Solar power has bright future – CSIRO
http://www.smh.com.au/national/solar-power-has-bright-future—csiro-20120615-20dig.html

THE myth that solar power is unreliable because clouds sometimes cover the sun has been dispelled by a world-first report produced by the CSIRO.

While clouds or rainy weather drastically reduce the amount of electricity produced by solar panels, intelligent management of the power grid means panels and mirrors should still supply 40 per cent of the nation’s energy in the future, the report said.

“People are worried about the reliability with little evidence, and that is limiting solar,” said Glenn Platt, a senior researcher in local energy systems at the CSIRO. “Solar intermittency is not an issue at the moment, but when it does become an issue there are solutions available to deal with it.”

The CSIRO’s solutions involve a combination of timely weather forecasts, storing renewable energy in batteries, and better directing energy to where it is needed to reduce overall demand. For prolonged rainy or overcast spells, turbines powered by gas or wind could fairly easily make up for the slump in solar electricity.

The report, Solar intermittency: Australia’s clean energy challenge, found that uncertainty about how to fit solar energy into existing power grids had led some utilities in Western Australia to block solar power because they feared it would complicate the power grid, and possibly cause blackouts.

“Australia is already facing the situation where, in some network areas, the installation of additional renewable generation has been stopped,” the report said.

“This is a conservative response to a lack of information about network problems intermittent renewable generation might cause and/or concerns about the mitigation measures required to address them, including cost and availability.

“This needs to be urgently addressed, through rigorous analysis of both network simulations and trial deployments in the context of Australian electricity transmission and distribution systems.”

Australia is vulnerable to intermittent power supplies, because the power grid is spread across a large, sparsely-populated area.

“There’s a real niche here for Australia to develop these systems of managing intermittency because of our situation,” Dr Platt said. “Europe and North America will have to look at doing the same thing down the track.”

The Clean Energy Council also released a study yesterday which attempted to address the concerns of people opposed to wind farms.

Consultants Sinclair Knight Merz found that a typical 50 megawatt wind farm creates up to 48 construction jobs, and provides about five permanent positions.

“More than $4 billion of investment has been generated by wind power in Australia since the technology started operating, and there is the potential to unlock another $17.8 billion locally based on currently proposed and approved wind farm projects,” said the council’s policy director, Russell Marsh.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/solar-power-has-bright-future—csiro-20120615-20dig.html#ixzz1xqWtNIjf

We need to get going faster on solar and wind.

Why solar hot water isn’t heavily subsidised and compulsory on new places I don’t know.

Ian said:

We need to get going faster on solar and wind.

Why solar hot water isn’t heavily subsidised and compulsory on new places I don’t know.

we need to change the way we are building and living

if they planned “communities” a little better they wouldn’t have half the problems with energy useage , crime, sickness and the other problems that plague society. canberra is a horrendous place regardless of its supposed “planning”.

wookiemeister said:

Ian said:

We need to get going faster on solar and wind.

Why solar hot water isn’t heavily subsidised and compulsory on new places I don’t know.

we need to change the way we are building and living

if they planned “communities” a little better they wouldn’t have half the problems with energy useage , crime, sickness and the other problems that plague society. canberra is a horrendous place regardless of its supposed “planning”.

crime maybe not

The power company, AGL and its manufacturing partner have won a $130 million Solar Flagships tender

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-11/solar-farm/4063442

Glance Fleeting said:

The power company, AGL and its manufacturing partner have won a $130 million Solar Flagships tender

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-11/solar-farm/4063442

23 July 2010

AGL Energy Limited (“AGL”) today announced that it has successfully priced US$300 million of unsecured notes in the United States Private Placement market in a transaction that was more than two times oversubscribed.
http://www.agl.com.au/about/media/Pages/AGLraisesA$338milliondebtintheUS.aspx

05 June 2009

AGL Energy Limited (AGL) has today successfully refinanced its 2009 and 2010 debt maturity obligations. The new facilities, which total A$800 million in two tranches, are for a term of three years maturing in June 2012.

The first tranche is for A$200 million and is a fully drawn facility with a bullet repayment. The second tranche is for A$600 million and is a revolving facility. Both tranches have the same ricing and term structure. The facilities are senior and unsecured in nature and rank pari passu with AGL’s other borrowing facilities. AGL will pay a fully drawn margin of 280 basis points per annum above applicable base rates for both tranches. The banking syndicate comprises the four major domestic banks and 13 offshore banks.
http://www.agl.com.au/about/ASXReleases/Pages/AGLsuccessfullyrefinancesA$800milliondebt.aspx

wait for it

AGL announces two financing transactions totalling A$1.2 billion
Home > About AGL > ASX and Media Releases > AGL announces two financing transactions totalling A$1.2 billion
20 July 2011

AGL Energy Limited (AGL) today announced that it had signed two financing transactions totalling A$1.2 billion. The funds will be used to refinance A$886 million of existing debt, due for repayment in October 2011, and provide additional funding for the group’s capital expenditure program. These transactions lengthen AGL’s debt maturity profile and further diversify its funding sources.

A$1.0 billion Self-arranged Syndicated Loan Facility

AGL has signed a A$1.0 billion Syndicated Loan Facility with 3- and 5-year tranches.

The facility is divided as follows: Facility Amount Facility Type Tenor

A A$600 million Term Loan 3 Years

B A$400 million Revolving 5 Years

>>>> We need to get going faster on solar and wind.
<<<<<

Journal of the European Physical Society

Wind turbines as yet unsuitable as electricity providers
C. le Pair, F. Udo and K. de Groot – DOI: 10.1051/epn/2012204

http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2012/02/epn2012432p22.pdf

abstract

Wind turbines have been widely accepted as electricity producers thanks to claims
that wind comes free of charge, and each kWh thus produced replaces a kWh provided
by conventional techniques, i.e., it saves the fossil fuel otherwise needed. However, these
assumptions have never been validated in existing power distribution systems even
after the installation of as much as 86 GW of wind power in Europe alone.

Conclusion
Quantifying the decrease in efficiency of the electric power system and the extra fuel consumption induced by wind developments is by no means a simple matter. To our knowledge there are presently not sufficient data in the public domain to substantiate a definite answer to the question how much fuel and CO2 emission is saved. It depends on the actors, the equipment, the kind of fuel, the amount of wind penetration, the behaviour of the regional wind, the amount of storage, the interconnection of regional grids etc.

Decisions to install large-scale wind-powered electricity generation are based more on the expectation to save significant amounts of fossil fuel and CO2 emission than on any evidence that this is indeed the case.

Wind technology is not suited for large-scale application without a good buffer and storage system. We propose to stop spending public money on large-scale use of wind. This money should be spent on R&D of future power systems. We expect that wind will not play an important role in these future systems

The_observer said:

>>>> We need to get going faster on solar and wind.
<<<<<

Wind technology is not suited for large-scale application without a good buffer and storage system. We propose to stop spending public money on large-scale use of wind. This money should be spent on R&D of future power systems. We expect that wind will not play an important role in these future systems

As I understand it, the wind farms that have recently been installed in WA are privately funded. For example, the Collgar wind farm.

i tend to put these threads out as an exercise

the coal industry is too strong and they have perhaps a thousand years of reserves in the ground over here

its interesting to see what’s said about renewable energy but the fact is digging up, processing and polluting with this stuff is just too entrenched

you have to have to remember that coal is loaded with radioisotopes, heavy metals and causes lung diseases with those who work with it or near it.

the only way to break the cycle is to come up with a power system that is self contained and can supply the power for one house. imagine if the households of australia just had the service fuses removed and stood alone without the need to be taxed by the government – they would make a law over night to ban the powersystem or tax it heavily.

Solar thermal is the standout renewable technology with its ability to provide baseload IMO.

Again, Australia is not racing ahead with this one..

“85% of electricity in Australia is generated by coal-fired power power stations. They produce 42% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC has recommended that developed nations such as Australia cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40% by 2020 and 80 to 95% by 2050. The Garnaut Climate Change Review found that Australia is highly vulnerable to global warming caused by climate change because of the effects of global warming on Australia. The Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and Murray Darling Basin are all threatened by climate change. Sea level rise threatens much of the highly populated Australian coast line, including the Gold Coast. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and Mandatory Renewable Energy Target are intended to reduce Australia’s emissions and the further development of techniques to harness solar thermal energy are critical to that effort.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy_in_Australia.

the mining companies are too powerful now. the coal seam gas industry is polluting our water supplies forever and you’ll not hear too much about it on the TV.

the destruction must be complete and forever before even a fraction of the population wakes up.

if the greens were so worried about it they would just harness the donations of all of their supporters to just buy solar panels or design and manufacture solar thermal devices

as it is they just sit on their arse and pontificate about gay marriage

>>>>The Garnaut Climate Change Review found that Australia is highly vulnerable to global warming caused by climate change because of the effects of global warming on Australia. <<<<
<<

What ever became of James Hansen’s 1988 temperature forecast? Time for an evaluation

by Prof. Jan-Erik Solheim

One of the most important publications on “dangerous man-made climate change” is one by James Hansen and his colleagues in the year 1988 which appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The title of the publication: Global Climate Changes as Forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies Three-Dimensional Model.

Graph – Models versus observations 1958 – 2011 http://thegwpf.org/the-climate-record/5974-hansens-climate-forecast-vs-reality.html

Figure 1: Temperature prognosis by the Hansen Group from 1988. The different scenarios assume 1.5% CO2 increase (blue), fixed CO2 emissions (green) and stopped CO2 emissions (red). In reality CO2 emissions have increased about 2.5% per year, which would be more than depicted the the blue curve scenario. The black curve is the actual temperature (smoothed 5-year mean). The Hansen-Model overestimated the temperature by 1,9°C and is thus a full 150% off. Graph supplemented as to Hansen et al. (1988).

In this publication Hansen and his colleagues present the GISS Model II, which simulates climate changes resulting from concentration changes in atmospheric trace gases and airborne aerosols. Here the scientists illustrate three scenarios:

–A: Increase of CO2 emissions of 1.5% per year
–B: fixed increase CO2 emissions after the year 2000
–C: No increase in CO2 emissions after the year 2000

CO2 emissions have increased at rate of about 2.5% since the year 2000 and so according to Hansen’s paper, we would expect a temperature increase greater than the Model A scenario. Figure 1 shows all three of Hansen’s scenarios as well as the real measured global temperature.

The arrow extending beyond Scenario A shows the temperature value that should have been predicted by the Hansen Team based a CO2 increase of 2.5%. According to Hansen’s projection, the temperature should have increased 1.5°C when compared to the 1970s level. In truth the temperature rose only 0.6°C.

It is clearly visible that the temperature forecast modelled by the Hansen Group is off by about 150%. It is truly regrettable that precisely this modelling is still being viewed as a reliable forecast by our politicians.

http://notrickszone.com/2012/06/15/norwegian-climate-professor-hansens-projection-off-by-150-regrettable-that-politicians-still-view-it-as-reliable/

Solar Cells Linked to Greenhouse Gases Over 23,000 Times Worse than Carbon Dioxide According to New Book, Green Illusions
PR Newswire

BERKELEY, Calif., June 4, 2012

BERKELEY, Calif., June 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Solar cells do not offset greenhouse gases or curb fossil fuel use in the United States according to a new environmental book, Green Illusions (June 2012, University of Nebraska Press), written by University of California – Berkeley visiting scholar Ozzie Zehner. Green Illusions explains how the solar industry has grown to become one of the leading emitters of hexafluoroethane (C2F6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). These three potent greenhouse gases, used by solar cell fabricators, make carbon dioxide (CO2) seem harmless.

Hexafluoroethane has a global warming potential that is 12,000 times higher than CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is 100 percent manufactured by humans, and survives 10,000 years once released into the atmosphere. Nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more virulent than CO2, and SF6, the most treacherous greenhouse gas, is over 23,000 times more threatening.

The solar photovoltaic industry is one of the fastest-growing emitters of these gases, which are now measurably accumulating within the earth’s atmosphere according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A NOAA study shows that atmospheric concentrations of SF6 have been rising exponentially. A paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters documents that atmospheric NF3 levels have been rising 11 percent per year.

Graphic: http://www.ereleases.com/pic/2012-NOAA-Green-Illusions.png

“If photovoltaic production grows, so will the associated side effects,” claims Zehner. “Even worse, there’s no evidence that solar cells offset fossil fuel use in the American context.” Zehner explains that alternative energy subsidies keep retail electricity costs incrementally lower, which then spurs demand. “It’s a boomerang effect,” remarks Zehner. “The harder we throw alternative energy into the electrical grid, the harder demand comes back to hit us on the head. Historically, we’ve filled that demand by building more fossil fuel plants, not fewer.”

Instead, Zehner advocates shifting to energy taxes and other conservation measures. He claims that even some of the most expensive options for dealing with CO2 would become cost competitive long before today’s solar cell technologies.

“If limiting CO2 is our goal, we might be better off directing our time and resources to those options first; solar cells seem a wasteful and pricey strategy,” says Zehner. “It is hard to conceive of a justification for extracting taxes from the working class to fund installations of Stone Age photovoltaic technologies high in the gold-rimmed suburbs of Arizona and California.”

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/738098#ixzz1xuuOKZp7

Bombshell: ‘Gaia scientist’ James Lovelock endorses fracking

Given that Lovelock predicted in 2006 that by this century’s end “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable”, this new laissez-faire attitude to our environmental fate smells and sounds like of a screeching handbrake turn.
Indeed, earlier this year he admitted to MSNBC in an interview reported around the world with somewhat mocking headlines along the lines of “Doom-monger recants”, that he had been “extrapolating too far” in reaching such a conclusion and had made a “mistake” in claiming to know with such certainty what will happen to the climate.

But Lovelock is relaxed about how this reversal might be perceived. He says being allowed to change your mind and follow the evidence is one of the liberating marvels of being anindependent scientist, something he has revelled in since leaving Nasa, his last full-time employer, in the late 1960s.
…
Having already upset many environmentalists – for whom he is something of a guru – with his long-time support for nuclear power and his hatred of wind power (he has a picture of a wind turbine on the wall of his study to remind him how “ugly and useless they are”), he is now coming out in favour of “fracking”, the controversial technique for extracting naturalgas from the ground. He argues that, while not perfect, it produces far less CO2 than burning coal: “Gas is almost a give-away in the US at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.”

>>Time for an evaluation

No. Time to move on

The_observer said:

Bombshell: ‘Gaia scientist’ James Lovelock endorses fracking

Given that Lovelock predicted in 2006 that by this century’s end “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable”, this new laissez-faire attitude to our environmental fate smells and sounds like of a screeching handbrake turn.
Indeed, earlier this year he admitted to MSNBC in an interview reported around the world with somewhat mocking headlines along the lines of “Doom-monger recants”, that he had been “extrapolating too far” in reaching such a conclusion and had made a “mistake” in claiming to know with such certainty what will happen to the climate.

But Lovelock is relaxed about how this reversal might be perceived. He says being allowed to change your mind and follow the evidence is one of the liberating marvels of being anindependent scientist, something he has revelled in since leaving Nasa, his last full-time employer, in the late 1960s.
…
Having already upset many environmentalists – for whom he is something of a guru – with his long-time support for nuclear power and his hatred of wind power (he has a picture of a wind turbine on the wall of his study to remind him how “ugly and useless they are”), he is now coming out in favour of “fracking”, the controversial technique for extracting naturalgas from the ground. He argues that, while not perfect, it produces far less CO2 than burning coal: “Gas is almost a give-away in the US at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.”

Give the guy a break.

He’s just a harmless old eccentric, a bit like Zarkov.

From: The_observer
ID: 165201
Subject: re: solar power and csiro

Solar Cells Linked to Greenhouse Gases Over 23,000 Times Worse than Carbon Dioxide According to New Book, Green Illusions
PR Newswire

BERKELEY, Calif., June 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Solar cells do not offset greenhouse gases or curb fossil fuel use in the United States according to a new environmental book, Green Illusions (June 2012, University of Nebraska Press), written by University of California – Berkeley visiting scholar Ozzie Zehner. Green Illusions explains how the solar industry has grown to become one of the leading emitters of hexafluoroethane (C2F6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). These three potent greenhouse gases, used by solar cell fabricators, make carbon dioxide (CO2) seem harmless.

Hexafluoroethane has a global warming potential that is 12,000 times higher than CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is 100 percent manufactured by humans, and survives 10,000 years once released into the atmosphere. Nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more virulent than CO2, and SF6, the most treacherous greenhouse gas, is over 23,000 times more threatening.
The solar photovoltaic industry is one of the fastest-growing emitters of these gases, which are now measurably accumulating within the earth’s atmosphere according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A NOAA study shows that atmospheric concentrations of SF6 have been rising exponentially. A paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters documents that atmospheric NF3 levels have been rising 11 percent per year.

Graphic: http://www.ereleases.com/pic/2012-NOAA-Green-Illusions.png

“If photovoltaic production grows, so will the associated side effects,” claims Zehner. “Even worse, there’s no evidence that solar cells offset fossil fuel use in the American context.” Zehner explains that alternative energy subsidies keep retail electricity costs incrementally lower, which then spurs demand. “It’s a boomerang effect,” remarks Zehner. “The harder we throw alternative energy into the electrical grid, the harder demand comes back to hit us on the head. Historically, we’ve filled that demand by building more fossil fuel plants, not fewer.”
Instead, Zehner advocates shifting to energy taxes and other conservation measures. He claims that even some of the most expensive options for dealing with CO2 would become cost competitive long before today’s solar cell technologies.
“If limiting CO2 is our goal, we might be better off directing our time and resources to those options first; solar cells seem a wasteful and pricey strategy,” says Zehner. “It is hard to conceive of a justification for extracting taxes from the working class to fund installations of Stone Age photovoltaic technologies high in the gold-rimmed suburbs of Arizona and California.”

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/738098#ixzz1xuuOKZp7

From: The_observer
ID: 165164
Subject: re: solar power and csiro

Journal of the European Physical Society

Wind turbines as yet unsuitable as electricity providers
C. le Pair, F. Udo and K. de Groot – DOI: 10.1051/epn/2012204

http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2012/02/epn2012432p22.pdf
abstract

Wind turbines have been widely accepted as electricity producers thanks to claims
that wind comes free of charge, and each kWh thus produced replaces a kWh provided
by conventional techniques, i.e., it saves the fossil fuel otherwise needed. However, these
assumptions have never been validated in existing power distribution systems even
after the installation of as much as 86 GW of wind power in Europe alone.
Conclusion
Quantifying the decrease in efficiency of the electric power system and the extra fuel consumption induced by wind developments is by no means a simple matter. To our knowledge there are presently not sufficient data in the public domain to substantiate a definite answer to the question how much fuel and CO2 emission is saved. It depends on the actors, the equipment, the kind of fuel, the amount of wind penetration, the behaviour of the regional wind, the amount of storage, the interconnection of regional grids etc.
Decisions to install large-scale wind-powered electricity generation are based more on the expectation to save significant amounts of fossil fuel and CO2 emission than on any evidence that this is indeed the case.
Wind technology is not suited for large-scale application without a good buffer and storage system. We propose to stop spending public money on large-scale use of wind. This money should be spent on R&D of future power systems. We expect that wind will not play an important role in these future systems