Energy & Nuclear

Story from the BBC website:

Australia in giant wind farm plan

Plans to build Australia’s largest wind farm have been announced by the German company Conergy.

The project would involve installing about 500 turbines near the outback town of Broken Hill in New South Wales

From Luke Walker:

Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-Hours a Year

From the lights out department – did you know that a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor uses about 74 watts to display an all white web page, but only uses 59 watts to display an all black page? Yes, there all still plenty of these still in use, particularly in China and Latin America. Worldwide, about 25 percent of the monitors currently in use are cathode ray tubes, which means that they waste energy displaying white backgrounds. This can add up for sites with a global audience.

Take at look at Google, for instance, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s about $75,000/year, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

Thanks to Luke Walker for alerting me to this:

ABC News: Solar takes off with US power supply deal

Extracts:

Two of America’s biggest power utilities have unveiled plans for a multi-billion-dollar expansion of solar power supply, backing the argument that solar energy can indeed become a viable alternative to coal-fired electricity.

The company at the heart of the development is Ausra. It was started by Australian solar expert David Mills, who left this country for California earlier this year to pursue the further development of his ground-breaking work.

What makes the announcement more significant is that the utilities are confidently predicting that their solar power will soon be providing baseload electricity – that is, day and night – at prices competitive with coal.

Australian technology

The solar technology developed by Dr Mills already exists here in Australia, in the form of small pilot plants attached to the Liddell coal-fired power station in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

A plant officer explains that the system’s emphasis is on simplicity, with near-flat mirrors on giant hoops tracking the sun.

“Sunlight, on a clear day like this, strikes those mirrors and is gathered up onto the tower, and there’s an absorber underneath that tower,” he said.

Out comes steam, ready to drive a conventional power turbine. This is on a small scale; the new US company started by Dr Mills and Mr Khosla, Ausra, is now planning plants far bigger.

Dr Mills says the first plant size is more than two square kilometres in area and will generate 175 megawatts of power.

“But really we want to aim for gigawatt-style plants, and they’re much bigger than that,” he said.

Assumptions overturned

The coal and nuclear industries have long asserted that baseload power cannot be supplied by renewable energy. That mantra is oft repeated by Australian politicians like federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

“You cannot run a modern economy on wind farms and solar powers. It’s a pity that you can’t, but you can’t,” he said.

Prime Minister John Howard says solar is “a nice, easy soft answer”.

“There’s this vague idea in the community that solar doesn’t cost anything and it can solve the problem,” he said.

“It can’t. It can’t replace baseload power generation by power stations.”

But baseload power supply is just what Ausra is now being contracted to supply for the insatiable US market. It says that within two years it will be able to economically store its hot water for more than 16 hours.

Dr Mills says there is a convenient correlation between humans’ power consumption and the sun’s power supply.

“We get up in the morning everyday, we start using energy, we go to sleep at night,” he said.

“And the presence of the sun, that’s natural. And that correlation means that we can get away with a lot less storage than we might have thought.”

Better than coal or nuclear

Dr Diesendorf says the huge US investment into solar will soon make talk of clean coal and nuclear as solutions to climate change redundant.

“Basically, the solar thermal technology will be on the ground, certainly in the United States and many other countries long before so-called clean coal and nuclear power,” he said.

Mr Khosla says solar power is developing rapidly and will be cheaper than either nuclear power or ‘clean’ coal.

“How do you think the unique fauna of the Daintree rainforest will fare against anthropogenic global warming?”

The inquiry was put to me last night at the conclusion of a nocturnal wildlife spotting tour and such questions are becoming more frequent.

I answered that I understood that the greatest losses suffered by the inhabitants of the ancient forests of Gondwana were brought about by global cooling and drying via circumpolar currents derived from the break-up of the super-continents; particularly the separation of Australia from Antarctica. A warmer, wetter climate should favour an expansion of tropical rainforest habitat.

Earlier in the day I was dealing with another concern that had previously compelled government intervention to purportedly protect the important ecological values of the Daintree from the adverse impacts of non-renewable electricity generation. On the 7th May 2000, the Queensland Government adopted an amended electricity policy for the area north of the Daintree River:

The extension of mains electricity supply was opposed and, as an alternative, the use of stand-alone power systems was to be supported. (Right of appeal: Not applicable).

The Daintree Futures Study 2000, states (p 99): Underlying this policy … is the belief that renewable energy generation is desirable in the Daintree as a demonstration of commitment to sustainable energy development and sensitivity to the special values of the area.

It had become apparent that our household reliance upon engine generators had increased significantly over the previous six months and solar contribution had declined through the impact of a lightning strike. I had dreaded this inevitability; large, prominent metallic structures strategically positioned to optimize unobstructed access to sunlight (and lightning). Tell-tale burns were revealed on the newer, more powerful 738 watt string of the four-string array.

The Daintree Futures Study 2000, states (p 99): Businesses in the Daintree Cape Tribulation area are currently not eligible for any subsidy programs for RAPS systems. This is despite a statement by the Minister for Mines and Energy in October, 1999 that, “A commercial rebate scheme is also to be introduced”. The lack of a subsidy has likely hampered economic development, as businesses have had to fund substantial capital to establish their generation plant, and higher operating and maintenance costs. The variable cost to generate power privately via diesel generators will be in the order of 25-35 cents/kWh compared to grid subsidised power costs of 10 cents/kWh. Businesses such as hotels and accommodation facilities will have annual power demand of between 50 000kWh and 1GWh per annum (any reasonable size business would have a power demand of 50 000kWh per annum or greater). The additional annual cost, adjusted for company tax, of self-generation versus grid will be in the range of $5 000 to $167 000.

The Queensland Remote Area Power Supplies (RAPS) Trials 1999 (Walden & Behrendorff), summarized data in the fastidiously maintained Daintree Cape Tribulation sites at 82-3% reliant upon engine generation.

Indeed, over the past seven years, not only have fuel prices skyrocketed, but residents and business-owners within the Daintree Cape Tribulation community have carried the cost of supply, maintenance and replacement of components, at as much as twenty-times the total cost per kilowatt-hour of other Queensland consumers.

It is incongruous, to say the least, that the excision from the distribution area was for the stated purpose of conforming with the government’s environmental policies, when its consequences include hundreds of concurrently running engine generators with their noise, fuel and oil spills. For a community with a regulated conservation management responsibility, generators simply do not make the grade.

The former non-executive chairman of Shell UK has issued a stark warning about the world’s oil supply at a conference in Ireland this week. Lord Oxburgh expects that global oil demand will outstrip supply within twenty years as production hits plateau, and that the oil price could hit $150 in the long term. He accuses some in the industry of having their heads “almost in the sand” about oil depletion, and concludes “we may be sleepwalking into a problem which is actually going to be very serious and it may be too late to do anything about it by the time we are fully aware”.

Read the full interview here.

Conference details here.

AUSTRALIA will have a blueprint for a near-zero-emission coal-fired power plant by the end of next year after drill tests proved the central Queensland coal and gas fields could safely store greenhouse gas underground.

Read the rest of the article in The Australian.