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| RossW Guru  Joined: 25/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 495 |
I can't believe the foolishness of our government. I thought I was dreaming when I heard them say this morning that they are spending $75 BILLION on reduction of greenhouse gasses but "alternative and renewable energy was impractical". They want to collect carbon from coal and gas fired powerstations and bury it underground, and go nuclear. Well.... I did some thumbnail calculations. We have a population of what, 20M? And average occupancy of 2.4 people per household. 8.3 million homes. If each householder was *GIVEN* a grid-interactive inverter and 1KW worth of PV cells, we're looking at something like $60 million dollars expenditure. Probably a lot less because of the quantities! If every house gets say, 8 hours worth of productive output, that is near enough 70 megawatt hours per day saved. Because it is distributed across the grid, there would be no major infrastructure upgrade cost. Moreover, they might actually get people INTERESTED in alternative energy. If households could see how much they used, make a game of it - see if they can keep the little green light on (exporting energy) and the little red light off (paying for energy). Householders might start reducing their use - turning off lights, TVs etc when not being used. If there were an order for 80 *MILLION* solar panels, I'm sure the price would plummet.... (ok, perhaps not an order for, but a "commitment to take" over the next (x) years) - ditto on inverters. Lets not bother with batteries, just "make power while the sun shines". Most of the people working at home during the day won't be using the power they make - and it can be shunted out onto the grid to supply business and industry when they are working. What am I missing? Or is it just that 70MW is a mere drop in the ocean of total power demand in this country? (It would still be like a farm of 50 odd wind turbines) |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5019 |
Ross I understand you pain mate. When I hear the government talking about nuclear it makes me feel so angry I want to scream. The simple fact is there are no jobs in renewable power compared to coal or nuclear. A windfarm only needs a couple of employees to keep it running, while a coal power station needs a whole comunity. The coal industry drives the economy in central Queensland where I live. I promise you this. I'm a quiet person, but if the government approves a nuclear power station, it will be the biggest pain in the bum to them. I will be at the protests, marching in the street, even chain myself to bull dozers. And I know a lot of other people will be doing the same. My reasons are I consider nuclear to be the MOST poluting fuel source we could use. Coal has CO2 emmisions and a few other nasties, but dear old Mother Earth can, given a chance, recycle these. But nuclear waste is pure poison to all life, for thousands of years. How dare we dump such a evil waste product on our children. Thats all from me, I need to finish off my "No Nuke" posters and plan the next protest march. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| dwyer Guru Joined: 19/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 573 |
Hi Gimzo I am in same boat as you is No Nuclear Power Plant in Australia Something l would like to ask Electrical Power maker Mobs why is Big W, Woolworth, Cole store ,Kmart ,Myers store, Target store, Harvey Norman, A-mart store, Large Shopping Complex, Main Road Dept ,Tax Dept, Government building including little Johnny’s home are having the light burning on 24 hours a days with Air Condition running as well ever worker not there or have gone home so much energy have been waste so with Country highway,Main road, street light burning all night ever there is no traffic running so what wrong with car or truck headlight as many years ago there was no highway street light, no one complaining about this as less accident as driver had to driver slower in the dark then daylight. If Australia in war by-law all street light, building ,street sign, light residents area must black out therefore 90% power is saved over night everyday that make hell of a big difference by cooling off the heat on living Planets,My Dear Mother Earth will be save . IF the Australian Government approve a nuclear power station there will biggest protest ,marching into the street with full police support against Nuclear Plant Dwyer the bushman |
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Megawatt Man Senior Member  Joined: 03/05/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 119 |
Well! Gentlemen I am with you. But we need to have an understanding of the magnitude of the problem we face before we can arrive at a solution. In reality there are several problems. The major ones are political, but stem from a view of the economy perceived as the instrument of politicians retaining their power. Our society has operated its power stations for many years based on the economics as they have been perceived. More on this later. In 2003 at a conference in Brisbane, a paper was presented that quoted the costs of generating 1 MWhr (1000 kWhrs) by coal, gas (in combined cycle operation) and wind. The numbers were $34, $41 and $78. The load cycle curve shown is roughly right for summertime in our societies, I have shown percent load for the vertical axis, it is actually read in megawatts, but for each state the values are different. We use coal based generation for the area of the curve shown in red. That’s where most of the energy is consumed and we have used the cheapest source we have, ie coal. This part of the curve shows “base load”. It is constant, for very long periods of time and that ideally suits the coal based steam generation technologies. It takes a couple of hours to get a big turbine is operating and once set, it just keeps going. It also takes a long time to get them off line as they require very careful cooling before they can be shut down, to say nothing of coordinating the slow down of the coal crushers and conveyors. The orange band is the next cheapest to generate, gas being a major source here, especially in recent years. Gas turbines can be up and running in a few minutes. Combined cycle processes reduce costs partly. This is where say a gas turbine generates some electricity and the exhaust heat raises some steam and it also generates energy, this avoiding the waste. The mauve upper band is reserved for the more expensive options- Snowy Hydro, wind and solar. Now John’s argument is that we can never replace the base load component with renewables and he is right unfortunately because we really could not rearrange our lifestyles sufficiently to do without the existing base load convenience. Yes, it would be OK if we had sufficient alternative generation Australia wide to generate the same number of megawatts for the same number of hours and still have enough to fill in the orange and mauve bumps. But that sadly does not seem realisable, due to the huge investment necessary, the interconnections needed, the fact that we’d need serious concentrations of turbines everywhere that a wind might blow the fact of its unreliability and more. But I don’t think he sees it quite like that. I reckon he is saying to himself, “I’ll lose too many votes if I tell my fellow Aussies that they have to seriously change their lifestyles – because they don’t want to lose anything they’ve got now”. In NSW at present the premier is avoiding doing something similar about the Sydney water supply crisis. Too many Aussies today take excessively long showers. We in the bush know full well that 5 minutes in the shower sees you get more than pristine in the body cleanliness stakes. But these other people I’m talking about take up to half an hour. If they showered in a bath with the plug in they’d get the idea. Showers were invented to economise on water and were intended to use much less than a bath full, but these people would overflow the bath! Now the premier won’t tell them to take a 5 minute shower, because there’s an election coming in a few weeks.. But work out how much water would be saved if there were about 1 million shorter showers per day in Sydney alone. So I reckon Johnny is making his judgement on such a basis. Now what about costs? What we have to deal with is a well entrenched set of economists who don’t accept what they call “externalities” as being valid inputs to an economy. Externalities are inputs such as the cost of sequestering CO2, the cost of allowing CO2 to continue building up and causing massive economic loss in other areas, the cost of atmospheric pollution shortening the productive lifetimes of people etc. In the early 80s, I saw some work done by a scientist who was assessing the cost of the externalities then being talked about in the generation of electricity. They included things like restoration to agricultural production of open cut mines as well as the CO2 problems. Those costs more than doubled the cost quoted by the economically oriented club. The man in Brisbane I mentioned above puts the cost after CO2 sequestration (if it can even be done) at $78, $64 and $78. So wind is not really more expensive. It’s just that, as many posts on this forum reveal, it’s bloody unreliable. And I guess if you are an industrialist providing employment the lack of a base load capacity would have profound effects. How do you start up in the morning if you’re not sure that the supply will be available all shift? It all boils down in the end to our accepting a lower standard of living (as distinct from a lower quality of life). For me, I see this as being inevitable. In not too many years serious petroleum shortages will drastically affect our lifestyles. People in FNQ will have to move to avoid water rising and people in southern states will have to move to get a drink. But when it comes to voluntarily lowering standards of living, I don't want to go first. And I reckon that most of us don’t want to even go! So while ever our pollies perceive their power as more important than much else, we are not even going to see a start to recovery from them. I reckon people like us have to show the way, publicising any successes we may have, so that other people will join the push and so demonstrate to our politicians the direction in which people want to go. Funny that. Our politicians are always talking about themselves as “leaders”. Seems nobody has yet told them that before you can be a leader, you have to earn the right to have followers. Megawatt Man |
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| Megawatt Man Senior Member Joined: 03/05/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 119 |
Sorry Gentlemen, here's the pic. Megawatt Man |
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| petanque don Senior Member Joined: 02/08/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 212 |
Perhaps the best message that can be sent to power generators and politicians is if everybody was to buy green power. Who will build nuclear or coal power stations if it is obvious that they produce a product that there is no market for? However it would require the community to show leadership rather than sit around whining about how the environment is important but I’m not going to do anything about it. The government can produce all the mistruths it wishes but if it is obvious that there can be no money made from it the project will fail to attract investors. |
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| dwyer Guru Joined: 19/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 573 |
HI everyone There is other news on to-night from Australian Scientists scared to blast fossil fuels Tuesday Feb 13 21:55 AEDT Australian scientists researching global warming fear going public about the dangers of fossil fuels because of possible government reprisals, an independent MP says. In a scathing attack on the Howard government, NSW independent MP Peter Andren branded it a captive of the "fossil fuel mafia" in the debate over addressing climate change. He criticised Prime Minister John Howard's eagerness to embrace nuclear energy, challenging him to explain which part of nuclear energy was "clean, green and safe". "I'll tell you about climate in this country. A climate of fear among scientists concerned about their careers if they're seen to be critical of the government's energy priorities," Mr Andren told parliament. "Those priorities are all about fossil fuels, including uranium. "So what's going on? (There is) a cosy climate of mates, nudges and wink-winks talking up nuclear with the help of a fossil (fuel) mafia with nuclear energy interests, talking up unproven clean-coal, solar research funding stripped, closing of the Energy Research and Development Corporation." Clean-coal technology was a long way off and would require carbon to be buried underground, he said, while no country in the world had yet established a permanent storage facility for high-level nuclear waste. The federal government has been vigorously talking up the competitive advantages of Australia's coal industry, although coal exports have been blamed for contributing to climate change worldwide. Mr Andren said Mr Howard and NSW Premier Morris Iemma, who are both facing elections this year, had been "caught with their swimming trunks down and no water to swim in" on the subject of climate change. The ABC's Four Corners program last year reported CSIRO scientists had been gagged from speaking out on greenhouse gases if it might appear they disagreed with government policy. Dwyer the bushman |
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| dwyer Guru Joined: 19/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 573 |
Hi Everyone Tonight l read the news from MP Howard saying Household light bulbs get the flick FLOURESCENT light bulbs will cost less over time and will last up to 10 times longer than less energy-efficient bulbs, Prime Minister John Howard has said this morning announced standard incandescent light bulbs would be phased out within three years in a bid to reduce energy consumption. "We are introducing new energy efficiency standards and these old lights simply won't comply, they will be phased out and basically over a period of time they will no longer be for sale," Mr Turnbull said. Compact fluorescent or low-wattage bulbs cost about $5 more, but are more energy-efficient and save an average of $30 per year. "They'll be a bit dearer to start off with but over time they'll be less expensive and they'll last four to 10 times longer," said Mr Howard. "We need to take practical measures in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." Federal Government figures suggest energy used for household lighting in Australia contributes up to 12 per cent of coal-energy greenhouse gas emissions and around 25 per cent of emissions from commercial and public lighting. It is felt the change to fluorescent lighting could cut greenhouse gas emissions by the order of 800,000 tonnes a year by 2012. Well again  Little Johnny does'nt understand in Theory in electricily this is make no diffrent as we are using more household lighting in every new home is built more street or highway light, more big shopping complexe that they are the worse greenhouse gas emissions manufacturing are Myers,Coles K-mart,Target,big W , Woolworth,24hrs Service Station, Goverment Dept have their light burning 24 hrs per day other ideas is cutting down on frozen food in supermarket so in year the of 70 there was only 9% frozen food enter into food store . Does make sense 
Dwyer the Bushman |
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| petanque don Senior Member Joined: 02/08/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 212 |
It seems that most of the green policies are more involved with being seen to be doing something rather than achieving something useful. While phasing out incandescent globes will make a modest difference. In all fairness many of the issues involved with greenhouse gasses are driven by individuals and until individuals are prepared to change their lifestyle there will be little change. For instance people are buying huge televisions for home entertainment but a modest TV would use a lot less power. People seem to be buying larger grander houses even though the average family is getting smaller. People seem to think nothing of getting on an aeroplane and flying halfway across the word for a holiday even if there are many holiday destinations a lot closer. Nobody forces people to purchase overpriced environmentally disastrous products like spring water. It does seem to be a part of western culture that large amounts of consumption are viewed as successful. How to make people happy with a more modest lifestyle I think is the big question. Eventually a more modest lifestyle will be forced upon them. |
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wind friend Newbie  Joined: 01/05/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 39 |
hi reading this forum with interest. not long a go had a tour around the eildon hydro plant. engineer there tells me they get 64 cents per MW hour ?????? a bit more when the peak demand comes in tell me who is making the money. hans |
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| dwyer Guru Joined: 19/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 573 |
Wind friend hi Is the Eildon Hydro Plant is near the Town of Alexandra Victoria dwyer the Bushman |
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