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OT: Moorabal/Lal Lal wind farm 15-Jun-2009 At 6:54:51 PM evanbb

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On 15/06/2009 one day hero wrote:
>I was shocked on a recent trip to Germany to see acres of PV panels lining
>the roofs of barns, houses and sheds, admired by the pastey white locals.
>All heavily subsidised, all tipped up at 50ish degrees.....I shook my head
>thinking about how low the outputs would be as the poor photons slant through
>the cloud and fog. It would seem much more sensible to mount those millions
>of dollars worth of silicon somewhere sunny. Maybe restricting their use
>to bits of the world where people have black skin or high rates of melanoma?

I'm actually with you on this point Hero. Yes the Germans in general know what they're doing, but there's also a layer of Democratic elections over the top of that. PV tariffs subsidised by the Government are not, in my opinion, the best way for the Government to get renewables onto the grid. They are however a terrific way to show that the Government cares, and get everyone thinking about renewables. It was discussed on the "old Rock Star" thread in pretty good detail.

But, this is definitely what I want to focus on, and the bit I am actually open minded about (I will readily admit I am closed minded about solar flares and other such nonsense.)How are wegoing to fix the problem?

So, here's Evan's cost-effective solutions to Climate Change.

We need to act fast, and cheap. First thing I'd to is put solar thermal boosting systems on all the coal fired power plants with decent insolation rates. Lets be frank, we are not likely to de-com all our coal infrastructure in a few year. Probably not even 20. By adding HTT (high-temperature thermal) straight onto the existing plant, you get to use all the steam to electricity generating capacity, plus the existing electricity infrastructure, at the lowest possible cost.

Then, I'd find somewhere on the existing grid, with high insolation, and close to existing nat gas infrastructure. CSIRO have been playing with using HTT to reform nat gas, to make a higher energy gas that ca be burnt later. So you store the thermal energy in the form of hydrogen, which raises the calorific value of the fuel, then it can just sit there until you need the power, Then you fire this through a pretty normal gas turbine for power on demand. Base-Load problems of renewables disappear. I'd also roll out millions of wind turbines in the most efficient places. Wind is by far the the most cost effective technology, but notoriously peaky. Phase out Coal ASAP, replace with fancy peaking gas turbines, and there's your 30% reduction.

Done.