Professional Documents
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FRONT COVER
One of the 500,000 volt transmission line towers carrying the two
highest capacity circuits feeding electricity to Sydney, NSW. Each
3-phase 4-conductor circuit can transmit the entire 2.64 gigawatt
electrical power output of the huge Eraring generating station near
Newcastle. The station has four giant coal-fired boilers delivering
steam to each of four enormous 660 megawatt turbo-alternator sets.
ISBN 0-9578946-2-7
Take a look at this set of electricity load curves for the State of New
Sourth Wales. It plots the system load in gigawatts (thousands of
megawatts) against the time of day 1:
12
10
Summer
8
6 Winter
4
Minimum
2
0
To supply the daily peak load of nearly twelve gigawatts, the majority
of the state's coal-fired power stations need to be in full operation. If
alternatives are being relied upon for part of this load, say 20 percent,
the stage will be set for power blackouts. Consider the evening peak in
winter, the sun will have already set and the wind may or may not be
blowing. Power cuts at that time will be most unpopular.
sunshine from that giant reactor in the sky that we call the Sun,
energy of radioactivity from the interior of the Earth,
and rotational energy of the Earth-Moon system.
There is some evidence that oil and natural gas are also primary in
the sense that they may have been bestowed from the formation of our
planet from a cloud of dust and gas containing organic matter. Coal
and peat on the other hand are derived from past solar energy.
From whatever source they come, energy supplies have their merits
and failings, requiring a careful evaluation which we shall attempt.
1
Source: Transgrid Annual Report 2001
5
Coal
The profligate combustion of coal and oil during the past few decades
is a major cause of the steady rise in global carbon dioxide levels,
prompting fears of global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions.
Fossil fuels, no matter how they are burned for heat energy, produce
roughly twice their weight in carbon dioxide and release considerable
volumes of other pollutants, including toxic trace elements, into the
environment. In these respects natural gas is the least noxious fuel
and coal the most, with oil pretty much in between.
6
2
“Trace Elements in Australian Bituminous Coals and Fly-Ashes”, Swain, D J,
Coal Colloquium, Newcastle University, August 1979.
3
Newcastle Herald, 25 February, 6 and 7 March 1998.
8
Oil
Oil, for transportation and to some extent energy generation,
accounts for roughly half of the global energy market.
Petrol, kerosene and diesel fuels refined from oil are the mainstays of
our transportation systems. Never mind the pollution they produce.
For as long as oil is available land, sea and air transport will guzzle it.
Natural gas supplements petrol and diesel for land transport and fuels
derived, at some expense, from coal can substitute for oil to some
extent.
The question is, and again never mind the pollution, how long will
the oil last?
Well why worry? The world survived the oil crisis of the 1970’s and
the cost of oil has risen by a factor of ten to around 25 to 30 US dollars
a barrel at the present time. The question still is, and never mind the
cost, how long will the oil last?
To answer the question and get real we must seriously examine some
figures, like rates of discovery and consumption. The rate of discovery
of new oil deposits peaked around 1967 at 43 billion barrels a year. It
has dropped to less than five billion (Fleay 1995). The good oil is
getting harder to find. Annual global consumption is running at
around 30 billion barrels a year, with demand increasing as world
population rises. Oil is now being consumed at more than five times
the rate it is being discovered. A worrying thought for motorists.
The question remains, and it’s now a matter of reserves, how much
longer will the oil last?
At this point the ifs and buts take over. Campbell (1997) states that
“At the risk of understatement, we may conclude that the world’s
9
Natural Gas
Natural gas is seen, with hydroelectricity, as a logical partner to the
intermittent alternative energies such as solar and wind power. Like a
hydroelectric station the power from a gas turbine electricity
generator can be brought online in a matter of minutes and carry a
load until the wind picks up or sunshine returns.
Because of its high methane content, giving a lower ratio of carbon to
hydrogen, natural gas reduces carbon dioxide emissions by about one
third. Also, depending on the source of the gas, other pollutants such
as sulphur are lower than for other fossil fuels. Like coal-burning,
natural gas releases the radioactive daughters of any radon it
contained at the well-head, although their activity is reduced by length
of residence in storage tanks and pipelines where they are deposited.
Natural gas does, however, provide a significant contribution to
world electricity generation. In the United States alone electricity
utilities
10
Biomass
This is essentially a combustion process, where gas from decaying
garbage is collected and burnt to provide energy. The gas is very
similar to the natural gas associated with coal and oil deposits, being
mainly methane. Methane is itself a contributor to the greenhouse
effect, and the product of its combustion is water and carbon dioxide.
So one greenhouse gas is consumed to produce others! Whether the
whole process is greenhouse-neutral or not calls for closer analysis.
However the methane produced by the decay of garbage represents a
source of energy that might just as well be utilised, especially if it
saves the burning of valuable fossil fuels. Another such source is the
anaerobic digestion of sewage by appropriate bacteria, producing
enough methane to run the sewage treatment plant. Unfortunately the
amount of energy generated is nowhere near enough to meet the
4
Fact Sheet, Sithe Energies Australia P/L
11
Cogeneration
This is not so much generation of electricity as the reclamation of
energy which would otherwise be wasted. Large industrial enterprises
often require vast quantities of high temperature heat that is dumped
to the environment after it has performed its role in whatever process
is involved. Instead, using cogeneration methods, it may be harnessed
to generate much or even all of their electrical requirements.
12
Examples of such industries are pulp and paper mills, sugar mills,
petrochemical refineries, breweries, fertiliser plants and even large
hospitals.
An industry association formed to promote cogeneration estimated
in 1996 that about 1000 MWe was already being produced in this way
and that cogeneration has the potential to take care of 25 percent of
Australia’s electricity requirements. Because the electrical power is
generated at or near where it is needed there is a saving in
transmission costs. And it has the great advantage in the current
greenhouse gas situation that its savings can be realised very
promptly.
Fuel Cells
A fuel cell is a means of obtaining electricity directly from a chemical
reaction. It is the opposite of the process of electrolysis, in which an
electric current passing through water, for example, breaks the water
down into its chemical constituents hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen
is given off at the negative electrode and oxygen at the positive.
Unfortunately it is very much harder to design an electrolytic device
which can operate in reverse and produce electrical energy.
For several decades fuel cells were specialist devices for use in critical
applications such as manned spacecraft. However they are gradually
becoming a commercial proposition as units of up to half a megawatt
capacity are achieving enviable performance figures. They can run on
anaerobic digester gas from sewage treatment works, gas from landfill
dumps, and they offer the cleanest and most versatile means of
converting natural gas and gasified fossil fuels to electricity. Whatever
combustible gases are used, they must first be cleansed of chlorine
and sulphur compounds before feeding to the cells otherwise they ruin
the semi-permeable membranes necessary for them to work. On the
other hand the exhaust gases from fuel cells comprise very pure
carbon dioxide as well as water vapour which can be condensed and
used in many applications. If the emerging molten carbonate fuel cell
technology matures, and large capacity systems (50 to 250 MWe at
better than 50 percent efficiency) become feasible they could cut
carbon emissions by about one third with no sulphur or nitrogen
oxide pollution. The outlook is good because fuel cells can be scaled
upward in size to enable compact power stations of large capacity to
13
Solar Power
There are several distinct ways of harnessing solar energy. One may
simply gather its heat. Another is to cause it to produce a current flow
in a solar cell. These are usually called thermal and photovoltaic
methods respectively. Both are limited by the dilute nature of solar
energy and "it is important to realise that solar is most available when
it is least wanted, in summer; and solar energy is least available when
it is wanted most, in winter" (Hoyle 1980).
Above the Earth’s atmosphere the total amount of energy over the
whole solar spectrum amounts to 1.36 kilowatts per square metre and
the radiation spans almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
After the sun’s rays have passed through the atmosphere their total
energy is reduced through absorption by hazes of various origins.
Under clear skies in the tropics the solar energy density may approach
one kilowatt per square metre and its spectrum ranges from the ultra-
violet rays which can give an exposed person severe sunburn, through
to the infra-red rays which are felt as heat. The energy falls away
dramatically at higher latitudes due to the lengthened path of the
sun's rays through the atmosphere and hence greater absorption loss.
Thus the usefulness of solar power varies greatly from country to
country, meaning that solar panels performing well under Australian
15
5
“Lights out for `sun town’ plant”, The Australian, 4 Nov 1989.
17
the silicon is cleverly laced with selected impurities and formed into
thin sheets with electrical contacts etched into their surfaces.
Efficiencies of around 24 percent have been achieved. That translates
to about 200 watts of electricity per square metre in direct sunlight at
low latitudes. Cells having that level of efficiency are, as might be
expected, relatively expensive. However they are in demand where
cost is a minor consideration, a good example being the solar-powered
cars competing in the annual Darwin to Adelaide race for that class of
vehicle. The usual energy conversion efficiencies of solar cells is in the
region of 11 to 16 percent. The world record for conversion efficiency is
around 35 percent, for a tri-junction cell devised at the University of
New South Wales, closely followed by 33 percent for a tandem cell
developed by the Boeing Corporation.
A photo-voltaics researcher at the University of New South Wales,
Bob Largent, frankly conceded that “solar energy was likely to cost five
times more per kilowatt hour than power supplied from the grid”6.
However the great advantages of solar cells for stand-alone
applications, like solar cars, remote telemetry transmitters, space
satellites and a host of other uses, outweigh their high capital cost for
those applications.
In the latest (2000) catalog from Australia’s leading commercial
supplier of solar cells the largest panel available costs A$815. It
supplies a maximum power of 83 watts (17 volts and 4.9 amperes of
direct current) when full sunshine falls perpendicularly on its surface
area of three-quarters of a square metre. This does not include the
costs of mounting the unit, regulating the electrical output or
conversion to alternating current for transmission over a power grid7.
From the above figures one can easily calculate that twelve million of
these solar panels would be required to equal the power generated by
our standard 1 GWe power station, and then only when the Sun is high
in the sky and the sunlight is falling perpendicularly on the face of
every panel. The amount of time during which this power level can be
sustained averages about eight hours a day if the panels are
continuously swivelled to follow the Sun. This is a complication
adding very considerably to the cost of the installation. If the panels
do not follow the Sun the output is roughly halved when a daily
6
Australian Personal Computer, Vol 19, No 2, p58, 1998
7
'Going Solar' Catalog and price list, 2001
18
Wind Power
There’s something about wind farms that fascinates people. They can
almost feel the power churning out from the huge blades whirling
hypnotically in a stiff breeze. One of the largest windfarms in the
southern hemisphere is at Ten Mile Lagoon, near the town of
Esperance in Western Australia. Since coming into operation in 1993
it has proved to be a significant tourist attraction. It has nine 225 kW
Danish wind turbines, with diesel backup which is absolutely essential
since the Esperance region is not connected to the State power grid.
The entire project cost $5.8 million. An earlier wind farm not far away
began operation in 1989 with six smaller wind-turbines manufactured
in Perth. Its success stimulated the new installation using larger and
more efficient Danish turbines.
The largest wind-turbine in the world is a 3.2 megawatt unit at
Kahuku in Hawaii. The blade diameter is 97.5 metres - the length of
each blade is 48 metres (not including the hub) compared with the
wing length of 28 metres for a 747 jumbo jet! This must be close to the
practical upper limit for fabricating blades strong enough to withstand
the stresses imposed by wind gusts. A wind farm with smaller, more
robust units would seem less vulnerable.
There’s also something about wind power that makes people wax just
a trifle over-enthusiastic. On the day in 1997 when Australia’s largest
wind turbine was assembled on Kooragang Island, near Newcastle, the
evening TV news8 interviewed an Energy Australia spokesman who
proudly announced that the Danish Vesta 600 kilowatt installation
would produce enough electricity for 6,000 homes. Six thousand?
That works out at one 100-watt bulb per home!
A few weeks later, at the official opening ceremony, the
parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Energy, said “it would
generate enough energy to supply about 4,000 customers...”9. That
now equates to two 75-watt bulbs per customer!
According to a Newcastle City Council State of the Environment
Report the average domestic electricity consumption per household in
the Newcastle Area is 5,500 Kilowatt-hours per annum. This works
out at 620 watts per household averaged over a whole day. So the
8
NBN TV 1st November 1997.
9
Newcastle Herald, 25 November 1997.
21
From the table we see that the rated power is delivered only when the
wind speed is between about 50 km/hr and 70 km/hr. Near the design
limit of 72 km/hr, wind gusts cause sudden shutdowns which
10
P Myors, Newcastle Herald, 28 Oct 1997.
22
render the supply very intermittent. Large wind farms tend to reduce
this problem somewhat since gusts don’t strike every wind turbine
simultaneously.
The above table allows one to apply the annual wind statistics from
nearby Williamtown airbase to the Kooragang wind-turbine revealing
its efficiency to be about half of the 36 percent expected. In fact, from
the time its blades began to turn, the average annual output of 900
MWh shows its efficiency (capacity factor) to be close to 17 percent.
The country with the greatest investment in wind power is Denmark,
where ten percent of their electricity is derived from wind-farms that
achieve a capacity factor of 20 percent. The total global production of
electricity from the wind is currently a little over 20 gigawatts, which
is less than twice the total coal-fired generating capacity of the State of
New South Wales. It could be provided by twenty of our standard
power stations rather than tens of thousands of wind turbines.
Sustainable energy gurus seldom mention that wind power is a
highly unreliable electricity source without power back-up of some
kind. Consumers demand continuity of supply. This makes it essential
for wind farms to operate in conjunction with diesel back-up or base-
load power generation, whether it be fossil-fueled, hydro or nuclear,
where the turbo-generators are kept spinning to take up extra load at
literally a moment’s notice when the wind fails - or blows too hard.
The weakness of wind and solar power is that they are both dilute
and intermittent. Thus they can contribute only a few percent of the
power demand in any large-scale distribution system.
To appreciate the inadequacy of wind power as anything other than a
supplementary source of electricity consider the extent of a wind farm
required to substitute for our standard one-gigawatt power station. If
the wind blows steadily at 60 km/hr and the turbines operate at their
maximum power of 600 kWe, 1,667 of them will be required. But the
wind does not blow continuously, or always within the correct speed
range. Taking into account an overall efficiency of, say, 20 percent we
find that 8,330 units will be needed.
Where large wind turbines are placed closer together than about half
a kilometre they suffer a shadowing effect which reduces their output.
Let us be as fair as possible and suppose that their rows can be
staggered to allow nine per square kilometre. The 8,330 wind turbines
would then occupy 926 square kilometres. More than ten times that
23
11
UIC Newsletter #3 May-June 2002
25
12
Newcastle Herald, 2 October 1997
26
Wave Power
Harnessing wave power is still very much at the experimental stage.
Theoretical and experimental studies are being carried out in Norway,
Denmark and Scotland. Great Britain’s long coastline exposed as it is
to heavy seas receives an enormous amount of wave power which
almost constantly pounds its shores with a peak energy dissipation of
up to 40 kW per metre of shoreline. An advantage of wave power is its
greater availability when seas are running high in winter, the season
when its electricity contribution is most needed. Obviously when seas
are calm the output power will fall away quite drastically.
Under moderate sea conditions it would be theoretically possible to
equal the output of our standard one gigawatt power station by
harnessing the energy delivered along 50 km of coastline. However
that assumes complete energy extraction by perfect machines. In
practice the conversion efficiencies are much lower, requiring
machines operating over a greater extent of coast without any breaks..
There are two main classes of wave power machines: floaters and
sitters. Floaters seem to be more efficient, but sitters are less
susceptible to storm damage. For either class the working fluid may be
oil or air, which drives a turbine or hydraulic motor, and of course the
action is intermittent as the waves rise and fall.
One type of floater that reportedly can extract up to ninety percent of
the energy from waves is Salter’s `duck’, a large device which rocks
like a see-saw with the wave action.. Another is Cockerell’s `raft’
design consisting of a line of rafts stretching out at right angles to the
wavefront, with pistons between them. Both types have been under
trial for many years and a full-scale installation using either of them
has, to my knowledge, yet to be built.
Experiments have been conducted in Denmark on a floater design
consisting of a float like a buoy tethered to the sea-floor 30 metres
below. The rise and fall of the waves drives a pump and generator
producing one kilowatt of power from a two-metre wave height.
Another type of sitter is the Vickers `duct’, a submerged tube which
works rather like a coastal blowhole. In it the water rises and falls and
compresses air to drive a turbine. It is perhaps the simplest and most
robust of all.
28
Tidal Power
At those coastal locations where the tidal range is sufficiently high a
tidal power station may prove to be an economic proposition. Such an
installation has been working successfully at the mouth of the River
Rance, in France, since 1968. Others have since been built in Canada,
13
The Australian,May 2 1987.
14
Newcastle Herald, 26 June 1997
29
China and Russia. The French installation extracts more than ninety
percent of the energy of the water rushing into, then back out of, a
large reservoir. When the tide turns and there is no head of water to
drive the turbine there is no electrical output. Notwithstanding this
unavoidable intermittency, the electricity generated amounts to 500
gigawatt-hours per year, roughly the equivalent of a 50 megawatt
power station.
A tidal power station is being considered for Broome, in the north of
Western Australia, where the tidal range of eleven metres is the
largest to be found anywhere around the Australian continent.
Proponents believe that for a cost of a billion dollars hydro-turbines
could be installed in dammed tidal estuaries along the Kimberley
coastline to generate more than 250 GWe - ten times the nation’s
current consumption15! To get the energy across to the East coast they
propose to manufacture hydrogen and transfer it by pipeline in the
same way natural gas is conveyed. This has the merit of overcoming
the intermittency problem with tidal power. In conjunction with
hydrogen fuel cells at the point where electricity is needed this
proposal is one of the few with the potential to provide a reliable base-
load electricity source. However it must be noted that piping huge
quantities of highly inflammable hydrogen gas across a continent the
size of Australia has never yet been attempted.
By way of contrast, a recent proposal for a hydro-turbine16 in
Newcastle harbour is a joke. The tidal range averages only one metre.
For a flow turbine to operate effectively from the harbour ebb and
flow a barrage would be necessary, seriously impeding shipping
movements. If a separate tidal basin is constructed the size of a
suburban swimming pool it might provide for about half the time an
effective head of water of, say, one fifth of a metre which could be used
to drive a small turbine. Assuming a basin capacity of 2 megalitres, the
turbine could produce something like 200 watts of power while it is
turning, barely enough to run a home computer. It would be a long
time before the capital cost of the basin and turbo generator is
returned, not to mention maintenance costs.
15
The Reader’s Digest Atlas of Australia, p47, 1994.
16
“Hunter’s Ark Plan Energy Showcase”, Newcastle Herald, 31 July 1997.
30
OTEC
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion schemes have been bandied
around for decades with nothing to show because the problems are
enormous. The oceans are extremely efficient collectors of solar
energy. Solar radiation penetrates the water and is trapped,
maintaining in the tropics a surface temperature of around 25 degrees
celsius night and day throughout the year. The Gulf stream carries
warm water into temperate latitudes where it flows over much colder
water, creating a thermal gradient of as much as twenty degrees. It is
estimated that the thermal energy passing the coast of Florida is
10,000 times the total consumption of electricity in the United States.
In 1929 a French engineer, Georges Claude, built and operated a 22
kW OTEC plant off the coast of Cuba17. Because OTEC schemes aim to
draw upon the huge heat reservoirs in the world’s seas, making use of
temperature gradients between upper and lower layers of water, they
require sites where water deep enough is present close inshore. There
are few suitable places in the world. The thermodynamic efficiency is
woefully low, about five percent, requiring vast quantities of water to
be passed through whatever system is employed. This and other
problems like corrosion where seawater is involved (as with tidal or
wave power) help explain why there are no OTEC plants anywhere.
Geothermal Power
Geothermal energy is derived from the natural heat below the earth's
surface, which, on the human scale, would be virtually limitless if it
could be accessed successfully. Wherever hot underground steam can
be tapped and brought to the surface, either near volcanic regions or
at sites where stronger than normal radioactive granites exist, it may
be used to generate electricity. The engineering problems are
immense due to the corrosive properties of dissolved minerals. Also
the release of noxious gases can render it damaging to the
environment.
The countries where the engineering and economic problems have
been overcome include California, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Mexico and
Cook, C S, “Renewable Energy: The Other Answer”, Yearbook of Science and the
17
18
ANU Hotrock Project (http://hotrock.anu.edu.au, 2002).
32
Nuclear Power
Because of relentless propaganda by various groups having an anti-
nuclear agenda, abetted by a gullible media, there is a widespread
belief that electricity generation employing nuclear fission reactors is
unsafe. Not so. Unbiassed statistics show it to be one of the safest
energy sources overall. No lives were lost through the major meltdown
accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. And the 80 percent complete
destruction of the number 4 reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 cost fewer
than 50 lives, despite the widespread fallout and the subsequent
clean-up operation (UNSCEAR 2000 Report).
There are over 400 nuclear power reactors around the world, with up
to eight at any single site. The majority of stations use highly reliable
pressurised water reactors which draw their energy from enriched
uranium fuel-rods. The extent of enrichment amounts to a few
percent, a far cry from the more than ninety percent necessary for a
nuclear bomb.
All power reactors, including retro-fitted Soviet installations, have
extensive safety systems. A member of the Presidential Commission
investigating the TMI accident, A R Buhl, commented that had the
operators simply walked away when the alarms began to sound the
safety systems would have shut the reactor down successfully19 and it
would not have suffered a financially disastrous melt-down. There are
a number of new reactor designs that are inherently safe, needing no
intervention if anything goes wrong - they simply slow down or stop
functioning. Buhl also dispels the myth that operators were to blame
for the TMI accident: it was their training that proved inadequate. The
lessons have been learnt (as in the aviation industry) and these days,
with comprehensive simulator training, reactor operators are, in their
own sphere, as competent as airline captains.
The Chernobyl disaster was another matter. There the operators
violated several safety rules and because the Soviet RBMK reactors
incorporated so few safety systems a disaster was almost inevitable.
The operators simply did not know that RBMK reactors are unstable
under certain low power regimes. About a month later their operating
Buhl, A R, Three Mile Island, NBS Special Publication 534, US Govt. Printing
19
Nuclear Fusion
For more than half a century major projects to obtain energy from
the fusion of hydrogen to helium have yielded nothing more than a
gradual climb towards the energy break-even point where, for a
fraction of a second, the energy produced exceeds the energy fed in. It
could be another century before continuous energy release is achieved
to run a power station.
The problems are so enormous, particularly in confining the
millions-of-degrees process, that some doubt that it will ever succeed.
Through neutron activation nuclear fusion is not free from the
production of radioactive wastes, but this is less than the wastes from
fission.
So-called `table-top' fusion driven by a plasma discharge is a fun
laboratory experiment but not a practical generator of useful energy.
Cold fusion? This is the very long-odds outsider in the race for energy.
If it can be made to work, a whole new chapter in the understanding of
nuclear physics will be written. Although a number of groups are
working on the problem it will greatly surprise the majority of nuclear
physicists if they ever succeed.
34
20
A A Bruneau, National Science Council, Canada (see Wyatt 1978)
35
Many people, reading this far, will still consider nuclear electricity
unpalable because of anti-nuclear propaganda suggesting all manner
of problems. Even the most serious reactor disaster at Chernobyl, with
a death toll of around fifty (see the UNSCEAR report), is eclipsed by
many other energy-related disasters, mainly in the coal industry.
Nuclear electricity is clean power. Its wastes can be readily contained
and easily managed because they are so small for the amount of power
generated. Effective disposal of nuclear waste is not a problem except
to sadly misinformed citizens and green-blinkered politicians.
A hard-hitting rebuttal of noisy anti-nuclear claims was written more
than two decades ago by the late Sir Fred Hoyle and his son. It is a
shame his revealing book has not been read and digested by media
commentators hypnotised by the greens. It is also worth noting that
the vast majority of Nobel laureates in the physical sciences, along
with senior members of Australia's Academy of Sciences, support
nuclear production of electricity. These people are not fools. The
strongest supporters of nuclear electricity are those who know the
most about it. So why are the real experts not listened to?
Here in Australia we owe our descendants the opportunity to live in a
properous society possible only through an abundance of energy to
maintain a high standard of living for the greatly increased population
that is forecast for the future. Nuclear electricity generation is the only
proven technology able to meet this demand without unacceptable
pollution. When the lights go out you can't say you weren't warned.
Cohen, B L, "The Nuclear Energy Option", Plenum Press, New York NY, 1990.
ISBN 0-306-43567-5
Fleay, J F, “The Decline of the Age of Oil”. Pluto Press, Sydney N S W, 1995.
Hayden, H C, "The Solar Fraud - Why Solar Energy Won' t Run the World", Vales
Lake Publishing, Pueblo West CO, 2001, ISBN 0-9714845-0-3.
Physics World, "Energy Challenges for the 21st Century", July 2002.
Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the material presented in
this booklet. If an error is detected the author would be pleased for it to be
identified and be advised of a more authentic source. Should a correction be
necessary, the author will be grateful and an amendment incorporated in future
reprints.
Supplement 1
The only escape from the intermittency of solar or wind power is to have it
supported by reliable base-load generating capacity on hand with generators
fired up and spinning ready to carry the load whenever the wind drops below
about 4 m/s (14 km/hr), or when sunshine is absent. This requirement sets an
upper limit of around 20 percent for the amount of on-again, off-again green
power that can be absorbed within a national grid system. Even with good
weather forecasts, sudden variations in supply to the grid makes wind (and
solar) power a load manager’s nightmare.
This lesson is being learned the hard way by Denmark and Germany. Early
in 2004 Denmark was reported to have decided to build no more wind farms
on land or sea because wind-power has given them the most expensive
electricity in Europe. But they intend to continue manufacturing wind
turbines for export because of being world leaders in the technology.
Why is Danish power so dear? Because the wind is so fickle and the Danes
became too reliant on it. When, due to lack of wind, there is a shortage of.
electricity they have to import power at well above market prices. Often it
cannot be imported from neighboring Germany, where there is usually a
shortage of wind power at the same time. That leaves Denmark reliant on
power from the Nordic grid – where it is generated by hydro plant in
Norway, where over 95 percent is hydro power, or a mix of hydro and
nuclear power from Sweden.
On the other hand, when there are strong winds over much of northern
Europe there is a surplus of wind power. P Anderson of Eltra, one of the two
Danish Transmission Service Operators (grid controllers) claimed as early as
2001 that on occasions Denmark has had to give electricity away abroad for
nothing, or has even had to pay to get rid of its surplus! Eltra’s house
magazine quotes their chairman as stating that wind power has produced an
acute need for innovative thinking. The company has been forced to develop
a new plan to cope with the usual winter over-production of electricity.
Germany, with extensive wind farms all along its northern seaboard, has
run into similar difficulties. The 2003 paper “Challenges and Costs of
Integrating Growing Amounts of Wind Power Capacity into the Grid – Some
Experiences Dealing with 12,000 MW in Germany” by Steffin Sacharowitz
of the Berlin Technical University highlights the developing problems in that
country. The paper contains valuable material I have been seeking for a long
time, particularly a chart of the feed of wind power as a function of time over
Supplement 2
a period of twelve winter days for a major national grid system, in this
example Germany. Notice how the amount frequently falls away to next to
nothing – not good for industry and commerce,
The above chart gives the lie to green claims that variations in wind power
even out over an extensive region. The German wind farms, the most
extensive in the world, are prone to outages as much as smaller installations.
Supplement 3
As shown in the second graph, the capacity factor of wind farms varies
greatly with season, as one might well expect. However the maximum values
are the ones often quoted in brochures and publicity releases.
The effects of wind power on conventional power production can be quite
dramatic. It is found that a twenty percent wind power contribution results in
a net saving of only six or seven percent overall simply because base load
plant has to be kept on-line, at considerable expense, to absorb sudden wind
power shortfalls.
Germany is currently (2005) facing a showdown over power generation.
The German government’s energy research agency, supported by the wind
industry and supply companies, has produced a 490-page report proving that
their plans to double the current number of wind turbines by 2015 will result
in drastic cost rises to consumers who already heavily subsidise wind power.
Not only will their costs rise, from EUR 1.4 billion to EUR 5.4 billion, but
the government will need to invest EUR 1.1 billion in better grid
infrastructure to cope with supply fluctuations. The German Greens dispute
the report’s adverse findings and have forced its withdrawal for “re-editing”.
So, all told, wind power is not the greenhouse gas saviour that many hope.
And much the same will prove true for solar power. It is noteworthy that
Australia’s largest solar-cell array near Singleton, NSW, opened seven years
ago, has not been duplicated anywhere in Australia to my knowledge.
Do not imagine that here in this country we do not have subsidies for green
power like those operating in Denmark and Germany. Here we have MRET,
the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target scheme providing credits of up to
$A40 per megawatt-hour which halves the $A70 per MWh cost of wind
power, making it comparable to the $A30-35 per MWh cost of coal power
and $A40-42 per MWH cost of gas-fired power.
States in Australia facing serious power shortages in the near future are
WA, SA and Tasmania. The latter, like Norway, has a high fraction of hydro
power that can absorb fluctuations in supply if they build more wind farms.
South and Western Australia are not so fortunate, and their expansion of
wind power is restricted by their limited base-load capability. According to
energy consultant Dr Robert Booth, South Australia already has, like
Denmark, a dangerously high contribution from wind power. In future, in
both states, crippling blackouts seem likely at times of high demand.
Power blackouts are very costly to the economy. Industry and commerce
suffer severely when power fails. Losses will quickly mount up if the
construction of additional reliable base-load electric power plant is delayed.
Then Australia will really suffer the perils of part-time power.
Supplement 4
* * *
This supplement shows how thorough investigation is essential to refute
only two of the many unsupportable claims made by irresponsible elements
of those opposed to safe, clean nuclear electricity production. See the book
“Nuclear Energy Fallacies” in my Nuclear Issues series for many examples.
Inside back cover
Peter Parsons.
ISBN 0-9578946-2-7