Hydrogen is a product of spliting water into H1 and o2 it burns efficiently and they already fill cars with it in LA, and do you know what the bi product of it is when its burned , Yep oxygen, it combats carbon dioxides ,
Keeping radiation in context.
- Thread starter Sunfish
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Hydrogen is a product of spliting water into H1 and o2 it burns efficiently and they already fill cars with it in LA, and do you know what the bi product of it is when its burned , Yep oxygen, it combats carbon dioxides ,
But it takes energy to split the H from the O[sub]2[/sub] in the first place. And you get back less energy when you burn the H. If you didn't, you'd be breaking one of the fundamental laws of the universe that states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
When I re-read my post I thought I would be caught out by not specifying "base load".
You may TRY to assure me but I remain unconvinced. Why have electricity tariffs risen lately? Bet it ain't because coal has become more expensive. Could it be because power companies have to pay outrageous sums for "other" power?
Take away the subsidies and mandates and those windfarms would be abandoned.
yes its called solar.
God help us!!! You are debating science and don't know that when you burn hydrogen you get WATER which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Even if it was O2 produced the last bit it combats carbon dioxides is still rubbish.
True i don't know about this science, its not in my field , but its worth a mention , i still think my argument is still valid ,
, sort of ???i just need to read more about it ,lol.
Ok then time to read some stuff, i did the google search and ten minits of reading , tells me its the energy source of the future , flying planes , fueling cars , using teck bioligys and algasides , solar products that fill the car while you sleep, if the world gives it 5% that it does for energies i think they would crack the code , and then the birdys could have a better chance of living.
You're into RE. I've got this nice little bridge you might like to buy.
HE I'm a sceptic. Without proof, those are just words from someone with a vested interest.Sigh....
I will say it all again, just in case it was missed the five previous times:
- In a typical Australian solar resource, energy payback occurs within 12 months, particularly for thin film panels. In Europe it can take 2 years but their electricity is more than twice as expensive as ours, which gives you some idea about their motivations.
- In a typical Australian wind resource, energy payback occurs within 3 months. In Europe it can take 6 months as their wind turbines produce half as much electricity as ours.
- There are far more wind turbines on the market that don't use rare earths than those that do. The efficiency difference between the two is around two - three per cent. Manufacturers are going that way to chase very small improvements and gain a competitive edge. If there was ever a problem with rare earths, they would just go back to DFIG and synchronous generator technologies, which have proven themselves over decades and around 200GW of installed wind turbines around the world.
- In an Australian context, nuclear costs significantly more than wind and is comparable with solar (including thermal storage if anyone feels like playing the irrelevant "baseload" card). And that is when there is a govt loan guarantee sitting behind it (without which a nuclear reactor has never been built anywhere in the world), reducing the cost of capital for a very capital intensive technology. Renewable energy costs (another capital intensive technology) are based on private capital costs, not govt guaranteed capital costs. And they still beat nuclear in Australia - the current debate is a complete political bum steer around the real issue, which is why there aren't any actual nuclear industry developers in the ear of any politicians advocating for it. Govt financial support for nuclear (a requirement for anything at all to happen for that industry) only makes sense in jurisdictions with much higher electricity prices than our own.
I hope that clears a few things up. It would be great if we could at least stick to some facts...
I read a fair bit and have NEVER heard such optimistic payback times that you quote. But I'm a share investor and if what you say is real there would be power companies springing up like dot.com's (or mushrooms for non share investors) I can't recall ANY getting spruked on hotcopper.
Do you invest personally or just advise others to put up their hard earned?
Hi Sunfish
I don't have a spare few hundred million lying around... And it's a bit hard to capitalise a start-up to the necessary level for a very capital intensive industry.
The main companies that invest in ownership of wind farms in Australia include:
AGL
Origin Energy
China Light and Power
International Power
Acciona Energy
Union Fenosa
Infigen Energy
Transfield
Various super funds
Hydro Tas / Verve Energy / Stanwell Corp
just off the top of my head (I'm sure I've forgotten some)... Only Infigen can be considered a "pure" wind play and no I don't invest in them - considering their history (Babcock and Brown) you could hardly blame me!
BTW energy payback doesn't have a lot to do with the price of eggs - there is a weak relationship between it and cost but there is a lot of other stuff there to cloud the picture. It's not something worth paying a lot of attention to.
As for vested interests, I have said before that while I consult in renewables like wind and solar I also do a lot of work in "conventional" energy like gas and coal. The only company in the power industry that I hold a very small amount of equity in is Origin and they're not exactly known as a renewable energy company...
I don't have a spare few hundred million lying around...
And it's a bit hard to capitalise a start-up to the necessary level for a very capital intensive industry.The main companies that invest in ownership of wind farms in Australia include:
AGL
Origin Energy
China Light and Power
International Power
Acciona Energy
Union Fenosa
Infigen Energy
Transfield
Various super funds
Hydro Tas / Verve Energy / Stanwell Corp
just off the top of my head (I'm sure I've forgotten some)... Only Infigen can be considered a "pure" wind play and no I don't invest in them - considering their history (Babcock and Brown) you could hardly blame me!
BTW energy payback doesn't have a lot to do with the price of eggs - there is a weak relationship between it and cost but there is a lot of other stuff there to cloud the picture. It's not something worth paying a lot of attention to.
As for vested interests, I have said before that while I consult in renewables like wind and solar I also do a lot of work in "conventional" energy like gas and coal. The only company in the power industry that I hold a very small amount of equity in is Origin and they're not exactly known as a renewable energy company...
So you are NOT putting your money where your mouth is.
In the absence of links to independent research, I will continue to disregard your statements.
Because of a decade where they didn't increase at all, during which there was next to no investment in transmission and distribution systems and we ate into the massive over capacity in base load generation that existed prior to the establishment of the NEM, courtesy of when State govts planned generation investment. The last thing we need is even more generators that can't (or more accurately won't) follow load and reduce their output overnight - our load profile is too peaky to use anymore of those technologies.
When I add up the amount of extra money the RET and FITs have cost, it comes nowhere near the level of price increases that have occurred. From memory, the last time I ran the numbers, I would say they maybe account for about 5% of the increase.
I do enough of that in my day job. It's all out there for you to find if you are actually interested - I will just wait to be proven wrong...
High Equity-Origin is developing Sliver technology , which is a very promising development for solar. I still think Tidal would be a great option for baseload as being an island we seem to have a lot of water ....and tides.
FWIW, all I ever said was that what is happening in Japan doesn't convince ME that nuclear is clean, but at least I am open minded enough to accept that it is here, like coal, for now. I would like to see further development in other technologies. I don't really understand why anyone would want to stop at nuclear and say this is the best we can do.
FWIW, all I ever said was that what is happening in Japan doesn't convince ME that nuclear is clean, but at least I am open minded enough to accept that it is here, like coal, for now. I would like to see further development in other technologies. I don't really understand why anyone would want to stop at nuclear and say this is the best we can do.
Craig you are spot on about the hydrogen. It is amazing what it can do. Hubby is an engineer and about 16 years ago he was involved with a company who were importing oxy/hydrogen generators. In europe there are a few public transport systems (buses) running on them and many factories. It is used not so much for electricity although it can be - using the burning H to boil water for steam. they are used a lot for cutting and braising - incredibly clean cuts and braises. Popular with Jewellers because of how clean the braises are.
Unfortunately, at the time it came in to Aus, we weren't ready for it I think. The bottled gas companies were not happy either.
Unfortunately, at the time it came in to Aus, we weren't ready for it I think. The bottled gas companies were not happy either.
Who said that? But if we want more power today, we must choose from the technologies available today.
I love hydro.
When the dam is full you just open the taps and let 'er rip! "Free" base load.
When they drop a little you reduce output and they can take over frequency control. Easier to vary minute by minute than boilers.
As they drop a little more they are there for peaking, regardless of wind or sun. Even at low levels they can quickly respond to fill the gap if a base load gen set trips.
But greens don't like dams so it has no champions.
nope - in nsw it's because the state government hasn't spent anything on infrustructure in the last 10+ years, and it's now falling apart.
Hi Perp
I'm glad you agree. Note that the costs I mentioned above are for renewable energy and not just carbon emission reductions so would therefore be more than twice as much as what we would see with a carbon price of $25/tonne, as is being bandied about right now.
Hi Joan
Lots of people are developing lots of technologies in this space. History has shown that 99% of them never make it to large scale deployment (I make no comment on Sliver other than it has been "coming" for a very long time now, just like Geodynamics etc for Origin). While we definitely need to support R&D in this space (which we do nowhere near enough of - if various national govts didn't spend as much as they did in WW2 on planes that didn't fly we would all still be flying biplanes...) we also need to plan on the basis that what we already have will continue to prevail.
As for tidal, it requires economies of scale and unfortunately our commercially available tidal resources (with a couple of exceptions) are generally too distant from major loads to achieve this. However, much like Sunfish's hydro examples (or the Gordon below Franklin example), there are projects that could work if it wasn't for "green" opposition, which is certainly rather ironic, particularly when hydro and tidal are excellent technologies for following the output from more variable renewables such as wind and PV.
BTW, I can only agree with others that hydrogen is a bum steer. It's just a storage technology. The process to split water into H2 and O2 requires lots of energy from sources like wind, solar, coal, gas etc etc leaving us behind where we started. For example, converting wind powered electricity to hydrogen and then back to electricity again is never going to be cheaper than just using the wind powered electricity directly in the first place... and the same logic applies to any other energy source used for hydrogen production.
