.

Somebody has a lot of work to do before we can build and run a decent sized nuclear reactor. But in anticipation, perhaps folk here will find appropriate software for our chronic hysteresis and the odd hiccup in our new generator.