17 comments on Australia to build world's largest solar energy plant: PM
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17 comments on Australia to build world's largest solar energy plant: PM
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GAIA Host Collective
I don't want to get into an argument... but I'm a bit ambivalent about "The Snowy". I don't discount the engineering feats and the character of the people who built it but let's not lose sight of the slogan behind this scheme: "Drought Proof Australia". Well? That didn't work out as planned.
The Snowy Scheme caused massive ecological damage to several river systems and precipitated landscape use changes that have turned out to be unsustainable. Sure, we had a spurt of economic growth for a while in the agricultural sector... but the massive land clearing that accompanied that has also been implicated as a factor helping prolong the "drought" of the past 10 years.
There are farming and grazing areas that would be best returned (if at all possible) to there native state. But this is unpalatable to those who believe in the iconic image of the cocky farmer... or that we can't let these communities "die".
WE should learn from the fact that while the implementation (ie the "doing") was heroically successful, ultimately the "vision" was misguided. And that vision was based on the idealistic presumption that we can engineer nature at will... exceeding it's bounds.
But back to the solar thermal story...
Let's give it a go... but it will be almost 5-10 years before anything comes of this. Snap elections not withstanding.
I don't think the philosphy of distributed decentralised power comes easy to a technocrat (control freak?) like Rudd.
Yes. I agree with the comments on the Snowy. I went on the tour of Murray 1 which was an interesting insight for me as an electrical engineer. The electrical power generated is useful and probably displaces a lot of peaking gas fired generation. As an irrigation scheme it isn't successful. The lady leading the tour conceded that the Snowy scheme was designed for a 10 year drought and said they were into the 11th or 12th year now. Also, when I went around (on Easter Sunday I concede) the display panel giving the MW output of the entire scheme was a big round zero.
Back to the topic. These solar thermal stations can be built more quickly than that in the states. I think Nevada Solar One was up within a year. I think Australia and the govt in particular needs to sharpen its act a lot.
I think decentralised power freaks the freaks out as you say. I am waiting for the molten salt thing to be commercially sucessful so some evening storage can be supported so it better matches the evening power demand. Either that or double summertime year round!
bjddavies,
Of course it was producing zero power, hydro is used for peak power and insuring industry against very high peak costs of $10 a kWh. The Snowy produces around 4.5GW peak, but only for 25% of the time, in fact it uses off-peak for pumped hydro. When we have replaced coal and NG by solar, geothermal and wind power,the Snowy and Tas hydro will be the jewel in the renewable energy crown. Very cheap batteries.
Maybe... if there is still enough water in the system. That's the pressing climate change issue. And that includes Tassie.
You can't peak nothing with an empty reservoir.
Below is the the last 36 months
To make this clear, The Snowy Hydro scheme is located in the larger red area (upper map) in the south-east of the mainland and the Tassie system is mainly located in the western region.
The recent floods in northern NSW and southern Queensland will do nothing for hydro storage, but may be helpful when the portion of these flows falling to the west of the divide finally finds its way down to the Coorong - where they might help reduce the affects of the recent acid sulfate acidification there.
I have to say that I agree with both of you. As I said it was Easter Sunday when I visited. The drought is very severe over there.
My main point was that the Snowy scheme was an example of what a government can do but no government has though this big for 50 years but I think they they need to otherwise things are going to end up like Mad Max in 50 years here in Oz. As for being pumped storage I think only Tumut 3 is. The water is never returned back to Lake Jindarbyne (which was nearly empty BTW) once it has left.
I hope that no stone is left unturned in Australia in the next 20 years be it river diversions/hydro, solar, shale oil or tidal or whatever in the search for new energy sources.
Hmmm - Lake Jindabyne was almost empty last year because they emptied it so they could work on the dam.
I was there in February and water levels seemed pretty good...
Its probably worth keeping in mind that CSP actually is a form of large scale, centralised power generation (whereas PV and thin film solar aren't).
So utilities and governments (or financiers for that matter) probably won't find large scale CSP projects offensive - they are really just a clean form of BAU.