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I know, that is why I called it one of the Been around for ages. Same as gasification. They used to gasify coal in the war etc etc etc.... If only electricity was valuable hey?

For wind turbines it varies depending on the wind resource obviously. There are a number of studies such as highlighted here that I have seen and the general consensus is around 3-6 months for energy payback for wind turbines. Google "embodied energy for wind turbines" and you can see the...

I was referring to how the wind industry has already progressed to be where it is today in that post. The point I was making previously to that is that I won't bring up unproven renewable technologies if others don't bring up unproven nuclear technologies, as has happened here in the past...

Hi SF You are quite correct on the early wind turbines. The early Californian experience is an example of how not to go about it and few countries have gone that way since. Some mistakes were made in the early Australian industry but regulators are well awake to it all now. If you do your...

Hi SF The high cost of nuclear is mostly to do with the cost of concrete and steel to withstand the impact of a 747 (or perhaps an A380 these days? :p). It's actually a very similar situation to renewables - high capital cost and low operating cost. The capital cost is much higher but...

Why would you? It's more expensive than renewables in Australia, the finance for it has to be guaranteed by government (unlike every other power generation technology) and it's not flexible enough to even vary its output. And please don't post up technologies that can't be bought yet. The...

Absolutely. Although it's still relative. The environmental impact of new hydro / tidal would be much greater than rooftop PV for example. But by far the greatest effort should go to reducing demand either way... there is so much to gain there but a large chunk of that requires a price...

We don't need to replace existing coal power stations. The number of wind farms currently on the system is pathetically small. We can install thousands of MW of wind before we run into any of these problems. As the cheapest form of renewable energy, perhaps we should do this first before...

What is it with "baseload" power? Australia is swimming with "must run" "baseload" power stations - we don't need baseload power! John Howard and his cronies have a lot to answer for that bum steer. It's really very simple. When wind farms are operating the coal and gas power stations use...

Wilson Tuckey has been pushing tidal for the last decade, against all the facts. Looks like he has moved on from Derby Tidal at least. I have spent too much time with people he has confused setting them straight on the feasibility of tidal power in Australia. Suffice it to say that if it was...

Capital cost of new coal power stations is around $2-3m/MW Capital cost of new solar thermal power stations is around $5-7m/MW You have to pay for the incredibly cheap coal in the former but can run it 24 hours per day and get a lot more energy from that capital investment as a result. In...

Why support that particular technology? There are around ten or so competing manufacturers of different technologies in the solar thermal industry after all. I doubt we have the funds to support all of them. If you have a genuine interest on the topic I suggest looking up the following names...