First, I think the USA and France and other large nuclear nations should immediately build the 3rd Generation plants that can 'eat the waste' and produce power as they do so. EG: They'll convert 1 ton of once-through waste that stays radioactive for a hundred thousand years into just 100kg of HIGHLY radioactive waste that burns itself out in just 500 to 1000 years, and so is smaller and easier to store for shorter periods. That's America's waste storage problem solved... and will also generate a stack of electricity as it does so.

But more generally? Surely with a mix of wind and solar and CETO baseload power we can run a renewable grid?

See this CETO wave power device... it's truly baseload.
http://www.ceto.com.au/about/wave-energy-and-ceto.php

Wind power can charge our "Better Place" electric cars at night, which then can sell electricity back to the grid during the peak afternoon periods. EG: Car charges at night, drives into work, charges at work, drives home, sells power back to grid in evening, and then starts charging again after 12 pm. Also, if you suddenly need to drive from Sydney to Melbourne after selling power back to the grid in the evening, you just drive to the closest battery-swap station. This system is coming to Canberra.

So Martin, I'm wondering how the numbers on "Better Place" stack up as our vast electricity storage system? It's not an extra cost to the utility... the cost of the car batteries is already built into the car km's scheme. (Works out at an oil equivalent price of 80cents a liter!)
Something like 50 thousand cars = a gigawatt of stored power?
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/08/14/2656263.htm

Eclipse Now, I think it would be wonderful if wave power proved to be able to produce baseload power. I live near the pacific ocean and sometimes the waves are very strong but sometimes it is almost like a mill pond so instincts tells me that this is likely to be a variable source of energy even if there are waves all the time.

Once someone builds a production system we will be in a better position to judge its ability to produce power at a consistent level all the time and how the cost stacks up.

Using electric vehicle batteries charged at home or in suburban charging stations as a form of electricity storage is also interesting. It will demand a significant upgrade to the electricity distribution system to handle the substantial increase in bi-directional power flows across a distribution network that was designed to be uni-directional.

The car owner will also want to know that his or her car is fully charged when he or she wants to use it so there will be scheduling issues to deal with as well.

It begs the question about whether batteries themselves are a sustainable device. But these are all technical challenges to be addressed and perhaps make our energy systems truly renewable.

Hi,
did you check out the CETO link above? They featured on a Catalyst Extra and I was very impressed. Underwater (no visual pollution to us beach lovers), good for marine life, able to pick up energy at a very small wave motion, and also able to provide desal water at night.

No expensive electronics at sea either! Only mechanical pumps and piping, pushing high pressure water down pipes onto land where they drive the turbines. Excellent system if you ask me.

Please do listen to the ABC talk I linked to above. Sha also discusses how the grid will cope. To replace all Australia's imported oil we need to do away with a quarter of our driving fleet, which works out to be about 4 million cars. (Natural attrition could achieve this if we ONLY bought full EV's over the next 8 years). According to Shai's talk above, 4 million cars in 8 years would only require a 1% upgrade to our electricity supply each year. He's providing it with wind power and solar as appropriate. That's why volunteers & activists can drive around with free Better Place stickers that say:

"My next car will run on the wind".

I've got one on the Mitsubishi Wagon. ;-)

Watch the add here and then sign up and they'll give you one. ;0
http://australia.betterplace.com/get-involved?source=homepage

(Oopps, I hope this doesn't qualify as SPAM... I'm genuinely interested in this technology as a partial solution for peak oil as well as global warming. It won't drive harvesters, but one problem at a time).

Eclipse, I'm sorry to advise you that the Spanish, the leaders in wave power, who bet their shirts on it, have lost them.

After hundreds of millions, they have dragged their wave generating gear ashore, like the junk it's turned out to be.

There are court cases in the UK, after people bought domestic wind power systems, to power their homes, & supply excess power to the grid.

Unfortunately these things in a full year, actually consumed more power from the grid, to energise the alternator, than they ever supplied to the grid. Owners got a bigger bill.

AS for wind charging your car batteries at night, have you wandered outside, at night, recently. Did you notice, no wind. The wind drops at night, perhaps because it's the sun that drives the wind.

Mate, I love wind power. I have sailed 53,000 miles around the Pacific, in 15 years, using it, but like everyone else, I found it useless for power generation. Oh, & the wind died almost every night, everywhere.

We do have the potential for some tide power in the Kimberley, WA, & south of Mackay in QLD, but only in a small way, & a long way from markets in the case of the Kimberley.

I read the Better Place stuff, & it really is a bit pie in the sky. Sounds OK, if you don't ask questions. They are working with battery people! What do you think GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota, & a few others have been doing, for years?

A bit like OUR ABC. They don't do science any more. Now all they do is green dream time rubbish. Facts are avoided, like the plague, in case they spoil a good beat up, or a nice pie in sky job.

No, I'd say keep your wallet in your hand, & your hand in your pocket, if you are thinking of buying one of those things, unless you want to start a failed dreams museum.

I support nuclear power. All the renewable options are fluff, or have significant environmental impact, usually both. The key concept that we need to get across to people is this: With so many people in the world, humans need to get their energy from sources that the rest of the living world isn't using. That means nuclear (or geothermal which is a sort of prefissioned nuclear). Let's get humanity's jackboot off nature's neck.

Yes, Eclipse, Hasbeen is right, the wind dies off at night.
There is a bigger problem with wind generators, arithmetic !
The output falls to the cube root of the wind speed.
The best wind farms and supporting infrastructure are built for
maximum output but over a year they are lucky to get 20% of the rated
kilowatt hours.
It is a problem that no one has yet solved.