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17 comments on The Bullroarer - Saturday 1 December 2007
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Desal from current power plants is impossible to support from my viewpoint.
It has to be powered from renewable (or nuclear) sources - and should preferably be near the open ocean, not the gulf.
As far as ever-rising energy prices go, this is only true if they aren't using renewables - once solar, wind, ocean, geothermal power is built the costs should be pretty much static from their onwards...
Basically agree except to say that geothermal (HDR) is an unproven technology at this time like cellulosic ethanol or carbon capture and storage and is the only renewable of those you mention that could provide base load electricity.
Well, strictly speaking it's not really a renewable either but from our point of view it's just as good as.
Geothermal faces possibility of immediate and catastrophic loss of productivity and capital if underground reservoir short circuits or otherwise mis-behaves to cause drop in flow rate or temperature. I wouldn't risk a cent of my money on it.
Desal plants have high maintenance costs and relatively short life due to harsh saline environment, hence high cost per unit output regardless of energy source.
Any renewable can provide baseload power if you build enough energy storage into the generation facility.
"Baseload" can also effectively be achieved by sufficient geographic distribution and using a range of sources - its a rare moment indeed that the sun isn't shining, the wind isn't blowing and the waves aren't rolling in.
I hope that what you say comes about but it is not possible with existing technology to go out and order a renewable energy driven set of electricity sources to reliably power a largish city in the manner to which we have become accustomed.
In my view we have to stop growing our economy, have zero net immigration if possible whilst allowing for the possibility of many climate change refugees, stop encouraging women to have more babies and learn to live with less consumption and hope for the best that renewable energy technology developments occur especially energy storage.
Otherwise with BAU we build more coal or gas fired power stations and dig the hole deeper.
Co-ordinating the electricity generation grid with demand so that when one station produces less others can make up for it is something that's been done for about fifty years now.
There's no difference between "oh, there was a mine collapse at Yallourn, better ask the Loy Yang station and the hydro dam to ramp up power," and "oh, the wind has dropped off at Coldstream, better have them turn up the panels at Woop Woop."
You might imagine that with coal-fired stations rated at (say) 1,000MW, the things are pumping along at 1,000MW every minute of every day. They're not. They're constantly being turned up and down to match demand in various areas, to make up for other stations being down for maintenance or repair, or for bursts of demand in the next state due to a hot afternoon, and so on.
It's just a matter of co-ordinating the whole grid. To say "just" is not to say that it's a simple job anyone can do, rather to say it's a very technical and difficult job but one which has been done regularly and fairly well for about half a century.
No doubt this has been done for half a century with FF powered stations which more or less can be switched on as required but with renewables you cannot crank up supply if the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.
If it is so straightforward to power a largish city by renewables only then why hasn't it happened?
Inherent intermittency of supply of wind and solar requires storage technology which does not exist as yet AFAIK for base load power.
It hasn't been done because coal has been cheap and easy to do (and nuclear had side benefits like big bombs).
Storage isn't an absolute requirement - it just makes the demand management problem easier.
Kiashu's comments about the intermittency (and variability) of coal fired power stations are true - these things adjust their output levels all the time.
The same applies to nuclear plants - Ireland looked at nuclear and realised they'd have to build 2 plants even though one would meet their needs - because sometimes, they go down...
Once people get this through their heads the baseload fallacy usually drops away not long after...