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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (4263)	6/7/2006 8:57:55 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24212

Solar is a real option: CSIRO Report says sun will soon match coal Rosslyn Beeby Friday, 26 May 2006 Solar thermal technology is capable of producing Australia's entire electricity demand and is the only renewable energy capable of making deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a confidential coal research report obtained by The Canberra Times says. The report, by the Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development, claims solar thermal technology "is poised to play a significant role in baseload generation for Australia" and will be cost-competitive with coal within seven years. It says solar thermal-generated power is capable of meeting the requirements of two major electric power markets - "large-scale dispatchable markets comprised of grid-connected peaking and base-load power and rapidly expanding distributed markets including both on-grid and remote off-grid applications". The draft report, written by five CSIRO Energy Technology division scientists, was submitted to the CRC in August last year but has not been published. CSIRO is one of 19 research and funding partners within the CRC - other participants include BHP Billiton, Wesfarmers Coal, Xstrata Coal and Rio Tinto. Greens leader Senator Bob Brown said the report clearly indicated Australia should be investing in developing and commercialising new solar technologies to meet growing global demand and has accused the Federal Government of undermining solar research by cutting back funding. "This report demonstrates that Australia's future is definitely solar. It also places a question mark over Government decisions to scale-back funding for research in this area. You begin to wonder if there are vested interests that are making sure cost-efficient renewable energy drops off the agenda. "It is inexplicable because solar energy is absolutely right for Australia's climate and dispersed populations in remote areas," Senator Brown said. The CRC's report claims a 35sqkm area with high levels of sunlight and low cloud cover "could produce Australia's entire current power demand" using solar thermal technology. "Solar radiation is the largest renewable resource on earth and, if harnessed by existing technology, approximately 1.5 per cent of the world's desert area could generate the world's entire electricity demand," the report says. CSIRO renewable energy manager Wes Stein, who advised the CRC on aspects of the report, said Australia had the potential to be a world leader in solar thermal technology. "The technology that has been developed over the last 10 years has a lot less risks for investors, both financial and technical. The potential is massive," he said. Solar thermal technology involves concentrating sunlight to produce heat to generate electricity, or to increase the chemical energy of natural gas. Technologies being developed and tested in Australia include parabolic troughs and dishes, power towers, solar arrays and solar thermal reactors. CSIRO's Energy Transformed national flagship has designed and built a world-first solar thermal tower at its headquarters in Newcastle which uses rows of 200 electronically positioned mirrors to track the sun as it moves across the sky. The tower captures and stores the sun's energy as "bottled sunshine" or solar natural gas. Mr Stein, who led the team that developed the solar thermal tower, said that using new solar thermal technology, Australia's current electricity demand could be supplied "within an area that would take about four minutes to fly over on a plane trip from Sydney to Perth". Solar thermal was also "as cheap or cheaper than the cheapest wind-power technology". The ANU's deputy director of sustainable energy systems, Dr Keith Lovegrove, said solar thermal had the potential to replace Australia's ageing coal-fired power stations with solar-powered steam turbines. "It would simply be a matter of changing over running the turbines off steam provided by coal to solar-produced steam, but the only problem is that most of Australia's coal-fired power stations aren't located in sunny areas," DrLovegrove said. The ANU has designed and built a 400sqm solar concentrator dish system - the world's largest - for use in large arrays for multi-megawatt scale electric power generation. canberra.yourguide.com.au