I have taken the time to follow them up and now am able to say categorically that this contributor is full of gas - the sites mentioned are somewhat biased in favout of enthusiasm and against analysis.

In particular (and I will cite only one example), his reference to http://depletedcranium.com/people-are-starting-to-get-it/ leads to a discussion about an irrelevant technology. Ausra and others base their process on linear arrays of mirrors, which are far more efficient than the discrete mirror array discussed on the referenced site.

It is difficult responding repeatedly to arguments put forward by folk who either do not know or who choose to ignore the substance of the previous posts.

Ausra (with whom I have no connection) use parallel linear arrays of curved mirrors to focus sunlight onto steam tubes which send their output to (in the cases I have experience with) existing steam fired boiler(s). This achieves very reasonable thermal efficiencies, accompanied by low operating and maintenance costs when compared with some other forms of solar power generation. It is not revolutionary but is a rational advance, based on research done over the past 30 or so years.

I find it difficult to remain focussed and positive when other contributors, such as the unfortunately arrogant and aggressive yet ill-educated Mr Tee make statements such as “Here’s my suggestion, Jim. Mind your own freaking business. I will decide, not you or anyone else.”

Anybody needing more re solar thermal would do well to start with an enquiry to Ausra, or by researching through CSIRO or other reputable sources. Personal contact with me via Crikey may be possible, however in order to keep my in-box manageable I choose not to disclose my current email address publicly.

I now give up on this topic and thread.

However, could those who know quite a bit about the subject, please tell us which method, or form of energy would be, after coal the cheapest and best and the most transportable form of energy?

The Australian government was willing and able to setup a goods and services tax on nearly every “value added” transaction in the Australian economy. But they appear unwilling to tax the proceeds of coal , oil and gas which comes nearly “free” + profits to the exploiting mining corporations, nor is there a monetary tax for the inescapable ecological costs of burning it here, or shipping it internationally to be burned. Their is no sales tax on the emissions producing products of agriculture.

Any significant reduction in Carbon Emissions will have to produce radical changes in our definitions of economic growth sustainability, jobs and lifestyle If it does not bring about pains of change, it will not be effective. I expect my government to attack the hard problems directly, and provide the help and support for surviving the consequences. The current CPRS has it backwards. It provides all the support to the corporations in the vain believe there can be no political and lifestyle consequences. Lets face the music, and not be a party to Carbon Tax Dodgers.

LLoyd energy is not chemical, carbon block storage:
http://www.lloydenergy.com/

Wizard Power home:
http://www.wizardpower.com.au/
The chemistry associated with this from ANU
http://solar-thermal.anu.edu.au/high_temp/thermochem/index.php

Syngas/Solar Systems project:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-279125611.html

I too am having trouble finding any more info on this project. I thought more of it was available publicly. Buggered if I know where though.

I was intrigued with the idea of a reversible heat store using the dissociation of ammonia, which seemed to be too entropic to recover its energy, unless the resulting compression was reused somehow.

Similarly, the idea that the immensely stable molecule, methane, could be made to reassociate as ethylene and hydrogen with only solar heat, would also be very interesting.

The reference to syngas is puzzling, too. As far as I know, the CSIRO Syngas project attempts nothing more than to turn biomass into syngas, that is, hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

Today’s announcement just proved my point.

Not so!!

His further protestations and claims must be viewed in light of his epic fail re Ausra. On this site, as with any similar site, claims and claimants are assumed to be honest until proven otherwise. Unfortunately, as with all friends and associates, not all measure up to expectations, so I will set the record straight.

Ausra and its predecessor company have installed a trial set of mirrors at Liddell, to demonstrate the steam-generating performance of linear collectors built to their design. This installation has served its purpose, has been mothballed, and may well be removed to storage soon.

A second, larger, installation has successfully operated for a couple of years as a production unit, supplying steam in tandem to a conventional power plant.

Further developments are on the drawing board, pending funding etc.

At no stage has Ausra attempted to “play with” holes in the ground at Liddell for thermal storage. This would be a welcome development, but it simply has not happened in any shape or form, nor is it worthwhile when the steam generated can be (and is) fed immediately into the adjacent existing power generation plant for immediate benefit.

May I suggest that we cease the credential-swapping and fairy stories and just stick to the facts?

Also RE solar thermal, I am totally unsure why you mention soils and geology. Ausra were playing with thermal storage in holes in the ground at Liddell, but haven’t made it work yet.

However, there are other ways of storing thermal energy. As I mentioned earlier, LLoyd Energy are at pilot plant stage storing solar thermal energy in blocks of carbon. Solar energy, 24 hours a day, cost effective at CO2 costs of about $25-30 a tonne.

Further, Wizard Power are turning sods on a pilot plant based around their awesome Big Dish technology which will store thermal energy in disocciated ammonia. Again, 24 hour solar power. And better than coal, this is on demand, not driven by the economics of keeping a plant thumping along in a narrow efficiency band.

A little further off, but something I like a LOT, is CSIRO’s Syngas project, which has been running for a few years at Newcastle Uni. This stores solar energy by ‘enriching’ nat gas into hydrogen and ethylene which can then be burnt through a standard gas turbine. Again, solar on demand.

I too, like John, have some professional and educational experience on renewables and their interaction with the grid. Even wrote a thesis on it. I am much less pessimistic about their limitations.

Greenpeace is hardly an authority for Australia’s ability or otherwise to obtain reliability from renewables. My point remains, that pumped storage is limited in Australia to several locations, two of which you listed. This involves multiple transmission costs, substantial energy losses and so forth. They are far from sufficient to support baseload type power after dark for the whole of south-eastern Australia. Also, there are few or no suitable sites to add to the existing list. Eraring Power Station may be developed soon to produce about 660 MW additional with a limit of about 8 hours… hardly enough to carry a 20GW load through a trough, but at least a start. Put simply, the existing pumped storage is not able to be significantly increased at reasonable cost, and is already pretty well flat out covering the peaks and troughs and diurnal range of the existing system.

Regarding wind, I recently saw an interesting graph which demonstrated that when the wind is low in SA, it tends to be calm also in NSW and VIC, hence the geographic spread of wind turbines does not remove the statistical probability that wind cannot be relied for base load power within the NEMMCO regions. There remains a need for power storage, which is simply not available using current technology.

Regarding solar thermal, with which I have some professional experience, there is a possibility that, given the right combination of soils and geology at site, thermal storage could be practical. This entails double handling of the steam again, but at least does not place large loads on existing transmission lines, with attendant system limitations and energy losses. No such plant has reached demonstration stage yet; or is likely to do so while conventional steam cycle units are available. The most efficient way to use solar thermal is at present to use the steam generated to reduce the need for coal or gas or nuclear heat to provide steam direct to the boiler and thus reduce the need for these less desirable fuels. This is likely to remain the case for a longish time.

Sorry to be such a wet blanket, but that is the way it is.

To cover the peaks, renewable energy options will have to rely on more conventional generating plant for many years to come.

I will leave for another day the opportunity and scope for demand management, via pricing, time-of-use metering, redesign of off-peak billing systems and so forth. Others are far more capable than I of explaining this.

Pay attention Mark! Did you watch the videos? Do you care that our uranium possibly killed people in Iraq/Afghanistan and other places, and will keep on killing long after we’ve left? And what about the military personnel in our country who’ll bring those horrors home with them! No sane and rational person looks at the nuclear industry ONLY as a form of energy? If they do, they’re just as bad as those who peddle the misery in my view! It would be like a doctor refusing to follow a form of investigation because it might make them realize the horrors of cigarette smoking? Not very ethical? But of course, we shouldn’t think of ethics when it comes to making heaps of money via exports, or helping Westinghouse or GE(if they’re still involved in nuclear power) in their quest for building more reactors?

Another aspect. I remember after the Whitlam Labor Government was sacked in 1975, there was a legal case involving Westinghouse not supplying its promised uranium. The legal person for that company said (to the effect) “If we get rid of the Labor Govt in 6 weeks time, we’ll have all the uranium we need”? Gave me a chill down my spine I can tell you. It’s a corrupt and corruptible industry, that only bothers with money and profits, and govts lie to cover it up. Why will 1 in every 2 people be diagnosed with cancer in their life? Think about that! There are alternatives to nuclear, and Australia is a logical place for solar! We have ‘more sunshine’ than any other country in the world! The energy can be stored and used at night etc. Hardly any snow, moderate climate etc etc. Nobody has given me one good reason to embrace nuclear power - on ANY level!

Renewables, and to a lesser extent nuclear, benefit by diverting off-peak power into some sort of storage. Three mechanisms come to mind:

1. Methanol for transport.
2. Ammonia for fuel cells and
3. Desalinated or reprocessed water.

All of which can be stored on scales of hours to weeks.

It is interesting that this forum echoes with claims that nuclear plants take too long to install at 5-10 years apiece, yet says we don’t have to worry about making renewables efficient for another 15 to 20 years.

Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration - even military resources are not infinite, so there might be some price sensitivity there. But to say we shouldn’t have nuclear energy because of the evils of DU is like saying we shouldn’t have beer because some people leave the bottles lying around our streets.

It says so much more about you are about.

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Mr. Beaver’s approval for “civilised comment”

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Leave the mutual agreably stimulating buddies alone

“What exactly is the point about depleted uranium and how does it relate to a discussion on nuke reactors?”

http://www.resurrectingliberty.com/Depleted%20Uranium.html

“Depleted uranium is a derivative of the uranium enrichment process required to produce fuel for commercial reactors. This process is then followed by gaseous diffusion in two streams — one is enriched and the other depleted.”

If uranium wasn’t enriched to be used in the fuel rods, there’d be no depleted uranium. The whole nuclear fuel cycle is dangerous, expensive and produces more dangerous toxins than exist in its natural state. Plutonium is not a natural substance, it’s the byproduct of the use of uranium. The more uranium that is enriched for reactors, the more DU there is! “It’s a cheap way of disposing of waste”?

In Britain, a legal case re a military person contracting colon cancer ruled, that it was caused by breathing in DU during the first Gulf War.

“In a landmark ruling a jury at an inquest has ruled that exposure to depleted uranium in the 1991 Gulf War was the likely cause of the colon cancer that killed British veteran Stuart Dyson, in June 2008.

Another article on this site says in part…http://www.erichufschmid.net/TFC/Bollyn-Uranium-Iraq-Vets.html

“Lost in the media circus about the Iraq war, supposedly being fought to prevent a tyrant from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, is the salient fact that the United States and Britain are actively waging chemical and nuclear warfare in Iraq - using depleted uranium munitions.”

“DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme weight and density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government money on the cost of its disposal.

Rather than disposing of the radioactive waste, it is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan .”

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5146778547681767408&hl=de#
“The Doctor, Depleted Uranium and the Dying children of Iraq”

You can watch it on this site!

Just so that everyone knows, there is, and always has been energy storage on the grid. Bendeela and Kangaroo Valley are 2 such examples.

I wish I could remember where I saw it, but suspect that it was the UK report into wind penetration commissioned by Greenpeace. The study found that the variation in supply of renewables at 40% penetration is equal in magnitude to the change in demand currently on the grid. Translating, this means that the energy storage and flexibility already in the grid can cope with the variable nature of renewables. Hence, storage is not an immediate concern, not for the next 15-20 years; renewable penetration will not be high enough to create a problem.

With the onsite storage, there are a number of very promising and cost effective (with CO2 at $25-30 a tonne) solar thermal projects that avoid the ‘double-handling’ problem by capturing heat directly and realise it as electricity on demand. Check out Lloyd Energy’s carbon block storage and Wizard power’s Big Dish tech. Both Aussie inventions and both suited perfectly to the awesome insolation available in Australia.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8559&page=0

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25817955-5005200,00.html

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24707449-7583,00.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2749522920080228?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Such a hurdle is significant and unable to be costed.

Wrt renewables being able to deliver baseload, there are two valid views.
1. If cost is not a consideration, then double-handling solutions such as pumped storage hydro, thermal mass and chemical storage systems are feasible. The answer is Yes.
2. If cost is a consideration, then baseload options will be prohibitive for the forseeable future. The answer becomes either No or Partly, especially within a timeframe of, say, 15 or 20 years.

Regarding Denmark’s experience with wind power, I note recent reports that not all is well, that expectations re maintenance and costs have not been met and that the promised nacelle manufacturing facility in WA has been cancelled. I would appreciate someone pointing to a relatively article which could bring us all up to date re Denmark’s experiences with wind.

Frankly, anyone who thinks that reneables just CAN NOT delivery carbon savings clearly doesn’t know anything about the state of renewables in the world right now. As I said earlier, read about the installations solar installations in Spain and the US; read about the wind installations in the UK and Denmark. We don’t need 100%; at most 40%. The grid can handle this, as many reports have shown.

Anyone that mentions that renewables can not delivery ‘baseload’ gets and immediate fail.