Xoddam,

you state, “’base load’ power is defined in terms of generation, not demand.”

This is nonsense. The base-load is the average load of electricity consumed at any given time. This is a law of electromagnetics because supplied power must always be equal to demanded power, for the grid to function properly.

From base-load requirements comes base-load generators. Ie Fossil fuel, Nuclear and some Hydro. At the moment these are the only technologies capable of supplying base-load power on a scale which is useful.

So base-load doesn’t go away at night just because you aren’t using your internet connection.

see http://www.uic.com.au/nip37.htm

You’ve got it all backwards. The technology is determined by the economics. That’s why coal fired power stations are the cheapest source of power. If we significantly varied our demand from these types of generators they would become far less cost effective. This is because of the associated wastage you speak of when they are not run at a constant rate.

The demand for storage of power has been around since large scale power stations were first built. Electricity cannot be stored in any real quantity so do you not think that people have been working on trying to solve it? That is why so many of us are skeptical about the sudden claims for intermittent renewables such as solar and wind, to have solved this power storage dilemma.

I think you misunderstand our electricity grid. It isn’t connected from west coast to east coast for starters. Also if your generating plant is a long way away from the point where the power is needed, you start to get significant wastage. So whether the wind doesn’t stop everywhere at once is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether the area where your power is generated has wind or not. Sharing power between grids assumes that A) your interconnection can carry the total amount of required electricity and B) whether you have enough excess capacity to provide the shortfall.

This means for wind we must have far in excess of our baseload requirement in order to allow for windless days

Hey, Shadow Minister,
Maybe the reason Rolling Stone (a Rock Magazine) is now an “Authoritative Source” is because it has “street credibility”. I suggest you criticise the cited article on its merits, rather than its origin. Its case is much better argued than any of yours.

As for your comment that
“Wind, solar and other technologies have made great progress, but are still decades from being able to meet the base load requirements on a sustainable basis.”

This must seem like a compelling opinion to you, but have a look at the wikipedia article on Wind Power:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
“Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into more useful forms, such as electricity, using wind turbines. At the end of 2006, worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators was 74,223 megawatts; although it currently produces just over 1% of world-wide electricity use[1], it accounts for approximately 20% of electricity use in Denmark, 9% in Spain, and 7% in Germany.[2] Globally, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006.
As I said in an earlier post, there are other ways of working on the base load problem. Wind will not solve your base-load problem, but it is one added factor which will reduce its severity.

Meanwhile, look at the growth rate for wind electricity. Where’s your nuclear electricity on a similar graph?
On the S (shouldawouldacoulda) axis?

Market influences are resulting in the addition of wind electricity to national grids at a phenomenal rate. The smart money is buying alternative energy and energy efficiency, and the mugs are betting on your radioactive boilers.

Paul.L,

Economics drives the choice of technology, but options are dramatically wider now than they were just 20 years ago. Don't use 1960s economics to decide infrastructure spending in 2007.

Queensland and Tasmania were only recently connected to the "national" grid with HVDC interconnectors; WA will most likely follow. Wind turbines strung across the Nullarbor could speed this along.

Base load is NOT defined as an average, it's the power (normally) made by continually-operating generators. It is always *lower* than the mean generation. In NSW the base load (4.4GW) is only one third of the summer afternoon peak of 13GW. NSW is short of peak capacity, but has a 40% baseload generation surplus.

The economics of integrating wind power are discussed in detail here:

http://www.ieawind.org/AnnexXXV/Meetings/Oklahoma/IEA%20SysOp%20GWPC2006%20paper_final.pdf

And to save on the OLO word limit, see my posts on the base-load concept here:

http://www2b.abc.net.au/tmb/Client/Message.aspx?b=70&m=10012&dm=1&pd=2&am=14060

The average capacity factor of SA wind power is well above 30% (not 20%), over 1% of Australian electricity is from wind power. Wind earns an excellent capacity credit of 20%, operating reliably with respect to forecasts and never suffering major outages.

*No* power source is 100% reliable. Coal generators operate for months, but outages can be several days (for scheduled maintenance) or weeks in the case of a breakdown. Nuclear facilities are comparable, but they also have to be shut down for refuelling, and after a"scram" (a forced shutdown originating in problems outside the power station) can be incapable of producing power for months.

http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E05-14_NukePwrEcon.pdf
http://www.waltpatterson.org/nucamnesia.pdf

Coal generation's capacity factor is around 85% -- so three MW of wind capacity easily compensates for one MW of coal capacity, except that the aggregate is *more* reliable because one-generator-at-a-time failures or maintenance outages have a negligible impact.

anti-green, your wind questions are pertinent but I've exceeded the word limit again (and I suspect you already know the answers). Informed, if partisan, responses are here:

http://www.awea.org/faq/

No-one advocates covering all the earth's wilderness with windmills. There are other competitive renewable power technologies; wind is merely at the leading edge today, as was hydro in 1930.

This has been a most interesting article followed by some good discussion however I’m bothered by recent comments about base load. I fear grid dynamics and generator station “agilities” are not well understood.

A problem least of all appreciated is the thermal lag of major coal fired power utilities. Old style equipment including quarries and boilers are inflexible energy sources at the best of times and so are their control systems. I won’t go into detail on dredgers, furnaces, steam lines, turbines, switch gear and load factor but all need to be understood.

As power was traditionally sold to maximize the performance of these common resources across networks, we are stuck with monsters that don’t like change in the way we do things. For instance, it took decades for authorities to allow minor sources to connect directly as phase relations always remained a critical factor for the systems. Cutting with DC was difficult enough in the early days of power control.

We end up with a bias against all fickle arrangements including wind power. Given enough wind machines distributed around the country, wind power can become a serious base load contender. I also notice nobody is assigning wind generators an old role in water pumping. How quickly we forgot windmills!

With a change in attitude we can achieve a lot in modifying demand. The grid has saved us from outages in one station or another but it keeps us all prisoners. As time goes on more sophisticated monitoring can back off demand. Building more generator capacity nuclear or otherwise is not the only answer.

I read today (The Public Sector Informant) - There are three “hardware” changes that can increase an organization’s adaptability

1) Reduce hierarchy
2) Increase autonomy
3) Encourage diversity

www.apo.org.au

Nuclear debate has bcome more pressing.

The consequences of Howard's shortsighted economic-growth-by-immigration stupidity are far greater than people realise.

PEAKOIL is colliding with Howard's enforced population growth. By 2025 there will not be enough liquid fuel for armed forces and police to intervene in race riots and ethnic cleansing campaigns in our suburbs. Governments will stand back and watch. If for example the Iemma government plays true to its Italian roots it may well find benefits in fostering riots for certain political and economic gains. Already we have seen a lot of questions like whose electorate the riots started from, surrounding the Cronulla riots. Only nuclear power can ensure that we have the energy replacement equivalent of OIL and the deterrence force of nuclear that since WWII has worked so well to stem terminal violence.

What all this means is that within a decade as we witness petrol prices reach the magic $10 per litre, Federal government will be too remote and powerless to be relevant if it does not embrace a nuclear program now.

Also, the ALP and the Libs WILL mine Uranium. No one is going to stop them doing their quickie economics. The best we can do is ensure they use Pebble bed technology to get better value out of Uranium. Pebbles are the equivalent of nuclear condoms. Value-adding yellowcake to Pebble Bed Reactor fuels, with corresponding reactor research, will give at least 10X the return on our ores. Further it makes reactor meltdowns impossible and prevents yellowcake's use in nuclear weapons in a way which no dumb-signed ruskie-sales-contract can ever do.

It is no use to have Kevin Rudd and a band of green peacmakers like Peter Garrett, all starry eyed with polices shaped two decades ago let loose on a Nation which, like Titanic, is headed full-Costello-throttle-ahead for the nearest iceberg.

Along with Rudd's positive social reforms we want Labor to show us they can develop POSITIVE nuclear policy and develop zero immigration policy commensurate with global warming, water, energy and infrastructure deficiencies that are going to prevail and grow over the next 2 decades.

KAEP

The proponents of pebble bed reactors continually fail to allude to the volume of radioactive waste from this technology. Whilst uranium use is more frugal, three hundred and eighty thousand tennis sized pebbles are required to fuel a reactor of 120 megawatts.

The volume of waste is much greater since that waste will be disposed of within the pebbles. If countries adopted this technology, I envisage an enormous waste problem.

The planet's largest problem for survival is now pollution.

The Yucca Mountain respository, not yet commissioned, is already regarded as insufficient to accommodate the current RA waste languishing in storage.

Where do nuclear scientists propose disposing of the spent, tennis ball sized pebbles if all countries adopted this technology? The U depleted pebbles would eventually equate to trillions and must be isolated for many generations.

Will our "leaders" resort to ocean dumping or continue their land grab by developing and contaminating even more massive subterranean repositories?