Dominique, is the Clean Energy Council just about improving technologies and efficiencies in our energy regime, or is it about a holistic approach to energy consumption and sustainability?

Your article unfortunately indicates the former.

As with the writers of practically every article of this sort on this forum, you miss half the picture. It is not just about improving technologies. It has also got to be about reducing or at least stabilising total demand/consumption.

Don’t take for granted that our population will continue to grow with no end in sight. Tackle this issue as well!! If you don’t, then you’re not being holistic in your efforts to achieve the minimum greenhouse gas impact that we can and to develop a sustainable energy regime.

Another puff piece from a vested interest. In this case its the power companies who have some investment in wind energy and the website links to the Australian Business Council for Sustainable Energy. Is the aim of this article to raise public awareness or to get government subsidies for the development of wind power?

I thoroughly endorse the need to explore windpower but I am sick and tired of the pork barrelling that means that "the squeaky wheel gets the oil". Its no way to run an nation of 23 million people. It might be good enough for 250 million Americans who quite frankly don't know any better but Australia needs a coordinated, well thought out plan for energy, transport, water and food needs as well as the corresponding population controls.

"abundant renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal"

Any chance of some numbers? Details about costs would be nice. Of course, the reason they're not included is that they would rather undermine the thrust of the article, given that the costs for wind and solar are too high (particularly the real costs that take into account their intermittent nature).

Geothermal, in the form of "hot rocks" may yet prove a winner, but otherwise please explain where the power comes from when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

BTW, before anyone mentions pumped storage hydro generation, do the maths. We don't have anywhere to store water on that sort of scale.

We do, of course, have an option that is known to work: nuclear.

Sylvia.

the unwillingness to even address population control is interesting. perhaps it'a a racial fear of admitting there are limits to growth. more likely, it's a profound fear in pollies that setting a limit on population is career suicide.

either way, ludwig, it's another aspect of social activity that desperately needs addressing, and won't get it under our present political structure.

fortunately, blathering on at olo requires little energy so we can afford to do it in the face of no visible progress.

We'll see what new technology brings, but frankly I'm pessimistic
and think that the "Tragedy of the Commons" applies here.
So one day nature will have to sort it all out the hard way.

The Catholic Church keeps promoting more babies and evil condoms,
so population keeps rising at 80 million a year.

I have friends who do great, peddle their bicycles etc and it
makes them feel good. Meantime I see that the first of the
Saudi princes has ordered his own personal Airbus 380 to get
around the place. The Chinese have no plans to stop building
ever more power stations and the high price of oil is in fact
going to pump more and more money into the third world, as that
is where the remaining oil is. So they will all be busily joining
the first world, with ever increasing energy demands.

So perhaps nature will just have to sort it all out the hard and
painfull way in the end. Sad but highly likely, unless there are
some amazing technology break throughs.

Yep, let's get to it. Do all the right things. And show our concern as well - Walk Against Warming and open our eyes. But only so far.

"A 30% reduction by 2020" - great stuff if your vision doesn't go as far as seeing that Australia's current rate of population growth would produce a numbers increase of 20% by 2020.

If we don't take in concern about population growth, walking is not fast enough. If such concern does not eventuate, even if we run the predictions are that energy and climate problems will overtake and trample us.

“Sad but highly likely, unless there are some amazing technology break throughs.”

A psychological breakthrough is what we need Yabby.

Unfortunately in the absence of this, technological breakthroughs are very likely to actually make things worse, by effectively facilitating population growth and hence taking us further away from sustainability.

This has been the case with most significant technological breakthroughs throughout the history of humanity.

And this why the Clean Energy Council MUST have a lot to say about the need for population stabilisation and for our society to wean itself off of the continuous expansion paradigm.

Sylvia,

The electricity network *already* deals with large-scale intermittency. Individual kettles and air-conditioners are intermittent, but aggregate electric demand is predictable and highly variable. The same applies to the aggregate of numerous widespread intermittent generators. It is no more true that the wind stops blowing everywhere at once, than that a city is dark at night.

Demand management techniques have for decades attempted to match electric demand to big steam-powered generators, smoothing demand variation by encouraging "off-peak" overnight electricity consumption. A significant portion of the "base-load demand" exists solely to take advantage of off-peak tariffs. Demand management would be equally effective in encouraging demand to match a non-flat supply profile.

The cheapest and fastest way to clean up the electricity supply is neither ambient nor nuclear, but improving fuel efficiency by cogenerating wherever there is demand for heat or cooling. Almost anywhere that heat is discarded to the environment, electricity could be generated instead. Wherever electricity is used for heat, fuel can be used instead and electricity generated on the side. Cogenerated electricity is cheaper than base-load and also matches demand.

We already have many gigawatts of hydroelectric and natural-gas-powered peak electricity generation capacity which is turned on when baseload is insufficient, and off when not required. Geothermal generation is likely also to be easily varied.

I've read your posts elsewhere claiming that integration of intermittent supply reduces the efficiency of existing plant -- this is rarely the case; solar and wind correlate with peak demand, so what happens is that expensive peaking generators are displaced before base-load power. Peakers remain available to make up for shortfalls in intermittent generation instead.

By combining cogeneration with intermittent and peaking generators we can displace as much 24-hour coal-fired generation as we like, right up to the point where intermittent generators regularly exceed the total demand on the network -- which will not happen until we have more intermittent generation *capacity* than conventional generation.

Only then need we worry about storing excess electricity. Numerous options are on the table besides pumped storage: vehicle-to-grid, molten salt batteries, vanadium ion flow-batteries, compressed air, hydrogen...

"A psychological breakthrough is what we need Yabby."

Ludwig, I don't think that will happen, without a really
big shock to the system somewhere. As I said before, I think
that people unfortunately often need pain to learn.

Regarding population, I actually do believe that given the
choice, most families are happy with 1-3 kids and realise
the benefits. We can see that in countries where women
have choice, they take advantage of it. Hundreds of millions
of women in the third world, simply still don't have that
choice. We send them food and vaccines, but forget about
family planning. No wonder there is a population explosion
there.

Religion remains the problem with that debate, as Catholics
hope to outbreed muslims, their archenemy. We've heard all
the gloom and doom about demographics etc. What they forget
of course that in more educated countries, no religion is
the most popular choice. Not all brainwashed kiddies, go
on to become religious fanatics. Certainly in my generation,
the majority have opted out.

I'm really tired of the "the wind never stops blowing everywhere" argument. Leaving aside the question of whether it's true, it's not relevant. The question is not whether the wind stops, but whether it reduces to the point where the electricity supplied collectively from wind farms is below the amount required of them. Since weather patterns are large, there are going to be occasions when this occurs.

On the subject of correlation, while it is arguably true that solar panels will be generating power at times of peak demand (from air-conditioning during the day), this is not true of wind generation. Indeed, the greatest demand for air-conditioning is likely to occur at times of low wind.

The specific problem that intermittent generation proponents need to address is that where there is a peak load, sheddable load has been shed, all the existing generation is running (hydro, gas peaking, etc) and the intermittent generators (particularly wind) are not.

To my mind, the primary effect of intermittent generation is to change the economics of fossil fuelled power generation so that more gas/oil fired generators get built, and fewer coal fired generators. This certainly reduces the CO2 output, at some cost, but it is hardly sustainable, because our known reserves of gas/oil are very limited compared with coal.

Hot rocks technology, provided it works, will be non-intermittent base load generation. There would be no earthly point in running solar/wind in parallel with hot rocks, and allowing solar/wind to displace geothermal. It would simply increase the price with no benefit at all in CO2 output.

As for various solutions involving storage. Building vanadium batteries on the required scale worldwide would require more than the entire world known reserves of vanadium. Other solutions may work, but are very much in the development phase. Either way, the causers of the need for storage - the intermittent generators - should be the ones who pay for it. Let those pushing wind and solar admit to the real cost of power supplied that way, and see how well the idea gets accepted then.

Hi Sylvia,

Existing wind generators match today's load profiles quite well; so it is disingenuous as well as incorrect for you to claim the opposite.

http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/resources/documents/Greenhouse_abatement_from_wind_report.pdf

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either intermittent generation reduces the need for peaking generators and saves expensive fuel and valuable hydro storage, or it requires peaking capacity for "firming" and displaces coal-fired base-load generators instead, therefore more effectively reducing carbon emissions.

In practice, the former is true at low penetrations (as we have everywhere in Australia except perhaps South Australia) and the latter at high penetrations (as is the case in Denmark and North Germany).

Either way, intermittent generation is a fuel-saver and, providing it is cheap, a winner therefore. Every kilowatt-hour from an intermittent source is a kilowatt-hour that doesn't have to be generated with fuel or stored water. At high penetrations, it saves coal instead, at the expense of more peaking capacity being required for *occasional* use.

It is certainly justified for intermittent generators to be required to pay for any extra peaking capacity that may be required. Conversely, at low penetrations with good demand correlation, they should be credited with the reduction in peak stored-energy consumption they enable.

Of course it will occasionally be true that wind generation reaches an unexpected minimum when there is a demand peak. How does this differ from occasional unplanned outages of coal-fired or nuclear generators? Coal and nuclear plants have only 85-90% availability. The measures used to cope with these outages are more than sufficient to cope with the comparably rare event of a complete wind outage.

It is true that mineral gas is a less abundant resource than coal or uranium, but biological methane is cheap and potentially very plentiful indeed.

http://biopact.com/2007/02/study-biogas-can-replace-all-eu-imports.html

Moreover, most "clean coal" and biomass technology is more readily adaptable to peaking operation than existing behemoth coal furnaces.

Intermittent generation can't supply all our requirements on its own. But until we have so much that we throw away the excess, more can't hurt.

Ask me again about vanadium when it hurts, OK?

xoddam

The report you cite gives what it states are assumed wind patterns. But even if they are correct they do not support your claim. Except on hot days, the peak load is in the evening, but for at least half the year, the graph in the report shows peak generation in the middle of the day.

In any case, they are averages, and there would be considerable daily variation. You cannot run appliances on average power.

The fact that wind generation produces a requirement for other gas generation that displaces coal generation is something I've already observed. But it does so at a cost - and the cost is considerable. Not only does the wind farm need to be paid for, but the gas powered generators, when running would have to run on gas which is more expensive than coal. Since wind farms have a capacity factor of about 30%, the associated gas generation would be run at a capacity factor of about 70%. That is, twice as much energy would be generated from gas as from wind.

Intermittent power would be a winner if, as you say, it were cheap. But it's not cheap by any stretch of imagination.

Unplanned outages of fossil or nuclear power generation do occur, but this should not be equated to their 85% availability. That figure doesn't mean that they're out of operation 15% of the time due to faults. It just means they have to be taken off line for planned maintenance, upgrades, etc. for that amount of time. Those outages are planned.

As regards the availability of biogas, I note that there is little in the way of concrete data in the article you cited, and particularly noticeable is the absence of any mention of cost.

And cost is the important issue here, because ultimately, it's going to be cost that decides between nuclear and other solutions. At the moment, people are being misled into thinking that solutions like wind farms and solar panels can be used without a significant increase in the price of electricity, but it's just not true.

Sylvia,

Read the Victorian document more closely, please.

"15% of the total capacity of wind generation was assumed to be firmly available at all times and could be relied upon to provide capacity during peak periods."

This assumption is reasonable; they have done their homework. Elsewhere, sufficiently-diversified wind earns up to 20% "capacity value"; this falls to 9% or so with very high penetration (wind capacity exceeding minimum demand).

http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/Wind_Energy-NovRev2005.pdf
http://ejournal.windeng.net/3/01/GGiebel-CapCredLit_WindEngEJournal_2005_right_links.pdf

So 4.5GW of 20%-capacity-value wind generation can replace (without gas-fired firming) 1GW of 90%-available coal-fired baseload. *And* it can produce 4GW on a good day, predictable well in advance so there's time to switch off more coal.

Cost *is* what is going to decide these things. Retiring coal-fired power stations early isn't free. Yes, wind integration costs money and intermittent generators ought to pay for any additional peaking capacity required.

But the assumption that firming gas generators would have to be equal in capacity to wind and run at 70% capacity factor to make up for wind at 30% is a gross exaggeration. It would be accurate if there were but one wind farm and one peaking generator in a network with constant demand. It is *not* the case with many windfarms supplying variable demand across several states.

Adding solar, wave and tidal energy to the generation mix would further diversify and smooth the daily aggregate profile of intermittent power.

Future estimates of cost are guesses at best. There is little doubt that immature and underutilised resources -- biogas, solar thermal, wave, tides -- are expensive today but can be expected to see dramatic cost reductions.

Quotations for more mature wind and nuclear power are probably more accurate, but still vary widely because of the different discount rates applied to the cost of capital (which is comparable for the two). Wind is a much less risky investment in terms of delays and cost overruns, so I'm inclined to believe a low discount rate is applicable to wind and a high one to nuclear.

Wind generation alone costs about $60 per megawatt-hour, or $70/MWh "firmed" with gas backup.

Compare

http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E05-15_MightyMice.pdf

“I don't think that will happen, without a really big shock to the system somewhere.”

Maybe Yabby, although we are seeing a quite amazing amount of concern about climate change being expressed across all sections of society. This seems to have been galvanised by one person; Al Gore.

So I think it IS possible for us to get the necessary psychological change without having to suffer a crash event first. We just need the right sort of leadership to get the process rolling.

Given the amount of concern about climate change, peak oil and so on, it should be a relatively easy step to morph it into widespread concern about overall sustainability.

Unfortunately we are not seeing the necessary leadership emerging, and neither are we hearing the right stuff from the Greens or Democrats.

So this is all the more reason why organisations such as the Clean Energy Council and many others that would comprise a component of a holistic sustainability approach must NOT just stick blithely to their charter but MUST push hard for the implementation of that overall philosophy.

"Maybe Yabby, although we are seeing a quite amazing amount of concern about climate change being expressed across all sections of society."

Thats true, but everyone wants everyone else to change. I'm told
Al Gore's power bill for his house is huge. He still flies in
a private jet. etc. etc.

Whatever we do, its a global issue and that includes population.
Until we address those core fundamentals, its a great big
feelgood exercise and little more.

The market will regulate alot of it. As energy becomes expensive,
people will be forced to change their habits. That will work
better then any regulations.

Fact is if you have another 5-6 billion all wanting to live
a cushy lifestyle, with ever more airconditioners and cars,
the wheels will eventually fall off and the system will crash.

Nature has a way of sorting these things out in the end.