Another point Foxy & Bazz. Unlike steam driven, [coal or gas generators with over 50 years life], wind turbines are good for no more than 20 years, so over the next couple of decades we will have to replace all the existing fleet of them, as well as quadruple, [at least] the existing fleet to have power even in the times that are good for wind. Totally unaffordable.

From what I have read it is not practical to rebuild the existing wind fleet as it is already out of date, so the entire lot have to be pulled down & scrapped, to be replaced by the much larger latest technology. The scrapping cost is huge, & little if any can be recycled. Just the blades force a huge scrapping cost, & the foundations are not suitable for reuse.

The life of solar is even shorter, so all of it will need replacing too.

Wind can do nothing but cripple our power grids. Just a little math, try some of your research skills foxy, proves there is no way we can afford sufficient wind/solar power to run our country.

One other small fact, a number of recent papers have shown that even the latest best windmills do mot produce the energy needed to build themselves, & make the steel & cement required to build their foundations & tower. Talk about a loss loss investment, just like ethanol fuel from corn & sugar cane.

It is a pity that stupid people, with no math are going to ruin our grand kids lives.

Hasbeen,
If these "recent papers" really exist, can you provide a link to them? It sounds incredibly dubious to me, as a few years ago people were fudging the figures (including non energy costs "converted" to energy costs) to achieve EROEI ratings below 7 (which they wrongly claimed was the minimum threshold for powering an advanced economy).

Mistakes in engineering are rarely in the mathematics; they're usually in the assumptions. For instance, you assume a short lifespan for wind turbines (20 years is quite a conservative estimate). And although you consider the costs of a large overbuild, you fail to consider the benefits. The surplus electricity can be used to make hydrogen, and there's no shortage of things to do with hydrogen: for instance it can be used to make sponge iron (reducing the amount of coal needed for steelmaking), or ammonia (for fertiliser, explosives and to a lesser extent fuel), or you can even burn it in gas turbines to make electricity when the wind's not blowing!

The climate change resulting from the continuing changes to atmospheric composition threatens to ruin our grandkids' lives. And yes the problem is caused by stupid people, but it's their assumptions that are to blame.

For gods sake Aidan, I just get through showing you we can't possibly afford to build enough windmills to generate the power we require to supply our current usage, & you start waffling on about surplus energy to use for hydrogen generation. I guess that would be the "surplus" left after using it to charge electric cars, that are supposed to replace ICE cars.

Do try to get real, just occasionally.

Get real yourself, Hasbeen!

>I just get through showing you we can't possibly afford to build enough windmills to generate the power we require
>to supply our current usage, & you start waffling on about surplus energy to use for hydrogen generation

Your explanation was based on the need for a large overbuild, yet you seem oblivious to the fact that a large overbuild would, by definition, result in surplus electricity being produced!

As this surplus can be put to an economically productive use, this makes such an overbuild more affordable.

In practice, of course, much of the electricity would be generated from solar rather than wind, and batteries and demand management would reduce the amount of overbuild needed. You correctly point out there'll be a lot of EVs to charge; some (but by no means all) of them would participate in the demand management and supply time shifting.

So will such a large overbuild be affordable? Probably not yet, but that's irrelevant as Australia still hasn't reached the stage of phasing out coal yet! Wind and solar costs are still falling (despite the recent rise in solar panel costs due to supply chain issues) and a large overbuild will probably be affordable by 2030, and almost certainly by 2040. Meanwhile we can continue to use natural gas at peak times.